Federalist Fascism

Abstract This article analyses the New Right's understanding of the French Revolution. Since the most prominent intellectual of the New Right, Alain de Benoist, frames 'Jacobinism' as the New Right's main enemy, the New Right may be understood as a counter-tradition to what it un...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFascism (Leiden) Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 298 - 322
Main Author von Eggers, Nicolai
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Leiden | Boston Brill 01.11.2021
Brill Academic Publishers, Inc
Subjects
Fascism
Federalism
French Revolution
Nation states
Right wing politics
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
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Summary:Abstract This article analyses the New Right's understanding of the French Revolution. Since the most prominent intellectual of the New Right, Alain de Benoist, frames 'Jacobinism' as the New Right's main enemy, the New Right may be understood as a counter-tradition to what it understands as Jacobinism. De Benoist defines Jacobinism as an ideology that makes people essentially equal and identical by means of the state. Against this, he posits what he calls 'federalism'-a project which aims at promoting and defending ethnic, cultural and other differences. In this article, the author shows how the New Right creates a mythical counter-tradition of federalism. We should understand this as a 'federalist fascism': instead of mass parties and an authoritarian nation-state, the New Right seeks the mythical rebirth of an Indo-European community consisting of various regional peoples who will supposedly realise their authentic nature through ethnically purified societies governed by a federal European-wide system.
ISSN:2211-6249
2211-6257
DOI:10.1163/22116257-bja10003