Nouvelle Droite
It pushes for an "archeofuturistic" or a type of non-reactionary "revolutionary conservative" method to the reinvigoration of the Pan-European identity and culture, while encouraging the preservation of certain regions where Europeans and their Caucasian descendants may reside.
To achieve its goals, the ND promotes what it calls "metapolitics", seeking to influence and shift European culture in ways sympathetic to its cause over a lengthy period of time rather than by actively campaigning for office through political parties.
[4] Adopting another approach, a number of extreme-right intellectuals decided that they would try to make many of their ideas more socially respectable through the creation of the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation (GRECE).
[1] It initially had forty members,[7] among the most prominent of whom were Alain de Benoist, Pierre Vial, Jean-Claude Valla, Dominique Venner, Jacques Bruyas and Jean-Jacques Mourreau.
[7] GRECE has been described as a "logical alternative" for those "young French nationalist militants" to join, given the 1958 dissolution of the Jeune Nation group, the 1962 collapse of the OAS, and the defeat of the European Rally for Liberty in the 1967 legislative election.
[11] GRECE inherited a number of key themes from Europe-Action, among them "the anti-Christian stance, a marked elitism, the racial notion of a united Europe, the seeds of a change from biological to cultural definitions of "difference," and the sophisticated inversion of terms like racism and anti-racism".
[17] Though it took nearly ten years for this Nouvelle Droite to be discovered by the media, its elitist discourse, its claims to be scientific and its emphasis on European culturalism were influential throughout the 1970s in rehabilitating a number of ideas previously held to be indefensible.
The New Right's strategy of intellectual rearmament was the polar opposite of commando activism, but continuity of personnel and, in substance (though not in form), of major tenets can be traced back to the OAS and beyond.
[23] In 1974, a group called The Club was established by several GRECE members—notably Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Yvan Blot, along with Henry de Lesquen,—to serve as an elite think tank for ND ideas.
[25][26] The club was frustrated with GRECE's long-term metapolitical strategy and sought to hasten the speed of change, with its members joining political parties like the Rally for the Republic (RFR) and Union for French Democracy (UDF).
[29] The Club called for the RFR and UDF to enter into a political alliance with the FN to defeat the Socialist Party government of President François Mitterrand, although this did not happen.
[33] De Benoist openly criticised Le Pen's party, condemning its populism as being at odds with GRECE's emphasis on elitism,[34] and expressing opposition to the FN's use of immigrants as scapegoats for France's problems.
"[38] Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff has distinguished five ideological periods within the history of the ND: the rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage and the ethnocentric "religion of human rights"; a critique of the liberal and socialist "egalitarian utopias" in the 1970s; a praise of the "Indo-European heritage" and paganism, perceived as the "true religion" of the Europeans; a critique of a market-driven and "economist" vision of the world and liberal utilitarianism; the advocacy of a radical ethnic differentialism, eventually evolving in the 1990s towards a cultural relativism inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Robert Jaulin.
[39] Some of the prominent names that have collaborated with GRECE include Arthur Koestler, Hans Eysenck, Konrad Lorenz, Mircea Eliade, Raymond Abellio, Thierry Maulnier, Anthony Burgess and Jean Parvulesco.
The Nouvelle Droite has distinguished itself from the mainstream right by embracing anti-capitalist, anti-American, pro-Third World, anti-nationalist, federalist, and environmentalist positions which were traditionally associated with left-wing politics.
[49] This blend of traditionally leftist and rightist ideas, which has long been recognised as a characteristic of fascism,[53] has generated much ambiguity surrounding the ND's ideological position, and has led to confusion among political activists and even academics.
[54] The political scientist Alberto Spektorowski espoused the view that the ND "has indeed seriously moved from its positions of old-style right-wing nationalism and racism to a new type of leftist regionalism and ethno-pluralism".
[21] McCulloch believed that the ND was "a deliberate attempt to paint certain ideological concepts in less compromised colours",[57] while Griffin stated that the ND's claims to transcend the Left and Right was "an impressive piece of sleight of hand by the ND which disguises its extreme right-wing identity".
[59] Among the other Marxist thinkers whose work has been utilised by the ND have been Frankfurt School intellectuals Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and Neo-Marxists like Louis Althusser and Herbert Marcuse.
[61] During the 1984 election to the European Parliament, De Benoist announced his intention to vote for the French Communist Party, deeming them to be the only credible anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-American political force then active in France.
[63] GRECE has promoted the project of slowly infusing society with its ideas and rhetoric in the hope of achieving cultural dominance, which would then allow for the assumption of political power.
That is to say, it was something that did not disregard political needs but transcended them, to comprehend them in a more vast, more complex design that implicated profound ideological revisions (without changing the vision of the world) and cultural roots [...] And certainly, talking about cinema and comic books, of politology and the sciences, of etiology and energy, of sexuality and celebration, of community and sport, of literature and art was different from evoking the past and envisioning apotheosis.
[77] Ideas about such a regionalised federal Europe are akin to those of earlier far right and fascist thinkers like Drieu La Rochelle, Dominique Venner and Jean Mabire.
"[74] Under the GRECE umbrella have been found a variety of thinkers and activists, including "European imperialists, traditionalists influenced by Julius Evola and René Guénon, communitarians, post-modernists, Völkisch nostalgics, anti-Judeo-Christian pagans".
[58] Works by Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye have been translated into various European languages, in English in particular by Arktos Media,[88] described as the "uncontested global leader in the publication of English-language Nouvelle Droite literature.
The European New Right is similar to the Cultural Conservatism movement led by Paul Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation, and to the related traditionalism of paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and the Chronicles magazine of the Rockford Institute (Diamond, Himmelstein, Berlet and Lyons).
[94] As Martin Lee explains, By rejecting Christianity as an alien ideology that was forced upon the Indo-European peoples two millennia ago, French New Rightists distinguished themselves from the so-called New Right that emerged in the United States during the 1970s.
[95] The Nouvelle Droite also developed a presence in the United Kingdom, where the term "New Right" was more closely associated with the Thatcherite policies introduced under the Conservative Party administration of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
[97] The Nouvelle Droite's ideas were pursued in a more sustained way in Britain when far right activist Michael Walker launched the National Democrat magazine in 1981, renaming it The Scorpion in 1983.
[107] Although many liberals and socialists have claimed that the ND has not ideologically shifted away from earlier forms of the far right, and that it should be socially ostracised, the leftist journal Telos has praised the ND's ability to transcend the left-right paradigm.
