Nouvelle Droite - Etymology and History

Etymology and History

The term Nouvelle Droite was first mentioned in the French media in 1979, in a media campaign against GRECE and the Club de l'Horloge. Some authors have traced it to Le Figaro editor and GRECE member Louis Pauwels, who wrote in the France Soir of March 29, 1979: "My positions are those of what we can call the 'new right', and have nothing to do with the bourgeois, conservative, and reactionary right."

Louis Pauwels, former director of the fantastic realist magazine Planète, entered in September 1977 the cultural services of Le Figaro, and became in October 1978 the director of the newly created weekly Le Figaro Magazine. The latter would become one of the main means of dissemination of the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite, including GRECE member Patrice de Plunkett as deputy chief editor, as well as fellow GRECE members Alain de Benoist, Jean-Claude Valla, Yves Christen, Christian Durante and Michel Marmin. Although other currents were represented in Le Figaro Magazine, the weekly remained one of the main mouthpieces of the Nouvelle Droite until 1981 and the election of François Mitterrand.

Some of the prominent names that have collaborated with GRECE include Arthur Koestler, Hans Eysenck, Konrad Lorenz, Mircea Eliade, Raymond Abellio. Thierry Maulnier, Jean Parvulesco, and Anthony Burgess.