Nouvelle Droite

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For the broad set of Post-WWII international right-wing dissident movements, see New Right.

Nouvelle Droite (English: New Right) is a school of political thought founded largely on the works of Alain de Benoist and GRECE (Research and Study Group on European Culture).

According to de Benoist:

  • "We are a theoretical and cultural movement...it is accepted in France as a part of the cultural-political landscape. Debate and discussion here during the last two decades could not be thought of without the contribution of the New Right. Moreover, it is because the New Right has taken up particular themes that particular debates have taken place at all. I refer, for example, to discussions about the Indo-European legacy in Europe, the Conservative Revolution in Germany, about polytheism and monotheism, or about I.Q. -- heredity or environment (which is partly a rather false dichotomy), participatory democracy, federalism and communitarian ideas, criticism of the market ideology, and so forth. Well, we were involved in all these issues."[1].

According to Tamir Bar-On, the arguments and the positions of the Nouvelle Droite can not be easily positioned in the traditional Left-Right dichotomy, noting that it is some sort of ideological synthesis of ideas of the Weimar Revolutionary Right (such as Carl Schmitt, who was one of the leading Nazi jurist, Oswald Spengler and Ernst Jünger) and the New Left[2]. Paul Piccone, editor and founder of the New Left journal Telos writes in 1993: "What makes the French New Right particularly interesting is that is does not propose a bizarre reversal of positions, but the end of the traditional contraposition of Left and Right in favour of a new political paradigm."[2]

Critics of the Nouvelle Droite argue it is a new form of neofascism or a version of the extreme right that draws from fascism (Laqueur, Lee).

Contents

[edit] Etymology

The term Nouvelle Droite was first mentioned in the French media in 1979, in a media campaign against GRECE and the Club de l'Horloge. Some authors have shown it to lead to Le Figaro editor Louis Pauwels and member of GRECE, who wrote in the France Soir of March 29, 1979: "My positions are those of what we can call the 'new right', and have nothing to do with the bourgeois, conservative, and reactionary right."[2]

[edit] The Broader European New Right

Nouvelle Droite arguments can be found in the rhetoric of many major radical right and far-right parties in Europe such as the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in Austria and Vlaams Belang in Belgium. This, despite the fact that Alain de Benoist and certain other ideologues of the Nouvelle Droite, since the late 80s, had issued statements against some populist far-right movements.[citation needed]

Although mostly known in France, according to Minkenberg, the Nouvelle Droite borders to other European "New Right" movements, such as Neue Rechte in Germany, New Right in the United Kingdom, Nieuw Rechts in the Netherlands and Belgium, Nuova Destra in Italy, Imperium Europa in Malta, and the New Right of Paul Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation in the United States[3].

This claim is disputed by most other scholars, who argue that the European New Right has some superficial similarities to certain sectors of the New Right in the United States, but not the entire New Right coalition. 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). However these subgroups of the New Right coalition in the United States are closely tied to Christianity, which the Nouvelle Droite rejects, describing itself as a pagan movement. (Lee).

According to Marcus:

  • "the label 'New Right' is potentially misleading. For the French nouvelle droite has little in common with the political New Right that emerged in the English-speaking world at around the same time" (Marcus, p.23).

As 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. Ideologically, [the European new Right group] GRECE had little in common with the American New Right, which [the European new Right ideologue] de Benoist dismissed as a puritanical, moralistic crusade that clung pathetically to Christianity as the be-all and end-all of Western civilization" (Lee, p. 211).

According to de Benoist:

  • "Based on everything I know about it, the so-called New Right in America is completely different from ours. I don't see even a single point with which I could agree with this so-called New Right. Unfortunately, the name we now have gives rise to many misunderstandings."[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Ian B. Warren. "Charting Europe's Future in the 'Post Postwar' Era: The 'European New Right': Defining and Defending Europe's Heritage. An Interview with Alain de Benoist". The Journal of Historical Review 14 (2): 28. 
  2. ^ a b c Bar-On, Tamir (2001). "The Ambiguities of the Nouvelle Droite, 1968-1999". The European Legacy 6 (3): 333-351. 
  3. ^ Minkenberg, Michael (2000). "The Renewal of the Radical Right: Between Modernity and Anti-modernity". Government and Opposition 35 (2): 170-188. DOI:10.1111/1477-7053.00022. 
  • Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1997, pp. 209-211.
  • Jonathan Marcus, The National Front and French Politics, New York: New York University Press, 1995.
  • Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States, New York: Guilford, 1995. ISBN 0-89862-864-4.
  • Jerome L. Himmelstein, To The Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
  • Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, New York: Guilford Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57230-568-1, ISBN 1-57230-562-2

[edit] Further reading

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