Alain de Benoist and the New European Right

“right-wing Gramscism” and new “conservative revolution”

Abstract

This article addresses the emergence and intellectual evolution of the European New Right from the 1960s onwards. It analyzes the production linked to its main exponent, the French philosopher Alain de Benoist, leader of the Grece — Groupe de Recherches et d’Études pour la Civilization Européene (Group for Research and Studies on European Civilization), whose project is to create a radical right-wing critical theory, an alternative to liberalism, communism and past forms of racist and nationalist fascism. Similar to the New Left in its critique of the Soviet Union on behalf of Marxism, the New Right criticizes former Nazi racism on behalf of a political and societal arrangement based not on nationalism or racism but on the “right to be different” and in an ethno-cultural and ecological federalism. Through a “right-wing Gramscism”, it seeks to conquer cultural hegemony in European societies, proposing an alternative modernity, critical of liberalism, socialism, capitalism and colonialism. Its proponents intend, in this sense, to be “beyond the left and the right”, however, they do not escape criticism of being a resurgence of fascism in a new guise: since its origins, New Right has been linked to a generation heir to ideals of the “conservative revolution” of the interwar period, many of which were associated with Nazism, but above all with Traditionalist or pagan spiritualist political thought, critic of Christian and Enlightenment individualism and supporter of societies based on the value of sacred hierarchy.