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A
N
I
NTERVIEW WITH
A
LAIN DE
B
ENOIST
Bryan Sylvian conducted the following exclusive interview with Alain de Benoist,
a prominent intellectual in the European New Right and a founder of the Centre
for Research and Study on European Civilization (Groupement de Recherche
et d’Études sur la Civilisation Européene—GRECE). Mikayel Raffi assisted in
the translation.
E
UROPEAN
S
ON
Few schools of thought come even close to the range and depth of the European New
Right, from its Indo-European origins to the current biotech revolution and every
thought current in between. This holds especially true for the dynamic core personified
in one of the philosophical prime movers of France’s New Right: Alain de Benoist.
The French New Right (hereafter NR) greeted the new century ready for action,
and proved it by issuing a manifesto for the whole world to read. Alain de Benoist
(b. 1943), along with Charles Champetier, crafted that statement, which took stock of
the NR since its birth in 1968 and fashioned a weapon for future intellectual combat
in response to its critical assessment of our present predicament. The NR manifesto,
“The French New Right in the Year 2000,” along with a biography of Alain de Benoist
and a selection of his writings, can be viewed online (“Les Amis d’Alain de Benoist”
http://www.alaindebenoist.com).
The interview is a snippet from a much larger one that fleshes out the 2000
NR manifesto. It may also be the first exposure to the NR’s outlook for many in the
English-speaking world, for whom so little of the NR’s output has been translated. This
interview may serve as the first exposure of many in the English-speaking world to
the NR’s thought. For further study one might want to consult
New Culture, New
Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe
by Michael O’Meara and Tomislav
Sunic’s
Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right.
Readers of
TOQ
might want to study the NR manifesto since they too are in
pursuit of the perilous Third Way (along third rails?) between “paleoconservatism”
and “neoconservatism.”
TOQ
continues to fashion its own statement of principles
(which are up to ten now, many of which, in my opinion, mesh perfectly with NR
beliefs). The NR has over thirty years of experience in avoiding the comfortable
but irrelevant intellectual ghettos occupied by the beautiful losers, Sam Francis’s
description of the conservative establishment. Thus its evolution can serve as a
practical guide.
In this time of struggle, the gulf that separates the United States from Europe
needs to be bridged, since we share so much that is both precious and deserving of
passage to future generations. Whatever dialogue results from interviews such as
this one will, one hopes, forge an appreciation for a common effort that acknowl-
edges differences (on such topics as nation-state vs. empire, racialism versus
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Vol. 5, No. 3
The Occidental Quarterly
communitarianism, etc.) but puts them into perspective in this time of both shared
emergency and shared roots.
If a manifesto like this one, rooted in a particular civilization at a particular
time, outlives the cultures and peoples that helped make its creation possible, that
will surely be a disaster. If, on the other hand, such a manifesto brings everlasting
fame to those who wrote it, to those who spread it, and to those courageous pioneers
whom it helped spur to constructive action, then they would all be acting in the
best of ancient Indo-European tradition.
T
OQ:
The French New Right, founded in 1968, published its first manifesto
in 1999. What is the manifesto’s background? Why did you and coauthor
Charles Champetier feel the need to publish a manifesto at that time?
BENOIST:
Actually, the NR published something like a manifesto in 1977,
in the form of a work entitled
Dix ans de combat culturel pour une renaissance
(“Ten years of cultural struggle for a renaissance”). A second, augmented
edition appeared in 1979 under the title
Pour une renaissance culturelle
(“For a
cultural renaissance”). If Charles Champetier and I felt the need to publish a
new manifesto, it was mainly because we wanted to draw up a balance sheet
of our main theoretical accomplishments over the previous twenty years. At
the same time, we were conscious that the world had changed. By 2000, not
only had we passed from one century to another, but from the postwar era to
a transitional period very unlike the one in which the NR was born. In other
words, we have left modernity behind us and entered postmodern times.
TOQ:
You seem to have accepted the term “New Right” and used it to identify
your “metapolitical” think tank, even though it is the designation of your media
critics and not your own. Why?
BENOIST:
The label “New Right”
(Nouvelle Droite)
was actually invented by
the French press in 1979, when we became the focus of an international media
blitz. It is not quite accurate to say that we accepted the label from that very
moment. We have rather suffered from this term, which for several reasons
has always been a quite inappropriate description. Given its political connota-
tion, it hardly does justice to a school of thought that has never sought to be a
political actor. The vague and varied semantics of the word “right” also imbues
it with a good deal of ambiguity. Finally, it can’t be translated into English,
since the “New Right” in England and the United States has really nothing in
common with our own school of thought. For a time, we tried to substitute
the term “New Culture,” but this equally vague designation never caught on.
Once the “New Right” acquired a certain currency, it seemed inescapable,
Fall 2005 / de Benoist
9
then, to accept it, although not without a certain reserve. As for myself, I try
to use the term as little as possible.
TOQ:
“Metapolitics” is a term rarely found in American political discourse.
The NR manifesto defines it in the following way: “Metapolitics is not politics
by other means. It is neither a ‘strategy’ to impose intellectual hegemony, nor
an attempt to discredit other possible attitudes or agendas. It rests solely on
the premise that ideas play a fundamental role in the collective consciousness
and, more generally, in human history…. In a world where closed entities have
given way to interconnected networks with increasingly fuzzy reference points,
metapolitical action attempts, beyond political divisions and through a new
synthesis, to renew a transversal mode of thought and ultimately to study all
areas of knowledge in order to propose a coherent worldview. Such has been
the aim for over thirty years” (Telos 115 [Spring 1999]). Is this a Gramscian call
for the cultural revolution, which is seen as requisite for a political revolution?
[Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist, lived from 891 to 1937.]
BENOIST:
I think too much importance has been given to the expression
“metapolitics.” In proposing a metapolitical course of action, the NR sought to
carry out on a more or less collective level what theoreticians and intellectuals
have always done individually. In this respect, the NR might be compared to
the Frankfurt School of the 1930s and 1940s. It was also a matter of recalling
that political movements are not the only things that change men’s lives, but
that ideas also affect the evolution of their beliefs and behaviors. The Cartesian
Revolution and the Kantian Revolution played a historical role at least as
important as the French Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. Of course,
metapolitics conceived in this way can also have political consequences. The
French Revolution would have undoubtedly been impossible, at least in the
form it took, without the work of the Encyclopedists or the Enlightenment
philosophers. But these always unforeseeable political consequences occurred
at a level quite different than ideas. Lenin, for example, would never have
been a Marxist if Marx had not come before him, though this doesn’t mean
Marx would have approved of Lenin! Think tanks, as they exist in the United
States, are something else entirely. They endeavor to elaborate programs or
provide ideas to politicians and political parties, which is not at all what the
NR is about. Comparisons with Gramsci, which I myself have made, are also
of limited value, insofar as Gramsci’s “organic intellectuals” were supposed
to act in liaison with a political party (the Italian Communist party). The
NR’s objective is much simpler: It seeks to propagate its ideas as widely as
possible, to make its analyses known, and to facilitate the evolution of beliefs
and behaviors.
Of course, one might wonder if ideas can play the same sort of role in our
world as they did in the past. The time when intellectuals possessed a certain
moral authority, at least in countries like France, for example, has obviously
10
Vol. 5, No. 3
The Occidental Quarterly
passed. The academic world’s prestige has declined to the advantage of the
media’s, whose forms, especially television, are ill-suited to complex thought.
At the same time, it is evident that the most significant social transformations
are no longer the result of politics, but of new technologies. Nevertheless, ideas
retain their importance in influencing the values and value systems to which
global society refers. The multiplication of networks, characteristic of our age,
will likely also have a role to play in their diffusion.
TOQ:
In what sense is the NR part of the right?
BENOIST:
I myself having wondered many times about that, but before
answering such a legitimate question, it is necessary to give a satisfactory
definition of the word “right,” which isn’t easy. For the “right” differs from
country to country and from epoch to epoch. Moreover, the right is never
monolithic: There always exist several rights (as there exist several lefts) and
some of these are closer to certain lefts than to the other ones on the right.
Finally, many political or ideological themes and ideas have migrated in the
course of history from right to left and vice versa. This makes it difficult to
identify a common denominator that links all the different rights (as well
as all the lefts). Many have tried to define such a denominator, but never
with any unanimity, since their criteria were inevitably subjective and the
exceptions too numerous.
In the last few years, the fog has only thickened. For example, if you look at
all the great events of the recent period, you’ll see that “transversal” cleavages
have taken place in respect to traditional political affiliations. Both leftists and
rightists are to be found among the supporters of European unification, just
as there are leftists and rightists opposing the war in Iraq. At the same time,
we are witnessing changes in electoral behavior, as more and more people
vote indiscriminately, sometimes for leftist parties and sometimes for rightist
parties. This suggests that the traditional basis of conventional political affili-
ations—whether generational, sociological, or religious—is in the process of
disappearing. Today, to know that someone is “on the left” or “on the right”
doesn’t tell us much about how he or she really thinks on today’s concrete
problems. The left-right cleavage is consequently losing its operative value
in defining an increasingly complex political scene. Other more interesting
cleavages, related to issues of federalism, regionalism, communitarianism,
secularism, etc., are beginning to replace it.
As for the NR, it has never identified itself with the traditionalist, counter-
revolutionary right, nor with the fascist, Jacobin, or racist right, nor with the
liberal conservative right. It has certainly drawn some lessons from the critique
of Enlightenment philosophy, which has always been more common for the
right than for the left. But in the matter of social criticism, it mainly refers to
left-wing writers, whether on the mutualist wing of French socialism (Proudhon,
Sorel, Pierre Leroux, Benoit Malon, et al.) or among the more modern “leftist”
Fall 2005 / de Benoist
11
thinkers and writers, such as Ivan Illich, André Gorz, Herbert Marcuse, Cornelius
Castoriadis, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Rifkin, Benjamin Barber, Michael Walzer,
or Naomi Klein. There is nothing contradictory in this, for the NR tries to situate
itself on the vanguard of the cleavages mentioned above.
TOQ:
Does the NR have a presence in the English-speaking world outside the
UK (i.e., outside of Michael Walker and
The Scorpion)?
What accounts for the
NR’s weakness in the English-speaking world?
BENOIST:
The NR has never really penetrated the Anglo-Saxon world. A
journal like
The Scorpion,
to which I am very sympathetic, has never been
completely part of our movement. While my books have been translated into a
dozen European languages, very few of my articles have appeared in English,
which is undoubtedly significant. There are a few exceptions, notably
Telos,
in
which a good number of my texts have appeared over the last ten or twelve
years. Edited by the recently deceased Paul Piccone,
Telos
was originally a
journal animated by the American disciples of the Frankfurt School (Theodor
W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer). It was one of the main organs of the New Left
in the 1970s, before it began opening itself up to new and more “transversal”
themes which led it, for instance, to make the work of Carl Schmitt better
known to the American public. It was also highly attentive to the evolution of
European ideas, which distinguished it from most other American journals. The
special issue
Telos
devoted to the NR (number 97–98 [Winter 1993]) is without
any doubt the best English-language study to date on that subject.
But the main reason for this situation is quite possibly the paucity of
culture or the lack of interest of most Englishmen and Americans in what
is going on in Europe and elsewhere. It suffices to read the publications of
the major academic book publishers to see that most of their references are
English-language ones. Everything written in another language is more or less
considered nonexistent. Generally speaking, very few European writers are
translated into English. Those who escape this rule (Jacques Derrida, Michel
Foucault, et al.) are usually the beneficiaries of certain fashions or people who
have the help of some specialized networks (René Girard, Jean-François Revel,
et al.). As for “French studies,” which are often of high quality, they remain
confined to the academic environment. With the larger public, the situation is
especially bad. Outside a narrow elite, Americans don’t speak foreign languages
(they apparently think it is normal for others to speak their language), they are
extraordinarily ignorant of matters of history and geography, and generally
show only the slightest interest in the “rest of the world.” As an array of recent
studies shows, the vast majority of young Americans lack the most rudimentary
geographical, historical, and political knowledge even of their own country.
All this tends to make them quite unreceptive to NR’s ideas.
But there is perhaps a more profound reason for the NR’s failure to penetrate
the English-speaking world. In the United States and England, intellectuals

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