Like its 1968 leftist counterparts, the New Right would champion the proliferation of new post-materialist issues in the 1980s and 1990s, whether youth questions, feminism, the environment, regional and cultural autonomy and pro-Third World solidarity. Was this strategy a type of revised cultural fascism in the mould of Bardèche or an authentic search for a new political alternative? Like the New Left, the New Right was critical of the harmful effects of capitalist modernization, the de-spiritualized vision of Western “progress” and questioned the merits of the colonialist project. The French New Right began to see the New Left as a spiritually and politically allied movement and common idealistic partner in their battle to destroy liberal democracy, capitalism and the gradual Westernization of the world. Besides, post-materialist issues tended to be transversal; they transcended the traditional categories of right and left; and they offered hope for a reconciliation between the revolutionary poles on the far right and left against liberal democracy.
The other lesson the French New Right learned from the 1968 leftist radicals was that the opposition’s ideas could one day enter the mainstream of political life in terms of co-opting both ideals and key cultural and political personnel within the state, administration, mass media and universities. The ENR never tired of lamenting that it was the New Left generation of the 1968ers, which completely controlled the cultural apparatus of French social life in the 1970s and 1980s. The leftist generation of 1968, then, acted as the ENR’s model in the battle to reclaim cultural hegemony, viewed as the key for any lasting political power. The New Left revolutionaries would continue to imprint the thinking of New Right revolutionaries at the beginning of the 21st century. This pervasive New Left influence was a major sign of the ENR’s “novelty,” but for some critics part of what Bardèche called the constant revision of “the famous fascist methods.”
If Hitchens and the New York intellectuals drifted towards the right, de Benoist went the other way from right to left. Indeed, the extension of boundaries beyond its traditional right-wing or neo-fascist milieux is what defined the ENR in the 1980s and 1990s. Hitchens would argue that he remained faithful to secular, Enlightenment-based ideals. In opening to the left, de Benoist could also argue that he stayed true to his core ideals, which had generous samplings of conservative revolutionary thinkers, the non-conformists, Evola and Sorel all rolled into one.
For the ENR, the world of human affairs, like the biological world, only thrives and grows on “difference,” “pluralism” and “diversity.” This “difference” must be enhanced in cultural, political and geopolitical realms. The ENR argues that the bio-diversity of different world cultures, each with their own unique conceptions of the world, enhances the pluralism, majesty and mystery of the world. The incommensurability of cultures, the ENR contends, should not lead to the reductionist and assimilationist Western imposition of “our” cultural values upon other cultures. In this thinking, we can hear the echoes of Herder, Vico, Lévi-Strauss and the conservative revolutionary Oswald Spengler all rolled into one. In the post-colonial era, the ENR argues that all cultures are inherently unique and different, and the old assimilationist logic of European colonialism is forcefully rejected. All “rooted” cultures in the post-communist age, argue the ENR intellectuals, should make common cause against the American-led, global capitalist vision based on the domination of the homo oeconomicus. Picking up from left-wing and ecological critiques of capitalism, Dutch New Right thinker Ruter argues that he wants “to share the whole cosmic living space with the animals, plants and matter, and wants to hand it over unharmed to the next generations” (Ruter in Krebbers 1999). His New Right colleague, Veldman, speaks of solidarity with “peoples that struggle to save their own identity and with all those offering resistance against the destruction of flora and fauna, against the limitless power and influence of multinational companies and against the international consumption society” (Veldman in Krebbers 1999). The Dutch New Right has even championed the cause of Native American “nations” fighting to preserve their cultural identities in the face of capitalist and North American assimilationist policies.
De Benoist has neatly outlined these twin notions of anti-egalitarianism and the “right to difference” in his fundamental 1977 work Vu de droite. In this text, de Benoist declares himself on the right because he contends that it is founded on the idea that the diversity of the world and the relative inequalities it produces is something “good” and the progressive homogenisation of the world produced by the two thousand year old discourse of Judeo-Christian egalitarianism is an “evil” (De Benoist 1979b, 16). De Benoist adds that this does not mean that he approves of all inequalities. In reality, de Benoist claims that the Judeo-Christian heritage of the West and the ideas derived from the French Revolution underpin numerous unjust inequalities. For de Benoist, to rally around an anti-egalitarian conception of life is to realize that diversity is the pre-eminent rule of the world. It entails the future creation of a post-liberal, organic and hierarchical society where both intellectuals and warriors will play key roles.
In another crucial passage from Vu de droite, de Benoist argues that the steady erosion of diversity and difference on the planet as a result of the emergence of a materialist, egalitarian “global civilization” is the principal menace of the contemporary age. It is worth quoting de Benoist’s passage at length:
What is the greatest threat today? It is the progressive disappearance of diversity from the world. The levelling-down of people, the reduction of all cultures to a world civilization made up of what is the most common. It can be seen already how from one side of the planet to the other the same types of construction are being put up and the same mental habits are being ingrained. Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson are the templates for the transformation of the world into a grey uniformity. I have travelled widely, on several continents. The joy which is experienced during a journey derives from seeing differentiated ways of living which are still well rooted, in seeing different people live according to their own rhythm, with a different skin colour, another culture, another mentality—from recognizing they are proud of their difference. I believe that this diversity is the wealth of the world, and that egalitarianism is killing it. For this it is important not just to respect others but to keep alive everywhere the most legitimate desire there can be: the desire to affirm a personality which is unlike any other, to defend a heritage, to govern oneself in accordance with what one is. And this implies a head-on clash both with a pseudo-antiracism which denies differences and with a dangerous racism which is nothing less than the rejection of the Other, the rejection of diversity. (De Benoist 1979b, 25)
It is interesting how de Benoist and other GRECE members who once could die for the colonialist and assimilationist idea of Algérie française now embraced the mantra of diversity and attacked both racist and anti-racist ideologies. While de Benoist has expressed solidarity with the immigrant detached from his unique cultural roots in what he calls a “heartless” capitalist system (De Benoist 1993-4a, 185-6), the difference in the 1980s was that the former immigrants from the French colonies were now on “our” soil in larger numbers and increasingly perceived as a cultural, economic and political threat to the French Catholic majority. In the 1980s, the ideas of GRECE would be used by the FN to argue for a “differential racism”: the repatriation of even French citizens from Algeria and others of North African descent in order to “mutually benefit” the “right to difference” of the “foreigners” and host culture of the “French French.” In contrast to the FN, however, de Benoist claimed to support the “right to difference” of all individuals and communities, immigrant and non-immigrant alike, throughout France. Besides, argued de Benoist, the French would have the same problems without immigrants because they no longer had their own unique identity and internal strength to fight against the steamroller of cultural globalisation and Americanization (De Benoist 1993-4a, 173-4). De Benoist has even gone so far as to embrace a defence of Jewish, Muslim and Vietnamese particularism within France as a result of the strong family roots and sense of cohesion within these cultures, which allows them to resist cultural homogenisation (De Benoist 1993-4a, 188-9).
from here
@CrowleyHead @DannyL
@version my main bone to pick with labour as lesser evil in the last paragraph of that quotation. This is what people say when they try to justify labour from the left, that cultural particularism is fine. One standard for the white Brits (and don't pretend Scottish people aren't Brits lol) and another for the immigrants.
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