ABSTRACT
Led by Alain de Benoist, the French Nouvelle Droite (ND) is a cultural movement distinguished from extreme-right political parties and extra-parliamentary formations of the revolutionary right (see also Virchow in this volume for the revolutionary right). Created in 1968, the ND has ultra-nationalistic, pro-colonialist roots. It is a response to the loss of French Algeria, the growing ascendancy of liberalism and the New Left (NL), and the weakness and divisiveness of the extreme-right and neo-fascist milieu in an ‘anti-fascist’ era (Bar-On 2007b). In line with the prevailing neo-fascist post-war trend led by French writer Maurice Bardèche (1907-98), the ND superseded narrow nationalism and embraced pan-European ism. Yet, there were earlier pan-European strains on the extreme right: the monarchical, counter-revolutionary tradition of Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) and Donoso Cortés (1809–53) (Schmitt 2002: 100–15) to elements within the Italian Fascist Party (PNF) (Ledeen 1972: 104–32; Griffiths 2005: 72–88).
