What place for culture in the RN program?

What would the ruling Rassemblement National do if it had a governing majority on the evening of July 7? To answer this question, we now have a wide and yet imprecise range of evidence. And it's no coincidence.

Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier

Credit Freepik

An examination of the RN in power, in French municipalities, makes it possible to clarify the nature of the historical moment in which we find ourselves, and to envisage the way in which it could make culture and heritage a "major place in the moral recovery of the country"(RN Heritage booklet).

But then there's the program as presented for the 2022 presidential election, following on from that of 2017 and the Front National's project for 2002. The changes are significant, but the core business remains relatively constant. It's very much in line with what far-right governments are doing in Europe.

A modest place in the RN program

There's no need today to give more coherence and depth to what would be a program of government of the RN culture. Why not? For one thing, it occupies a relatively modest - albeit re-evaluated - place in the RN's political project. The RN's neo-Gramscian turn - in reference to the Marxist philosopher's idea that the conquest of hegemony passes through cultural combat - remains relative.

On the other hand, this program is designed more to tame than to wage cultural war. If it is so respectful - on the surface - of what has already been achieved (heritage, intermittence, culture pass, aid for creation, etc.), it is also to avoid provoking an outcry from a cultural milieu with a "loudmouth" reputation, rather valued by citizens, and impervious to the RN's posture in general.

This discourse of "de-demonization" and these common traits can also be seen in the way the few local RN authorities manage culture. What do we see? On the one hand, the RN's local leaders have no intention of making a fuss about culture. Julien Sanchez, in Beaucaire (Gard), has certainly seen his cultural department's executives leave, and recruited new ones by turning the municipal library into a convenient closet for agents opposed to him. But he has prolonged the theatrical season set up by the previous team, and gives a speech before each performance put on by the same entertainment company that has been present in the town for over 20 years.

He gave greater prominence to Camargue culture and local folklore, giving a speech before each evening concert at the Madeleine festival. He inaugurates the crèche by his presence, girded with the tricolor scarf, assuming the repeated risk of fines for which he cares nothing.

In the case of Beaucaire, as elsewhere, we are witnessing a re-politicization of culture, in the sense of the presence of elected representatives at the heart of decisions usually entrusted to cultural professionals. The weakening of the latter remains relatively discreet, and difficult to counter politically.

In Perpignan, Louis Aliot and his deputy for culture have regained control of a policy that was being implemented with institutions at odds with his values. This may have led to conflicts with Casa Musicale, a major player in contemporary music in all its social diversity, or even to the rejection of any support for certain aesthetics, such as rap. But it has maintained its support for the city's flagship event: the Visa pour l'image photojournalism festival.

While local icons of culture are generally protected (notably by the powers of other levels: intercommunality, département, region, State), the associative players most committed to popular education or culture in the neighborhoods are discreetly deprived of support either directly (cuts in subsidies) or indirectly, by the requirement to pay a rent at a deliberately exorbitant rate, as we saw in Hénin-Beaumont, with the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme.

On the contrary, a great deal of attention is paid to the traditional and folk cultures of each of these territories. Politicization, folklorization and the rejection of cultural diversity are thus both present and discreet in RN city management. This is hardly surprising, since these municipalities have an assumed function as laboratories demonstrating the RN's ability to govern, by adopting the most sober posture possible in ideological terms.

RN's program for culture

First and foremost, this program places enormous emphasis on heritage, in its most conservative version, centered on buildings. It ignores the more contemporary version, which takes the plural form and gives pride of place to intangible heritage, open to 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 highly advantageous for property owners, particularly in terms of inheritance - is intended to benefit owners of châteaux and bastides. It would be accompanied by the abolition of taxes on the Loto du patrimoine, which, despite its modest size (the equivalent of a regional conservation of historic monuments), makes it possible to finance projects that are in part different from those followed by the Ministry of Culture.

To further consolidate this policy, there are plans to increase the heritage rehabilitation budget considerably, and to accompany it with the implementation of a national heritage service for 18-24 year-olds, lasting six months and renewable once. These youth workcamps, which already exist, as well as the other version of "integration workcamps", will undoubtedly be assigned the task of "moral recovery" mentioned above.

As expressed, this policy is essentially about form and means. Nothing is said about the content of their project. To get a clearer idea, we have to make the - not very bold - assumption that the heritage in question will be evaluated in terms of this value of moral recovery, based once again on the campaign's program: "the Nation finds itself in the places, landscapes and monuments where it was formed" (booklet, p.7).

It would therefore be under the influence of national preference, which refers to an untraceable golden age. At best, it involves the invention of a homogenized, mythologized past that art historians tear to shreds, as Gabor Sonkoly does with the reconstruction of Buda Castle and its emphasis on authenticity and instrumentalization.

Neo-liberal orientation

If it's difficult to detail - rather than imagine - the content of the RN's heritage policy, what can be said about the other aspects? The privatization of the audiovisual sector sheds light on the neo-liberal and populist dimension of the project.

This is an alternative choice to that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, who assures herself more direct control of content, within the very framework of RAI's public ownership: in Italy, the far right in power is attacking intellectuals.

This French neoliberal orientation takes on a second meaning through the ordinary criticism expressed by RN elected representatives (in Parliament as well as in the rare speeches that deal with culture) with regard to contemporary creation, contrary to "people's tastes". Their promotion as a criterion for assessing cultural policy clashes with any ambition in this area, which, in the words of Jean Vilar, consists in offering people things they might like (and not what they already like).

Above all, it clashes with the spirit and the letter of the LCAP law (Liberté de création, architecture et patrimoine - Freedom of creation, architecture and heritage), which specifies the limits of public intervention in artistic content, and of which the elected members of the RN are ignorant (in both senses of the word).

"A taste for people" as a compass

In place of public policy, legitimate cultural decision-making would therefore essentially fall back on the individual choices already made by people, and from which one might wonder where they originate: a family tradition? A school curriculum? From media subject to audience measurement? It's a neoliberal enterprise, in the sense that we see a double mistrust of cultural institutions and creative freedom.

This choice, albeit expressed in much more moderate terms, echoes the options already defended by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the field of culture: "In the diabolical square of the destruction of France led by politicians of the Establishment, after biological extinction (the French denatality), migratory submersion (settlement immigration), the disappearance of the Nation (Euromondialism), the fourth side is that of cultural genocide" (Programme culture du Front national, 2002).

This neoliberal stance makes Marine Le Pen's pledge in the 2022 campaign to maintain support for creation and the status of intermittent workers in the entertainment industry extremely cautious. With regard to the latter, however, we can no longer find any trace of the reinforcement of control over its use through the introduction of a professional card, which was proposed by her in 2017. There is also little doubt as to how the policy of artistic and cultural education would be implemented under the leadership of a Rassemblement National Ministry of Culture.

We can therefore easily consider that the RN culture program is characterized by three features:

  • A national, uniform vision of heritage;
  • a neo-liberal approach to broadcasting and creation, 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 for culture can only be envisaged if we bear in mind that it may well limit its program to a few formal decisions, since what is at stake for it is to be at the head of existing instruments and to subvert, without modifying them, their entire spirit.

The RN's heritage policy is inspired by what already exists, but its content would be overturned by a different politicization. Aid for creation, the status of intermittent workers and the French-speaking world could well benefit from the same resources, but in a very different political direction. According to this hypothesis, it is 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

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.