I believe that the chief causes for this withdrawal are:
1 – The competitive emergence of the Front National and of the thought of Antonio Gramsci,[13] which was badly understood by the Nouvelle Droite.
2 – A tightening of censorship through a blacking out and closing off of the mainstream media, which followed the strengthening of ideological interdictions against all forms of alternative thought: the Nouvelle Droite submitted to these diktats, not daring to fight them through a creative, disorienting and provocative reaction.
3 – The profound inadequacy of Nouvelle Droite publications with respect to current media communication strategies, combined with an editorial tactic that was hardly effective.
4 – The continued adoption of an outdated ‘apparatus logic’ of the type to be found in political parties, which was not appropriate for a movement and school of thought, as well as journalistic or editorial policy, and which led cadres to flee on account of ‘problems with the apparatus’.
5 – A certain ideological fossilisation, combined with the persistence of a ‘Rightist cultural attachment to, and sentimentalising of the past’ and the abandonment, in many fields, of the idea of ‘radical thought’ – the only kind of thought capable of sending a shockwave to arrest the media black-out. To this we can add the contradiction between implicit Euro-imperial references and an explicitly ‘ethnopluralist’ or even immigrationist stance.
6 – A (previously unknown) doctrinal softening on economic and scientific matters and a burgeoning of literary discourse.
7 – The favouring of criticism over positive formulations, of reaction over action.
Let us examine some of these points.
1. The Front National and the ‘Gramscian’ Strategy
At first sight, the Front National could not have been a rival of the Nouvelle Droite, which never presented itself as being French nationalist. Yet different ‘airlocks’ exist in the family of the Right. The more ideologically unrefined public (or clientele?) is always attracted by the strongest pole. In the early 1980s, GRECE was the most important organisation in this area of politics: the Front National was considered a micro-group of good-for-nothings. We used to see them as being bigoted, papist, reactionary, servile towards America, jingoist and anti-European. Le Pen – this pirate-faced, confusion-stirring, neo-boulangist[14] old soldier – was barred from our meetings.
Then, by a twist of history, everything changed: the Front gained irresistible ascendency, and GRECE was no longer the pole of attraction that monopolized the movement. Like water leaking from a tap, cadres and leaders, even at the cost of ideological revisionism (something all too human), moved to where something was happening: the Front National. Bardet, Blot, Le Gallou, Martinez, Mégret, Millau, Vial and twenty others or so – all worthy men who were closely connected to GRECE or otherwise involved with it – transferred their skills to the Front National. Had it never appeared, it is likely that important ‘human resources’ would have remained in the sphere of the Nouvelle Droite. A veritable flight of brains...
Another reason why the Front caused the decline of GRECE is the former’s enticing of the media, a phenomenon admen know well. The media, fascinated by the shocking political incorrectness of the Front National and of its President, soon forgot all about the Nouvelle Droite, which produced texts and events that were less attractive and provoking. Since the late 1980s, the Front has served as a media screen for the Nouvelle Droite, which – as we shall see – has proven incapable of reacting and opening counter-fire.
It should also be said that one of the handicaps of the Nouvelle Droite has been a poor reading of Gramscism, based on the adoption of the ‘all is cultural, all is intellectual’ strategy.
In our metapolitical ‘Gramscian’ strategy, we had simply overlooked the fact that the cultural battle Gramsci promoted was associated with the political and economic battle of the Italian Communist party, and as such did not take place ‘in the void’. But unfortunately we had never actually read Gramsci... Ours was only braggadocio, pseudo-Gramscism. In order to prove effective, ideological and cultural action must be supported by concrete political forces which it integrates and extends. Chevènement’s former CERES,[15] for instance, a satellite of the PS, or SOS-Racisme, another of its satellites, are clear examples of successful propaganda. In defining the founding idea behind the Nouvelle Droite in the 1970s, we had simply underestimated the political element.
By overestimating the cultural and intellectual pole, through a distorted analysis (of the works of Augustin Cochin[16]) and which found inspiration in cultural circles from before the French Revolution, we all too soon buried what would have been – and still is – a winning political strategy, without grasping the contemporary formula ‘intellectual and cultural propaganda combined with electoral and political mobilisation’. We had forgotten we were no longer living in the Eighteenth century: that elections of various sorts were taking place every six months, and that politicians were the media heralds of a party system. The ‘all is cultural’ strategy only worked for the non-elective regimes of the past... We had announced the death of politics all too soon. Evidence for this is the fact that Libération[17] is more concerned by the mediatisation of Pierre Vial’s association Terre et Peuple, a cultural and intellectual movement coordinated with the activities of a party, the Front National, than it is by Madelin[18] and Juppé’s[19] circles of buddies.
The reason for this? Intellectual movements that gain public attention pose challenging problems along with a concrete political threat.
The Nouvelle Droite has thus found itself in an increasingly precarious situation, devoid of any political backing and cut off from its own natural public, whose outlook was for the most part close to that of the Front National. The ‘public of the Nouvelle Droite’ was puzzled by our Third-Worldist and pro-Islamic positions, which were ideologically incomprehensible and were taken as the expression of a ‘bourgeois way of thinking’ indifferent towards immigration problems, or even as evidence of flirtation on our part with the non-Jacobin Left. From that moment onwards, unable to appeal to a new public, the Nouvelle Droite was progressively enveloped by the Front – the cultural value of its publications simply could not make up for its ideological drift. No doubt, as we shall see, increasing hostility on the part of the media also made the spread of the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite increasingly difficult. Like Ruyer and Freud (but not Debord, a rehabilitated para-Marxist), de Benoist’s work has been confined by the system to limited spheres of influence.
But make no mistake: this is no excuse. The strong pressure put upon decision-makers by well integrated minority circles and lobbies such as SOS-Racisme, MRAP, LICRA, DAL, Ras l’Front, LDH, ACT-UP or Greenpeace and the various ideologues that inspire them cannot exclusively be explained on the basis of their political ultra-correctness and total complicity with the system: it is also due to the fact that they have been capable of powerfully delivering their messages, by using all the tricks of the new media circus. The Nouvelle Droite has not managed to do the same, but has remained tied to an obsolete view of how ideas are circulated.
The surfacing within the European population of a persistent faction destabilised by the ‘crisis’ and revolting against the concrete results of the system would have served as a new breeding ground for the Nouvelle Droite.
2. The Tightening of Censorship and
the Nouvelle Droite’s Failure to React to It
In the early 1980s, soft totalitarianism against all ‘incorrect’ forms of expression tightened its grasp. Once the generation of ’68 – which used the slogan ‘It’s forbidden to forbid’ – came into power, it distinguished itself for its conformism, taste for prohibition and desire for ideological order.
Censorship is exercised both through the legislative erosion of free thinking and writing (even by the use of lawsuits) and – in most cases – through intentional silence on the part of the media when it comes to people or things that might prove upsetting
: a demonising and blacking out strategy. The Nouvelle Droite has certainly fallen victim to this censorship, which was even made the object of a GRECE meeting. But let us not exaggerate things. I fear that censorship is invoked as a pretext to justify lack of will and the failure to take any risks.
Each form of censorship represents a stimulus, each form of oppression a challenge: one should rise and face challenges, not complain. Why, was the Nouvelle Droite threatened with a ban? With persecutions and violence? Truth is, it was never capable of managing and turning to its own advantage ‘conformity of ideas’ (a pertinent notion first coined by Alain de Benoist and later mediatised by Jean-François Kahn,[20] who – paradoxically – is actually a lackey of political correctness and hegemonic thinking).
On the other hand, at the height of its glory – starting from 1979 – the Nouvelle Droite was subjected to a number of serious media attacks and even physical acts of aggression, but it was this very air of battle that had given it its drive and elicited creative reactions on its part.
There is no need to come up with bad excuses, overemphasising the treachery and effectiveness of censorship. Silence on the part of the media can also be explained with their indifference towards the Nouvelle Droite, a movement which is no longer surprising, shocking or provoking; which, despite the clear value of its writings, has ceased to offer anything new. I bet – and will get back to this point – that had the Nouvelle Droite resumed its former fighting spirit, had it sought to launch provoking debates and formulate radical ideas, the media black-out would have been short lived: the media must necessarily attack – and hence advertise – everything that opposes their system. I am paid to know it.
Aggressions are opportunities: they mediatise thought and enable it to grow sharper and react. With both skill and daring, one must outrage people if he wishes to be listened to; and most importantly, he must prevent his thought from becoming bourgeois.
3. An Incorrect Publishing Policy
The Nouvelle Droite has three magazines (which are more like light buoys than lighthouses): Nouvelle École, Krisis and Éléments. The function of the first two of these, which are theoretical in nature, is to establish intellectual foundations. By contrast, Éléments, the chief media bridge, is badly positioned: it is intended to be the cutting edge among Nouvelle Droite publications, to address an educated public and persuade people in outside milieus, but it falls short of its target. It lacks dynamism, addresses too many literary and intellectual topics that do not serve its purpose, and engages with few social issues; it contains long, stiff and often repetitive articles, and inadequate graphics with bad captions – defects that limit its media appeal. The layout of the magazine, particularly in its new version, is aesthetically impeccable, yet too austere and quite unsuited for an ambitious publication.
Still, behind all this, talent is still to be found. Editorial blunders alternate with excellent reports, although there are too few of the latter. The enquiry on the noxiousness of cars and the dead end reached by ‘progress’, for instance, which are featured in issue 86 (October 1996, ‘La société folle’) represents an example of what Éléments should be discussing systematically: topics of great interest to everyone and which capture readers’ attention – a sort of intellectual detoxification and ideological revival.
While the ‘analyses’ made are often very sharp, and concrete, practical theses and suggestions are lacking that go beyond mere criticism and raise questions such as, ‘Let’s open the debate: what is to be done?’
Another mistake is publishing dispersion. I first noticed this shortcoming in the early 1980s. We should not multiply our publications, but concentrate our forces.
Charles Champetier introduced me to the small magazine Cartouches, which is full of dynamic and stimulating invective. Fine, but... Anyone working in the communications sector could tell you that the logic behind this magazine should be incorporated (and merged with) Éléments. Short pieces, striking information, a style that isn’t stuffy, etc. Even Krisis, a magazine regarded as ‘presentable’ – but why? – tends to overlap with Nouvelle École and all too often succumbs to the appeal of Parisian slang, which does not always help carry on the debate...
To sum up my argument: I believe that some texts can only be aimed at ‘inner’ circulation, but that many others can be presented and circulated ‘outside’, at the heart of the system. We should never underestimate our own skills: talent always prevails over censorship, when it is accompanied by daring and intelligence.
Ideological Mistakes
The ambiguity of the ideological line of the Nouvelle Droite, which became more marked in the 1980s, constitutes the chief reason for its decline. To this, despite high-quality analytical texts – I am thinking, for instance of Champetier’s work Homo Consumans or Alain de Benoist’s article on ‘colours’ in issue 50 of Nouvelle École – we should add a return to doctrinal invective and a sort of intellectual bombast.
Let us now examine these mistakes.
1 – From the start, the members of the Nouvelle Droite and GRECE – including myself – have practiced semantic clumsiness and permanent slips. The double talk of many articles, magazines and books was caught between oblique references to issues, authors and iconographic motifs typical of the far Right – particularly that of Germany – and anti-racist, pro-Islamic, pseudo-Leftist or Third-Worldist tirades which did not fool the enemy, but puzzled our readership. I am happy to point to these shortcomings for which I too was responsible prior to realising how noxious they were. Today the Nouvelle Droite has not rectified these mistakes, but if anything worsened them.
2 – Second serious mistake: the exploitation and politicisation of paganism. Starting from a correct Nietzschean assessment – regarding the egalitarian, levelling and ethno-masochistic harmfulness of Christian evangelism – the Nouvelle Droite has set up a neo-pagan corpus that suffers a number of handicaps. Paradoxically, the unconscious starting point of this neo-paganism was a Christian perspective: the countering of dogma with a counter-doctrine. Paganism, as such, is non-existent: what exist are different, potentially countless kinds of paganism. The Nouvelle Droite presented itself as a ‘pagan Church’, one – moreover – without any deity. But paganism, by its very nature, is unserviceable as a metapolitical banner, unlike Christianity, Islam or Judaism.
Second handicap: a virulent anti-Catholicism (where indifference would have been more in order), at times bordering on anticlericalism, combined with an open friendliness towards Islam. The latter is a risky attitude, given that Europe is facing a concrete Islamic threat, and represents a particularly absurd ideological stance, considering that Islam is a rigid theocratic monotheism, ‘religion of the desert’ in its coarsest form – far more than classic Catholic henotheism, which is strongly mixed with pagan polytheism. Moreover, the essence of the pagan perspective is to position oneself not ‘against’, but ‘after’ or ‘alongside’ – something which strikes me as being far more creative and innovative. I personally adopted this mistaken approach, which the Nouvelle Droite never corrected.
Third handicap: this paganism was – and still seems to be – marked by forms of folklore that find no space in the actual culture of Europeans (as opposed to what takes place in the United States!), and which I have always struggled against in a friendly spirit but in vain.
The result of this: one potential public never turned towards the Nouvelle Droite, while another fled from it. Why? Firstly, because many people could not understand this preference assigned to paganism over more important and concrete political matters, such as the destruction of the European ethno-sphere and anti-natalist masochism on the part of governments. Another consequence: the media effect of the promotion of paganism as a brand name, particularly in France, was to stir repulsion. An explicit appeal to paganism ‘gives the idea of a sect’, as I was once told by a great French actress, who was privately close to the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite, but unwilling, like many others, to mingle political ideology with p
ara-religious elements. Such an attitude may be deplored, but still: there are certain rules of propaganda that cannot be ignored.
As for the attacks against the Catholic Church, these would have been – and would be – more apt if directed against the para-Trotskyism, immigrationism and self-ethnophobia of the high clergy, which favours a return to the hard evangelism of the original monotheistic sources, the ‘bolshevism of Antiquity’. This masochistic and stupid high clergy that with false contrition is favouring the erection of mosques on European soil!
Two books have contributed to shape my outlook: The Antichrist by Nietzsche[21] and The Gods of Greece by Walter Otto.[22] As did Pierre Vial’s initiatory ‘oath of Delphi’ in the early 1980s. By Apollo’s sanctuaries, at sunrise, followers from Greece and Burgundy, Tuscany and Bavaria, Brittany and Wallonia, Flanders and Catalonia swore to keep the pagan soul alive. That’s all very well, but pagan actions such as this should remain inside affairs.
The pagan soul is an inner strength that must permeate all ideological and cultural expressions. It is like the heart of a nuclear reactor: it is not something to be openly displayed through instrumental slogans. One doesn’t go around saying ‘I am pagan’! One is pagan.
More prosaically, I believe that this insistence on paganism as a para-political banner has puzzled the natural public of the Nouvelle Droite, as if the wish were to divert attention from secondary matters, while also starting an artificial conflict with ‘traditional Catholics’, who are not all that Christian after all... The exploitation of paganism has been a huge communications and propaganda mistake, which has distanced the Nouvelle Droite from many Catholic milieus initially favourable to it, which shared its ideas but were sentimentally tied to local traditions. We have made this serious blunder from the start, and it still waits to be rectified.
Archeofuturism Page 3