A flock of yellow hats to welcome Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the FNSEA. On November 22, the president of the first agricultural union was attacked and exfiltrated by around fifty activists from the Rural Coordination during a trip to Agen (Lot-et-Garonne). “I remind you that the FNSEA and the Young Farmers are in the majority in 95% of the chambers (of agriculture) and that, for my part, I will never accept that the president of Rural Coordination cannot go to a department, that “she is physically threatened”, reacted Arnaud Rousseau. The boss of the FNSEA, who spoke beforehand at the national congress of vegetable producers, was escorted by the police. “Did we threaten him physically? Of course not!, storm to L’Express Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, president of the Chamber of Agriculture of Lot-et-Garonne and former boss of the local branch of Rural Coordination (CR 47) He wanted to show his little muscular arms by proving that he was not afraid to come. It was obvious that they were going to take him to task.
In the midst of agricultural mobilization against the free trade treaty between the European Union and Mercosur, the CR criticizes Arnaud Rousseau for wearing “two hats”. That of a farmer, as boss of the FNSEA, and that of president of the Avril group, French leader in vegetable oils and proteins (“which invests largely in Brazil”, thunders Bousquet-Cassagne). A few weeks before the professional elections at the end of January, relations are strained between the two organizations. The Rural Coordination carries out punchy actions, multiplies the shocking formulas. Last week, the yellow caps blocked the port of Bordeaux, while in Lille, other members of the CR parked their tractors in front of the Hauts-de-France regional council. This media omnipresence is accompanied by anti-tax discourse and a very marked anti-elite imagination. “The CR shares the values of working France. The invisible, silent France. The one that suffers from increases in energy prices and the twists and turns of Parisian politics,” summarizes Serge Bousquet-Cassagne. Criticized for the proximity of some of its leaders with the National Rally, partly contested internally, the union’s line displays an increasingly assertive neo-poujadist turn.
Register of emotion
Since its creation, the union has always been marked by a strong taste for protest, a reverse copy of the “co-management” of the majority organization with successive executives. Rural Coordination also emerged from a split with the FNSEA in 1991, during a disagreement over a reform of the European common agricultural policy (CAP). “The CR was created in reaction to unease with an identity dimension and professional distress,” notes Jean-Philippe Martin, historian, author in particular ofA History of the New Peasant Left. The following year, the new union representing farmers “at the end of despair” attempted to organize a “blockade of Paris” with 500 tractors. The blockade will not last twenty-four hours, but will mark the birth in the eyes of the general public of Rural Coordination.
From its beginnings, the union presented itself as apartisan and apolitical, refusing to take a position for a candidate in the presidential elections. The founders of the CR are fond of shocking formulas: in 1992, its founders believed that the CAP and that the ancestor of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the GATT, led to “peasant genocide” – an assertion that we find in the mouth of the current leader, Véronique Le Floc’h, who prefers to talk about “agricide”. Their demand: “Prices, not bonuses”. In 2010, François Purseigle, university professor of sociology at AgroToulouse, estimated that, using “the register of emotion”, the CR “intends to affirm the identity of a social group that is threatened and has become a minority”.
Defense of traditions and sovereignty
This description still holds true today. “Its supporters have one thing in common: they are people who feel cheated, often abstainers,” describes François Purseigle. The union targets a population of vulnerable young people who call for sovereignty and the defense of a certain number of traditions. ” Asked in 2020 by ReleaseDenis Barrault, former head of the departmental chamber of agriculture of Lot-et-Garonne, described the CR as “a shock union, a bit of a Poujadist, which occupies the field, against a majority union judged to be too much in consensus”.
Today, the president of the Rural Coordination prefers to talk about protectionism and sovereignty. She has also extensively developed this argument in a book co-authored with the philosopher Michel Onfray, Can you hear each other in our countryside: the peasant woman and the philosopher. Present in majesty at the union congress on November 20, the latter attacked “European law (which) supplants French law” and described Emmanuel Macron as a “recording chamber for what is happening in Brussels”. Speaking to L’Express, Véronique Le Floc’h calls for “the exit of agriculture from the WTO agreements”, and, above all, castigates her bete noire – Brussels – and the CAP, “which has helped the large industrial groups to get rich.” “We have been made economically dependent on the European Union and large industrial groups,” she told L’Express.
“Neither chaos nor excess”
This anti-European and anti-liberal line annoys internally. “At the beginning, the line was rather European, we were based on the founding values of the common agricultural policy, community preference,” assures Damien Brunelle, former member of the steering committee of Rural Coordination, president of France Grandes Cultures and farmer in the Aisne. The lieutenants of Bernard Lannes, former president of the CR, holding a rather liberal and pro-European line, take a dim view of the evolution of their union.
But more than its declared sovereignist turn, other elements upset them. First, the multiplication of high-profile actions – and comments considered outrageous. Last week, the CR announced that it wanted to cause “chaos” in the South-West to make itself heard. “We were perhaps too civilized, but the watchword of Rural Coordination has always been to lead demonstrations with respect,” continues Damien Brunelle. The images of dumpsters of manure dumped in front of the prefectures and tire and pallet fires shocked them. “I have already told the activists in my department that there would be no chaos or excess. No need to burn tires to be heard,” insists Emmanuel Rizzi, head of the CR in Jura. action ‘South-West style’, we can’t find our way there”.
Both Brunelle and Rizzi say they regret a “desire to dramatize everything, to blow everything up”. “We are not safe from someone attacking a manager of the Biodiversity Office,” alarms Emmanuel Rizzi, referring to the public body, regularly attacked by biodiversity activists. CR. To believe them, the media emergence of Rural Coordination and its increasingly radical image are primarily to be attributed to the CR of Lot-et-Garonne. A reading that the person concerned does not deny. “We have distributed the roles well,” assures Bousquet-Cassagne, confidently. “Véronique, the platforms. Ours, the field.”
Evolution of the agricultural world
These two CR figures seem to be playing a half-spontaneous, half-orchestrated pas de deux. Le Floc’h, proponent of a more “reformist” line, extolling to L’Express the merits of Annie Genevard, new “listening” Minister of Agriculture. Bousquet-Cassagne and his “succession” at the head of CR 47 – Karine Duc and José Perez, in charge during the blockade of the port of Bordeaux -, more radical, irritated by “Parisianism” and assuming a certain sympathy for the National gathering.
Beyond the Lot-et-Garonne branch, links between Marine Le Pen’s party and Rural Coordination have multiplied in recent years at the local, and even national, level. In Aude, RN deputy Christophe Barthès is a former union executive. At the Agricultural Show this year, the CR certainly had as much dinner with MP François Ruffin as with Marine Le Pen. “But let’s note one thing: at the time of the show, there is only one of the two which is acclaimed by the activists present, observes François Purseigle. This is an evolution: the agricultural world has always been a bulwark against the far right until 2022. And even today, the RN scores among farmers are below those of the general population.”
A “regrettable display”
Emmanuel Espanol, who heads communications for the CR, was for a time an LR-RN candidate in the last legislative elections, before being disinvested. In Lot-et-Garonne, Jordan Bardella was again received with great fanfare on a farm a little over two weeks ago. Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, who has long shown his support for the National Rally, insists: “Yes, I support it, and I am not the only one in the movement. But not by membership: rather because it is the only one that we never tried,” explains the man whose son once headed the National Front section (former name of the National Rally) of Lot-et-Garonne. According to The WorldBousquet-Cassagne would even have “unsuccessfully sought a place” on the RN list in the European elections in June. Information that the person concerned disputes with L’Express. “This proximity to the RN is not what upsets me the most, but it is a regrettable display. Here too, the CR du Jura does not find itself there, adds Emmanuel Rizzi. With the reputation of extreme right that we are dragging, we shouldn’t have added a layer of it.” What does it matter that Véronique Le Floc’h prides herself, at the congress as well as at the conferences organized by the CR, on welcoming centrists, like the mayor of Agen, Jean Dionis du Séjour. “Today, the various currents are swallowed up by the image sent back by the CR 47,” continues Rizzi.
The most visible executives seem to reflect the bulk of the activists. In a survey for the Sciences Po Political Research Center (Cevipof) published on November 21, François Purseigle and the econometrician Pierre-Henri Bono divided the agricultural population into four large families: the “socio-alter-globalization ecologists” (rather seduced by the Peasant Confederation), the “pro-European liberals” (rather close to the FNSEA and the Young Farmers), the “conservatives cheated” and the “identity and agrarian conservatives”. These last two categories would be particularly attracted by the messages from Rural Coordination. Both are located on the right, or even on the extreme right of the political spectrum: the identity and agrarian conservatives would lean towards Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, while the cheated would have started their transition to the RN. Two electorates which ultimately correspond quite well to the distribution of roles between Véronique Le Floc’h – who speaks to the right of government – and Bousquet-Cassagne – to the National Rally. “Internally, the movement is very protean, confirms François Purseigle. There are two lines: a middle line, embodied by Le Floc’h, and another much harder, embodied by Bousquet-Cassagne”. The CR, neo-poujadist union… of the union of the rights?
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