The French extreme right sees the conquest of the Élysée as possible in 2027 and is working to achieve it. One of the strategies, already underway, is to build an alternative ecological discourse to that of the left, less maximalist and more pragmatic. The aim of Marine Le Pen’s party, the National Rally (RN, formerly the National Front), is to broaden its electoral base by fully exploiting an already existing political and social divide between rural communities – which would include the suburbs furthest from the cities – and the strictly urban world.
The thinking heads of the RN and also of The Republicans (LR), the Gaullist right, increasingly close to Le Pen, are inspired by the success of the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) ??in the Netherlands.
“Could ecology be right-wing?” asked the magazine Valeurs Actuelles a few weeks ago – close to ultra-conservative postulates – in its cover story. The debate was picked up last weekend by a medium that was ideologically distant, the newspaper Le Monde, which opened its front page with this headline: “Ecology: the new electoralist doctrine of the RN.”
Right-wing –or extreme right– environmentalism aims to act with common sense and respect people’s lifestyles and short-term economic interests. He does not deny climate change and aspires to protect the environment, but he opposes what he calls “punitive ecology” (sanctions, restrictions, taxes), practiced for years by the left, and the theory of economic decline as the only way to avoid destruction of the planet. In reality, this approach is close to squaring the circle and contains many contradictions when it comes to putting it into practice, be it in the field of the use of fertilizers, wind energy or atomic power plants.
Marine Le Pen herself put forward some ideas in this area during the speech she gave on the occasion of the May Day festival in Le Havre (Normandy). The three-time presidential candidate advocated for “a much more effective ecology that is more respectful of the balance between human activity and nature.” Le Pen urged to impose, in the face of catastrophism, “an optimistic vision based on faith in man and in science, in reason and action, in progress and innovation.” This confidence that humanity, with its ingenuity, find solutions that avoid sacrifices is called techno-solutionism.
Ecological politics already showed its conflictive potential in 2018 and 2019 during the revolt of the yellow vests. The origin of the protest was an eco-tax –of a few cents– for fuel. A sector of the population, the most dependent on private vehicles, especially rural or expelled from cities due to its high cost and living in far-flung suburbs, rebelled against a new tax that they saw as the imposition of the technocratic elite and Parisian bourgeois. It is these impoverished and tense social layers that are attracted to the discourse of the extreme right. They were opposed to the eco-tax and also to unrestrained globalization and uncontrolled immigration.
The National Regroupment thinks that environmentalism, suitably reformulated and with populist dressings, can be a very profitable polarizing factor electorally, following the example of the immigration and insecurity debate.
Right-wing environmentalism will make a banner for the preservation of the landscape – that is why it opposes wind farms – and the consumption of local products. The extreme right will present itself even more as the guardian of the essences of France, of the roots of its population, in the face of a philosophy, which they link to Macron, of promoting a liquid society and “globalizing and free-trade nomadism.” This scheme includes the promotion of small and medium-sized cities against monsters like Paris.
The Republicans, under the command of Éric Ciotti, are following paths similar to those of the RN. Their convergence in the environmental field is similar to what they already have with the extreme right in the immigration debate. Some LR mayors, for example those of Cannes and Nice, go further and are carrying out very aggressive policies, be it extending bike lanes or cleaning up beaches and protecting coasts and marine spaces. The message, once again, is that environmentalism should not be left in the hands of the left because the right is capable of applying it more sensibly and at lower cost for citizens and companies.
