Ideology[edit]

The ENR has gone through several re-syntheses since its emergence in the late 1960s. The last attempt at a common doctrine dates back to the manifesto "The New Right in the year 2000". Its leading ideas were "the critique of liberalism and of the commodification of the world; the rejection of individualism; an attachment to an organicist and communitarian view of society; the rejection of egalitarianism and of the various forms of monotheism from which it arose; the promotion of well-rooted collective identities and of the "right to difference"; the rejection of the nation-state as a form and the promotion of a federalist model that applies the principle of subsidiarity; and a view of international relations based on the idea of a multi-polar world in which Europe would be endowed with its own nationhood, apart from American omnipotence, which is designated the chief enemy of the European peoples."^[2]


According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the core idea of the ENR is their rejection of the "eradication of cultural identities", which has been caused in the ENR worldview by the principles of standardization and egalitarianism inherent to the concept of human rights. Alain de Benoist denounces the "ideology of sameness" as the idea that both commodities and human beings are increasingly seen as identical and interchangeable.^[2] According to him, the "greatest" danger in the world at the moment is the "progressive disappearance of diversity from the world", including biodiversity of animals, cultures and peoples.^[11] New Right thinker Tomislav Sunić emphasized Oswald Spengler's influence on the ENR, especially his assumption that mankind does not exist as such, that "each culture passes through various cycles", and that the concept of universal history is a non-sense, as there are only a "plurality of histories and their unequal distribution in time and space."^[12]


ENR thinkers believe that the West is living in an "interregnum" that will sooner or later give way to a new era in which their worldview would thrive. According to Roger Griffin, they developed, in response to this apparent post-fascist "parenthesis", a worldview founded on a "maze-way re-synthesis" of old and new ideological and ritual elements, combined in a "palingenetic metanarrative". The current political order is portrayed as needing to be abandoned or purged of its impurity, so that the "redemptive community" can leave the phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. Additionally, ENR leaders frequently invoke a legendary and mythical past they want to symbolically re-ground in the new society about to emerge, not in a spirit of nostalgia for the return of an ancient golden age, but rather "to create a rooted futurity, a new reality re-established on firm metaphysical foundations."^[1] This idea is particularly embodied in the concept of archeofuturism promoted by Guillaume Faye.^[13]


Some ENR thinkers, who belong to the Völkisch leaning of the movement,^[14] highlight race and ethnicity as the core dimensions of their concept of "identity". This has led to violent rejection of "difference", Faye calling for a "total ethnic war",^[15] and Pierre Vial for an "ethnic revolution" and a "war of liberation".^[14][16]