The Nouvelle Droite in the 1980s and 1990s: Ideology and Entryism, the Relationship with the Front National

Abstract

The Nouvelle Droite (ND) was an intellectual movement that emerged from the failures of extreme right politics in 1960s and sought to recontextualize ideology in a manner which avoided overt fascist–Nazi identification. From the later 1970s, one ND strand, the Club de l'Horloge, pursued a national-liberal programme at odds with the Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne's (GRECE) pan-Europeanism and opposition to the homogenizing dynamic of neo-liberalism. Nevertheless, both groups continued to share an ideological core: the defence of collective identities and a refusal of egalitarianism. For reasons that mixed an already existing commonality of discourse with strategic and political concerns, leading ND ideologues came to join the Front National (FN) in the 1980s, constituting a powerful party faction, which acted as a conduit for the passing of key ND concepts into FN ideology and policy.