What role does culture play in the RN’s platform?
What would the National Rally do if, on the evening of July 7, it secured a governing majority? To attempt to answer this question, we currently have a wide yet vague range of evidence at our disposal. And this is no coincidence.
Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier
An examination of the National Rally’s governance in French municipalities helps clarify the nature of the historic moment we are currently experiencing and consider how it might give culture and heritage a “major role in the country’s moral revival” (National Rally Heritage booklet).
On the other hand, there is the platform as it was presented during the 2022 presidential election, following on from the 2017 platform and the National Front’s platform from the 2002 election. While there have been noticeable changes, the core of the platform remains relatively consistent. It is very much in line with the policies of far-right governments in Europe.
A modest place in the RN’s platform
We should not, at this point, ascribe greater coherence or depth to what a National Rally (RN) cultural policy might look like. Why? For one thing, it occupies a relatively modest place—even if its importance is being reassessed—within the party’s political agenda. The RN’s neo-Gramscian turn—referring to the Marxist philosopher’s idea that the conquest of hegemony requires a cultural struggle—remains limited.
On the other hand, this program is designed more with a view to winning people over than waging a culture war. If it appears so respectful of existing achievements (cultural heritage, intermittent work status, the “Pass Culture” card, creative grants, etc.), it is also to avoid provoking an outcry from a cultural community known for its outspokenness—one that is generally well-regarded by the public and largely impervious to the National Rally’s stance.
This rhetoric of “de-demonization” and these common traits are also evident in the way the few RN-led local governments manage cultural affairs. What do we see there? On the one hand, local RN leaders make no attempt to make a splash with culture. Julien Sanchez, in Beaucaire (Gard), certainly saw the staff of his cultural department leave, and recruited new ones while turning the municipal library into a convenient dumping ground for employees opposed to him. But he extended the theater season established by the previous team and delivers a speech there before every performance presented by the same theater company that has been active in the town for over 20 years.
He has brought greater attention to Camargue’s traditions and local folklore by giving a speech before each evening concert during the Fêtes de la Madeleine. He officially opens the nativity scene with his presence, wearing the tricolor sash, willing to risk repeated fines—a consequence he doesn’t care about.
In the case of Beaucaire, as elsewhere, we are witnessing a repoliticization of culture, in the sense that elected officials are becoming involved in decisions that are typically left to cultural professionals. The erosion of the latter’s influence remains relatively subtle and difficult to counter politically.
In Perpignan, Louis Aliot and his deputy for culture have regained control of a cultural policy that had been shaped by institutions at odds with his values, which led to conflicts with the Casa Musicale—a major player in contemporary music across its social spectrum—and even the refusal to support certain genres, such as rap. But he has maintained his support for the city’s flagship event: the Visa pour l’image photojournalism festival.
While local cultural landmarks are generally protected (particularly by authorities at other levels: intermunicipal bodies, departments, regions, and the national government), the community organizations most committed to community education or culture in neighborhoods are quietly deprived of support—either directly (through cuts to subsidies) or indirectly—by being required to pay rent at deliberately exorbitant rates, as seen in Hénin-Beaumont with the League of Human Rights.
On the contrary, significant emphasis is placed on the traditional and folkloric cultures of each of these regions. Politicization, folklorization, and the rejection of cultural diversity are thus both present and subtle in the RN’s management of these cities. This comes as no surprise: these municipalities serve as deliberate testing grounds intended to demonstrate the RN’s ability to govern, while maintaining the most ideologically neutral stance possible.
The RN's cultural policy
This program places a strong emphasis on heritage, specifically in its most conservative form, which focuses on buildings. It overlooks the more contemporary approach, which takes a broader view and gives due consideration to intangible heritage—heritage that reflects the diverse communities of citizens living in France and what constitutes heritage for them.
The measures are both specific and highly targeted. The tax overhaul—which is already highly favorable to property owners, particularly regarding inheritance—aims to benefit owners of châteaux and bastides. It would be accompanied by the elimination of taxes on the Heritage Lottery, which, despite its modest scale (equivalent to a regional historic preservation fund), helps finance projects that differ in part from those overseen by the Ministry of Culture.
To further consolidate this policy, there are plans to significantly increase the budget for heritage restoration, accompanied by the launch of a six-month national heritage service for 18- to 24-year-olds, renewable once. These youth work programs, which already exist—much like the other version of integration work programs—will likely be tasked with the “moral rehabilitation” mentioned above.
As it stands, this policy focuses primarily on form and means. Nothing is said about the substance of their plan. To get a clearer picture, we must make the—not particularly bold—assumption that the heritage in question will be evaluated in terms of this value of moral renewal, based once again on the campaign platform: “The Nation finds itself in the places, landscapes, and monuments where it was formed” (brochure, p. 7).
It would thus be influenced by a preference for the national, which harks back to a golden age that cannot be found. At best, it would involve the invention of a homogenized and mythologized past that art historians tear apart, as Gabor Sonkoly does regarding the reconstruction of Buda Castle and its biases toward authenticity and instrumentalization—and thus through a logic of exclusion.
Neoliberal orientation
While it is difficult to elaborate on—let alone imagine—the specifics of the RN’s cultural heritage policy, what can be said about its other aspects? The privatization of the broadcasting sector highlights the neoliberal and populist dimensions of the project.
This is an alternative approach to that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, who is ensuring more direct control over content within the framework of RAI’s public ownership: in Italy, the far-right government is attacking intellectuals.
This French neoliberal orientation takes on a second meaning through the routine criticism voiced by National Rally (RN) lawmakers—both in Parliament and in the rare speeches they give on culture—toward contemporary art, which they claim runs counter to “people’s tastes.” Elevating these tastes to the status of a criterion for evaluating cultural policy runs counter to any ambition in this field, which, in the words of Jean Vilar, consists of offering people things they might like (and not what they already like).
Above all, it runs counter to both the spirit and the letter of the LCAP law (Freedom of Creation, Architecture, and Heritage), which sets out the limits of government intervention in artistic content—a law whose provisions the RN’s elected officials are ignorant of (in both senses of the word).
“People’s tastes” as a guide
Instead of public policy, legitimate cultural decision-making would thus essentially be reduced to individual choices already made by people—choices whose origins are open to question: a family tradition? An educational background? Media driven by ratings? This is a neoliberal endeavor in the sense that we see a dual mistrust of cultural institutions and creative freedom.
This stance reflects—albeit in a much more moderate form—the cultural views previously advocated by Jean-Marie Le Pen: “In the diabolical quadrangle of the destruction of France led by Establishment politicians, following biological extinction (the French birth rate decline), migratory submersion (settlement immigration), and the disappearance of the Nation (Euro-globalism), the fourth side is that of cultural genocide ” (National Front Cultural Program, 2002).
Given this neoliberal stance, one must view with extreme caution Marine Le Pen’s pledge, made during the 2022 campaign, to maintain start-up grants and the status of freelance performing artists. Regarding the latter, however, there is no longer any mention of the plan to tighten controls on its use through the introduction of a professional license, 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.
It is therefore safe to say that the RN’s cultural program is characterized by three features:
- A unified national vision of cultural heritage;
- a neoliberal approach to the audiovisual sector and the creative industries, which is not incompatible with increased control over content.
- A reactionary focus on the link between culture and society.
Subverting the existing tools
Finally, the RN government’s approach to culture can only be understood by bearing in mind that it may well limit its agenda to a few formal decisions, given that its true objective is to take control of existing mechanisms and subvert their underlying spirit without altering them.
The RN’s cultural heritage policy draws inspiration from existing policies, but its substance would be radically altered by a different political agenda. Funding for the arts, the status of freelance workers, and the French-speaking world might well receive the same resources, but in service of very different political priorities. It is therefore in concrete action, according to this hypothesis, that we might see a radical political program at work—that is, the translation 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
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.