"The people who write these texts have never seen you, they've never been on a fishing boat!" exclaimed Jordan Bardella. He's never drafted any regulations, but there he was, on Tuesday, January 23, in the fishing port of Lorient-Keroman, Brittany, in front of a trawler vessel that has been banned from operating at sea for a month: France's highest administrative court, acting on a request from environmental protection organizations, has ordered that half the boats in Lorient be kept in the harbor to curb the accidental capturing of cetaceans. The government will compensate them, but these payments are often slow in coming.

An industry in distress just three hours away by high-speed train: an ideal opportunity for Bardella. The president of the Rassemblement National (RN, far-right), was met by around 30 fishermen and twice as many anti-fascist demonstrators, to his great delight. "Here, you have the whole package: the tyranny of NGOs, the rule of judges and Europe!" he exclaimed. (In fact, the European Union had no role in the decision.) Bardella nodded his head at all these expressions of anger, and singled out those responsible: The non-governmental organizations, whom he called "professional nuisances," and "them" – referring to the leaders in Paris and Brussels.

"You get the feeling that they don't want fishing and farming anymore. Everything is being done against [the principle of] food sovereignty. You're fighting against the same people!" insisted Bardella, speaking from the deck of a trawler, in front of a mob of microphones. While the RN president had a lot to say about agriculture, he was less vocal about the difficulties facing the fishing industry, and offered no solutions – as his guide to the port of Lorient, David Le Quintrec, a free-spirited fisherman who has been kept at arm's length by the industry's representative bodies, admitted. Nevertheless, many fishermen have noted that he was the only major politician to come and see them, at a time when the government no longer has a minister for the sea, since the reshuffle earlier this month.

Three days earlier, the RN president had put on his most immaculate boots to go and criticize these same elites on a farm in the Médoc winegrowing region or southwestern France. In recent days, many Rassemblement National MPs have flocked to the roadblocks set up by protesting farmers, proclaiming their unwavering support. As a result, three RN MPs from the southwest were careful to refrain from condemning acts of violence committed by winegrowers from their area, known for their hardline attitude, and instead posed proudly in front of an insulting, misogynistic sign placed on a tractor.

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