the world of culture relies on professional associations and unions to stand up against the RN

Few artists have spoken out directly to call for a “barrier” to the far-right party. Rather, it is professional organizations, unions in the cultural sector or festivals that take center stage in this battle.

“With the extreme right at the gates of power, our organizations are measuring their responsibilities in this decisive moment for democracy,” highlighted around fifteen performing arts, cinema and audiovisual unions in their call to demonstrate on June 20 throughout France. An appeal in response to the concern to see the National Rally (RN) become the first parliamentary group following the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7.

The prospect of this tidal wave in the National Assembly has made cultural circles step up, as for the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 where Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Rally – the name of the National Front since 2018 – , found herself in the second round against Emmanuel Macron. The world of culture is relying on the speeches of trade unions and professional organizations to “block” the far-right party.

Those responsible for the Avignon festival reiterated their call to make dam on the far right during a press conference, Monday June 24, in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais des Papes, the opening of the festival and the first round of legislative elections taking place next weekend. “There are two ways available to us to defend democracy in the coming days: one is obviously to participate in the elections, the other is to fill in” the places of the Avignon festival, assured its director, the Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues.

Son of a journalist forced to leave his country in the 1960s “to escape the persecution of the fascist dictatorship” of Salazar at the time, he wanted to recall that the values ​​of the Avignon festival were those “of a democratic, popular, republican, ecological, feminist, anti-racist festival”, which leads him to make this appeal against the far right, as he had already done on Friday June 21.

The CGT-Spectacle, the CGT Culture, the CFDT Culture, SUD Culture, the Syndeac (national union of artistic and cultural companies), the Profedim (producers, festivals) and the National Union of Public Scenes (SNSP) were among the organizations mobilized on June 20.

A week earlier the Syndeac, Les Forces musicales (Operas, Orchestras), Profedim as well as the federations of the world of entertainment and music of the CGT, the CFDT and Sud had also called for demonstrations on June 13 and 15. For this last date, they joined a larger protest movement against the far right organized by different actors of civil society.

The opportunity for the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, to affirm that “For the far right, culture is propaganda.” His union has come out of its usual reserve to call for a vote. New Popular Front, in the next legislative elections. Sophie Binet believing that “notour democracy” East “on the eve of great peril”.

Likewise, faced with the project to privatize public broadcasting, several professional organizations in the creative sector have made themselves heard, denouncing the dangerousness of the project. The RN “proposes a measure which would leave an information and creation market subject only to private interests to the detriment of the search for truth, contradiction and the diversity of stories, in the absence of the counterweight of an audiovisual center strong and independent public”, around forty structures indicated in a joint press release.

LThe Union of Audiovisual Production (USPA), the association of animation producers AnimFrance, the Union of Directors (U2R) and the Union of Cinema Producers (UPC) are some of the signatories of the column published on June 18.

The day before, actors and actresses of the book had launched a petition where “they call all those who identify with these values ​​to mobilize and to raise their voice with determination against the extreme right“. “Usually, I never express myself politically and I really keep my opinions to myself, I am very careful to separate my romantic and literary life from my political opinions.”one of the petitioners, the writer Franck Thilliez, told Franceinfo. “If I do it today, continues the author, I find the moment serious. The far right has never been so close to power and we are in a critical moment in our country.”.

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud was unable to obtain this collective mobilization in the classical music sector. “A few years ago, when Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived in the second round, almost all of France was in the streets. The artists, in their vast majority, stood up, headwinds against the extreme right and the dangers it represents”, he points out on Radio France. “I remember meetings all over France, notably at the Zénith in Paris, where a very large number of artists spoke on stage, against the far right.”

It is with the Union of Current Music (SMA) that 500 other artists and musicians published a column against the RN on the website of the Inrocks. Eddy de Pretto, Clara Luciani, Barbara Pravi, Billie Chedid, Gaël Faye and Miossec signed it. Like them, 800 “cultural professionals and around forty cinema, performing arts and cinema organizations managed to formalize their opposition to the RN in a text published on June 23 in The world.

Is the presence of unions and professional associations a sign that artists themselves do not believe in their ability to rally opinions? The founder of the Théâtre du Soleil, Ariane Mnouchkine, has clearly expressed her doubts. “Today, I am not sure that collective speaking out by artists is useful or productive. Some of our fellow citizens are fed up with us: fed up with our helplessness, our fears, our narcissism, our sectarianism, of our denials, that’s where I am.” she writes in the columns of Release.

The director was more optimistic in 2022 “We don’t try pace Marine Le Pen! We don’t try fascism, however disguised, however masked it may be. We do not surrender to dark forces. If she is elected, then, with those who have remained in the shadows until now, will appear around her on the morning of April 25, 2022.” she then declared in the left-wing daily.

It’s not even time to vote anymore. Roschdy Zem and Pierre Niney who spoke on the issue demonstrate this. The first calls to wake up when the second indicates that he has no lessons to teach.