Alain de Benoist (born 11 December 1943) is a French academic, philosopher,[1] a founder of the Nouvelle Droite (English: New Right) and head of the French think tank GRECE. Benoist bills himself as a critic of liberalism, free markets and egalitarianism.[2]
Biography
Alain de Benoist was born in Saint-Symphorien (now part of Tours, Indre-et-Loire) and attended the Sorbonne. He has studied law, philosophy, sociology, and the history of religions. He is an admirer of Europe and paganism.
Benoist is the editor of two journals: Nouvelle Ecole ("New School") since 1968 and Krisis since 1988. His writings have appeared in Mankind Quarterly, The Scorpion, Tyr, Chronicles, and various newspapers such as Le Figaro. The New Left journal Telos has also published some of Benoist's work, which led to protests from some scholars on the editorial board. In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines (Copernic, 1977). He has published more than 50 books, including On Being a Pagan (Ultra, 2005, ISBN 0-9720292-2-2).
Core Views
Alain de Benoist was previously associated with different right wing persons linked with the Algerian independence war. From being close to fascist French movements at the beginning of his writings in 1970, he moved to attacks on globalisation, unrestricted mass immigration and liberalism as being ultimately fatal to the existence of Europe through their divisiveness and internal faults. His influences include Antonio Gramsci,[3] Ernst Jünger, Jean Baudrillard, Helmut Schelsky, Konrad Lorenz, and other intellectuals.[4]
Against the liberal melting-pot of the U.S., Benoist is in favour of separate civilisations and cultures. He opposes Jean-Marie Le Pen, racism and anti-Semitism.[5] He has opposed Arab immigration in France, while supporting ties with Islamic culture.[6] He has also tried to distance himself from Adolf Hitler, Vichy France or Aryan supremacy, in favor of concepts like "ethnopluralism," in which organic, ethnic cultures and nations must live and develop in separation from one another.[7] He also opposes Christianity as inherently intolerant, theocractic and bent on persecution.[8]
Benoist has made pointed criticism of the United States: "Better to wear the helmet of a Red Army soldier," he wrote in 1982, "than to live on a diet of hamburgers in Brooklyn."[9] In 1991, he complained that European supporters of the first Gulf War were "collaborators of the American order."[10]
Benoist argues that heredity is dominant role in forming an intellectual elite. In addition, he says egalitarianism is destructive because it ruins the superior qualities and genetic aristocracy in the human race.[1] Benoist argues that Europe must return to its pre-Christian roots and uses the Indo-European model, such as Nordic, Celtic, Greek and Roman civilisations,[11] as an alternative to communism and capitalism.[1] "We want to substitute faith for law, mythos for logos... will for pure reason, the image for the concept, and home for exile," he once wrote.[12]
Benoist has said he opposed racism and violence, saying he is building "a school of thought, not a political movement."[13]While he has complained that nations like the United States suffer from "homogenization," due to multiracial industrialization, he has also distanced himself from some of Jean-Marie Le-Pen's views on immigration.[2]
Benoist considers himself, however, neither left nor right-wing, and has recently tried to appear less radical: in his preference for Heidegger over his first influence, Nietzsche; his support of multiculturalism rather than disappearance of immigrants' identities (though he does not support immigration itself); his interest in ecology; and a less aggressive view of Christianity. He has said that he hopes to see free-debate and greater popular participation in democracy,[citation needed] although he is also critical of modern democracy.[14]
Benoist also promotes a type of federalism, in which the nation state is surpassed, giving way to regional identities and a common continental one at once. This would be distinct from what he sees as the consumerism and materialism of American society, as well as the bureaucracy and repression of the Soviet Union. This vision looks to a Europe of specific peoples, each with their own cultures and heritages.[15]
His critics, such as Thomas Sheehan, argue that Benoist has developed a novel restatement of fascism. Roger Griffin, using an ideal type definition of fascism which includes "populist ultra-nationalism" and "palingenesis" (heroic rebirth), argues that the Nouvelle Droite draws on such "fascist" ideologues as Armin Mohler and Julius Evola in a way that allows Nouvelle Droite ideologues such as de Benoist to claim a "metapolitical" stance, but which nonetheless has residual "fascistic" ideological elements.[16] Benoist's critics also claim his views recall Nazi attempts to replace German Christianity with its own paganism.[17]
Selected Bibliography
Articles
References
- ^ a b c A big splash from France's new wave from the right The Economist July 14, 1979
- ^ a b Trouble on the right; recent gains by the extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen have left conservatives and moderates confused about whether to imitate or attack him; France The Atlantic February, 1985
- ^ The Marcuse factor, Modern Age March 22, 2005
- ^ Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? CLIO January 1, 1994
- ^ Speaking Terms;Europe's Left And Right Are Too Divided To Even Talk About It Chicago Tribune December 13, 1993.
- ^ Under cover story The Guardian (London) August 14, 1987
- ^ Making hate safe again in Europe: right cultural revolutionaries. The Nation September 19, 1994.
- ^ Intolerance, American-Style;Given This Country's History Of Religious Animosities, Thomas Fleming Writes Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) December 21, 1997
- ^ Paris shrugs off Mickey Mouse's cultural imperialism The Independent (London) February 12, 1991
- ^ FRENCH REVIVE A PASTIME: FRETTING ABOUT U.S. 'IMPERIALISM'; REACTION: TALK OF 'SECRET AGENDAS' SURFACES ON THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT. SOME CHAFE AT THEIR COUNTRY'S SECONDARY ROLE IN THE GULF. OTHERS WORRY ABOUT DIMINISHED EUROPEAN INFLUENCE. Los Angeles Times February 15, 1991.
- ^ France's new right in search of old European roots The Economist September 1, 1979
- ^ Russia's bad dream;Zhirinovsky's fascism is not an isolated phenomenon The Boston Globe December 19, 1993
- ^ France;Ideas and bombs The Economist August 23, 1980
- ^ Benoist, Alan de (2003). "Democracy Revisited: The Ancients and the Moderns". Occidental Quarterly Vol. 3 (No. 2). http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/archives/vol3no2/adb-democracya.html.
- ^ The disharmonic convergence: the far left and the far right as strange bedfellows,s Whole Earth Review June 22, 1988
- ^ Griffin, Roger (2000). "Between metapolitics and apoliteia: the Nouvelle Droite's strategy for conserving the fascist vision in the 'interregnum'". Modern & Contemporary France 8 (1): 35–53. doi:10.1080/096394800113349.
- ^ Marx, Moses, and the pagans in the secular city. CLIO January 1, 1995[verification needed][cite this quote]
- Fascism edited by Roger Griffin, pp. 346–348.
- The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee, pp. 208–213.
- Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, pp. 29–30.
- Tom Sheehan, "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist," in Social Research, issue "On Violence: Paradoxes and Antinomies", Volume 48, No. 1 (Spring 1981). Arien Mack, Editor; Franco Ferrarotti, Guest Editor.[Need quotation on talk to verify]
Further reading
- Jonathan Marcus, The National Front and French Politics, New York: New York University Press, 1995, pp. 22–4, 151.
- Michael O'Meara, New Culture, New Right Anti-liberalism In Postmodern Europe (2004). ISBN: 9781410764614
- Tomislav Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (New York: Peter Lang, 1990). ISBN 0820412945
External links
