What place does culture have in the RN's program?
What would the National Rally do if it had a majority to govern on the evening of July 7? To answer this question, we now have a wide range of evidence, yet it remains unclear. And this is no coincidence.
Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier
An examination of the RN's position in power in French municipalities allows us to clarify the nature of the historic moment in which we find ourselves and to consider how it could give culture and heritage a "major role in the moral recovery of the country" (RN Heritage booklet).
But then there is the program as it was presented during the 2022 presidential election, following on from that of 2017 and the National Front's platform for the 2002 election. The changes are noticeable, but the core remains relatively constant. It is very consistent with what far-right governments are doing in Europe.
A modest place in the RN's program
There is no need today to give more coherence and depth to what would be the RN's cultural policy program. Why? On the one hand, it occupies a relatively modest place—even if it has been reevaluated—in the political project. The RN's neo-Gramscian shift—referring to the Marxist philosopher's idea that hegemony is achieved through cultural struggle—remains relative.
On the other hand, this program is designed more with a view to appeasement than cultural warfare. If it is so respectful—in appearance—of existing achievements (heritage, intermittent work, culture passes, creative grants, etc.), it is also to avoid provoking an outcry from a cultural milieu with a reputation for being "outspoken," highly valued by citizens, and impervious to the RN's stance in general.
This discourse of "de-demonization" and these common traits can also be seen in the way in which the few local RN communities manage culture. What can we see here? On the one hand, local RN leaders are not seeking to make waves with culture. Julien Sanchez, in Beaucaire (Gard), certainly saw the departure of the managers of his culture department, and recruited new ones, turning the municipal library into a convenient hiding place for officials opposed to him. But he has extended the theater season set up by the previous team and gives a speech before each performance offered by the same show provider that has been present in the city for more than 20 years.
He brought greater prominence to Camargue culture and local folklore by giving a speech before each evening concert during the Madeleine festival. He inaugurated the nativity scene with his presence, wearing the tricolor sash, accepting the repeated risk of fines, which he did not care about.
In Beaucaire, as elsewhere, we are witnessing a repoliticization of culture, in the sense that elected officials are now involved in decisions that were traditionally left to cultural professionals. The weakening of the latter's position remains relatively discreet and difficult to counter politically.
In Perpignan, Louis Aliot and his deputy for culture took control of a policy that was being implemented by institutions whose values were diametrically opposed to his own, which led to conflicts with the Casa Musicale, a major player in contemporary music in all its social diversity, and even to the rejection of any support for certain genres, such as rap. However, he has maintained his support for the city's flagship event: the Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival.
While local cultural icons are generally protected (particularly by authorities at other levels: inter-municipal, departmental, regional, and national), the community groups most involved in popular education or culture in neighborhoods are quietly deprived of support either directly (through cuts in subsidies) or indirectly, by requiring them to pay deliberately exorbitant rents, as we saw in Hénin-Beaumont with the League of Human Rights.
On the contrary, considerable attention is paid to the traditional and folkloric cultures of each of these territories. Politicization, folklorization, and the rejection of cultural diversity are therefore both present and discreet in the RN's management of cities. This is hardly surprising: these municipalities serve as laboratories, claiming to demonstrate the RN's ability to govern by adopting the most sober stance possible in ideological terms.
The RN's program for culture
This program places a strong emphasis on heritage in its most conservative form, focusing on buildings. It ignores the more contemporary version, which is pluralistic and gives equal weight to intangible heritage, embracing the different communities of citizens living in France and what constitutes heritage for them.
The measures are both precise and highly targeted. The overhaul of the tax system—already very advantageous for owners, particularly in terms of inheritance—aims to favor owners of châteaux and bastides. It would be accompanied by the abolition of taxes on the Heritage Lottery, which, despite its modest size (equivalent to a regional conservation of historic monuments), helps to finance projects that are partly different from those pursued by the Ministry of Culture.
To further consolidate this policy, there are plans to significantly increase the budget for heritage restoration and to accompany this with the implementation of a national heritage service for 18-24 year olds, lasting six months and renewable once. These youth work camps, which already exist, as in the other version of integration work camps, will undoubtedly be assigned the task of "moral recovery" mentioned above.
As it stands, this policy focuses primarily on form and means. Nothing is said about the content of their project. To get a clearer idea, we must make the not-so-bold assumption that the heritage in question will be assessed in terms of its moral value, based once again on the campaign program: "The nation finds itself in the places, landscapes, and monuments where it was formed" (booklet, p. 7).
It would therefore be influenced by national preference, which harks back to an unattainable golden age. At best, it would involve the invention of a homogenized and mythologized past that art historians tear apart, as Gabor Sonkoly does with regard to the reconstruction of Buda Castle and its biases of authenticity and instrumentalization, and thus through a logic of exclusion.
Neoliberal orientation
If it is difficult to detail—let alone imagine—the contents of the RN's heritage policy, what can be said about other aspects? The privatization of the audiovisual sector highlights the neoliberal and populist dimension of the project.
This is an alternative choice to that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, who ensures more direct control over content, even within the framework of RAI's public ownership: in Italy, the far right in power attacks intellectuals.
This French neoliberal orientation takes on a second meaning through the routine criticism expressed by RN elected officials (in Parliament and in the rare speeches that address culture) toward contemporary creation, which runs counter to "people's tastes." Their promotion to the status of a criterion for evaluating cultural policy runs counter to any ambition in this area which, in the words of Jean Vilar, consists of offering people things they might like (rather than what they already like).
Above all, it conflicts with the spirit and letter of the LCAP law (Freedom of Creation, Architecture, and Heritage), which specifies the limits of public intervention in artistic content, the contents of which RN elected officials are unaware of (in both senses of the term).
"People's tastes" as a compass
Instead of public policy, legitimate cultural decisions would therefore essentially be reduced to individual choices already made by people, and one might wonder where these choices come from: family tradition? School curriculum? Media subject to audience ratings? This is a neoliberal undertaking in the sense that there is a double distrust of cultural institutions and creative freedom.
This choice reflects, albeit in a much more moderate form, the cultural views already espoused by Jean-Marie Le Pen: "In the diabolical square of the destruction of France led by Establishment politicians, after biological extinction (the French birth rate), migratory submersion (immigration), and the disappearance of the Nation (Euro-globalism), the fourth side is that of cultural genocide " (Front National Culture Program, 2002).
This neoliberal stance calls for infinite caution regarding Marine Le Pen's commitment, as part of her 2022 campaign, to maintain subsidies for creative industries and the status of intermittent workers in the entertainment industry. However, there is no longer any mention of strengthening control over its use by introducing a professional card, which she proposed in 2017. There is also little doubt about how arts and cultural education policy would be implemented under the leadership of a National Rally Ministry of Culture.
We can therefore easily conclude that the RN's cultural program is characterized by three features:
- A national and consistent vision of heritage;
- a neoliberal orientation of the audiovisual and creative sectors, which is not incompatible with tighter control over content.
- A reactionary focus on the link between culture and society.
Subverting existing tools
Finally, the RN government's cultural policy can only be considered in light of the fact that it may well limit its program to a few formal decisions, given that its real challenge is to take control of existing instruments and subvert their entire mindset without changing them.
The RN's heritage policy is inspired by the existing situation, but its content would be radically altered by a different political agenda. Aid for creative industries, the status of intermittent workers, and the French-speaking world could well have the same resources at their disposal, but for the benefit of very different political orientations. According to this hypothesis, it is therefore in concrete action that we could see a political program of rupture at work, i.e., the transposition of slogans (national preference, heritage identity, rejection of multiculturalism, people's tastes) into instruments of action, or even levers of hegemony.
Emmanuel Négrier, CNRS Research Director in Political Science at CEPEL, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier
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