Sign reading “Solidarity with workers’ and peasants’ struggles” at a rally in the Zone to Defend (ZAD) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. ---- Rural areas, with their high proportion of National Rally (RN) voters, are often perceived as being so far removed from the networks of the militant left that some political parties choose to abandon them in order to focus on establishing themselves in major cities. However, left-wing initiatives in the countryside do exist, as does the potential to build genuine counter-powers there. A comrade from Aveyron tells us about the local grassroots struggles that are on the front lines against this resistible rise of the far right.
Seven of the ten million votes garnered by the RN in 2024 came from municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. It is therefore largely in areas far from major cities that he is counting on seizing power by filling the void left by the left, which is largely absent from these regions.
Weakening of public services, medical deserts, closures of schools, bars, and grocery stores (21,000 municipalities without shops according to INSEE), isolation and poor public transportation, and a feeling of abandonment fuel the RN vote just as much as racism.
Yet the rise of the far right here, as elsewhere, as well as the division between urban and rural working classes on which it relies, is not inevitable. It would be misleading to consider the countryside as the exclusive domain of the far right, to the point of abandoning it to them. In fact, it is far more diverse and vibrant than the stereotypes attributed to it. Better still, it is perhaps also in these areas that aspirations for emancipation are currently taking root.
Fighting and Establishing a Presence
First, not all progressive forces focus exclusively on major cities and their working-class suburbs. Thus, the fact that rural areas have become major battlegrounds in environmental struggles is not explained by spontaneous phenomena, but rather results from both a process of establishing local presence and forging alliances. This is what allowed the development of the Earth Uprisings, for example.
Furthermore, the progress of the far right in rural areas cannot be measured solely by electoral results. It relies on other vectors, such as the activism of the Rural Coordination (CR). Therefore, the fact that in several departments, actions against the management of the health crisis linked to the spread of lumpy skin disease were carried out jointly by the CR and the Confédération Paysanne (CP) is, at first glance, troubling. But for the latter, this stems more from a tactical than a strategic choice.
In Aveyron, the CP (Communist Party) is wondering how to prevent the CR (Coordination Rurale), which made significant gains in the agricultural chamber elections and is increasingly occupying the public sphere through its activism, from dominating the protest movement. Therefore, the CP is striving to reach not only non-union members, but also sympathizers and those within the CR who are angry but not subscribe to far-right ideology. There are also issues at stake with factions of the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FNSEA) who have joined the CP and CR in the mobilizations.
These two groups thus find themselves united in action, but not in a clear sense of unity, as there is no common message, whether in banners, press releases, press conferences, leaflets, posters, or marches.
In Aveyron, the CP (Communist Party) has adopted this tactic while working alongside Solidaires, the FSU (French National Union of Teachers), and the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) to establish Vigilance and Antifascist Trade Union Initiatives (VISA), which aims to expose the far right's hypocrisy. The far right claims to defend rural areas while supporting a deadly agricultural model that is crippling small farmers and destroying the environment.
More broadly, the CP's objective is to be present on the ground to defend peasant farming in place of the productivist model and land concentration promoted by both the CR (Revolutionary Communist Party) and the FNSEA (National Federation of Farmers' Unions), a model in which many farmers are trapped.
Developing inclusive collectives
Environmental and peasant struggles are the most visible, but they are not the only ones that matter. The involvement of many progressive activists in local social activities (village festivals, raffles) and the development of spaces collectively managed by associations (libraries, bars, grocery stores, community gardens, etc.), as well as mutual aid practices (bartering, lending, and sharing equipment), allow people to break out of their insularity, develop solidarity, and combat rural depopulation. This leads to the promotion of self-organization and autonomy in villages, but also of openness to others and democratic culture.
In Southern Aveyron, the activists most involved in these forms of collective action have, for several years now, been driving the networking of these initiatives. This encompasses sectors as diverse as community grocery stores, the food security project, the promotion of cultural and festive events, and the maintenance of rural trails.
These interactions bring together very different people. They are invaluable where the National Rally (RN) encourages division, scapegoating, and retreating into an idealized and mythologized past. They also constitute a bulwark against the offensive of the reactionary billionaire Stérin, who seeks to exploit village festivals with his funding and influence strategy. Such collective initiatives do not transform these villages into bastions of class struggle and intersectional activism, but they contribute to spreading progressive ideas and provide fertile ground for more aggressive struggles (against polluting industrial projects, against water privatization, for the development of public services, etc.).
This is how, in southern Aveyron, the Manifesto for the Defense of Local Hospitals has played a vital role for nearly thirty years in maintaining the hospitals in Millau and Saint-Affrique. This collective, led by activists from Solidaires, the CGT, the FSU, and the CNT, and with a real presence in both cities and villages, has, through its actions, helped prevent the dismantling of the two facilities and thwarted the maneuvers of the Regional Health Agency and local dignitaries, who were driving privatization and depopulation.
All these examples show that rural areas can be a true laboratory for social movement organizations as well as for both institutional and revolutionary left-wing groups. This is all the more reason to integrate them more fully into the project of emancipation and into a strategy that both develops counter-powers and promotes libertarian communist intervention.
Laurent (UCL Aveyron)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Ruralite-La-resistible-ascension-de-l-extreme-droite
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #369 - Antifascism - Rurality: The Resistible Rise of the Far Right (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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