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Chapter 11 - A Successful Dédiabolisation?

Factors in Understanding the Weakening of Religious Immunity to Populism in France

from Part III - French Catholicism, the Rassemblement National and Laïcité

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2023

Tobias Cremer
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Chapter 11 explores France’s Catholics’ reactions to the religiously laden references of the Rassemblement National (RN) and Éric Zemmour. It finds that in spite of historical animosities and the abiding policy clashes between the far right and Catholic values, beliefs and institutions identified in Chapter 10, French Catholics’ traditional religious immunity to the far right has begun to erode since the mid-2010s. Whilst this development chronologically coincided with the emergence of the conservative Catholic movement around the Manif pour Tous, the analysed evidence suggests that Catholics’ electoral opening towards the populist right was primarily driven by political and religious supply-side factors. In particular, the narrowing of electoral alternatives for Catholics and the softening of the bishops’ language against the populist right, in the context of the church’s gradual shift from a politically engaged national church, towards a more inward-looking minority church, have contributed to the relative dédiabolisation of the RN and Zemmour amongst Catholics.

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Chapter
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The Godless Crusade
Religion, Populism and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West
, pp. 156 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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