A Conversation with Alain de Benoist
- A Conversation with Alain de Benoist
During a summer visit to Paris, I spent an afternoon with Alain de Benoist, the well-known founder of the French New Right. He was a gracious host, and for lunch we dined at an enjoyable, outof-the-way restaurant that featured traditional, very rich French cuisine. We spoke about many subjects, and exchanged some books and journals. Later, we went back and forth by e-mail to produce the following conversation, which includes his final thoughts on the unusual exchange between him and Tamir Bar-On, who has written extensively on the French New Right in English, and with whose work its subject, Alain de Benoist, takes great issue. Our conversation ranged widely, but also includes de Benoist’s final words on the controversy with Bar-On, whose incendiary response to de Benoist is included in the Dossier section at the end of this issue.
Roger Griffin, Tamir Bar-On, and others who specialize in the study of what is variously termed the “radical right,” the “far right,” or the “extreme right,” have argued that the Nouvelle Droite really seeks “conserving the fascist vision in the interregnum,” to quote from Griffin. In other words, the “New Right” is just a way of marking time until some form of fascism can be restored to power. How do you respond to this hypothesis, and to these kinds of labels? [End Page 79]
In the first place I am not inclined to respond to such labels, as I find them extraordinarily pathetic and ridiculous. So far I have published nearly 100 books, more than 2,000 articles, and given more than 400 published interviews. There isn’t a single line in favor of “fascism” in there. My books have been published by some of the biggest French publishers (Robert Laffont, Plon, Albin Michel, Table ronde, Bernard de Fallois, etc.). In 1977, I was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Essai de l’Académie française. I am a regular guest on radio and television programs. Well, this does not quite sound like the trademark of a “fascist.” In 2012, I published my autobiography, Mémoire vive. This more than 300-page-long book does not espouse or document the itinerary of a “fascist.” Such charges are clearly ad hominem attacks, bearing the mark of anachronism and intellectual laziness.
Today there is no definition of fascism that is unanimously accepted by political science researchers. Tamir Bar-On himself admits, “defining fascism is tricky because there is no universal consensus definition of what constitutes fascism.” He cites in this regard Roger Griffin and Stanley Payne, but does not make any mention of Juan Linz, Pierre Milza, Renzo De Felice, Zeev Sternhell, Ernst Nolte, Klaus Hildebrand, Jules Monnerot and many others who, for the most part, he conspicuously ignores. Worse, he does not even offer himself any definition of fascism. Neither does he provide a definition of racism. This enables him, therefore, to dub someone as a “racist”—someone like me, who has published three books against racism and has demonstrated, based on ample arguments, the fallacious and harmful character of all racist theories. Instead Bar-On prefers right at the very outset to position himself on the side of those who put on display the word “fascism” to insult somebody, a word which is now being exploited for the sole purpose of delegitimizing or discrediting the opponent. It is a common knowledge that the word “fascism” belongs now primarily to a polemical vocabulary having nothing to do with real fascism. In France, just to give one example, General de Gaulle, the leader of the Resistance against the Nazis during the German occupation, was himself on countless occasions labeled a “fascist” after his return to power.
No longer defining a political or ideological reality that can be empirically determined, “fascism” has thus become an empty word, a [End Page 80] cliché or a catchword, a Gummiwort (elastic concept), a “sound bite,” a buzzword—a fantasy-prone notion to which anyone can assign an ad hominem defamatory meaning of his own choice. Roger Griffin, for example...
