Alain de Benoist, ethnopluralism and the cultural turn in racism

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to analyse critically the idea of ethnopluralism (also known as ethno-differentialism and droit à la difference) as formulated by Alain de Benoist, one of the founding fathers of the Nouvelle Droite and one of the most important far-right intellectuals of the last decades. Rueda locates this ideal as part of what will be called ‘the cultural turn in racism’, that is, the passage from biological and pseudo-scientific racism to alterophobic discourses based on culture and ethnicity among European far-right intellectuals. Moreover, the article will explore the impact of ethnopluralism on both increasingly mainstream radical-right parties and fringe extremist organizations since the 1980s.

Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS, Secret Armed Organization). 2 Like many of his comrades, he decided to move to a more 'intellectualist' strategy after witnessing both the defeat of the OAS and the persistent marginality of the French extreme right. This led him to become one of the founding members of the think tank Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE, Research and Study Group for European Civilization) in 1968, when he was only twenty-five. 3 Ever since, and despite the fact that some of his ideas (such as his neo-paganism or his anti-Americanism) can be problematic for his audience, he has become a prominent member of the so-called Nouvelle Droite (ND, New Right) and one of the most influential thinkers of the contemporary far right, both for mainstream parties and for fringe, extremist organizations. He has published more than 100 books and thousands of articles, some of the most important of them in journals associated with the ND, such as Nouvelle École (founded in 1969), Éléments (1973) and Krisis (1988).
This article will not explore the vast theoretical work that de Benoist has published in the last decades, which goes well beyond political philosophy. Neither will not examine the advent and characteristics of the ND, as such work has already been done by other scholars. Instead, it will focus on one of his key ideas: ethnopluralism, the notion that different cultures should not coexist in as much as each of them has a unique character that should be preserved and respected. The article will locate de Benoist's ideas in their particular context, analysing them as part of what shall be called 'the cultural turn in racism', a moment in the history of the far right in which a series of intellectuals began to reject biological racism overtly while retaining nativist and ethnic-based preferences, focusing on preserving cultural rather than racial identities. It will not only treat the French thinker as a far-right intellectual, but also as an interlocutor (and one who has won the prestigious Prix de l'essai) who has repeatedly defended himself against accusations of racism and xenophobia coming from academics. 4 The main research objective is to explore ethnopluralism as a renewal of xenophobia that emerged in the late twentieth century, and to do so through the writings of Alain de Benoist.
Analysing subjects like ethnopluralism, the far right and racism is one of those tasks in which the researcher can easily be tempted to speak from his or her ideological point of view, which can lead to normative biases that can mitigate the analytical value of the research. In order to limit the effects of such biases, this article engages in what George L. Mosse, one of the major historians of fascism, called 'methodological empathy', 5 that is, the idea that researchers should try to understand the goals, values and reasoning of the intellectuals in question, something that requires studying their thought directly and 'from the inside', without intermediaries. 6 Since we naturally apply this approach when we analyse other ideas or ideologies there is no justified analytical reason to avoid it in the case of the far right.
It is essential to provide some conceptual clarifications before starting the analysis of de Benoist's ethnopluralist ideas and their impact. First of all, we need to distinguish between forms of right-wing radicalism in order to both locate de Benoist and understand his relationship with different political actors. This conceptual issue has caused many headaches among political scientists, 7 but today there seems to be a certain consensus on differentiating between the extreme right (which opposes democracy, tends to be revolutionary and self-marginalizing and sometimes supports violence) and the radical right (which accepts democracy but is illiberal and reformist and tends to opt for institutional means to attain power), which are both part of the broader family of the far right. 8 Thus, the Front National (recently renamed Rassemblement National), Trumpism, Lega Nord (often known as Lega) and Fidesz would be part of the radical right, whereas neo-fascist organizations such as Golden Dawn, the National Radical Camp, the Alt-Right and CasaPound would be part of the extreme right.
Moreover, the concept of 'racism' needs to be carefully defined, since it will be crucial for the subject of this article. Drawing from the works of George Fredrickson, who dedicated his academic career to the analysis of racism, it will be defined as discriminatory and essentializing persuasive and structured mindsets and discourses based on difference (between racialized groups) and power (between the dominant and the dominated group). 9 This definition allows the integration of some manifestations of the so-called 'cultural racism' (based on ethnicity) as a form of discrimination similar to biological racism (based on physical characteristics solely), and therefore to understand phenomena such as some forms of antisemitism or Islamophobia as part of racist world-views. It also allows us to apply it to different regions and eras, which undermines what Giovanni Sartori called 'the travelling problem' in conceptual formation while at the same time being concrete enough to avoid conceptual stretching. 10 Similar 'expanded' conceptualizations have been propounded in the last few decades, especially due to the rise of new forms of prejudice after the dismissal of 'scientific' racism after the Second World War and the subsequent 'adaptation' of the far right. 11 How to be racist after 1945: the cultural turn There are few, if any, examples of ideological defeat that can be compared to what happened to the European far right in 1945. After a catastrophic military defeat and the dissemination of documents regarding the extermination of the European Jews and other minorities, it became virtually impossible to publicly defend ultranationalist and racist ideals. Divided between a liberal and democratic West and a socialist and authoritarian East, post-war Europe emerged as a no-go area for right-wing extremists. 12 Both extreme-right politicians and intellectuals, including eugenicist scientists who had posited the existence of natural hierarchies between human 'races', 13 were soon marginalized. As Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg note, this was a time of revisionism in which 'both the facts of history and past doctrine had to be revised to ensure a future for neo-fascism'. 14 The task of reinventing right-wing extremism represented a great challenge for former fascists, who had to face serious obstacles at the beginning. Although, in countries such as Italy and Germany, there was a certain resurgence (with parties such as the Movimento Sociale Italiano and the soon-tobe-banned Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands), western countries established party systems in which the main competition took place between social democrats and conservatives, and there was a strong consensus around democracy and liberalism. Some pre-war fascists such as Otto Strasser, Julius Evola and Oswald Mosley tried to articulate European nationalist movements (such as the European Social Movement and the National Party of Europe), 15 but Europeanism soon became a liberal and post-nationalist ideal constructed as a bulwark against both fascism and communism with the help and sponsorship of the United States.
As racism was one of the most problematic elements for the new political zeitgeist after 1945 (with both the Holocaust and decolonization as the main driving forces behind this trend), right-wing extremists tended to focus their discussions on the racial question. Outside Europe, intellectuals from both the American South (where segregation was still in place) and South Africa (where apartheid was not dismantled until the early 1990s) were able to formulate racialist discourses at least for a certain period of time. 16 But in countries such as Italy, Germany, France or the United Kingdom, recent events made things more difficult.
One of the major developments was the crucial passage from pan-Aryanism to white supremacism, which opened the possibility for broader alliances among Westerners. According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, for post-war neo-fascists 'Germanic people no longer had a specific role, and Aryanism was confined to the proclamation of the supremacy of the white race, which therefore included the Slavs', a shift that also led to the emergence of sympathy for the 'anti-Zionism of the USSR'. 17 In France, key neo-fascist intellectuals such as Dominique Venner and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz reaffirmed their compromise with racist ideals. Réné Binet (a former member of the Waffen-SS) created the concept of 'biological 15 This allowed neo-fascists to present an alternative against the binary logic of the Cold War and to assert Europe's particularism against both Russian and American cultural and ideological trends. For an overview of European nationalism as a key ideological element of post-war fascism, see Tamir  realism', 18 and claimed that immigrants coming from the colonies should leave the country in as much as they threatened Europe's 'genetic capital'. 19 Francis Parker Yockey, an American attorney and philosopher (famous among extreme rightists for his 1948 book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics) also had an important role in mixing white supremacy and pan-European nationalism (in 1949 he founded the short-lived European Liberation Front after some disputes with Oswald Mosley) which included Russia as part of the white race. 20 It then became possible to imagine ethnic alliances stretching from California to Siberia and involving the whole European continent.
However, in the late 1950s, it was already possible to appreciate some discursive shifts. Neo-fascist organizations such as Nouvel Ordre Européen (founded in 1951) began to propound the repatriation of immigrants as a form of benevolent and pluralist decolonization: 'It is our responsibility. . . to substitute, for the current colonialist regime, a regime of association that shows respect for the traditions proper to each race, accompanied by a strict racial segregation in the interest of each of the contracting parties' and 'to call for and realize the return of the nonnative groups to their traditional space'. 21 Other French neo-fascists such as Dominique Venner started advocating the idea of a strong and united Europe based on ethnic (rather than racial) common traits, which was already popular in the late 1940s. 22 As Pierre-André Taguieff noted, there were already signs in the 1960s that ethnopluralism (as a response against the cultural influence of the USSR and the United States, and the alleged global standardization bolstered by capitalism) was gradually replacing biological racism among these activists. 23 This meant the slow but steady passage from biological racism to ethnic particularism among extremists, even if there is no doubt that the degree of intolerance and alterophobia (understood as intolerance towards those perceived as foreign, which can and has taken many shapes during human history) was barely revised, and that this was often a purely strategic move. What is important to note is that the possibility for European culture to 18  displace the white race as the key identity aggregator among some neo-fascists and the growing salience of immigration gained momentum against pre-war antisemitic conspiracy theories and justifications of colonialism. Instead, Europe itself would be portrayed as another victim of both American and Soviet colonization. This is a key moment in the history of the European extreme right that is here referred to as the 'cultural turn' in racism, when ethnies replaced races as the key political unit of analysis, even though the difference between the two is sometimes blurred, since culture is often attached to geography. This tendency took time to take root and was challenged by some militants, but its victory over biological racism is now evident. It is here argued that some forms of 'differentialism' are indeed a form of racism, since they conflate ethnic and racial traits in an essentializing, hierarchical and discriminatory way. That being said, other forms of it are not necessarily racist, although, as it will be argued, they can trigger the same degree of violence and intolerance as racial discrimination. This is the context in which GRECE was born in 1968, just a few months before the protests of May erupted in Paris. 24 Its founders (among whom were both Dominique Venner and Alain de Benoist) envisioned it as a think tank that would employ a metapolitical approach, that is, instead of planning a coup or an electoral victory, it would slowly but steadily try to undermine the foundations of the post-war liberal and increasingly multicultural democracy. The rationale behind this is simple: the conquest of power only comes after the conquest of 'culture'. This idea of focusing on 'culture wars' against liberalism and the left after articulating a consistent doctrine rather than directly pursuing political power, a tactic that de Benoist calls 'right-wing Gramscianism', 25 was preconceived by Dominique Venner in the early 1960s after witnessing the strategic limitations of the French extreme right. 26 The 'movement' was qualified as Nouvelle Droite-even though it always saw itself as being beyond the left-right dichotomy 27during a major controversy concerning its infiltration of conservative mass media such as Le Figaro. 28 What is the ideological identity of the ND? The question itself is problematic, since this is a loose (and ultimately transnational) school of thought that has gone through many transformations, rather than a homogeneous, static movement. That being said, it is possible to identify some essential characteristics, all of them linked to far-right thought.
First of all, it is a renewal of both French and European right-wing nationalism and extreme-right ethnic prejudices at a moment of political impasse, using already existing ideals to articulate new sets of idées-forces. 29 Second, although de Benoist and other prominent members of the ND persuasively claim to be against fascism and point to the intellectuals of the Konservative Revolution as their ideological forebears, 30 it is difficult not to see that they share many ideas with European neo-fascism. As Tamir  It seems clear that rescuing these elements is a way to preserve the European far-right tradition while avoiding any reference to stigmatized exaltation of a warrior ethic; praise of a voluntarist creed as the key to historical change; a Romantic, anti-materialist worldview; the ideal of an organic ethnically based homogeneous community; and the goal of a revolutionary political system superseding traditional conservatism, liberalism, and socialism 31 are traits shared by both neo-fascism and the members of the ND. Roger Griffin shares such a view, noting that 'at the height of its fame the ND had indeed retained much of fascism's mythic foundations and groundplan despite the extensive structural alterations and redecoration it had carried out to the visible ideological edifice'. 32 And, third, the ND challenges many of the elements that are generally defended by the European mainstream right, such as globalization, the model of homo economicus, Judaeo-Christian ethics, some forms of nationalism, multiculturalism and Atlanticism, thereby distinguishing itself from conservative and liberal-conservative ideological competitors and paving the way for situational sympathy with anti-imperialist, New Left, indigenous or anti-capitalist groups.
As mentioned, this school of thought went through several changes in the last decades. Pierre-André Taguieff, an expert on both the history of racism and the Nouvelle Droite, distinguishes two main phases when it comes to thinking about race and ethnicity. 33 The first would stretch from the foundation of GRECE to the late 1970s and be a mere continuation of neofascist biological and anti-revisionist racism. During this decade, the racial superiority of 'Whites' or 'Europeans' was opposed to egalitarian and liberal ideals. The second phase (starting in the early 1980s) consists of a shift towards ethnic differentialism that emphasizes ethnic differences and the need to preserve ethnoregional spheres, which could imply both opposing multiculturalism and supporting anti-colonial and anti-western projects. 34 The next section critically explores Alain de Benoist's version of this idea and its impact on both radical-right and extreme-right organizations. fascist intellectuals. (The members of the KR were somewhat sympathetic to the Nazis, but they remained reluctant to fully support all of its ideological elements

Understanding Alain de Benoist's ethnopluralist ideal and its impact
The notion of ethnopluralism as it is being analysed here was not coined by de Benoist, but by Dominique Venner, a veritable intellectual pioneer among those who postulated a replacement of biology by ethnie as the fundamental identity marker of Europeans. 35 Yet it was the former who developed it and made it available for political praxis. As Pierre-André Taguieff explains, de Benoist started as a 'biological realist' in the 1950s and turned towards a focus on ethnic identity and a critique of cultural standardization in the late 1970s, coinciding with the advent of mass migration towards Europe and the rise of the New Left. 36 His 1974 interview with the journal Éléments, entitled 'Contre le racisme', can work as an interesting summary of this shift. 37 In answer to a question, de Benoist explains that he opposes the idea of racial superiority (he rather thinks that every race has its own 'genius'), but also left-wing 'anti-racism', which for him acts as a homogenizing force that imposes western values on non-white peoples. He proposes, instead of cultural interbreeding, to guarantee the autonomy of every ethnie and build harmonious societies that avoid hate and prejudice through a respect for diversity. Finally, he denounces both the United States and the Soviet Union as the two major threats against the cultural sovereignty of both Europe and the developing world and he claims that fighting against discrimination means offering self-rule to every ethnic group (not only African Americans and immigrants, but also Whites from different backgrounds). Those are the key elements of de Benoist's ethnopluralist project. In order to examine them thoroughly it is necessary to provide an overview of the foundations of his thought. As mentioned earlier, he was part of neofascist and pro-violence groups when he was young but, after the late 1970, he turned to less anti-democratic positions and to a form of differentialism based on ethnic rather than racial identities. 38 His political thought ever since has been based on three pillars: identitarianism, anti-liberalism and pan-Europeanism. He is first and foremost a great advocate of basing political praxis on an emphasis on the centrality of identity for human beings: 35  according to de Benoist, we live in a disenchanted, globalized and materialistic world in which abstract reason, technological change and universalism have wiped out the spiritual and ethnic roots of human identity, thereby producing atomized and replaceable individuals. 39 The culprits of such transformation are not only the Enlightenment, financial and political elites or the United States, but also the Judaeo-Christian heritage (alien to Europe), with its universalist and egalitarian principles. 40 According to him, we live in 'a society of individuals' in which 'individualism has led to a hedonistic endorsement of the private sphere, and therefore a disinterest, maybe even a hostility, towards public affairs', including ethnic identities. 41 Second, there is stark opposition to liberalism in all of its forms and manifestations. In economic terms, de Benoist sees liberalism as a system capable of uprooting individuals and homogenizing them as mere consumers, since its laws know no frontiers or boundaries. 42 In political and juridical terms de Benoist sees liberalism as an ideology that paves the way for the emergence of an atomized type of individual who is separated from the social and political body, leading to the conquest of society by market forces. 43 Both economic and political liberalism are thus different sides of the same coin. According to de Benoist, the idea of human rights (which he also criticizes) is likewise a result of liberalism, in as much as it starts from the premise of 'proclaiming the equal right of each individual to pursue the ends that he has independently chosen'. 44  such as the diversity of cultures, value systems, and rooted ways of life, to one uniform model'. 45 Third, de Benoist is an enthusiastic proponent of pan-European nationalism. As mentioned earlier, this stance is embraced by many post-1945 European extreme-right organizations (and by many other pre-war fascists who supported Germany's imperialism). De Benoist himself was part of Europe-Action, an overtly white supremacist and Europeanist movement founded in the early 1960s. This was closely interconnected to the perception that after 1945 Europe needed to be united in order to preserve its independence against other great powers such as the Soviet Union. 46 For de Benoist, this position can also be defended after the Cold War since, today, a federal and strong Europe would mean an alternative sovereign power to the alleged American domination of the continent, an equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine ('Europe for the Europeans'). 47 This position also allows him to criticize nationalism, once again distinguishing himself from other far-right theoreticians. 48 According to him, Europe should be an independent power and become politically united so 'that it can liberate itself from the domination of financial markets and, more generally, from the money system' and be part of 'a multipolar [and ethnopluralist] world, where large continental blocs of culture and civilization could play a role of regulatory poles'. 49 Recently he claimed that in a multipolar world civilizations will replace nations and a unified (yet ethnically diverse) Europe should be one of them. 50 All these elements are present in the doctrine of ethnopluralism. For de Benoist, the droit à la différence is an alternative to the homogenizing forces of globalization and liberalism. Ethnopluralism is portrayed as an anti-totalitarian and liberating ideal, since it contests the oppression caused by global capitalism and American cultural imperialism against both European and ethnies of the developing world. 51 It is allegedly also against any form of racism, in as much as it considers that there are no superior races (even though there are differences between them at an ethnic level) and that every race has the right to self-determination. 52 On the other hand, xenophobic discourses such as the one articulated by Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National are condemned as a form of cruelty, not because they oppose immigration but because they use immigrants as scapegoats for deeper problems. 53 Moreover, by opposing mass immigration, it goes against the interests of large corporations and posits that cultural interests are above material ones. 54 Finally, it is a form of Europeanism, since it provides a way to protect, celebrate and bolster the relative ethnocultural homogeneity of European peoples (who would organize federally), thereby producing a 're-enchantment' of the world against the dynamics of capitalist acculturation and a 'third position' against egalitarian ideologies such as socialism and liberalism. 55 The fact that de Benoist's approach is only one possible form of differentialism raises the question of whether there are other forms of right-wing ethnopluralism. Apart from the abovementioned differences between Faye and de Benoist it is possible to distinguish some of them. Lega Nord available on the Les Amis d'Alain de Benoist website at www.alaindebenoist.com/2020/ 08/05/une-europe-unifiee-est-necessaire (viewed 13 October 2021). 51 Alain de Benoist, 'Le totalitarisme raciste', Éléments, no. 33, 1980 (special issue on 'Le droit à la différence'), 10-19. Here de Benoist syncretically borrows some ideas from Third-Worldist and anti-imperialist left-wing movements of the 1970s. 52 De Benoist, 'Contre le racisme', 147-9. This is followed by a critique of sociobiological accounts of human morality, especially those propounded by (now turned into a national party) and Vlaams Belang could be described as 'ethnoregionalist', as they posit the existence of particular regions (which could integrate different ethnies) that should be independent. On the other hand, pan-white nationalism (whereby the 'white race' should be reunited within the same nation-state) and pan-European nationalism (whereby all Europeans should be united within the same nation-state) contrast with more localist approaches (such as de Benoist's, which is compatible with broader civilizational alliances), but they can share the 'pluralistic' rhetoric and present themselves as forms of tolerant separatism (the 'separate but equal' approach). Even though these differ on some points, they all start from the premise that different ethnies should be, if possible, separated, and they all reject universalist humanitarianism (here we see how the Counter-Enlightenment still lies at the core of the far right) and cultural miscegenation. 56 It is also important to explore whether ethnopluralism is actually a pluralist ideal against racism and intolerance, as de Benoist claims. It suffices to scrutinize his works closely to contest this assertion. First of all, the celebration of différence is also necessarily a repudiation of miscegenation. Of course, this is far from being a new idea among the far right: there is no shortage of intellectuals who have offered this 'separate but equal' doctrine as an alternative to more radical or eliminationist views. It is undoubtedly problematic to assert both that one feels admiration and professes extreme tolerance towards different cultures but only as long as they remain far away. In addition, only an ethnic-based vision of identities could support the reductionist view that different cultures are incommensurable, 57 as a more 56 On the other hand, it is interesting to wonder whether there is such a thing as 'leftwing ethnopluralism'. In general, progressive activists in the West tend to prioritize an approach whereby different cultures can be integrated within the same society, and they are divided on the degree of adaptability that these communities can require (creating a dichotomy between the so-called 'melting pot' and 'salad bowl' models, and generally trying to find a balance between the two), normally focusing on values rather than on ethnicity. individual methodological approach shows us exactly the opposite. Unless culture is also understood as a series of ethnic, ancient traits it is difficult not to see that history is nothing but cultural hybridization among peoples from different races and backgrounds. In fact, what de Benoist calls 'acculturation' is actually the triumph of liberal, democratic and pluralist cultural trends, which sometimes intersect with previous cultural realities thereby creating 'hybrids' (which do not seem to play an important role for the French thinker who is fixated on pure and generally hypothetical ethnies). By downplaying the possibility of building cultural bridges, de Benoist cannot but become a critic of fraternity, as was made clear in his recent diatribe against Pope Francis. 58 Moreover, de Benoist's ethnopluralist theorizations do include some overtly racialist and racist remarks, even after the 'cultural turn' that crystallized in the late 1970s. It is in 'Contre le racisme', paradoxically, that he first displays these views. During that interview, he essentializes ethnic behaviour as part of race, pointing to how African Americans could never be assimilated in to the American culture, as, according to him, the Black Power movement shows. 59 A few pages later he acknowledges biological differences of intelligence between races (as measured by IQ tests) and the link between biological race and ethnie. 60 Two decades later, in the Manifeste pour une renaissance européenne, co-written with Charles Champetier, he emphasizes that 'Man is first and foremost an animal' and that 'every single individual already bears the general characteristics of the species, to which are added specific [racial?] hereditary predispositions to certain particular aptitudes and modes of behavior'. 61 Later the authors claim that 'Man is rooted by nature in his culture . . . he is a singular being: he always locates himself at the interface of the universal (his species) and the particular (each culture, each epoch)', 62 which seems like a difficult attempt to insinuate essential differences while trying to avoid biological racism. By reductively defining racism as a form of extreme and violent biologism, de Benoist shrinks the concept in a way that historians of the idea would not accept, which is problematic in epistemological terms but certainly advantageous for him, since it allows him to draw a clear line between ethnopluralism and racism.
But even if there can be no doubt that both de Benoist and the ND sometimes 'flirt' with racist and racialist positions, it is clear that they defend a different form of discrimination, based on ethnic elements and often opposed to biological racism. The droit à la différence is based on cultural, not biological, distinctions, and it can lead to communitarianism rather than to exclusion. Although sometimes the dissimilarity is not clear-cut, it is fundamentally different from both pre-1945 scientific racism and postwar attempts to articulate new forms of pan-European, white supremacist identities (which de Benoist embraced but then rejected). It also allows for the formulation of discourses that oppose racism and defend the rights of both immigrants and developing countries, paving the way for less polemical positions among post-war far-rightists. But even if, in de Benoist's hands, ethnopluralism can appear as an abstract and even benevolent ideal, its impact on the far right is impossible to deny, despite his reluctance to be associated with those movements.
Indeed, de Benoist has repeatedly claimed that neither he nor the ND are right-wing but rather 'both right and left', 63 given that they borrow from many intellectual traditions and the left-right distinction would in any case be questionable today. Since his activism is mostly intellectual, he sometimes can avoid being concrete in relation to some issues, thereby presenting himself as an author moved only by his libido cognoscendi, beyond particular ideologies and concrete policies. Yet, if that is the case, one might wonder why his model of ethnopluralism has only been embraced by far-right groups. The main example is of course the Front National (recently renamed Rassemblement National), created by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972 and today headed by his daughter, Marine Le Pen. It is important to note that de Benoist does not support the party and that many of his ideas (such as paganism, anti-capitalism, antinationalism and a stark criticism of Atlanticism) are actually opposed to its doctrines, although this should not blind us to the way that ethnopluralism has had a crucial impact on the French far right, facilitating its normalization.
Like the ND, the FN was created as a way to overcome the post-1945 stigma by rejecting violence and embracing democracy, thereby trying to mirror the electoral progresses of the Movimento Sociale Italiano. influence of the ND was there for all to see: during the 1980s key nouvelle droitistes such as Bruno Mégret, Jean-Claude Bardet, Pierre Vial, Jean Mabire, Jean-Jacques Mourreau, Jean Varenne, Christiane Pigacé and Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Yvan Blot joined the party. 65 Of course, not all of them were sympathetic to de Benoist's ethnopluralism, but the connection between the ND and the FN seems clear. In addition to that, Jean-Marie Le Pen soon started to defend the idea of droit à la différence in reference to Muslims and other immigrants while at the same time denouncing liberal globalization and trying to avoid racist and antisemitic discourses. 66 His daughter (leader of the party since 2011) is even more explicit in her sympathies for de Benoist's ethnopluralism. Soon after removing any positions that could make the party susceptible to accusations of antisemitism and rejecting the left-right divide, she denounced globalism (mondialisme) as a form of totalitarianism 'whose monstrous project is one of a planet in thrall to consumption and production for the benefit of a few big businesses or banks which alone stand to profit'. 67 Globalism is for her an invention of the elites, 'an ideology that far exceeds mere globalization and which aims to standardize cultures, to encourage nomadism, the permanent movement of uprooted people from one continent to another, to make them interchangeable and, in essence, to render them anonymous'. 68 One of the trends that intensifies this 'interchangeability' is of course mass immigration (presented as a weapon in the hands of big corporations), 69 and yet this is not accompanied by xenophobic remarks but rather, following de Benoist's approach, by a cult of ethnic diversity, celebrating 'the diversity and, indeed, the radiance of the world, free from the flavourless mush of onedimensional globalism which is the opposite of the universal'. 70 During the campaign for the 2017 French presidential election, she declared that Islamism and 'ultraliberalism' were the two major totalitarianisms that the French were facing, once again echoing the discourse of the founder of the ND. 71 In France, this ideal has also influenced extreme-right groupuscules such as Les Identitaires and the recently banned for inciting hatred and violence Génération Identitaire (GI). 72 As José Pedro Zúquete (the author of the most important study on these groups to date) explains: Irrespective of the ND's excoriation of the excesses of Identitarianism . . . the reality is that the ND has laid the theoretical ground for Identitarians, exercising a great influence on their preference for cultural combat, rejection of universalism, embrace of differentialism, and overall critique of a system captured by a disintegrating liberal capitalism. 73 Indeed, GI is part of what Zúquete calls 'the Identitarian turn', 74 which can be seen as a by-product of ethnopluralism and which has become popular among young European extremists in recent decades. The approach is based on de Benoist's main idea: identity (particularly ethnic identity) is essential for the well-being of individuals, and therefore it should be protected from the cultural dynamics that pose a threat to it (mainly, capitalist globalization and mass immigration from non-western countries). In theory, this can be defended in a purely speculative and rhetorical way (as de Benoist does), but in practice (as the example of GI and other movements shows) it can only lead to xenophobia and discrimination, as it is based on a 'rejection of the Other'. 75 Ethnopluralism has also had an impact beyond France. As this article shows, since 1945 the European far right has favoured the creation of links between nations that are deemed part of the continent, from Portugal to Russia. Therefore one can find supporters of de Benoist's droit à la différence in Italy (such is the case of some intellectuals associated with Lega Nord, a party that has now shifted from regionalism to nationalism), 76 the United Kingdom (where both Michael Walker and Troy Southgate have propounded ethno-differentialist and allegedly anti-racist views), 77 and Belgium (with the journal Nieuw Recht and intellectuals such as Luc Pauwels and Robert Steuckers), and, in a lesser way, in Holland, Spain, Croatia, Romania, Poland and other European countries, as Tamir Bar-On notes. 78 In Germany, Götz Kubitschek (the most prominent figure of the Neue Rechte) is explicit about this influence and its importance as a substitute for biological racism: '"I agree with Benoist," and his defense of a "differential antiracism . . . [w]hen you look at the term 'ethnopluralism,' you find distinctness by the side of equality, and you do not have to use the word 'racism,' which is scorched beyond repair."' 79 It is important to insist, against de Benoist's alleged ideological agnosticism, that every single one of these groups is part of the extreme right and they all tend to promote in one way or another forms of discrimination against ethnic minorities.
The case of Russia deserves separate treatment. There the intellectual in charge of translating the ideas of the ND was Aleksandr Dugin. 80 A former member of the Yuzhinsky Circle (an outlandish group of anti-Soviet dissidents who embraced all kinds of esoteric and mystical neo-fascist ideas), Dugin later moved to more ultranationalist and militaristic positions in order to influence the Russian establishment, even though, as Marlene Laruelle notes and contrary to what some western media commentators tend to think, he 'has been unable to secure himself a position within the Kremlin's institutions'. 81 Dugin has used the notion of ethnopluralism to fantasize about a united and spiritually regenerated Eurasia in which Russia would be an essential part and which would also make an alliance with Shia Islam against western liberalism, the United States, Jews and 'the cosmopolitan financial elites'. 82 The Russian thinker praises the droit à la difference, from which he draws the natural conclusion that some 'ethnic hygiene' will need to be preserved somehow in an ethnopluralist world. 83 His views are clearly xenophobic and discriminatory yet, according to de Benoist, Dugin 'stress[es] that Empire is always a multicultural space, and thus he takes a firm stand against all forms of racism and xenophobia'. 84 This description of Dugin's thought is yet another proof of how de Benoist can use the cultural turn and the idea of ethnopluralism to do away with any accusation of alterophobia, even when its presence is all too evident. Indeed, the fact that he can present Aleksandr Dugin as a tolerant antiracist activist tells us more about him than about the Russian thinker (who is less cautious when it comes to exhibiting his intolerance).
The idea of ethnopluralism has also reached the native far right on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States. Indeed, Richard Spencer and other key intellectuals of the Alt-Right, a loose association of neofascist and white nationalist activists formed in the early 2010s, have overtly adopted many concepts coming from de Benoist (who visited Spencer in Washington D.C. in 2014) and the ND, starting with the idea of metapolitics. 85 Spencer has repeatedly advocated the creation of white 'ethno-states' in North America and Europe, but he has also defended the existence of other ethno-states for minorities whose culture needs to be respected. His manifesto states: 'Globalization threatens not just Europeans but every unique identity on Earth.' 86 This is a great example of how ethnopluralism, despite focusing on culture, can perfectly fit racialist approaches, a fact that is also evident when one examines the discourse of extreme-right groups such as Génération Identitaire (which has an American equivalent, Generation Identity) and its recurrent merging of the ethnic, the cultural and the racial. 87 The impact of de Benoist among right-wing extremists is obvious, although this should not imply that the ND is at the heart of the rise of the contemporary far right. Indeed, since the 1980s, both the ND and the European far right have gained popularity simultaneously after a few decades of marginality, but this is not because they are necessarily interconnected. In fact, and as already mentioned, many ideas of the ND are incommensurable with the ideology of the contemporary far right. The reality is rather that, as this article intends to show, both are part of a renewal of the western far right after the fatal blow of 1945. Ethnopluralism should therefore be understood as a new form of ethnic identity-building that can be used to condemn liberalism, individualism, multiculturalism and mass immigration while at the same time rejecting biological racism. It is important to note in any case that there has been a genuine shift within the far right, which, as shown, was pre-formulated around the 1950s. In other words, a non-negligible part of the contemporary far right (and this is also the case of other political groups) has changed its ideas and has adapted to the world that emerged after the Second World War. This is the only conclusion that a non-biased researcher can draw from an analysis of the evolution of the far right since 1945. Insisting on how these forces remain somehow as racist and fascist as their 'predecessors' is simply misleading, even if the frontiers between ethnopluralism and racism remain porous.

The plasticity of prejudice
Biological racism and similar forms of ethnic essentialism have not always existed. Their expansion and popularization in Europe and later in the United States can be traced to both the persistent Spanish stigmatization against conversos even after they accepted the Catholic faith and naturalist explanations of geographical inequalities by thinkers such as Montesquieu, John Locke and Carl Linnaeus. 88 Ever since, the idea that there are essential differences between races, religions and cultures has taken many different shapes, and it has shown an astonishing capacity to intersect with historical particularities. This idea has sometimes been formulated in an aggressive and hierarchical way, but generally the historian of racism will find benevolent and 'differentialist' views, most of them presented as a way to protect or improve the conditions of the Other.
After 1945, these ideals soon became marginal among the western public, including those who sympathized with right-wing positions. Being racist or defending the incommensurability of cultures almost inevitably reminds one of the anti-egalitarian and brutal policies of interwar fascist regimes. Even though extremist groups tried to revitalize their ethnic-based approach to politics, decolonization and the fall of segregation in the American South made things even more difficult for them. Neo-fascist groupuscules remained active across the West, but they did not represent a threat to liberal democracy and multicultural coexistence.
In the 1970s, Alain de Benoist and other far-right intellectuals began to craft an alternative to biological racism that could still provide a more or less acceptable defence of cultural separatism and civilizational chauvinism, a sort of xenophobia with a human face. As an ideological bricoleur, de Benoist managed to merge far-right ideas with the postcolonial cult of difference professed by some activists of the New Left. As shown, this has had an 88 Wald Sussman, The Myth of Race, 11-43. impact on many radical-right and extreme-right activists, coinciding with an era of mass migration and demographic anxieties among a not inconsiderable section of the public. The resulting ideal, ethnopluralism, is not a priori a variant of racism, but it can provide new ways to rationalize ethnic stigmatization and discriminatory policies against non-European immigrants. One cannot doubt that de Benoist does not agree with many of the activists who use his ideas, but neither can we deny that ethnopluralism was always conceived as a renewal of far-right alterophobia towards other groups and autophilia towards one's own ethnie.
What is important to understand is that the idea of ethnopluralism poses a threat to multicultural societies, in as much as it challenges the possibility of peaceful coexistence between different cultures (and it conveniently does so in an era of mass migration towards the West), even if their proponents would never admit that openly. As mentioned, it is not necessarily racist, but it connects with 'classic' far-right anxieties and it is embraced by movements that promote stigmatization and discrimination. In fact, religion, nationalism or class have also historically played this role for extremists, who do not necessarily need to put race in the centre of their discourse in order to be discriminatory (or violent) towards minorities. What matters is that ethnopluralism is essentializing, and its dogmatic rejection of methodological individualism downplays the possibility of cultural encounters, and similar ideals have been used to justify ethnic separatism, stigmatization and colonial arrangements. Suffice it to note, as a historical example, how cultural differentialism became the fundamental sociodicy coming from apartheid South African authorities at a certain point. As George Fredrickson observes: 'No better example can be found of how a "cultural essentialism" based on nationality can do the work of a racism based squarely on skin color or other physical characteristics.' 89 Roger Griffin is right to employ the metaphor of the rhizome to explain the possibilities of the contemporary extreme right, which 'behaves like the tangled root-system of some species of grass or tuber, displaying "multiple starts and beginnings which intertwine and connect with each other", constantly producing new shoots as others die off in an unpredictable, asymmetrical pattern of growth and decay'. 90 It is important to note, though, that this apparent chaotic marginality is perfectly compatible with influencing the more mainstream radical right and even the conservatives. Indeed, even though biological racism suffered a deadly wound during the second half of the 1940s, it is now evident that other forms of ethnic discrimination (some of them difficult to separate from pre-war racism) can develop in our societies, and that metapolitical extreme rightists can supply mainstream parties with new ideas, even though those will probably be filtered and adapted before reaching the public. Alain de Benoist and his notion of ethnopluralism are proof of the many shapes that these new offshoots can take, even to the point of looking like the opposite of what they actually represent. Indeed, this thinker has shown an ability to articulate an approach that provides discursive grounds for the defence of anti-miscegenation stances in a context in which ethnic pluralism is part of the political mainstream. Even though his views are only embraced by a part of the political spectrum (the far right, both in the form of radical-right parties and extreme-right fringe organizations), the possibility of articulating them in a way that allows us to take a great distance from its interwar predecessors (presenting them as a defence of freedom and pluralism) is remarkable and should be considered by both researchers and activists.
Daniel Rueda is a Teaching Assistant and a PhD candidate in the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London. His research focuses on analysing the role of nationalism among four European right-wing populist parties from four different countries (France, Italy, Portugal and Spain). His chief research interests are populism, nationalism, the far right, European history, intellectual history and international relations. He also works as a managing editor at Studies in Ethnicities and Nationalism (SEN), a journal based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Email: daniel.rueda@kcl.ac.uk. ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5169-2631