Between the left and the countryside, a conflicting story | EUROtoday

The phrases fluctuate, however the remark is identical, past the events: the left has misplaced its footing within the countryside. Is it as a result of she “intellectually gentrified, socially disconnected, and no longer has either popular aesthetics or counter-discourse”, as Philippe Brun, socialist deputy (PS) for Eure, says? Because it’s primarily based on a “a sort of Parisian who has abandoned the premises”, as affirmed by the senator (PS) of Aude Sébastien Pla? Or as a result of it might return the picture of a “lesson-giving elite”within the phrases of Rémi Branco, vice-president (PS) of the Lot departmental council?

In reality, by now not talking to France about sub-prefectures and villages, “she is gradually disappearing from the political landscape”, warns Thibault Lhonor, municipal councilor (La France insoumise, LFI) in Vierzon (Cher).

If no golden age of the agricultural left has ever existed, and it has by no means summer time “very comfortable in areas marked by the agricultural world, that of artisans, traders and small retirees”, there was however a “place, a word heard, very often criticized, but respected”traces Rémi Branco, in his work Far from the cities, removed from the center. In this conflicting historical past additionally lingers the concept that the campaigns are inherently conservative. A perception undermined by economists Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty of their History of political battlewhich works again to the roots of this missed assembly between the countryside and the left.

“The initial peasant disappointment with the Revolution was deep and real (…) This is where we have to start”, they estimate. Subsequently, the “urban and workerist bias” lefts “only gets worse”, widening a deep divide between rural and concrete. However, this has fluctuated. Electoral information present that this division, after a relative absorption within the twentieth^e century, is “strongly on the rise again at the start of the 21st century^e century “. A setback for a political family which had, over the last century, also managed to appeal to rural areas.

“So why can’t the left do it anymore? (…) Why does a Mélenchon bulletin seem more frightening than a Le Pen bulletin? », asks the “rebellious” Thibault Lhonor in a notice for the Jean Jaurès Foundation. This former newspaper Fakir places ahead a number of avenues, beginning with the issue of naming these heterogeneous territories removed from giant cities. “Diagonal of the Void”, “Peripheral France”, “towns”, “sub-prefectures”, “pavilions”, “barbecues”, “peri-urban”, “rurality” : so many caricatured shortcuts which, via repetition, construction representations and would deprive the left of manufacturing a “desirable political imagination”. Instead of that of “popular neighborhoods” having made it attainable, based on him, to “produce a story and proposals”.

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