Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism
In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a troubling propensity for submission that questions its capacity for future resistance.
The cultural sector’s contradiction regarding the Rassemblement National
The French cultural sector, traditionally rooted in left-wing thought, is today expressing growing concern about the rise of the Rassemblement National. Professionals are wondering: how can we work with RN elected officials? This question, as recently highlighted in an article from Haute Fidélité, center for contemporary music in Hauts-de-France published in the OPC media (Extreme right and culture, an unthinkable Faustian pact?->https://www.observatoire-culture.net/extreme-droite-culture-pacte-faustien-inenvisageable/]), evokes this anxiety and the related contradictions: “Should culture compromise with the extreme right or maintain a line of resistance?”
Yet what I observe in this posture is a preconception disconnected from recent reality. These same professionals who are worried today have, for the most part, accepted without protest the authoritarian decisions made during the Covid period. Decisions devoid of common sense, stigmatizing and brutal, without real health basis, based on lies quite obvious to anyone who at the time had the awareness to fight against their fears, and serving a capitalist opportunism that made people believe it was for their own good.
This collective psychological manipulation is reminiscent of what Alice Miller described in For Your Own Good (1984): “Totalitarian education always begins by making individuals believe that the violence they suffer is exercised in their own interest.” For those who tried to build their own critical apparatus during this period, the evidence of this manipulation was blatant.
Moreover, let’s remember that, already today, a significant share of large private contemporary music venues belongs to investors or entrepreneurs close to the radical right.
Accepting sanitary totalitarianism
The violence of this extreme-center that manifested in arbitrary and baseless closures of cultural venues, generalized surveillance, stigmatization of the unvaccinated and their professional exclusion, was generally accepted without protest by the cultural sector. Even more disturbing, this acceptance went beyond what the law authorized. I’m thinking particularly of health pass controls, coupled with identity checks in certain cultural venues, a practice prohibited by law, except during the two months of the vaccine pass in early 2022.
The cultural sector thus collaborated in an unprecedented enterprise of surveillance and stigmatization. No doubt out of fear, no doubt because they believed the official discourse. They thought they were on the side of good while participating in something quite different. Hannah Arendt had warned us: totalitarianism occurs when it is accepted by citizens themselves as being good. Yes, we went through a period with totalitarian overtones. And everyone is responsible for their blind obedience.
The consequences were disastrous: accentuation of inequalities, unprecedented deterioration of mental health, particularly among young people and children, deterioration of public health, for which we will pay the price for a long time, stratospheric debt of the country, benefiting, once again, major shareholders. Thus, major global shareholders doubled their fortune in two years, unprecedented in the history of capitalism. A resounding success for some, a disaster for the majority. I don’t claim at all that everything was orchestrated, even though similar scenarios had been discussed, such as during Event 201 in November 2019, and that the H1N1 episode of 2009 already constituted a rehearsal, which didn’t take hold at the time for lack of popular support, while the speeches of the health minister at the time, Roselyne Bachelot, were exactly similar, almost word for word, to the speeches of the health minister during the Covid period, Olivier Véran.
The boulevard offered to the extreme right
Today, the RN is demonized. This party is, in my personal opinion, indeed concerning and dangerous. But we refuse to face the fact that totalitarianism has already been here and we have already supported it. This willful blindness opens, in my view, a boulevard for the RN.
If the RN has the intelligence to build arguments based on fear, as the extreme-center government still in power has done, it will be able to bring many people into its project of violence against others. This stigmatization has already taken place: the unvaccinated were ostracized by digital surveillance systems deployed on an unprecedented scale and with massive popular consent. Families have unfortunately divided permanently, and still are, because of this totalitarian system, between those who collaborated and those who resisted.
Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” experiment in the 1960s sheds light on this phenomenon: as soon as an authority is recognized as such, the individual feels absolved of responsibility and can commit the most ignoble acts out of obedience. This is exactly what happened during the Covid period. If the RN gains control of public funding, particularly cultural funding, those who obeyed the extreme center yesterday will obey the extreme right tomorrow, that’s obvious. We will see jackets turn inside out one by one, we will see today’s heroes become tomorrow’s collaborators, these “reasonable” people, these “honest folks” as Georges Brassens said with such poetry. Submission to authority, whatever it may be, remains the same psychological mechanism. The key, even if one has been manipulated, even if one has collaborated believing they were doing good, is to expand one’s consciousness, to do differently tomorrow. That’s why I’m writing this; not to make people feel guilty, but on the contrary, to be more tolerant, forgive and move forward.
Rethinking the political independence of the cultural sector
What truly frightens me is this total lack of political consciousness in the cultural sector, this blind obedience to the power in place, masked by supposedly politicized discourse. Today, the RN does not yet have executive power. If it obtains it, we will see many jackets turn inside out, suddenly presenting things as “positive and constructive”.
The independence and political courage of each person must, in my view, be at the heart of cultural action. It’s not about obeying the injunctions of the Ministry of Culture or the State, but about defending a vision of the world. The discourses of the cultural sector all speak of freedom, emancipation, creativity. These discourses must be consistent with actions. It’s never too late; no one is perfect, but everyone has the duty to grow, to refine their critical thinking, that is, their nuanced singular thought.
Let’s take a simple example: in a cultural project intended for children, if we impose something on them “for their own good” without really giving them space to express themselves or helping them understand why, or if we pretend to listen to them to better appropriate and professionalize the ideas that come from them, we are also reproducing a pattern of domination. It’s a project of submission to authority, on a small scale. This awareness must manifest at all levels. As Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968): “No one liberates another, no one liberates themselves alone, people liberate themselves together.”
Toward a democratic reinvention through culture
The political consciousness of the cultural sector must be exercised at all levels. It must be embodied in the actions themselves, in respect for others and in the contributive place we give them when we hold the power and responsibility of a project funded by the common good.
It is only in this way that we can create truly democratic spaces, laboratories for democratic reinvention through cultural actions. If we are not already doing this in the field, in our daily practices, it is logical that we obey those who hold power, whatever their injunctions may be.
Recent history has shown us our collective fragility. Five years ago, the cultural sector largely failed. There is no reason the same thing won’t happen again if the RN gains more direct political power in France. Democratic vigilance begins with critical examination of our own practices and our own submissions. Only at this price can culture play its role of awakening consciousness rather than collective sleep and submission to the inhuman.
My multidisciplinary practices—spanning creation, cultural action, training, and support in a wide range of cultural, social, and educational contexts across France—provide me with a privileged, subjective, and in-depth observatory of the cultural sector in France.
This sector is weakened by its position, often deemed “non-essential” by many political leaders, by the competition from digital platforms in cultural practices, as well as by challenges and obstacles related to the difficulty of establishing interdisciplinary collaborations and the scarcity of evaluations, which are often poorly conducted and instrumentalized.
My observatory allows me to identify dynamics that work, as well as difficulties I observe. Here, I propose to share my analyses, methods, and suggestions, hoping they may prove useful. My goal is to contribute to a stronger cultural sector in the future, as I believe that defending a cultural sector funded by taxpayers’ money holds the potential for emancipation, the development of freedoms, democracy, and the capacity to act—in a way that is fundamentally different from what private actors produce.
This is possible if there is no hypocrisy, and in my view, it comes at the cost of a commitment to lucidity and self-questioning, a choice to deconstruct representations, and perhaps to challenge certain privileges and systems of domination.
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Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism
Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.
In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a (…) -
Rethinking the digital content strategy of cultural institutions
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The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution
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The Accelerated Eye
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The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture
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For a narrative revolution of territories
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Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence
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On the role of artists
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Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
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Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices
Anthropology of the future.
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Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector
Methodological approaches.
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Overcoming the fragility of public funding for culture
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Pour une robustesse coopérative des projets culturels
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“Donotdo”
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New directions
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