The problem of Alain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist is the leader of the "New Right" in France, a small and rather idiosyncratic current. They claim to be pagan, seem interested in Traditionalism, and even call for a kind of "multi-culturalism", ethnopluralism, in which each ethnic group should inhabit its own territory while respecting the territories of others. The "New Right" think-tank GRECE is apparently seen by many on the French far right as too intellectual and even somewhat strange.

"The problem of democracy" is one of the few texts by De Benoist translated into English. The text is rather heavy and indeed intellectual. De Benoist claims to support democracy, but his ideal is the democracy of ancient Athens. He claims that the Indo-Europeans have always been "democratic" in this sense, and mentions the Germanic tribes described by Tacitus, the Vedic republics and the allting on medieval Iceland. More in passing, he mentions Switzerland.

De Benoist's conception of democracy is aristocratic, hierarchic and ethnic. At one point, he calls for aristo-democracy. His ideal seems to be a confederation of decentralized units with as much direct democracy as possible. Of course, he wants this decentralized democracy to be ethnically pure. De Benoist also emphasizes that the citizens must be equal, an ideal difficult to square with his hierarchic perspective. After all, the Athenian and Spartan citizens were, if not entirely equal, at least "more equal than others", i.e. the slaves, women and resident aliens. This is presumably De Benoist's real program, but he doesn't dare spell it out. A more charitable interpretation is that De Benoist wants something similar to the government of Appenzell Innerrhoden, the smallest Swiss canton, where decisions are taken by an assembly open to all adult males (women got the right to participate only in 1990). I presume all males in the canton are lily White and Catholic.

There are some other contradictions in the booklet as well, for instance the call for more frequent national referendums, something historically used by strongmen to *centralize* power. Perhaps the author is a secret admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III and Charles De Gaulle?

The most disturbing trait of "The problem of democracy" is De Benoist's moral relativism, apparently inspired by Carl Schmitt (who may also have influenced Leo Strauss) and perhaps Machiavelli. This, of course, is not a traditional right-wing position, but rather an adaptation to a kind of existentialism and postmodernism. It's also the real position of most establishment groups, ancient or modern... De Benoist's paganism seems somehow to be connected to his amoral relativism, since he attacks the Christian idea of human equality as a "moral ideal" (and hence wrong or absurd). Incidentally, De Benoist's book "On being a pagan" is also available in English, but I haven't read it yet.

Obviously, I disagree with most of the contents of this book, but it's nevertheless an interesting introduction into the ideas of the French Nouvelle Droite and the Alain de Benoist Probleme.