La maison d'édition Diana propose la réimpression d'un essai de Marcel Gauchet "Droite/Gauche - histoire d'une dichotomie", enrichi d'une introduction de Marco Tarchi et d'une postface de l'auteur, annexe nécessaire à une publication datant déjà de 1992.
Les finalités, les contenus et les programmes changent mais l'"ordre de bataille" de la politique française reste formellement inchangé : dans un mélange de conflit et de fragmentation, les modérés et les alternances du centre continuent à gouverner, laissant "libre cours" aux doctrinaires des extrêmes et à un dualisme aussi élémentaire que manichéen, virulent et implacable.
Cette approche contraste avec celle "essentialiste" (identifiable, en grande partie, dans les écrits de Norberto Bobbio), qui échappe au test empirique d'une discrimination claire entre les deux catégories et n'explique pas les transformations que le passage du temps et l'évolution des circonstances ont imposées aux pratiques des partis et mouvements politiques traditionnellement placés dans l'un ou l'autre domaine.
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Il y a 80 ans, le 9 décembre 1940, Adriano Romualdi naissait à Forlì. Cet anniversaire est important pour se souvenir de cet intellectuel, demeuré jeune parce que décédé prématurément, le 12 août 1973, à la suite d'un accident de voiture. Son souvenir est resté gravé dans la mémoire de la jeune génération des années cinquante, confrontée à l'engagement politique et culturel des années soixante-dix. Adriano Romualdi était, pour cette génération, une sorte de grand frère, capable d'offrir à la vision néo-fasciste des raisons d'être plus profondes, puis d’emprunter de manière autonome les chemins d'un nouveau dynamisme culturel. Dans cette perspective, sa personnalité reste encore un exemple.
Son idée d'un droit politique "non égalitaire" repose sur ces solides fondements spirituels, que je viens d’exposer ici. C'est en septembre 1972 qu'Adriano Romualdi, à l'occasion de la conférence annuelle de la revue L'Italiano, dirigée par son père Pino, figure historique du MSI, met en évidence la distinction entre la droite (politique et culturelle) et le qualunquisme, sous ses différentes formes (qualunquisme politique, patriotique, culturel).
En dehors des contingences d'une situation politique et culturelle de cette époque d’avant 1973, qui sont nettement perceptibles dans certains passages de son œuvre écrite, inévitablement affectée par le temps qui a passé. Les bouleversements de notre époque ont changé la donne (il suffit de penser à la fin de l'URSS, à la crise de l'empire américain, à l'émergence de la mondialisation, à la montée des nouvelles économies asiatiques). Les propositions de Romualdi conservent leur valeur, dans la mesure où elles se nourrissent d'une vision profonde de la culture et donc de la politique, rejetant tout minimalisme et toute respectabilité rassurante.
L'auteur explique l'échec historique de la contre-révolution par plusieurs raisons, que nous pouvons toutefois regrouper dans une seule catégorie, relative aux techniques de communication modernes, bien trop délaissées par les penseurs contre-révolutionnaires, «largement incapables d'utiliser des méthodes modernes, une organisation, des slogans, des partis politiques et la presse» (p. 179). C'est d'ailleurs grâce à leurs écrits que les révolutionnaires ont imposé leurs idées, jusque y compris dans le camp adverse : «Á mesure que les années passaient, les idées proposées par le parti révolutionnaire paraissaient de plus en plus attrayantes, non pas en raison de leurs mérites intrinsèques, mais parce qu'elles imprégnaient le climat intellectuel, acquéraient un monopole, isolaient les idées contraires en arguant de leur modération pour prouver leur impotence» (p. 59). Cette idée n'est à proprement parler pas vraiment neuve, puisque Taine puis Maurras l'ont développée avec quelques nuances, le premier critiquant la décorrélation de plus en plus prononcée entre la réalité et les discours évoquant cette dernière (2), le second affirmant que la Révolution française ne s'était pas produite le 14 juillet 1789 mais, comme l'écrit Molnar, qu'«elle s'est faite bien avant au tréfond[s] de l'esprit et de la sensibilité populaires, imprégnés des écrits des philosophes» (p. 65). D'une certaine manière, cette thèse fut aussi développée par le général Giraud qui dans un article paru durant l'été 1940 attribua une partie de la défaite française à la littérature, coupable à ses yeux d'avoir sapé les bases de la nation, puis par Jean Raspail dans son (trop) fameux 
Il serait pour le moins difficile de dénier à Thomas Molnar la justesse de tels propos, y compris si nous devions tracer quelque parallèle avec notre propre époque, où triomphent ces «intellectuels des classes moyennes» (p. 108) qui à force de cocktails et de mauvais livres cherchent à s'émanciper de leur caste, pour fréquenter les grands, ou ceux qu'ils considèrent comme des grands, tout en n'affectant qu'un souci fallacieux de ce qu'ils méprisent au fond par-dessus tout et qu'ils sont généralement vite prêts à qualifier du terme méprisant (dans leur bouche) de peuple. Ce peuple est instrumentalisé, et ce n'est que par tactique que les intellectuels révolutionnaires peuvent donner l'impression de le flatter, voire de le respecter : «Ce qui est essentiel, les révolutionnaires ont rapidement compris que bien que 1789 ait ouvert la porte du pouvoir aux masses, celles-ci ne l'utiliseront jamais pour elles-mêmes, mais permettront seulement qu'il passe entre les mains de ces nouveaux privilégiés que sont les entraîneurs de foules, les faiseurs d'opinion et les idéologues» (p. 119). Finalement, la révolution n'est pas grand-chose, si nous nous avisions de la séparer de ses béquilles, que Thomas Molnar appelle «sa méthode de propagation dans tous les coins de la société» (p. 110) et, surtout, l'élevage quasiment industriel de ces intellectuels si remarquablement définis par 
L'écrivain contre-révolutionnaire, quoi qu'il affirme, reste irrévocablement marqué au fer du provincialisme et, précise Thomas Molnar, est accablé par la mauvaise conscience de ceux «qui n'ont pratiquement jamais entendu répéter leurs paroles, vu reprendre leurs idées» (p. 174) : «il ne représente au regard de l'histoire qu'un moment peut-être brillant, mais passé, donc isolé, déposé loin du lit principal du fleuve» (p. 122), alors que, en face de lui, vainqueur qui n'a même pas eu besoin de mener un combat, se dresse l'intellectuel révolutionnaire, un de ces hommes «perpétuellement déchirés entre l'action et la réflexion, le bureau du philosophe et les barricades du révolutionnaire, la prose résignée du sceptique et l'allure de David devant Goliath, le mépris de l'esthète devant le chaos et l'enthousiasme du guerillero dans le feu de l'action» (pp. 126-7), description qui pourrait sans aucune difficulté s'appliquer à la majorité de nos propres penseurs révolutionnaires et même, sans doute, aux rares qui font profession de penseurs contre-révolutionnaires ou, disent les pions universitaires, d'
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Amid the social turmoil of the late 1960s, the German Communist student Rudi Dutschke called for a “long march through the institutions” as the preferred strategy of ensuring the victory of global Marxist revolution. The success of this initiative is no more prominent in the West than in today’s academia, where Frankfurt School Critical Theory and its related trend, postmodernism, maintain an iron grip of control over the intellectual atmosphere, viciously rooting out all forms of dissent through outing, outrageous accusations, public shaming, firing, and, all too often, the tragic consequence of permanently destroying one’s future. Should any uppity academic arrogate to oppose the systemic “deconstruction” of the heteronormative, cisnormative, patriarchal, ethnocentric, elitist, religious West, their villainous resistance to tolerance and progress will be justly silenced.
Naturally, such quasi-Stalinist practices (we will remove “quasi” once incarceration, and not the loss of one’s livelihood, becomes the normal penalty for opposition) make a bad impression on those yet unconvinced of the merits of these intellectual traditions. Popular figures such as Jordan Peterson and Pat Buchanan are well known for their criticisms of critical theory, with the unfortunate consequence that their obstinacy in truly engaging with the school has resulted in more than a few jokes and the vehement refusal of most men on the Right to see anything valuable in the enemy’s unwavering criticism and deconstruction of the modern West’s various sacred cows. Peterson is often mocked by Leftist intellectuals and their followers for his tirade against “postmodern neo-Marxism,” quick to see the movement as nothing but a nihilistic and epistemologically skepticist cult with no real conviction for anything but frenetic revolution. Pat Buchanan, in The Death of the West, [1] [1] acknowledges the Frankfurt School’s success in undermining the various institutions of our civilization, but can only pathetically anathematize critical theory as “anything but benign” [2] [2] in the typical fashion of a paranoid and impotent American “conservative” who is chronically unable to realize the inevitable, downward-spiraling consequences of the Enlightenment project and fears for the destruction of his comfortable, consumer lifestyle. Accusing the cultural Marxists of preferring psychological conditioning to philosophical argument, [3] [3] Buchanan fails to see the irony when he continues to merely restate the anti-Western positions of critical theorists in order to generate panic in his readership without producing any real understanding or alternative, openly remarking a few pages later that “traditionalists have yet to discover effective countermeasures.” [4] [4]
But they have. If “traditionalists” have yet to discover effective methods to defend the West’s traditional values, it is only because Buchanan conflates traditionalism — more specifically, Traditionalism — with his own “paleoconservatism” and worship of classical liberal American principles. It is indisputable that Republicans, Right-wing libertarians, and other mainstream conservatives are more concerned with the performance of the stock market and a vague notion of “liberty” than they are with the much more tangible and profound issues of demographic change, the family, spiritual well-being, and other matters factoring into the question of whether or not the proverbial “pursuit of happiness” means anything more than the hollow satisfaction offered by monetary gain; consequently, they are by no means willing to actively engage with self-professed enemies of Western Civilization through anything but the occasional pseudointellectual garbage (of which The Death of the West is a slightly above average example) regurgitated by “thinkers” like Dinesh D’Souza or Ben Shapiro. This is owed in no small part to the time-honored American tradition of anti-intellectualism and the fact that any real action would cost them their own, slightly older, modernist ideals. However, once one is willing to recognize that a true conservatism entails a rejection of all revolutionary tendencies and thus begins to look outside the camp of those satisfied with self-destructive American principles, one sees that the Right itself has access to an entire critical tradition of its own, older than that of the Frankfurt School, which needs only to be revived to fight academic Leftism with its own methods: a radical disillusionment with the bourgeois narrative of progress combined with a systematic effort to establish an intellectual elite of theorists through securing as much influence as possible by openly working to deconstruct all modern myths.
That is to say, if the Right can look beyond the specific, unappealing conclusions of critical theorists and postmodernists and instead take inspiration from their methods as a whole, this tradition could be recovered. But, once again, what is meant by “Right” is no milquetoast Americanist conservatism, nor even the illiberal ethnonationalism of the “alt-right,” which are both essentially modernist. Rather, what might be termed “Right-wing critical theory” is fully and fundamentally counter-revolutionary, in the intellectual vein of the Traditionalists René Guénon and Julius Evola. To the extent that the “West” is identified with the individualistic, secularist paradigm of European society following the Enlightenment and French Revolution, Right-wing critical theory can even be termed anti-Western. Opposing material and moral progress, the bourgeois invention of the nation-state, the artificial dichotomy of capitalism and communism, the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment and its arrogant dismissal of other cultural traditions, stale Christian moralism, biological racism, the unjust oppression of colonized peoples by mercantile European empires, the primacy of science, and a plethora of other ideas specific to the modern West, Evola and Guénon frequently sound like trendy postmodern academics or other “cultural Marxist” intellectuals. If the Traditional Right is to crush — or “deconstruct” — the ideologies and institutions that led to the genesis of decadent modernity, then they would do well to imitate the critical theorists by looking at our own critical tradition as developed by these seminal thinkers and thus catch the enemy off guard by using his own weapons. In what follows, I will list five excerpts (though I could list many, many more) that demonstrate Guénon and Evola’s uncanny skill in challenging the distorted and puerile Weltanschauung of Western bourgeois civilization.
Let us begin with the central myth of modernity. Regarding the idea of progress, Evola, in Revolt Against the Modern World, states:
No idea is as absurd as the idea of progress, which together with its corollary notion of the superiority of modern civilization, has creative its own “positive” alibis by falsifying history, by insinuating harmful myths in people’s minds, and by proclaiming itself sovereign at the crossroads of the plebeian ideology from which it originated. . . . Our contemporaries must truly have become blind if they really thought they could measure everything by their standards and consider their own civilization as privileged, as the one to which the history of the world was preordained and outside of which there is nothing but barbarism, darkness, and superstition. [5] [6]
Written during the existential crisis of faith experienced by the champions of liberalism in the wake of the Second World War, Guénon appraises the idea of material progress:
However, let us consider things for a moment from the standpoint of those whose ideal is material “welfare,” and who therefore rejoice at all the improvements to life furnished by modern “progress”; are they quite sure they are not being duped? Is it true that, because they dispose of swifter means of communication and other things of the kind, and because of their more agitated and complicated manner of life, men are happier today than they were formerly? The very opposite seems to us to be true: disequilibrium cannot be a condition of real happiness. Moreover, the more needs a man has, the greater the likelihood that he will lack something, and thereby be unhappy; modern civilization aims at creating more and more artificial needs, and as we have already said, it will always create more needs than it can satisfy, for once one has started on this path, it is very hard to stop, and, indeed, there is no reason for stopping at any particular point. [6] [7]
Next, for those who know all too well the Leftist lecture on how everything is merely a “social construct,” let us take a look at Evola’s views on the modern nation-state, taken from the same work, wherein the “nation” is only a result of the degeneration of the higher ideal of the Imperium, or Empire:
Modern nationalism is not based on a natural unity, but on an artificial and centralizing one . . . Regardless of its myths, the substance of modern nationalism is not an ethnos [emphasis original] but a demos, and its prototype always remains the plebian one produced by the French revolution. . . . It is well known that in Europe during the nineteenth century, nationalism was synonymous with revolution . . . What emerges in nationalism is an opposite aspect, namely, the cumulative and collectivizing element. [7] [8]
What may be most surprising is how similar the Guénonian-Evolian critique of European colonialism sounds to modern liberal-academic critiques of the same; far from praising the conquering spirit of the European people, Guénon and Evola strictly condemn the cruel spread of materialism and “progress” to other parts of the globe, the subsequent economic exploitation, the laughable intimations of Western superiority, and the perceived unbridgeable differences between East and West. Any reader who has taken a college course or two on an Eastern culture will probably have heard of the Gramscian Marxist and postmodernist writer Edward Said, who in 1978 published Orientalism (a holy book in today’s universities), accusing Western civilization, which supposedly sees itself as masculine, active, rationalistic, and progressive, of caricaturizing the East — fundamentally Other — as feminine, passive, superstitious, and regressive, and using this depiction to justify colonialism. Long before Said penned Orientalism, however, Guénon, as early as 1927, had already dismissed the arrogance of modernist Western scholars who had failed to understand the East, blaming the supposed divide between Occident and Orient on the West’s abnormality:
There is no essential opposition between [traditional civilizations] . . . On the other hand, a civilization that recognizes no higher principles, but is in reality based on a negation of principles, is by this very fact ruled out from all mutual understanding with other civilizations . . . There was no reason for opposition between East and West as long as there were traditional civilizations in the West as well as in the East; the opposition has meaning only as far as the modern West is concerned, for it is far more an opposition between two mentalities than between two more or less clearly defined geographical entities. [8] [9]
Often misrepresented as a sadistic, militarist fascist bent on oppressing others for the mere hell of it, Evola, in Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems from the Perspective of the Right, critiques Western imperialism:
. . . but especially with regard to the Orient the idea of “superiority of civilization” was a mere presumption of the white races, as was the conviction that Christianity made the Occident the bearer of the true faith, authorizing it to a haughty detachment from the rest of humanity, which it considered “pagan” and barbaric. . . . The myth of superiority, which in the end justified every sort of abuse and oppression, rested on the progressivist superstition — that is on the idea that science and technological civilization constitute the last word on the history of the world, and secure the Europeans of the global right to a general “civilizing” work. [9] [10]
It is quite obvious that the similarities with the critical theorists extend only as far as the act of criticism itself, only in recognizing that there is a crucial problem with the world today and the subsequent initiation of intellectual-cultural militancy against it; thus, the critical Right must in truth act as a counter-criticism, combating the pernicious assumptions of the modern world as well as of the Marxist theorists themselves. One clear example is found in Evola’s doctrine of the regression of the castes, viewing bourgeois society as a morphological anomaly of civilizations but even more harshly condemning the Marxist-led proletarian movements which seek to replace it. [10] [12] Nor could the formation of a true Right-wing critical theory flourish without a concomitant spiritual awakening; as today’s subversive academics are fueled by a religious white guilt and bourgeois pity for “oppressed” minorities, the Right ought to draw strength from a source indescribably higher.
One might object that the formation of an intellectual elite in today’s increasingly dystopian environment is fanciful at best and delusional at worst. After all, Guénon, in The Crisis of the Modern World, explicitly advocated for the formation of an élite intellectuelle to make contact with spiritual representatives of the East in order to direct the West back onto a course of normality, eventually giving up on this possibility late in life. Likewise, Evola’s idea of the Männerbund (though this was less intellectual for him) has hardly come to fruition. Furthermore, open critical dissent — that is, not merely expositions of one’s own ideology, but the direct deconstruction of the dominant paradigms peddled by the Leftist elite — isn’t safe for a family man with a job.
However, as the technocratic surveillance state tends increasingly towards practical omnipotence and omnipresence, and those preferring to stick to the shadows in some remote corner of America become increasingly unable to do so, one must ask oneself what alternatives are left. Nor should anyone mistakenly believe that a Right-wing critical theory would discourage complementary action; as the 60s generation marched in the streets, their allied intellectuals fervently published in their defense. It is also worth considering that the revolutionaries themselves faced the same dangers of loss of their livelihoods, reputations, or even lives through active dissent. If true men of the Right can ride the tiger by adopting the same methodologies of deconstruction and disillusionment as their subversive opponents, and use their increased popularity to gain ever more prominent positions with society, then as long as the counter-revolution sticks to truly Traditional principles, perhaps the tide can be turned. Counter-Currents already recognizes that the culture war is truly crucial.
If modernity is a prison, then we must survey the movements of our guards to learn how to escape.
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Notes
[1] [15] Patrick J. Buchanan, “Four Who Made a Revolution,” in The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.
[2] [16] Buchanan, 80.
[3] [17] Buchanan, 83.
[4] [18] Buchanan, 90.
[5] [19] Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1995. p. xxx.
[6] [20] René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World. Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004. p. 93.
[7] [21] Evola, 339.
[8] [22] Guénon, 21-22.
[9] [23] Julius Evola, Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems from the Perspective of the Right. London: Arktos Media, 2017. p. 90.
[10] [24] The regression of castes permeates Evola’s work. For an overview, see “The Regression of the Castes” in Revolt. See also “The Historiography of the Right” in Recognitions for an example of the appropriation of Marxist methodologies for Right-wing purposes.
Me relisant, je me dis que j'ai finalement du mérite à m'être en fin de compte plongé dans la lecture de l'ouvrage de François Bousquet dont on ne pourra guère m'accuser, du coup, de vanter louchement les mérites qui, sans être absolument admirables ni même originaux, n'en sont pas moins bien réels : mes préventions, toujours, tombent devant ma curiosité, ma faim ogresque de lectures, et ce n'est que fort normal.
Reste une autre solution, plus fictionnelle, donc métapolitique, que réellement, modestement politique, sur le papier en tout cas ne souffrant point l'endogamie propre à l'élite française, de droite comme de gauche, solution purement romanesque qu'explore Bruno de Cessole dans son dernier livre, L'Île du dernier homme, et que nous pourrions du reste je crois sans trop de mal rapprocher de la vision de l'Islam développée depuis quelques années par Marc-Édouard Nabe, consistant à trouver, dans la vitalité incontestable des nouveaux Barbares, le sang nécessaire pour irriguer la vieille pompe à bout de force d'un Occident en déclin, d'une France complètement vidée de sa substance, d'un arbre, si cher au 
Ensuite, Daniel Cologne tente de définir la Droite dans un deuxième chapitre. Celui-ci fait le constat qu’« une des plus belles victoires du terrorisme intellectuel de la Gauche a été d’imposer à l’opinion une fausse définition de la Droite (p. 9) ». Sa définition de la Droite est en fait synonyme de verticalité, belle référence évolienne. « Julius Evola propose d’ailleurs de redéfinir la Droite comme une tournure d’esprit traditionaliste. L’homme de droite est celui qui adhère aux valeurs dont on trouve l’empreinte dans toutes les grandes civilisations indo-européennes : prééminence du politique, de l’éthique et du culturel sur l’économique et le social, nécessité d’un État fort capable d’organiser en un tout cohérent la pluralité naturelle de la société, nécessité de l’aristocratie (au sens étymologique grec de “ gouvernement des meilleurs ”), reconnaissance des valeurs héroïques comme critères de l’élite, refus du matérialisme (p.10). »
Dans son texte, « Le retour de la vraie Droite », l’auteur revient en premier lieu sur l’ascension culturelle de la Gauche et conqtate que « les idéaux de l’Occident ont subi une inversion totale, et des idées qui se situaient initialement à la périphérie de l’extrême gauche ont été élevées au rang de normes sociales qui prévalent aujourd’hui dans l’éducation, les médias, les institutions gouvernementales et les ONG privées (p. 2) ». Un tel résultat, nous explique l’auteur, n’aurait pas pu être possible sans « les sociologues et philosophes marxistes de l’Institut für Sozialforschung de Francfort [qui], au début du XXe siècle, visaient, au travers de la conception de la philosophie et leur analyse sociale sélective, à saper la confiance dans les valeurs et hiérarchies traditionnelles (p. 2) ». Sans doute que d’autres facteurs sont rentrés en ligne de compte concernant l’involution de l’Occident, et non pas uniquement des facteurs politiques, mais cela ne rentre peut-être pas dans la grille de lecture de l’auteur – ce qui n’enlève rien, par ailleurs, à la justesse de ses propos.
EM : 
For full disclosure, let me mention that at least one of Scott’s French contacts, Arnaud Imatz, who represents perfectly the kind of French intellectual he describes, is someone whom the author met through me. Arnaud and I have been friends and correspondents for over 30 years, and his understanding of the French nation and the enjeu social (social question) confronting his people make eminently good sense to Scott and me. Although I have focused on German more than French intellectual history, most of the authors and social critics whom Scott cites are for me familiar names. I agree with Scott that Éric Zemmour, a Moroccan Jew who has tried to revive the sense of French honor that he associates with the late General de Gaulle, illustrates the new identitarian French politics. So too does the iconoclastic novelist Michel Houellebecq, who, despite his shockingly erotic work, clearly loathes multiculturalism and despises French Islamophiles. Another figure in this Pleiades of intellectuals of the French right is Christophe Guilluy, who often sounds like the French Steve Bannon. In his books La France périphérique(2014) and Le crepuscule de la France d’en haut (2016), Guilluy comes to the defense of that 60 percent of the French population living on the “periphery,” that is, outside of metropolitan areas and the sprawling suburbs. These are the “les Francais de souche,” the true indigenous French, whom the globalist elites treat like human waste while they cut production costs by bringing in cheap labor from the Muslim Third World.
Streets named after saints were given new names, and statues of saints were actually guillotined. (These people guillotining statues were the rational ones, you understand.) The calendar itself, rich with religious feasts, was replaced by a more “rational” calendar with 30 days per month, divided into three ten-day weeks, thereby doing away with Sunday. The remaining five days of the year were devoted to secular observances: celebrations of labor, opinion, genius, virtue, and rewards.
Is Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s description partly out of date? After all, who touts their allegiance to “diversity” more than the left? But the left’s version of diversity amounts to uniformity of an especially insidious kind. No one may hold a dissenting view about the desirability of “diversity” itself, of course, and “diverse” college faculties are chosen not for their diversity of viewpoints but precisely for their dreary sameness: left-liberals of all shapes and sizes. What’s more, by demanding “diversity” and proportional representation in as many institutions as possible, the left aims to make all of America exactly the same.
This program, wrote Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “oozes the spirit of leveling leftism: it was democratic; it was anti-Habsburg (it demanded the destruction of the Danube monarchy in favor of the Pan-German program); it was against all unpopular minorities, an attitude that is the magnetism of all leftist ideologies.”
For instance, 
, the 2010 Stanford University Press book on anti-globalization movements by Charles Lindholm and José Pedro Zúquete contains a quite balanced and well-informed chapter on the European New Right. (See Michael O’Meara’s review 
contains extensive chapters on the French National Front and Italy’s Northern League.
In chapter 1, Hawley argues that modern American conservatism was defined by William F. Buckley and National Review in the 1950s. The conservative movement was a coalition of free market capitalists, Christians, and foreign policy hawks. Hawley points out that based on ideology alone, there is no necessary reason why any of these groups would be Right wing or allied with each other. Indeed, the pre-World War II “Old Right” of people like Albert Jay Nock and H. L. Mencken tended to be anti-interventionist, irreligious, and economically populist and protectionist rather than free market. National Review was also philo-Semitic from the start and increasingly anti-racist, whereas the pre-War American Right had strong racialist and anti-Semitic elements. What unified the National Review coalition was not a common ideology but a common enemy: Communism.
Chapter 5, “Ready for Prime Time?” is devoted to mainstream libertarianism, including Milton Friedman, the Koch Brothers, the Cato Institute, Reason magazine, the Ron Paul movement, and libertarian youth organizations. Chapter 6, “Enemies of the State,” deals with more radical strands of libertarianism, including 19th-century American anarchists like Josiah Warren and Lysander Spooner, the Austrian School of economics, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, the Mises Institute, and the Libertarian Party. Again, Hawley has read widely with an unfailing eye for essentials.
Paleoconservatism is defined in opposition to neoconservatism, the largely Jewish intellectual movement that largely took over mainstream conservatism by the 1980s, aided by William F. Buckley who dutifully purged their opponents. Since the neoconservatives are largely Jewish, and many of the founders were ex-Marxists or Cold War liberals, their ascendancy has meant the subordination of Christian conservatives and free marketeers to the hawkish interventionist wing of the movement. Now that the Cold War is over, the primary concern of neoconservative hawks is tricking Americans into fighting wars for Israel.
Chapter 9, “Voices of the Radical Right,” covers White Nationalism in America, with discussions of progressive era racialists like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard; contemporary race realism; the rise and decline of such organizations as the KKK, American Nazi Party, Aryans Nations, and the National Alliance; the world of online White Nationalism; and Kevin MacDonald’s work on the Jewish question — which brings us up to where we started, namely the task of forging a North American New Right.
