“We know very well that you take us for hillbillies in Paris”

Reportage Ardèche, a historic land of the left, gave 34% of its votes to the RN. Former employees of nuclear subcontractors, former right-wing RPR activists, children of socialists anxious about “disorder”… They have become the ordinary faces of the far-right vote.

With one hand, the guy grabs a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros, lights it, opens his window. On the other hand, he jerks the steering wheel sharply to avoid the potholes on the tiny winding road. The rain wets his cigarette, the seats, the steering wheel, but he doesn’t care. Since we came to ask him, he will explain to us why here, in the small town of Teil, almost one in two voters voted for Jordan Bardella in the European elections. Suddenly, he stops his red Peugeot 307 in the middle of nowhere, gets out, leaving the engine running, then kneels in front of a patch of warped tarmac. Gets up, waves his arms, very excited: “Come and see, there it is, the flaw. » It was here that the road split in two, a little before noon, one day in November 2019. All the houses in the Rouvière hill district shook. Sébastien believed that the Cruas nuclear power plant had exploded, a few kilometers away: ” I got the fright of my life. »

It was not the power station but an earthquake: 751 danger orders, 825 homes damaged, 200 destroyed. “We never knew the real cause. » In the town, everyone thought that it was the extractions of the nearby cement manufacturer Lafarge that had affected the geological fault. Or the national road diversion works, just above. In Cruas, where Sébastien worked, EDF “unplugged” one month the production units. And then…