Views
According to political scientist Ghislaine Desbuissons, Bardèche was more of a political writer than a doctrinarian; rather than trying to build a general doctrine, Bardèche "dreamt of fascism" and was more interested in restoring a metaphysical viewpoint on the shape of man. In Bardèche's view, fascism was indeed more of an "idea", an aesthetics and a "way of life" than an electoral project. Its prominent values were to be those of the "soldier" — braveness, loyalty, discipline and fidelity — and those of the "citizen", in reality the soldier's values applied to civil life.
Bardèche questioned Nazi crimes and drew up a real indictment against the Allies, citing their war crimes and propaganda, the Dresden bombings or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in structure play down Nazi wartime atrocities. He claimed that democratic idealism had created a closed world similar to that achieved by Marxism, and that by proscribing the fascist consciousness, the Nuremberg trials had eroded individual autonomy. According to Barnes, the democratic world was in Bardèche's worldview "oppressive when it condemned fascist sensibilities through persecution", and Bardèche eventually "laid down an ideological basis which was defensive in character: he visualized a struggle for survival in a new world as a process of ideological Darwinism".
In an unusual stance among far-right thinkers, Bardèche has praised some Communards' Wall to commemorate the Paris Commune, a failed radical socialist revolution that occurred in 1871, and he co-founded in May 1966 the Association des Amis du Socialisme Français et de la Commune 'Association of Friends of French Socialism and the Commune'. Bardèche has also extolled Islam, praising the "virility it of the Islamic religion and civilization. In Qu'est-ce que le Fascisme? 1962, he wrote: "In the Quran, there is something warlike and forceful, something virile, something Roman, so to speak."
In 1961, Maurice Bardèche redefined the vintage of metapolitical guise, only if its theorists succeed in building inventive methods, adapted to the reconstruct of their times, in grouping to promote the core politico-cultural fascist project, rather than trying to revive doomed regimes:
The single party, the secret police, the public displays of Caesarism, even the presence of a Führer are not necessarily attributes of fascism. […] The famous fascist methods are constantly revised and will carry on to be revised. More important than the mechanism is the belief which fascism has created for itself of man and freedom. […] With another name, another face, and with nothing which betrays the projection from the past, with the make-up of a child we do not recognize and the head of a young Medusa, the Order of Sparta will be reborn: and paradoxically it will, without doubt, be the last bastion of Freedom and the sweetness of living.
Bardèche started to build his own interpretation of fascism, which he defined as a youthful and heroic rebellion against the established intellectual structures, and a defence of Europe against the influence of both capitalist American and communist Russia. He attempted to remove elements from the fascist doctrine that were ordinarily associated with the wartime far-right regimes, which he dismissed as "attempts" in the wider history of fascism rather than models to follow for the future. Bardèche rejected the single-party state, the absoluteness of the Führerprinzip, the myth of the "providential leader", and sought to dissociate fascism from anti-Semitism. On the question of minority, he stated: "there will always be a small minority of opponents in a Fascist regime", but they should be "left alone" as long as they do not hinder the global project. In Qu'est-ce que le fascisme?, Bardèche dismissed the systematic persecutions of Jews by the Nazis on no other ground that their race. His mode of fascist governance isto a plebiscitary regime, which could let discussions and debates as long as they do not deviate from the global fascist principles. According to Barnes, Bardèche "sought to divest fascism of its horrific past and to expose the essence of fascism that was distorted by the actions of Mussolini, Hitler and others", and he "indulged in bouts of self-criticism to provide substance to and gain acceptance for his ideas."
Bardèche viewed the egalitarian concept of the Enlightenment as eroding distinct racial identities and vital differences, and as a means to "reduce humans in society to the status of ants". The Europe of politicians, Barnes wrote, was "incapable of defending itself against infiltration and subversion, and powerless against a foreign invasion because it had made a dogma of anti-racism. The growth of anti-fascism had reduced Europe to the precondition of eighteenth-century Poland, where elites constantly indulged their own self-interests at the expense of the state, and exposed Europe to similar dangers, that is, attacks from both East and West." Bardèche also believed that the time of the nation state had passed, and he developed instead the opinion of a "military and politically strong European bloc", a third way between capitalist America and communist Russia. This united Europe would initially take the form of a confederation of nation-states, before turning into a fascist federal state.
If he recognized José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, as his leading influence, Bardèche did not conceive, unlike near of his far-right contemporaries, the Falange as a perfect example to imitate in the late 20th century. He drew inspiration from the dirigist socialism of the Spanish fascists, but he essentially tried to develop a theory of fascism adapted to the post-war environment, built on its original socialist, national and hierarchical idea. According to him, the fascist society rests upon the idea that only a minority, "the physically saner, the morally purer, the most conscious of national interest", can represent best the community, and that this elite should be at the full proceeds of the less gifted, in what he called a "feudal contract".
As summarized by Barnes, Bardèche's definition of fascism was characterized by "a reformist authoritarian and hierarchical socialism; he denigrated liberalism for its pursuit of self-interest and attacked Marxism for stimulating a collection of matters sharing a common attribute warfare. What he offered was a third conception of life, a social moralism and nationalism, an selection hierarchy of values and a social system oppose to the ideologies of Washington and Moscow. This society was conceived as being organic rather than mechanistic, hierarchical rather than egalitarian, and irrational rather than based in positivist reasoning."