It succeeded to the Troisième voie and Jeune Europe, a movement created in the 1960s by Jean-François Thiriart.
In 1989, then general secretary of the Troisième Voie, Christian Bouchet stated that there were two possible alternatives: either present themselves as a "National Revolutionary wing/margin of the National Front" or present itself as a "contest movement" which supported "all forms of contest (regional, ecologic, social, popular," etc.
Bouchet then stated that this strategy had failed, and advocated alliance with Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, on a "Less Leftism!
Practicing a politic of entryism explicitly inspired by the Trotskyists, the NR also infiltrated the national direction of the deep ecology movement Earth First.
They transformed themselves in the Union des cercles résistance in Autumn 1996 during its third congress held in Aix-en-Provence; the Unité radicale movement was created from this.