Culture put to the test of RN town halls

Catherine Pegard, Minister of Culture, speaks about the deprogramming of Alexis Michalik’s play by the municipality of Castres, on June 16, 2026, at the National Assembly. (Photo Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas via AFP)

From one city to another, a worrying picture begins to take shape. In Castres, the play is canceled Passportby Alexis Michalik, who hit the headlines. The work recounts the journey of an exile and yet, Michalik, author of the success Edmond (formerly The Story Bearer et Rostand in certain scenes), does not exactly come across as a dangerous revolutionary. Scheduled, already performed, the piece was awaited.

At La Flèche, it was the Le Carroi company which saw its street theater festival, The Freedmencut from a large part of its subsidy, while the free concerts of the festival Les Apartés, were deleted. Double punishment in this city where aid to Carroi had already been eliminated last year by the Pays de la Loire Region, chaired by Christelle Moranais.

But it is in the South-East, particularly in Vaucluse and Gard, that the RN is most rampant. In the Camargue, in Vauvert, an exhibition by a photographer suspected of being a convinced Mélenchonist was canceled. A jazz association disappeared after its subsidy was withdrawn. In Agde, in Hérault, a film festival has seen its budget reduced by a third, as have free concerts. In Perpignan, the name of Walter Benjamin was removed from the contemporary art center. We know that the philosopher died in 1940, not far from there, after crossing the Pyrenees, and that he is buried in Port-Bou.

In Bédarrides, subsidies to cultural associations increased from 31,400 to 830 euros. We could add Beaucaire, Camaret-sur-Aigues or even Carpentras, where was played Maréchal, nous voilà the anniversary of the Landing. The examples are multiplying.

Culture at the heart of the ideological fight

At the same time, mayors extol “the defense of Provençal traditions and culture” or even “traditional festivals around our Occitan traditions”. They call for an end to “pseudo-artists who make culture an instrument of propaganda in the service of immigrationist ideology”.

During a debate, Sarah Knafo even castigated a left which would have placed culture under supervision for eighty years. We did not know that the Gaullists or the Christian Democrats of the MRP were left…

A weakened cultural exception

In any case, we have been warned: the battle is on. What happened this year – the Alloncle commission and its project to dismantle public broadcasting, Bolloré’s offensive on Grasset, that of the RN against public subsidies, and in particular against the role of the National Cinema Center – heralds large-scale political and ideological clashes. Culture is becoming one of the issues of the next presidential campaign.

Will there still be a French cultural exception tomorrow? The right-left consensus that protected it for a long time is now broken. As in the United States or Italy, the far right found here an ideological terrain allowing it to assert its xenophobic, reactionary and ultranationalist convictions by attacking intellectuals, artists and, more broadly, universalism. To arms, citizens of culture!

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Jérôme Clément

Editorialiste culture