Alain de Benoist
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Alain de Benoist (born 11 December 1943) is a French academic, founder of the Nouvelle Droite (English: ) and head of the French think tank GRECE.
Benoist is little known outside his native France but his writings have been highly influential on anti-globalist thought, primarily on the political right, with groups such as the National Bolsheviks.
Biography
Alain de Benoist was born in Saint-Symphorien and attended the Sorbonne. He has studied law, philosophy, sociology, and the history of religions. He is an admirer of Europe and paganism.Benoist is the editor of two journals: Nouvelle Ecole (since 1968) and Krisis (since 1988). His writings have appeared in Mankind Quarterly, The Scorpion, Tyr, Chronicles, and various newspapers such as Le Figaro. The New Left journal Telos has also published some of Benoist's work, which led to protests from some scholars on the editorial board.
In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines (Copernic, 1977). He has published more than 50 books, including On Being a Pagan (Ultra, 2005, ISBN 0972029222).
Ideology and views
Alain de Benoist was previously associated with different right wing persons linked with the Algerian independence war. From being close to fascist French movements at the beginning of his writings in 1970, he moved to attacks on globalisation, unrestricted mass immigration and liberalism as being ultimately fatal to the existence of Europe through their divisiveness and internal faults. Against the liberal melting-pot of the USA, he is in favour of a separation of civilisations/cultures.
Benoist has said that he hopes to see free-debate and greater popular participation in democracy. He also believes in a federal Europe, in which the nation state is surpassed, giving way to regional identities and a common continental one at once.
He considers himself, however, neither left nor right-wing, and has recently tried to appear less radical: in his preference for Heidegger over his first influence, Nietzsche; his support of multiculturalism rather than disappearance of immigrants' identities (though he does not support immigration itself); his interest in ecology; and a less aggressive view of Christianity.
His critics, such as Thomas Sheehan, argue that Benoist has developed a novel restatement of fascism. Roger Griffin, using an ideal type definition of fascism which includes "populist ultra-nationalism" and "palingenesis" (heroic rebirth), argues that the Nouvelle Droite draws on such "fascist" ideologues as Armin Mohler and Julius Evola in a way that allows ND ideologues such as de Benoist to claim a "metapolitical" stance, but which nonetheless has residual "fascistic" ideological elements..
References
- Fascism edited by Roger Griffin, pp. 346-348.
- The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee, pp. 208-213.
- Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, pp. 29-30.
- Thomas Sheehan, "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist," in Social Research, issue "On Violence: Paradoxes and Antinomies", Volume 48, No. 1 (Spring 1981). Arien Mack, Editor; Franco Ferrarotti, Guest Editor.
Further reading
- Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1997, pp. 208-215, 288, 318-320, 368-369.
- Jonathan Marcus, The National Front and French Politics, New York: New York University Press, 1995, pp. 22-4, 151.
External links
- [The Alain De Benoist Collection]
- [Three Interviews With Alain de Benoist]
- [Archive of articles], many by or about Benoist
- [Les Amis d'Alain de Benoist]
- [Un ancien dirigeant de l’extrême droite représente la presse française] by Pascal Dillane
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