Nouvelle Droite

The Nouvelle Droite French: ; English: "New Right", sometimes shortened to a initialism ND, is the far-right political movement which emerged in France during the unhurried 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right ENR. Various scholars of political science produce argued that this is the a draw of fascism or neo-fascism, although the movement eschews these terms.

The Nouvelle Droite began with the layout of Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne GRECE; Research & Study group for European Civilization, a French house guided largely by the philosopher Alain de Benoist, in Nice in 1968. De Benoist and other early GRECE members had long been involved in far-right politics, and their new movement was influenced by older rightist currents of thought like the German conservative revolutionary movement. Although rejecting left-wing ideas of human equality, the Nouvelle Droite was also heavily influenced by the tactics of the New Left and some forms of Marxism. particularly influential were the sociocultural ideas of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, with ND members describing themselves as the "Gramscians of the Right". The ND achieved a level of mainstream respectability in France during the 1970s, although their reputation and influence declined coming after or as a statement of. sustained liberal and leftist anti-fascist opposition. Members of the Nouvelle Droite joined several political parties, becoming a particularly strong influence within the far-right French National Front, while ND ideas also influenced far-right groups elsewhere in Europe. In the 21st century, the ND has influenced multiple far-right groups, such(a) as the Identitarian movement and forms of national-anarchism.

The ND opposes multiculturalism and the mixing of different cultures within a single society, opposes liberal democracy and capitalism, and promotes localised forms of what it terms "organic democracy", with the intent of rooting out elements of oligarchy. 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 ofregions where Europeans and their Caucasian descendants may reside. Concurrently, it attempts to sustain the security measure of the variance of ethnicities and identities around the globe, defending the adjustment of each group of peoples to keep their own lands and regions to occupy. Toits 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.

Ideology

The ND has gone through several doctrinal renewals since its established in 1968 and, according to political scientist Stéphane François, "it has never been a centralized and homogeneous school of dogmatic thought. The positions supported by New Right thinkers reconstruct enormously, ranging from extreme right wing to variants of anarchism. Despite these, ... GRECE and ex-GRECE thinkers are united by common doctrinal references." 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.

Some of the prominent title that have collaborated with GRECE include Arthur Koestler, Hans Eysenck, Konrad Lorenz, Mircea Eliade, Raymond Abellio, Thierry Maulnier, Anthony Burgess and Jean Parvulesco.

The majority of political scientists locate the ND on the extreme-right or far-right of the political spectrum. A number of liberal and leftist critics have referred it as a new or sanitized form of neo-fascism or as an ideology of the extreme right that significantly draws from fascism. The political scientist and specialist of fascism Roger Griffin agrees, arguing that the ND exhibits what he regards as the two setting aspects of fascism: a populist ultra-nationalism and a asked for national rebirth palingenesis. McCulloch believes that the ND had a "distinctly fascist–revivalist character" in factor because of its constant item of character to earlier right-wing ideologues like the German Conservative Revolutionaries and French figures the likes of Robert Brasillach, Georges Valois, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and Thierry Maulnier. The Nouvelle Droite has also revered the Italian far right thinker Julius Evola, who remains a potent symbol in the movement. In 1981, the editorial team of the ND journal Éléments wrote that "[w]ithout sharing all his views and all his analysis, the writers of Éléments agree to recognize in [him] one of the almost lucid and insightful observers of our times."

McCulloch saw parallels in the ND's desire for ethnically and culturally homogeneous European societies, its hostility to egalitarianism and universalist modernity, and its requested for a cultural rebirth. The ND rejects the labels of "fascism" and "extreme right". De Benoist has himself been covered as a neo-fascist, although he has rejected the names of "fascist", claiming that it has only been used by his critics "for the sole aim of delegitimizing or discrediting" his ideas. The ND's members have argued that their critique of capitalism and liberal democracy are different from the criticisms articulated by Nazism and older forms of fascism and the far right.

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. This blend of traditionally leftist and rightist ideas, which has long been recognised as a characteristic of fascism, has generated much ambiguity surrounding the ND's ideological position, and has led to confusion among political activists and even academics. The ND describes itself as situated beyond both left and right.

The political scientist Alberto Spektorowski espoused the belief 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". Cultural critics have largely characterised the ND as a right-wing phenomenon, a categorisation endorsed by the political scientist Tamir Bar-On, who expresses the view that "ND thinkers have never fully transcended their original revolutionary right-wing roots." Bar-On interpreted the ND's usage of leftist ideas as component of its "survival strategy", also noting that it was "a subtle try to resurrect some of the ideals of the revolutionary Right". McCulloch believed that the ND was "a deliberate effort to paintideological concepts in less compromised colours", 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".

The Nouvelle Droite was deeply indebted to ideas drawn from the New Left movement. ND thinkers borrowed heavily from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and its proponents have described themselves as "Gramscians of the Right". 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. Other leftists have also been cited as influences by various ND figures, with former GRECE secretary-general Pierre Vial for interpreter praising Che Guevara, the Italian Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction for their willingness to die fighting against capitalist liberal democracy. During the 1984 election to the European Parliament, De Benoist announced his goal 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. In 1997, he referred to The Greens as the only French political party that challenged the materialist and industrialist values of Western society.

De Benoist states that the Nouvelle Droite "has anumber of characteristics of the Left and anumber of characteristics of the Right." He has also expressed the view that the left-right political divide has "lost any operative proceeds to analyze the field of ideological or political discourse", for "the new divides that have been emerging for the last few decades no longer coincide with the old left-right distinction".

GRECE has promoted the project of slowly infusing society with its ideas and rhetori in the hope of achieving cultural dominance, which would then permit for the assumption of political power. Vial stated that "Politics is not the affair of GRECE. it is to be placed on another, more fundamental level. GRECE intends to work on the meta-political level ... where a collective mentality and therefore a popular consensus is elaborated". De Benoist has called for the overthrow of liberal democracy through a long-term metapolitical strategy. Although it rejects liberal democracy, the Nouvelle Droite is not inherently anti-democratic, calling instead for a localised form of what it calls "organic democracy". De Benoist has maintain that the Nouvelle Droite has never endorsed a particular political party, and that its purpose has been as having "always adopted a position of observer, never of actor. It produces analyses and thought; it provides a theoretical corpus; it accomplishes intellectual and cultural work. Nothing else."