ExcerptDemocracy of opinion? Television democracy? Market democracy? Whether one studies them in the context of the crisis or evaluates them in relation to the dynamic of postmodernism, the pathologies affecting contemporary democracies are attracting more and more attention. The general opinion is that these pathologies, far from being inherent to democracy itself, are the result of a corruption of its principles. The most superficial observers attribute this corruption to external factors or phenomena (hence the ritualistic denunciations of fundamentalism, populism, communitarianism, (...) globalization, etc.), which amounts to questioning solely the changes in morals and the transformation of society. Yet this confuses…. (shrink)

Fighting racism requires knowing what it is—not an easy task. Today the word “racism” has so many contradictory meanings that it takes on the aura of a myth and is, therefore, difficult to define. The following will attempt to define racist ideology, independently of any sociological considerations. The first difficulty arises from the fact that racism is a Schimpfwort: a term with pejorative connotations, whose very use inevitably tends to be more instrumental than descriptive. Deploying the adjective “racist” involves using (...) a powerful epithet. It can be a smear designed to disqualify those at whom the term is addressed.…. (shrink)

The concept of sovereignty is one of the most complex in political science, with many definitions, some totally contradictory.1 Usually, sovereignty is defined in one of two ways. The first definition applies to supreme public power, which has the right and, in theory, the capacity to impose its authority in the last instance. The second definition refers to the holder of legitimate power, who is recognized to have authority. When national sovereignty is discussed, the first definition applies, and it refers (...) in particular to independence, understood as the freedom of a collective entity to act. When popular sovereignty is discussed,…. (shrink)

Les auteurs présentés attestent que le travail de la pensée a joué un rôle décisif dans l'histoire, entraînant des mutations bien différentes des révolutions bruyantes, des grandes explosions restées sans lendemain. De Heidegger à A. Koestler, de Goethe à G. Sorel, de Nietzsche à Montherlant, de Leo Strauss à Jean Baudrillard, diverses façons de voir et comprendre le monde et d'agir sur lui.

An interview with Alain de Benoist -- Confronting globalization -- Nazism and communism : evil twins -- What is sovereignty? -- The first federalist : Johannes Althusius -- On politics -- On the French right-new and old : an interview with Alain de Benoist -- On identity -- On the French referendum -- Our American friend Paul Piccone was a free spirit and a loud talker -- The current crisis of democracy -- Dismantling the left-right divide -- What is populism?

The publication of this Black Book by a group of historians to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the October Revolution has opened a heated debate, first in France and then abroad. Edited by Stéphane Courtois, who also wrote the preface (instead of François Furet, who died a few months before its publication), this work attempts to provide an accurate account of the human cost of communism in view of the documentary evidence available today. The estimate is around 100 million dead—four (...) times the body-count of Nazism. These figures are not really a revelation. From Boris Souvarine to Robert Conquest and…. (shrink)

In his “Liberality versus Liberalism,” John Milbank certainly begins with good intentions, but the article is open to ambiguous understandings.1 Personally I have no difficulties agreeing with parts of his criticism. Like Milbank, I believe that since the collapse of “really existing socialism,” which the soviet systems claimed to represent, “liberalism” is without a doubt the contemporary “bearer of modernity” and “progress.” In addition, globalization is primarily a “liberal” phenomenon: the transformation of the planet into an immense single market. Milbank (...) is equally correct when he evokes the “vicious global spiral” that tends to transform today's liberal democracies into societies…. (shrink)

IntroductionThe French New Right was born in 1968. It is not a political movement, but a think-tank and school of thought. For more than thirty years—in books and journals, colloquia and conferences, seminars and summer schools, etc.—it has attempted to formulate a metapolitical perspective. Metapolitics is not politics by other means. It is neither a “strategy” to impose intellectual hegemony, nor an attempt to discredit other possible attitudes or agendas. It rests solely on the premise that ideas play a fundamental (...) role in collective consciousness and, more generally, in human history. Through their works, Heraclitus, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St.…. (shrink)