The Nouvelle Droite (, ), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Various scholars of political science have argued that it is a form of fascism or neo-fascism, although the movement eschews these terms.
The Nouvelle Droite began with the formation of the GRECE (Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne; Research and Study Group for European Civilization), a French group 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 following 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 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 of certain regions where Europeans and their Caucasian descendants may reside. Concurrently, it attempts to sustain the protection of the variance of ethnicities and identities around the globe, defending the right of each group of people to keep their own lands and regions to occupy. To achieve its 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.
History
Following the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Vichy regime, the French extreme-right was driven underground. It resurfaced as a force able to contest elections in the mid-1950s, when some far-right activists successfully returned to the public arena through the Poujadist movement. In the following two decades, the country's extreme-right movement then rallied around the cause of the French Empire, opposing the decolonisation movements that were gaining strength in Indochina and Algeria. A number of far-right paramilitary groups were formed in this environment, including the Secret Army Organisation (Organisation armée secrète - OAS) and the Revolutionary Army (Armée Révolutionnaire - AR). Adopting another approach, a number of extreme-right intellectuals decided that they would try to make many of their ideas more socially respectable through the creation of the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation (GRECE). The acronym means "Greece" in French, and the organization has emphasized the pagan values of Ancient Greece.
1968–1974: Establishing GRECE
GRECE was founded in the southern French city of Nice in January 1968, shortly before the May 1968 events in France. It initially had forty members, among the most prominent of whom were Alain de Benoist, Pierre Vial, Jean-Claude Valla, Dominique Venner, Jacques Bruyas and Jean-Jacques Mourreau. The political scientist Tamir Bar-On has stated that "the intellectual evolution of both GRECE and leading ND intellectuals is definitely situated within the revolutionary Right milieu". GRECE has been described as a "logical alternative" for those "young French nationalist militants" to join, given the 1958 dissolution of the Jeune Nation group, the 1962 collapse of the OAS, and the defeat of the European Rally for Liberty in the 1967 legislative election. These young radicals were ultra-nationalists and anti-communists, and centred their beliefs around a defence of Western society, scientific racism, and eugenics. They were opposed to the migration of non-white peoples from former French colonies into France itself, and this led them to adopt anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspectives.
De Benoist came to be regarded as the "undisputed leader" of the Nouvelle Droite, and its "most authoritative spokesman". He had previously been a member of the ultra-nationalist Fédération des Étudiants Nationalistes and involved with the racialist Europe-Action journal, both of which have been characterised as reflecting ND ideas in their "embryonic form". GRECE inherited a number of key themes from Europe-Action, among them "the anti-Christian stance, a marked elitism, the racial notion of a united Europe, the seeds of a change from biological to cultural definitions of "difference," and the sophisticated inversion of terms like racism and anti-racism". De Benoit was also influenced by the Conservative Revolutionary movement of interwar Germany—including thinkers like Ernst Jünger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Oswald Spengler—and in the 1970s the ND helped to promote a revived interest in these conservative revolutionaries.
GRECE circulated an internal document in which it urged members not to employ "outdated language" that might associate the group with older fascist sectors of the far right. It also urged its members to socialise with some of France and Europe's most important decision-makers, so as to better set the ground for its goals. GRECE did not remain a homogeneous intellectual movement but contained different and sometimes conflicting perspectives. The ND learned from the unrest of 1968 as well as from the wider New Left movement of that decade, adopting the idea that the promotion of cultural ideas is a precondition for political change. De Benoist noted that the French left had not been elected into office since the end of the Second World War but that nevertheless leftist ideas had gained considerable traction in French society, particularly among intellectuals. He sought to change the values and assumptions of French society in a similar way, by shifting the prevailing ideology without the need for any electoral victories.
GRECE held a number of seminars and colloquia with varying degrees of success. It also began to issue a number of semi-academic publications through which it could promote its views. Its journal, Nouvelle École, initially circulated among the group's members although went into public circulation from 1969 onwards. A review, Éléments, was then made public in 1973. Over the course of 1975 and 1976 it issued bulletins promoting its message among medical, educational, and military circles. In 1976, GRECE launched its own publishing house, known as Copernic.
1975–79: Growth and opposition
The expression nouvelle droite was not originally a term of self-appellation. It first appeared in a series of articles on GRECE written by the journalist Gilbert Comte and published in Le Monde in March 1978 which were titled "Une nouvelle droite?". It was applied at a time when the appellation "nouvelle" was being given to a wide range of developments in French intellectual and cultural life, including the nouveaux philosophes, the nouveaux historiens, and nouveaux économistes, as well as nouvelle cuisine.
By the late 1970s, the ND had captured the political zeitgeist in France, reaching its mass media heyday. During these years, intellectuals affiliated with the movement published articles in the mainstream magazine Le Figaro, edited by Louis Pauwels. In 1978, De Benoist's Vu de droite won the prestigious Prix de l'essai from the Académie Française. The ND's growth raised concerns among many liberal and leftist intellectuals in France, who claimed that it was a racist, fascist, and Vichyite movement that sought to undermine liberal democracy, egalitarianism, and the legacy of the French Revolution of 1789. A campaign calling for the rejection of the ND was embraced by media outlets like Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, L'Express, and La Croix, resulting in Le Figaro withdrawing its patronage of the movement. The ND claimed that it was facing a form of intellectual persecution akin to McCarthyism. Now deprived of a popular platform, the ND accelerated away from biological racism and toward the claim that different ethno-cultural groups should be kept separate in order to preserve their historical and cultural differences.
In 1974, a group called The Club was established by several GRECE members—notably Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Yvan Blot, along with Henry de Lesquen,—to serve as an elite think tank for ND ideas. The club was frustrated with GRECE's long-term metapolitical strategy and sought to hasten the speed of change, with its members joining political parties like the Rally for the Republic (RFR) and Union for French Democracy (UDF). By the late 1970s, the Club de l'Horloge had moved away from GRECE by both endorsing economic neoliberalism and embracing Roman Catholicism as a core aspect of France's national identity, something in contrast to GRECE's anti-Christian bent.
1980-99: Affiliation with Front national
In the early 1980s, a number of ND-affiliated intellectuals—among them Jean Haudry, Jean Varenne, Pierre Vial, Jean-Claude Bardet, and Pierre de Meuse—came out in support of the extreme-right National Front (FN) party, which was then growing in support under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The FN were influenced by the ND in their platforms and slogans, adopting the ND's emphasis on ethno-cultural differentialism. The Club called for the RFR and UDF to enter into a political alliance with the FN to defeat the Socialist Party government of President François Mitterrand, although this did not happen.
In 1994, there were four ND-affiliated individuals on the FN politburo, making it the second most influential faction within the party. Within the FN, there were tensions between the ND-affiliated factions and other groups, most particularly the Catholic faction which rejected the ND's exultation of paganism. There were also tensions between the FN nouvelle droitistes and the wider ND, in particular with the wing influenced by De Benoist.
De Benoist openly criticised Le Pen's party, condemning its populism as being at odds with GRECE's emphasis on elitism, and expressing opposition to the FN's use of immigrants as scapegoats for France's problems. He may have been seeking to distinguish his GRECE with the FN, being aware that the two had much overlap.
In 1993, a group of 40 French intellectuals signed "The Appeal to Vigilance", which was published in Le Monde. This warned of "the resurgence of anti-democratic currents of far Right thought in French and European intellectual life" and called for a boycott against ND-affiliated intellectuals. In 1994, the appeal was again published, this time having been signed by 1500 European intellectuals.
Ideology