Discussion or Inquisition? The Case of Alain de Benoist

Abstract

Abstract In many respects, Alain de Benoist is a political and intellectual turncoat. During the 1960s, his political culture revolved around radical anti-communism and a nationalism à la Charles Maurras (vying with a supra-national, post-national perspective). His “worldview,” centered on the “defense of the West,” was based on “scientific racism” (the theory of race revised by Mendelian genetics and a differential psychology of intelligence) and a eugenic project situated at the core of the “biopolitics” of the future. During the 1970s, he gradually broke with biologism and distanced himself from anti-communism — the dominant political thinking in various groups on the Right — to the point of characterizing liberalism and the US (the embodiment of consumer society) as the “main enemy.”