To the Editor:
In what might otherwise have been an excellent study of the French New Right [“France’s New Right,” March], Roger Kaplan incorrectly associates the GRECE circle and, more specifically, Alain de Benoist, with the ideology of Marshal Pétain and with the old French Right. The charge simply won’t wash. Whereas Pétain and his defenders appealed to clericalism, nationalism, and monarchism, it is exceedingly hard to find any of these tendencies in de Benoist’s Writings and speeches. His philosophy is unabashedly atheistic and rooted in the Enlightenment’s scientific materialism. In a published affrontement with a Catholic philosopher from the University of Paris, de Benoist attacks Christianity as empirically indefensible and as a hindrance to scientific progress. An unusual position for a Pétainiste, although one entirely appropriate for a child of the Enlightenment. As Thomas Molnar has observed, de Benoist’s critiques of medieval and Christian institutions owe as much to Voltaire’s and Gibbon’s historical writings as they do to Nietzsche’s more oracular pronouncements on the slave ethic.
Mr. Kaplan does not pay sufficient attention to de Benoist’s scientific materialism or to GRECE’s repeated pleas for Western European unity. The fact that de Benoist despises liberal democracy—together with the Old Right and the Catholic Church—supposedly qualifies him as a crypto-anti-Semite and spiritual ally of the Vichy regime. My inclination would be to scold Mr. Kaplan for an anachronistic and petulant judgment. Because de Benoist dredges up Gibbon’s attacks on the Christian’s timidity and civic indifference, and ridicules the Bible’s lack of a scientific basis, does not mean that he and his followers are signaling their support for political anti-Semitism. One does not have to like de Benoist to recognize that his movement is clearly not the old French Right in new wrappings. Although new political ideologies may not be any more attractive than those they replace, despite the old French saw, history does change.
Paul Gottfried
Rockford College
Rockford, Illinois
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To the Editor:
Roger Kaplan’s article is very clear and perceptive, though I do not find all his conclusions totally convincing. It is interesting to point out, as Mr. Kaplan does, . . . the similarities between the New Right and the Action Française (this comparison is especially valid for those thinkers who were influenced by Nietzsche, but we should also remember that Charles Maurras, unlike Alain de Benoist, emphasized the social utility of the Catholic religion). But the Action Française has been only one of the groups on the French Right since the Revolution, and the others have not usually been anti-Christian. . . .
It would be interesting to study the aftermath of the story. After the storm, the calm. The intellectual world seems to have forgotten the New Right. Why? The role of fashion (in France, intellectual fashions change quickly)? The weakness of New Right thought (de Benoist and Pauwels are not Maurras)? Or the success of the Left’s offensive against the New Right? The reaction from the Left has in fact isolated the New Right. If de Benoist and Pauwels wanted to seize cultural power, it seems that for the moment, and for the near future, they have failed . . . and the Left has won. I think these three explanations (and perhaps others) are all partly true.
Philippe Bénéton
Faculté des Sciences Juridiques
Rennes, France
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Roger Kaplan writes:
To Paul Gottfried: I don’t understand what won’t wash, because I did not—even between the lines—associate anybody with the “ideology” of Marshal Pétain. As for the “old French Right,” well, there are connections, but then one must know which Old Right one is talking about. Similarly, I did not call Alain de Benoist a crypto-anti-Semite or a spiritual ally of the Vichy regime. (What is a crypto-anti-Semite, anyway?) And what does it mean to say that “history does change”? As a matter of fact, history does not change. What happened, happened. Of course, history in the sense of man’s examination of his past changes. Indeed, each generation rewrites history. If Mr. Gottfried will be a little more clear, I shall endeavor to explain to him in what ways de Benoist and his friends are good old French right-wingers, but one has to know where one should begin because this is a long story and a large subject.
Philippe Bénéton’s letter deals with more interesting issues. He is altogether correct to remind us that Maurrassian sociology required a role for the Catholic Church. And many young Catholics of the 30’s gravitated toward the Action Française. He is right, too, to point out that de Benoist and Pauwels are simply not as profound as Maurras (though the latter, like all cranks, could become terribly boring). He might have added—I believe he would agree with me here—that there is also a significant difference in the audiences addressed by our respective rightists. The point is that the audience for Maurrassian ideas was widespread, whereas it was only by turning over Figaro-Magazine to Pauwels that the owner of Le Figaro gave the New Right an audience of any size. The fact, moreover, that Figaro-Magazine has published writers who deliberately dissociate themselves from its editor and his New Right friends, and that it has repeatedly run pro-American, pro-Western-alliance articles, suggests that with or without the offensive of the Left against them, the New Rightists could not have imposed their views on the reading public, even that part of it most inclined to sympathize with them.
Who is winning the cultural fight is far from clear, however. The New Right came out very strongly with its ideas, in pure form, last year. Naturally, in this form they were rejected by most intellectuals. In diluted form, however, they remain influential. I should think that Philippe Bénéton and his friends have their work cut out for them.
