
European New Right

The European New Right (ENR) is a far-right movement which originated in France as the Nouvelle Droite in the late 1960s. Its proponents are involved in a global "anti-structural revolt" against modernity and post-modernity, largely in the form of loosely connected intellectual communities that strive to diffuse a similar philosophy in European societies.
ENR leaders are generally opposed to liberalism, individualism, egalitarianism, and the nation-state. They endorse a communitarian and organicist world view, and advocate the concept of ethnopluralism, which they describe as a global project where collective identities would coexist peacefully within separated geographical spaces. They do not share, however, a standard and collective political agenda. Instead, ENR leaders promote their ideas via a common "metapolitical" practice of politics, in order to eventually achieve cultural hegemony within Europe.
The European New Right has influenced the ideological and political structure of the Identitarian Movement. Part of the alt-right also claims to have been inspired by Alain de Benoist's writings, arguably the most influential figure of the movement.
History.
The European New Right (ENR) emerged in France from the Nouvelle Droite, an intellectual movement linked to the ethno-nationalist think tank GRECE, established in 1968 by Alain de Benoist and Dominique Venner. The original prominence of the French nucleus has declined over the decades, and the movement now appears in the form of a European network of various groups, parties and intellectuals, all sharing ideological similarities and affinities between each other. Among them are the Neue Rechte in Germany, New Right (defunct) in the United Kingdom, Nieuw Rechts (defunct) and Deltastichting in the Netherlands and Flanders, Forza Nuova in Italy, Imperium Europa in Malta, Nova Hrvatska Desnica in Croatia, or Noua Dreapta in Romania. In Italy, the Nueva Destra emerged from the initiative of a group of young members of the neo-fascist party Italian Social Movement.
Ideology.
The ENR has gone through several re-synthesis since its emergence in the late 1960s. The last attempt at a common doctrine dates back to the manifesto "The New Right in the year 2000". Its leading ideas were "the critique of liberalism and of the commodification of the world; the rejection of individualism; an attachment to an organicist and communitarian view of society; the rejection of egalitarianism and of the various forms of monotheism from which it arose; the promotion of well-rooted collective identities and of the "right to difference"; the rejection of the nation-state as a form and the promotion of a federalist model that applies the principle of subsidiarity; and a view of international relations based on the idea of a multi-polar world in which Europe would be endowed with its own nationhood, apart from American omnipotence, which is designated the chief enemy of the European peoples."
According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the essential idea of the ENR is their rejection of the "eradication of cultural identities", caused in their views by the principles of standardization and egalitarianism contained in the idea of human rights, what Alain de Benoist calls the "ideology of sameness". New Right thinker Tomislav Sunić emphasized Oswald Spengler's influence in the ENR, especially his assumption that mankind does not exist as such, that "each culture passes through various cycles", and that the concept of universal history is a non-sense, as there are only a "plurality of histories and their unequal distribution in time and space."
ENR thinkers believe that the West is living in an "interregnum" that will give way sooner or later to a new era. According to Roger Griffin, they developed in response a worldview founded on a "maze-way re-synthesis" of old and new ideological and ritual elements, combined in a "palingenetic metanarrative". The current political order is portrayed as needing to be abandoned or purged of its impurity, so that the "redemptive community" can leave the phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. Additionally, ENR leaders frequently invoke a legendary and mythical past they want to symbolically re-ground in the new society about to emerge, not in a spirit of nostalgia for the return of an ancient golden age, but rather "to create a rooted futurity, a new reality re-established on firm metaphysical foundations." This idea is particularly embodied in the concept of archeofuturism promoted by Guillaume Faye.
Some ENR thinkers, who belong to the Völkisch leaning of the movement, highlight race and ethnicity as the core dimensions of the concept of "identity". This has led to violent rejection of "difference", Faye calling for a "total ethnic war", and Pierre Vial for an "ethnic revolution" and a "war of liberation".
Critics.
Roger Griffin and Tamir Bar-On argue that the ENR is at the origin of a subtle strategy to reinvent the general framework of fascism while preserving the original fascist world view and ideas. They compare the metapolitical stance of ENR leaders to the strategy advocated by neo-fascist thinker Maurice Bardèche in his 1961 book "What is Fascism?", where he averred that fascism could survive the 20th century in a new guise: