Donald Trump's MAGA movement finds a particular echo in France among agricultural actors, as shown by the harsh criticism of appointing a former ecologist to the French Biodiversity Office. A recent Senate event highlighted this trend, with an implicit slogan of 'Make Agriculture Great Again'. Stéphane Foucart, a chronicler at Le Monde, analyzes these echoes in a context of rural polarization.
In his chronicle, Stéphane Foucart, a journalist at Le Monde, examines how the MAGA movement's rhetoric infiltrates French countryside areas, especially in agriculture. On February 2, the Observatory for Agricultural Decline and Self-Sufficiency organized an event at the Senate, attended by parliamentarians, communicators, agricultural actors, and Minister Annie Genevard. The initiative aimed to combat norms and unfair competition to launch a 'sustainable reconquest of food self-sufficiency' and reconnect with the word 'produce', evoking a mythical past prosperity.
While some goals, such as resisting imports under lax regulations, are widely shared, others clash with undeniable scientific realities. The collapse of biodiversity, widespread pollution of drinking water by agricultural inputs, soil degradation, territory aridification, and rising chronic diseases make a return to 'business as usual' unsustainable in environmental and health terms.
Foucart likens this to Trump's 'Drill, baby, drill!' slogan, adapted here to French agriculture rather than oil. Similarities with MAGA include the pursuit of a mythical golden age, denial of scientific facts, and propaganda that exploits social distress for a minority's benefit. The polarizing rhetoric pits ecologists against producers and urbanites against rural folk, amplifying a temptation for extreme right political violence.
