The ambiguities of the intellectual European New Right, 1968-1999 /

• Main Author: Bar-on, Tamir.
• Other Authors: Meadwell, Hudson (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2000
• Subjects: Conservatism > Europe.; Right and left (Political science); Europe > Politics and government > 1945-
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36750

The subject of this dissertation is the intellectual European New Right (ENR), also known as the nouvelle droite. A cultural "school of thought" with origins in the revolutionary Right and neo-fascist milieus, the nouvelle droite was born in France in 1968, the year of the spectacular student and worker protests. In order to rid the Right of its negative connotations, the nouvelle droite borrowed from the New Left ideals of the 1968ers. In a Gramscian mould, it situated itself exclusively on the cultural terrain of political contestation in order to challenge what it considered the ideological hegemony of dominant liberal and leftist elites. This metapolitical focus differentiated the nouvelle droite from both the parliamentary and radical, extra-parliamentary forces on the Right. === This dissertation traces the cultural, philosophical, political, and historical trajectories of the French nouvelle droite in particular and the ENR in general. The dissertation argues that the ENR worldview is an ambiguous synthesis of the ideals of the revolutionary Right and New Left, and that it is neither a new form of cultural fascism, nor a completely novel political paradigm. In general, the ENR symbiotically fed off the cultural and political twists of the Left and New Left, thus giving it a degree of novelty. In the 1990s, the ENR has taken on a more left wing and ecological aura rather than a right-wing orientation. As a result, some critics view this development as the formulation of a radically new, post-modern and post-fascist cultural and political paradigm. Yet, other critics contend that the ENR has created a repackaged form of cultural fascism. === The nouvelle droite has been able to challenge the main tenets of its "primary" enemy, namely, the neo-liberal Anglo-American New Right. Moreover, it has restored a measure of cultural respectability to a continental right-wing heritage battered by the burden of 20th century history. In an age of rising economic globalization and cultural homogenization, its anti-capitalist ideas embedded within the framework of cultural preservation might make some political inroads into the Europe of the future.