Alain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist de Gentissard (Saint-Symphorien, December 11, 1943) is a French political philosopher, founder of the Nouvelle Droite and leader of the ethnonationalist think tank Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilization européenne (GRECE). Its purpose was, according to Pierre-André Taguieff, to "intellectually rearm the right in France" to confront the cultural hegemony of the left (in this sense he described the Nouvelle Droite as gramcism of right, because the objective was to gain ground on the enemy gradually and patiently).

Mainly influenced by thinkers from the conservative revolutionary movement, de Benoist opposes Christianity, natural law, neoliberalism, representative democracy, egalitarianism; and what he sees as the embodiment and promotion of those values, namely the United States. He developed the notion of "ethnopluralism", a key concept in the ideas of the French New Right that is based on mutual preservation and respect of individual and limited ethnocultural regions.

Benoist is the editor of two magazines: Nouvelle Ecole since 1968 and Krisis since 1988. His writings have appeared in Tyr, Chronicles and several newspapers such as Le Figaro. Benoist has featured his work in scientific racism and white supremacist publications such as Mankind Quarterly and The Occidental Quarterly and the new-left magazine Telos. I>

His work has been influential in the development of the new far right in the United States. He even presented a lecture on ethnic identity at a National Policy Institute conference - organized by Richard B. Spencer; However, he has distanced himself from the movement.

In 1978, he received the Essay Prize (awarded by the French Academy) for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines.

Biography

Above, the Lycee Louis le Grand and La Sorbonne, below the Paris Law School (Paris University). In the latter two, Alain de Benoist completed his higher studies in constitutional law, philosophy, sociology and history of religions.

Origins and academic training (1943-1961)

Alain de Benoist was born on December 11, 1943 in Saint-Symphorien (a town that is now part of Tours), Centre-Val de Loire, son of a sales manager at Guerlain, also called Alain de Benoist; and Germaine de Benoist (née Langouët). Alain de Benoist grew up in a bourgeois and Catholic family. His mother came from the lower middle class of Normandy and Brittany, and his father belonged to the Belgian nobility with roots in the Middle Ages. During World War II, his father was a member of the armed resistance group 'French Forces of the Interior'. He was an avowed Gaullist, while his wife Germaine was more leftist; while Benoist's family was divided between the Free French and Vichy French sides during the war. Benoist is also the great-nephew of French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau and descendant of aristocrats murdered by the hordes of the French Revolution.

De Benoist was still in high school at Lycée Montaigne and Louis-le-Grand during the unrest of the Algerian War (1954-1962), a period that shaped his political stances from an early age. In 1957 a At the age of 14, he became friends with the daughter of the anti-Semitic journalist and conspiracy theorist Henry Coston. From the age of 15, de Benoist became interested in the nationalist right in the context of the Algerian War, and began his career. as a journalist in 1960 writing articles and pamphlets for the magazine Coston Lectures Françaises, generally in defense of the French Empire and the political-paramilitary and pro-colonial group Organization de l'Armée Secrète (OAE).

Despite the above, Alain de Benoist stayed away from Coston's conspiracy theories about Freemasonry and Jews.

At the age of 17, in 1961, he met François d'Orcival, with whom he became editor of France Information, a clandestine newspaper in favor of the OAS. The same year, and began attending the Sorbonne and joined the student society "Federation of Nationalist Students" (FEN).In 1962, he became secretary of the organization's magazine, Cahiers universitaires, in which he wrote the main articles together with D'Orcival. As a student of law and literature, he began a period of political activism and passion for fantasy cinema. According to Pierre-André Taguieff, de Benoist had an intellectual curiosity that was absent in his older comrades Dominique Venner (1935-2013) and Jean Mabire (1927-2006), and the young philosopher led them to discover a conceptual universe "that they could not even imagine" outside "your own convictions"

After completing his secondary studies in Paris at the secondary schools of Lycée Montaigne and Lycée Louis le Grand, he studied constitutional law at the Paris Law Faculty, then philosophy, sociology and history of religions at the Sorbonne.

Youth and extremist political activism (1962-1967)

De Benoist met Dominique Venner in 1962. The following year, he participated in the creation of Europe-Action, a white nationalist newspaper created by Venner, for which de Benoist began working as essayist and journalist. At that time he published his first philosophical-political works: Salan devant l'opinion ("Salan confronts [public] opinion", 1963) and Le courage est leur patrie ("Courage is your motherland", 1965), defending French Algeria and the OAS.

Between 1963 and 1965, de Benoist was a member of the Union rationaliste (Rationalist Union), and probably began reading Louis Rougier's criticisms of Christianity at that time, since Rougier was also a member of the organization. They maintained intellectual contact and Rougier's ideas deeply influenced the anti-Christianity of Alain de Benoist. De Benoist continued his journalistic career and in 1964 became editor-in-chief of the weekly publication Europe-Action Hebdomaire, renamed L'Observateur Européen in October 1966. Some of his articles were also published in the neo-fascist magazine Défense de l'Occident, founded in 1952. by Maurice Bardèche.

After a visit to South Africa at the invitation of the National Party government of Hendrik Verwoerd, de Benoist co-wrote with Gilles Fournier in 1965 the essay Vérité pour l'Afrique du Sud ("The truth for South Africa"), in which they supported apartheid. The following year, he co-wrote another essay with D'Orcival, Rhodésie, pays des lions fidèles i> ("Rhodesia, country of the loyal lions", 1966), in defense of the Rhodesian State, a separatist country in southern Africa that was controlled by a white minority government. The country's then Prime Minister, Ian Smith, wrote the book. Upon returning from a trip to the United States, de Benoist criticized desegregation and wrote as a prediction that the system would survive outside the law, for therefore, in a more violent way.

In two essays published in 1966, Les Indo-Européens ("The Indo-Europeans") and Qu'est-ce que le nationalisme? ("What is nationalism?"), Benoist contributed to defining a new form of European nationalism, in which European civilization, which should be understood as the " #34;white race" (a notion that would later be continued alone by the philosopher Guillaume Faye), must overcome intra-European ethnic nationalism, all united in a common empire and civilization, including Russia. This theory was embodied in the 1967 legislative program of the European Freedom Movement (REL), in which de Benoist was a member of the national council. This manifesto became a central idea of GRECE after 1968.

The successive failures of the various far-right movements that he had supported, from the dissolution of the OAS and the Évian Accords in 1962, to the electoral defeat of the presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour in 1965 (de Benoist had participated in the grassroots movement "T.V. Committees"), and finally the debacle of the REL in March 1967, led Alain de Benoist to question his participation in politics. In the fall of 1967, he decided to make a 'permanent and complete break with political action', and focus on a metapolitical strategy by developing a school of thought.

During the events of May 1968, when he was twenty-five years old, de Benoist was a professional journalist at the newspaper L'Écho de la presse et de la publicité.

Philosophical development: Nouvelle Droite and media fame (1968-1993)

Together with militants from REL and FEN, de Benoist founded GRECE in 1968, an ethnonationalist think tank becoming its leader and its "most authoritative spokesperson. In the In the 1970s, de Benoist adapted his geopolitical views, 1) from a pro-colonial attitude towards a defense of Third Worldism against American liberal capitalism and communist Russia, from the defense of the "last outposts of the West" against "north-Americanism" 2) and from a biological definition of otherness, towards a cultural one. An idea developed in his ethnopluralist theories.

His works, along with others published by the think tank, achieved public fame in the late 1970s, and the media called the movement 'Nouvelle Droite';. Alain de Benoist began writing articles for the main right-wing magazines, namely Valeurs actuelles and Le Spectacle du Monde from 1970 to 1982, and Le Figaro Dimanche (renamed in 1978 Le Figaro Magazine) from 1977 to 1982. He received in 1978 the prestigious Prix de l'essai of the Académie française for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines ("Visions for the Right"), which sold 30,000 copies.

De Benoist met the Russian writer Aleksandr Duguin in 1989. They soon became close collaborators: Dugin invited De Benoist to Moscow in 1992. The Russian philosopher introduced himself as GRECE's Moscow correspondent for a time. The two authors finally broke off their relationship in 1993 after a virulent campaign in the French and German media against the "red and brown menace" (alluding to national-bolshevism) in Russia. While de Benoist acknowledged ideological differences with Dugin, especially in his views on Eurasianism and the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the two have maintained regular exchanges since then.

Intellectual re-emergence (1994-present)

In 1979 and 1993, two press campaigns launched in the French liberal media against Alain de Benoist, alleging that he was actually a "non-accepted fascist" or a "Nazi", damaged his public image and influence in France. They accused him of hiding his racist and anti-egalitarian beliefs in a way apparently acceptable to the public, by replacing the hierarchy of races with the less suspect concept of "ethno-pluralism". Although he still frequently comments on Politically, de Benoist chose in the early 1990s to focus on his intellectual activity and avoid media attention.

From the 2000s onwards, however, public interest in his works has resurfaced. He has made several media appearances on France Culture, Europe 1, Telemadrid, Radio Courtoisie and Il Giornale. His writings have been published in several far-right academic journals such as the Journal of Historical Review, Chronicles, The Occidental Quarterly or Tyr, as well as in the new left magazine Telos.

De Benoist was one of the signatories of the Manifesto against the death of the spirit and the earth, since, in his words: "it seemed to me that he reacted against the practical materialism that It is part of a dominant ideology, an ideology for which there is nothing beyond material concerns.

In 2002, in a new publication of his book Vu de droite, de Benoist reiterated what he wrote in 1977: the "major" danger in today's world is the "progressive disappearance of the world's diversity", including the biodiversity of animals, cultures and peoples. De Benoist is now the editor of two magazines: theNouvelle annual École (since 1968) and the quarterly Krisis (since 1988).

Although the extent of the relationship is debated by scholars, de Benoist and the Nouvelle Droite are generally seen as mentors in the ideological and political structure of the Identitarian Movement. Part of the alt-right He has also stated that he was inspired by the philosopher's writings.

Thought

From being close to pro-colonial movements and adopting an ethno-biological perspective at the beginning of his writings in the 1960s, when he approved of apartheid with Gilles Fournier as the &# 34;last outpost of the West" At a time of "decolonization and international blackification", Alain de Benoist gradually moved toward a defense of the Third World (see: Third Worldism) against American imperialism and a more cultural definition of "difference" #34;, theorized in its concept of ethnopluralism.

Alain de Benoist is also an ardent critic of globalization, unrestricted mass immigration, liberalism, postmodern society and what he calls the "ideology of equality" (see: egalitarianism). Scholars wonder whether this evolution in de Benoist's concepts should be considered a sincere ideological detachment of a young far-right activist (de Benoist stopped supporting biological racism and separatist colonialism before the age of 24), or rather a metapolitical strategy to reshape non-egalitarian ideas into "acceptable" to status quo.

Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus describes the main idea of De Benoist's writings in the following terms: "through the use of metapolitics, to think about the ways and means that are necessary for European civilization, based on the cultural values shared on the continent before the advent of globalization, to prosper and perpetuate themselves.

Although they embody the core values of GRECE and Nouvelle Droite, Alain de Benoist's works are not always identical to those of other thinkers of the movement. For example, he disapproved of the "strongly racist" ideas. of the philosopher Guillaume Faye regarding Muslims after the publication of the book La colonization de l'Europe, Discours vrai sur l'immigration et l'Islam, which was published for the first time in 2000.

De Benoist opposes political violence, stating that he has been building "a school of thought, not a political movement."

Main themes

Identity

Inspired by Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue and the concept of his book Ich und Du (1923), de Benoist defined "identity" as a "dialogical" in Nosotros y los otros ("Nous et les autres", 2006). According to him, one's identity is made up of two components: the "objective part" that comes from origin (ethnicity, religion, family, nationality) and the "subjective part", freely chosen by the individual. Identity is therefore a constantly evolving process, rather than a completely fixed notion. In 1992, he consequently rejected the National Front's use of the term ethnopluralism, arguing that it portrayed 'difference'. as an absolute, while, by definition, it exists only in a relational way." De Benoist believes that knowledge of ethnic and religious traditions is a duty, which must be transmitted to the next generation, and considers that there is no moral imperative for cosmopolitanism.

Alain de Benoist has also criticized what he calls "the pathology of identity", that is, the political use of identity by the populist right to promote a debate "us versus them" escorted by "[systematic] and [irrational] hatred". The difficulty in understanding Alain de Benoist's views on identity lies in the fact that his writings have undergone multiple re-syntheses since the 1960s.

In 1974, he said: "There is no master race. All races are superior and each of them has its own genius. Suspicions have arisen of a subtle metapolitical appearance designed with the aim of reestablishing the original fascist idea around a new framework. It has also been said that de Benoist has been influenced by Carl Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy as the central theme of politics. However, he sees immigrants as eventually 'victims of globalization', and also explained that immigration was, in the first place, a consequence of large companies being greedy for profits and preferring to import labor. cheap work.

Ethnopluralism and rejection of nationalism

Alain de Benoist rejects the nation state and nationalism, claiming that both liberalism and nationalism eventually derive from the same metaphysics of subjectivity, and that the centralized and "Jacobinian" of the French Republic had destroyed regional identities in the project of a 'single and indivisible' France. In its place, it defends the political autonomy of each and every one of the groups, favoring a comprehensive federalism based on the principle of subsidiarity, which would transcend the nation-state and give way to regional identities and a common continental identity at the same time.

Liberalism

He is a critic of the primacy of individual rights, an ideology he sees embodied in humanism, the French Revolution, and the Founding Fathers of the United States. Although he is not a Marxist, de Benoist has been influenced by the communist analysis of the nature of capitalism and conflicting class interests, expounded by Karl Marx in Das Kapital. As a result, another of his central ideas is that the world faces the 'hegemony of capital'. and the "pursuit of self-interest", two typical trends of the postmodern era.

However, according to Jean-Yves Camus, although Alain de Benoist may share the anti-capitalist analysis with leftists, the concern he has is really different, since the Frenchman considers the unlimited expansion of the free market and consumerism as contributors key to the elimination of people's identity. Furthermore, although he recognizes their existence, he does not make an essential distinction between the & # 34; working class & # 34; and the "bourgeoisie", but rather among the "new ruling class" and the "people". In 1991, its magazine Eléments described through its editorial team how "overly systematic anti-egalitarianism [could] lead to social Darwinism, which could justify the free market economy.

United States

Alain de Benoist opposes the liberal-American idea of the 'melting pot'. A critic of the United States has been quoted as saying: 'Some people do not accept the idea that one day they will have to wear the Red Army cap. Indeed, it is a horrible idea. However, this is no reason to tolerate the idea that one day we will have to spend what we have left to live on eating hamburgers in Brooklyn.' In 1991, he complained that European supporters of the first Gulf War They were "collaborators of the American order."

Islam

Alain de Benoist supported ties with Islamic culture in the 1980s, arguing that the relationship with it would be different than that of the consumerism and materialism of American society, as well as the bureaucracy and repression of the sovietic Union.

Paganism and Christianity

He also opposes Christianity as inherently intolerant, theocratic, and bent on persecution.

Influences

Alain de Benoist's leading intellectuals include Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Jünger, Martin Buber, Jean Baudrillard, Georges Dumézil, Ernest Renan, José Ortega y Gasset, Vilfredo Pareto, Karl Marx, Guy Debord, Arnold Gehlen, Stéphane Lupasco, Helmut Schelsky, Konrad Lorenz, Johann Gottfried Herder and Johannes Althusius.

The currents of thought that most influence its theoretical development are the Konservative Revolution, the French nonconformists of the 1930s, the Austro-Marxists of the interwar period, and communitarian philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor.

Personal life

It is neopagan. On June 21, 1972 he married Doris Christians, a German citizen, with whom he has two children.

He is a member of Mensa, an international association for the gifted, whose former president of the French branch was a member of the sponsorship committee of the magazine Nouvelle École, one of the written media of the Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilization européenne.

It has the largest private library in France, with an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 books.

Pseudonyms

Fabrice Laroche, Martial Laurent, Cédric de Gentissard, Tanguy Gallien, Frédéric Laurent, Robert de Herte, David Barney, Pierre Dolabella, Maxime Meyer, Jean-Pierre Dujardin, Frédéric Toulouze, Jean-Louis Cartry, Pierre Jacob, Julien Valserre, Pierre Carlet, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Maiastra, Gilles Foumier, Mortimer Davidson, Fabrice Valclérieux, Éric Saint-Léger, Éric Lecendreux and Éric Dumesnil.

Books

Works in Spanish

• The new right, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1982.
• The ideas of the New Right. a response to cultural colonialism, Editions New Art Thor, Barcelona, 1986.
• How can you be pagan? Editions New Republic, Molins de Rei, 2004.
• Communism and Nazism. 25 reflections on totalitarianism in the 20th century (1917-1989). Altera, Barcelona, 2005.
• Diego Luis Sanromán, The New Right. Forty years of metapolitical agitation, CIS, Madrid, 2008.
• Beyond the right and the left. The political thought that breaks schemes, Altera, Barcelona 2010 ISBN 978-84-96840-91-1.
• We and the others. Problem of identity, Editions Fides, Tarragona 2015 ISBN 978-84-943920-8-5.
• Europe- Third World. Same fight, Editions Fides, Tarragona 2015 ISBN 978-84-944350-2-7.
• The right to difference. To end racism, Editions Fides, Tarragona 2015.
• Liberalism, the main enemy, Editions Fides, Tarragona 2015.
• Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and the German conservative revolution, Editions Fides, Tarragona 2015.
• Sustainable decrease, Editions Ignacio Carrera Pinto, Santiago 2019.

Original work in French

Collective works

Collaborative works

Works in which Alain de Benoist is the sole author