The modern far right : blame the French, not the Germans

Or at least that's the conclusion of this very interesting essay.

New Right ideas are clearly not a revival of 1930s fascism. Despite some similarities, today’s nationalists are more directly inspired by a late 19th-century French line of thinking. Maurice Barrès came along 1897. He was the thinker behind a very specific set of nationalist ideas that developed more restrictive definitions of national identity than those of the previous nationalist pioneers. 

Barrès theorised that the culture and integrity of a nation was “eternal”, and that any change to it, whether brought about by foreign influence or progressive politics, would bring about its demise. Any cultural change, be it to the arts, to the role of women, or to racial assumptions, was seen to erode the spirit of the nation and its way of life. Ideas about the state, belonging and politics, which emerged from Barrès tended to advocate racial and cultural exclusion as necessary to national survival. The key idea introduced by Barrès was the link between race and culture. It meant that culture needed to remain unchanged if it was to survive, as did the race that produced it. Even more importantly, it introduced the notion that any progressive, modern or culture-changing idea endangered the nation’s survival. 

Whereas in contrast the more well-known far right movements of the 1930s didn't fear social change in itself. Instead they had a specific goal in mind and saw no problem in modifying society so long as it was in accordance with their vision.

Mussolini, for example, sought to dismantle Italian family values and relations, so as to foster new relations between individuals and the state. Likewise, fascists sought racial purification and expansion through modern science. In anticipation of populating huge empires after the destruction of their original populations, Nazi scientific ambitions sought to double the German population by intervening in women’s bodies to ensure each pregnancy yielded twins. Fascist nationalism gave total control to a saviour-leader. It demanded total discipline over the entire country and all of its social, cultural, biological, economic and even artistic functions.

The fascist generation of nationalists hoped to radically change their societies. Today’s nationalists want only to stop and reverse social change.

And yet... surely they still have an underlying ideological-driven goal ? Does it really make much of a difference if they aim towards a mythical past or a hypothetical future ? It sounds less to me like the different far-right movements have "some similarities" and more like they have similar goals but different justifications.

Here, race is relevant only insofar as it determines which culture an individual may belong to. Cultural belonging is underpinned by birth, which is why speaking and defending culture, as the New Right does, has powerful racial implications. But conveniently, the emphasis on culture circumvents restrictions on – and public revulsion for – overt racism.

Which sounds to me more like a cloak for racism rather than a fundamentally different ideology.

What our research shows is that we are living through the latest battle in a 300-year long ideological war over the meaning of humanity itself. On one side is the belief in a universal idea of humanity, which produced notions of equal rights, humanism and liberalism. Opposing it is the belief that marks all forms of nationalism: that humanity is not a single entity but rather, one divided by nature into national identities.

The New Right, like Barrès before them, purport that culture is biologically mediated rather than socially determined. If one is of the wrong biology then participating in another culture is difficult, if not impossible. The restoration of the nation logically requires the purification of culture and – by implication – race... This way of thinking is used to explain all manner of grievances ranging from shifts in the world of work, loss of control over one’s destiny, hopelessness, and community decay.

Finally, some interesting comments on the structure of the movements :

This system of New Right electoral alliances clearly emerged in the Brexit referendum: despite superficial disagreements, Vote Leave, Leave.EU and UKIP never fully contradicted one another. The same is true of Drumpf’s Republicans and alt-right “very fine people”; Le Pen’s Front (now Rassemblement) National and Génération Identitaire; and Salvini’s Lega and Fratelli d’Italia, Forza Nuova and Casa Pound. These alliances are mostly leaderless, unstable and scarily undisciplined.

This is what makes this new generation of nationalism truly viral. Without a permanent structure, these shapeshifting alliances can dodge attacks by reinventing new coalitions of similar members, as occurred with Farage’s Brexit Party.

These coalitions depend on the continued presence of grievances that directly affect people’s lives, particularly growing poverty even when working, the collapse of stable and safe social identities linked to work, the increasing instability of employment security, and the rapid change of local communities due to emigration, migration, collapsing housing affordability, and redevelopment initiatives that displace communities. These provide precise and urgent electoral rallying points. The New Right stems from 19th-century ideas, updated for our times. It ultimately promotes a rather sad view of humanity, where everything is determined by nature, not by individual choice. A world where culture is biologically mediated, immobile and restricted, not the fruit of learning and creativity. If their success is to be confronted, the basic grievances they claim to resolve will need to be addressed and solutions offered.

Which reminds me of Niall Ferguson's rule 5 : it take a network to beat a network. I'm not so sure about this here though. UKIP seemed to be entirely dependent on Farage. When it collapsed, he merely had to stamp his foot and most of the party came running along to lick his boots. Isn't that more of a hierarchy than a network ? Would either party have ever become a significant political force without him ? I rather doubt it.

On the other hand, UKIP's days as a fringe party ended when Farage began tapping into the racist zealotry and started leaving behind the criticism of the EU's bureaucracy (or at least that's my purely anecdotal observation). So perhaps the ideology is sustained by network forces but the way this is actually manifested as a group is due to hierarchy. The tribal identity this generates may be easily transferred if one believes a new group is essentially the same as the old.

What's harder for me to understand is whether the leaders of these groups result from the same forces or if they are something different. They tend to be much wealthier and far more secure than most of their members, and it's clear that they don't really have their underling's best interests at heart. Are they simply using such groups to conveniently advance their own interests or is it more complex than that ?

Finally, one has to wonder what it would really take to disrupt such networks. If they are entirely driven by social change, then addressing such grievances does not seem at all easy, because some of these changes are inevitable. It doesn't seem likely that they are purely hierarchical either, so removing the leaders would only cause temporary disruption. Where's their weakness ? Can we persuade them that they shouldn't try to fight the changes but accept them instead ?

The New Right: how a Frenchman born 150 years ago inspired the extreme nationalism behind Brexit and Donald Trump

Dressed in pastel-coloured Sunday best, Charles does not look like your typical far-right extremist. Yet he is a member of Génération Identitaire, a militant French youth group keen to overcome the thuggish reputation of the far right.