Author: Alain de Benoist

Antonio Negri (left) & Michael Hardt

5,027 words

Introduction here, Chapter 10 Part 2 here, Chapter 11 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published a book intitled Empire (E.) in the United States in April 2000, followed four years later by another essay, Multitude (M.). (more…)

6,136 words

Introduction here, Chapter 10 Part 1 here, Chapter 11 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In most Western countries, all discussion of immigration today immediately results in a debate about “multiculturalism.” In England, the United States, and Germany, to cite only three countries, if one is against immigration, one is also against multiculturalism[1] — and the converse is also true: It is generally in the name of multiculturalism that immigration is justified. (more…)

Alasdair MacIntyre

3,903 words

Introduction here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here, Chapter 10 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Communities, whether ancient or recent, and whether of a historical, ethnocultural, linguistic, religious, sexual, or other nature, are natural dimensions of belonging. They accompany and underlie chosen forms of identity. No individual can exist without belonging, if only to distance himself from it. (more…)

Barricade of the Communard National Guard, Paris, March 18, 1871.

3,377 words

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Introduction here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here, Chapter 10 Part 1 here

The Revolution of 1789 was itself above all a liberal and bourgeois revolution — even “ultra-liberal,” as the very liberal Gaspard Koenig affirms, not failing to celebrate this. (more…)

3,968 words

Introduction here, Chapter 8 here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

The ecologist Fabrice Nicolino, a member of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial board (he was seriously wounded in the Kouachi brothers’ attack in January 2015), declares:

I am nostalgic for a time when people had a place, when men and women were strongly bound. I am nostalgic for a time when rural civilization was not the garbage it is today, a monstrosity that stuffs people with pesticides. (more…)

Ernesto Laclau

3,974 words

Introduction here, Chapter 7 here, Chapter 9 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, a populist movement that became (with 20.6% of the vote) the third-largest political force in Spain following the elections of December 2015, said shortly thereafter that one could “define Podemos by saying that we have done everything the Left said must not be done.” (more…)

6,066 words

Introduction here, Chapter 6 here, Chapter 8 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

“To be on the Right is to be afraid for what exists,” said Jules Romains. A nice definition. We find it again in many authors. (more…)

6,367 words

Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here, Chapter 7 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In the eighteenth century, in order to put a definitive end to the wars of religion, liberalism attempted to “pacify” society politically and ideologically. (more…)

Jean-Claude Michéa

6,046 words

Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here, Chapter 6 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

No doubt we should have expected this. The views developed by Jean-Claude Michéa were not slow to earn him many critiques, mostly directed at two of his books, Orpheus’s Complex and Mysteries of the Left. (more…)

Jean-Claude Michéa

5,916 words

Introduction here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In January 1905, the regulations of the French Section of the Workers’ International, the Socialist Party of the time, still indicated that it was a “class party whose goal was to socialize the means of production and exchange, i.e. to transform capitalist society into a collectivist or Communist society, and that its means to this end was the economic and political organization of the proletariat.” Of course, no “socialist” party would dare say this today. Socialists have mutated into social-democrats and, increasingly, into social-liberals. (more…)

The Grange Movement, an early example of American populism.

5,779 words

Introduction here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Like “communitarism,” “populism” has today become a garbage-bag term. The proof is that this label has been applied to people as different as Donald Trump, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Nigel Farage, Beppe Grillo, Viktor Orbán, Nicolas Sarkozy, Georges Marchais, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, (more…)

3,564 words

Introduction here, Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Illusion, threat, wrong turn, and temptation are some of the words that recur most frequently nowadays in public discourse regarding populism. (more…)

7,101 words

Introduction here, Chapter 2 Part 2 here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Books on the crisis or dysfunction of democracy have been multiplying for some time now. (more…)