2011/07/01 by Tamir Bar‐On · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Communism, Protests, Social Movements #European union #Extreme right #Far right #French Historical and Cultural Studies #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Law #Political science #Politics #Racism #Sociology #Transnationalism #World War II
paper · doi:10.1080/0031322x.2011.585013
openalex publication_date 2011/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Born in 1968, the French Nouvelle Droite (ND) is a ‘cultural school of thought’. It created a sophisticated European-wide political culture of the revolutionary right in an anti-fascist age; it helped to nurture the discourse of ‘political correctness’ among extreme right-wing political parties, and turned former French ultra-nationalists into pan-Europeanists seeking to smash the egalitarian heritage of 1789. Bar-On argues that the ND world-view has been shaped by transnational influences and that the ND has, in turn, shaped a decidedly more right-wing political culture in Europe in a transnational spirit. The transnational impact of ND ideas is a product of three key factors: first, the intellectual output and prestige of ND leader Alain de Benoist; second, the ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ of the ND's pan-European project that mimicked earlier attempts to unite interwar fascists and post-war neo-fascists into the revolutionary right; and, finally, the political space opened up by the decline of the European left after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Bar-On concludes by considering the influence of the ND on contemporary European politics, as well as the implications for the struggles against racism and the extreme right.