French political activist and essayist (1949?2019)
Guillaume Faye
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Faye in 2015
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Born
| (
1949-11-07
)
7 November 1949
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Died
| 6 March 2019
(2019-03-06)
(aged 69)
Paris, France
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Notable work
| Archeofuturism
(1998),
Why We Fight
(2001)
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Notable ideas
| New right
[2]
Futurism
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|
Guillaume Faye
(
French:
[?ijom
faj]
; 7 November 1949 ? 6 March 2019) was a French political theorist, journalist, writer, and leading member of the
French New Right
.
Continuing the tradition of
Giorgio Locchi
,
his various articles and books sought to posit Islam as a nemesis necessary to unite the white non-Muslim peoples of Europe and the former Soviet Union into an entity named "Eurosiberia". Faye considered regional and national grievances to be counterproductive to this goal and was supportive of
European integration
.
Scholar
Stephane Francois
describes Faye as "pan-European revolutionary-conservative thinker who is at the origin of the renewal of the doctrinal corpus of the French
Identitarian Right
, and more broadly of the Euro-American Right, with the concept of 'archeofuturism'."
Biography
[
edit
]
Early life and education
[
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]
Guillaume Faye was born on 7 November 1949 in
Angouleme
from a bourgeois family close to the
Bonapartist
right.
He attended the
Paris Institute of Political Studies
, where he ran the student's associations
Cercle Pareto
and Association GRECE between 1971 and 1973.
GRECE
[
edit
]
On the advice of
Dominique Venner
, Faye joined
GRECE
in 1970, an
ethno-nationalist
think tank led by
Nouvelle Droite
thinker
Alain de Benoist
.
He soon became the head of movement's Secretariat for Research and Studies, and one of the major Nouvelle Droite theorists. Faye wrote at that time for many New Right journals such as
Elements
,
Nouvelle Ecole
,
Orientations
, and
Etudes et Recherches
.
From 1978, he became a promoter of the strategy of "
metapolitics
" embodied by GRECE, although he eventually failed his project of entryism within the mainstream right-wing newspaper
Figaro Magazine
.
At the same time, in the early 1980s, he gave courses in the sociology of sexuality at the
University of Besancon
.
[10]
Departure from GRECE
[
edit
]
According to Nicolas Lebourg, Guillaume Faye was expelled from GRECE at the end of 1986, and his eviction was notably caused by his references to
Jean-Francois Thiriart
[11]
After intellectual and financial disagreements with de Benoist, Faye was marginalized in GRECE. He is said to have been ousted from the think tank in late 1986, although his departure was only officially announced in August 1987 via a letter wrote by
Pierre Vial
to the newspaper
Le Monde
.
According to Robert Steuckers, on the other hand, Guillaume Faye would have left on his own in April-May 1987, due to disagreement on the evolution of GRECE and the way he was treated by
Alain de Benoist
.
Faye justified his departure as follows: "The New Right, like GRECE, are no more than a shadow of themselves and have given up the fight for identity. They have abandoned any idea of defending European identity and, like false rebels, eager to be recognized (obviously in vain) by the system, they align themselves completely with the positions of the far left and the diplomatic world , for example: Islamophilia,
Third-worldism
, radio silence on immigration (“avoidance” strategy: above all not talking about what shocks), summary
anti-capitalism
, relentless and ineffective
anti-Americanism
, distressing, rowdy and hateful
anti-Zionism
”.
[2]
Later, he published in his book L'Archeofuturisme(1998) a memorandum, in which he underlines the responsibilities of Alain de Benoist in what he considers to be the failure of the “new right”. He believes that it has become bogged down in "dead ends", such as a folk paganism, a "revised leftism", or a "fetishism for empty words". He believes that the concept of the new right has gone bankrupt because "now burdened with too many ambiguities."
Media Career
[
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]
Faye then distanced himself from political activism and became actively involved with the media industry. Between 1991 and 1993, he worked as an entertainer under the name of 'Skyman' at the
urban
radio station
Skyrock
.
He was also a journalist at
L'Echo des Savanes
and
VSD
, and appeared on the
France 2
talk-show
Telematin
.
[13]
Faye taught the sociology of sexuality at the
University of Besancon
,
and he has also claimed to have acted in pornographic films.
Return to political activism
[
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]
Faye went back to political activism in 1998 with the publication of his book
Archeofuturism
, followed in 2000 by
The Colonization of Europe
.
The latter, criticized as "strongly racist" by de Benoist, earned him a criminal conviction for incitement to racial hatred.
Faye organized conferences with GRECE sympathizers,
Monarchists
,
Traditional Catholics
and
neo-Pagans
. At the request of de Benoist, however, he was excluded once again from GRECE in May 2000.
Faye then became close to
Terre et Peuple
, a neo-Pagan movement founded in 1995 by former GRECE members
Pierre Vial
,
Jean Mabire
and
Jean Haudry
, but he was also expelled in 2007 after the publication of his book
The New Jewish Question
('La Nouvelle Question Juive'),
regarded within some revolutionary-nationalist and Catholic traditionalists circles as too overly "Zionist".
In 1999 and 2002, he was invited to speak at conferences organized by the
Club de l'Horloge
, a national-liberal think tank led by
Henry de Lesquen
.
Faye died on 6 March 2019, after a long battle with
cancer
.
While his death received limited media coverage in the mainstream press, he was praised by many far-right activists, including
Jean-Marie Le Pen
,
Dan Roodt
,
Daniel Friberg
,
Greg Johnson
,
Jared Taylor
,
Richard Spencer
, and
Martin Sellner
.
Ideas
[
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]
GRECE period (1970?1987)
[
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]
A key concept of Faye's thought is that
paganism
? viewed as a quasi-ideal object aligned on the cosmic order that allowed for a
holistic
and
organic
society ? is a rooted and
differentialist
religion, and thus a solution to the dominant "
mixophile
" and
universalist
worldview of the West.
Faye has also participated in the diffusion of an identity defined as biological and cultural.
In 1979, he argued that immigration, rather than immigrants, should be combated in order to preserve cultural and biological "identities" on both sides of the
Mediterranean Sea
.
His first books, published in the early 1980s, developed a rejection of the consumerist society and the standardization and Westernization of the world, one of Faye's intellectual constants. For him, a multiracial society is by essence "multiracist", and he has called for the return of non-European immigrants to their respective "civilizational areas".
In 1985, Faye stated that Zionist "opinion circles" in France had forced the French government to break ties with the
Ba'athist regime
of
Saddam Hussein
, and he has denounced "Zionist lobbies" in the US that wished to influence geopolitics in favour of
Israel
.
After his return to politics in the late 1990s, however, Faye reversed from his pro-Arab position and became a supporter of Israel as a potential political ally of circumstance against Arabs and Muslims.
Later period (1998?2019)
[
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]
Through several books Faye published from the late 1990s onward, which he conceived as an appeal to the "ethnic awareness" of Europeans, Faye became an important ideologue of
nativism
and advocated a form of
racialism
that scholar
Stephane Francois
has described as "reminiscent of the 1900s to the 1930s".
The "ethnic foundations of a civilization", Faye argued, "rest on its biological roots and those of its peoples."
He has also made references to the "loyalty to values and to bloodlines", promoted
natalist
and
eugenicist
politics to resolve Europe's demographic issues, and adopted a racialist
Darwinian
concept of the "struggle of the fittest", regarding other civilizations as enemies to be eliminated.
Faye believed the West to be threatened by its demographic decline and decadent social fabric, by a supposed ethnoreligious clash between the North and the South, and by a series of global financial crisis and uncontrolled environmental pollution. To avoid the announced civilizational and ecological collapse, Faye has promoted an authoritarian regime led by a "born chief", a charismatic and providential man protecting the people's identity and ancestry, and taking the right decisions in emergency situations.
Faye also condemned what he has called "ethnomasochism", defined as the self-hating of one's own ethnic group.
In
Why We Fight
, originally published in 2001, Faye defined '
metapolitics
' as the "social diffusion of ideas and cultural values for the sake of provoking profound, long-term, political transformation."
[26]
"Archeofuturism", a concept coined by Faye in 1998, refers to the reconciliation of
technoscience
with "archaic values".
He argues that the term "archaic" should be understood in its original
Ancient Greek
, that is to say as the 'foundation' or the 'beginning', not as a blind attachment to the past.
According to Faye, anti-moderns and
counter-revolutionaries
are actually mirror-constructs of modernity that share the same biased linear conception of time. Defining his theories as "non-modern", Faye was influenced by
Friedrich Nietzsche
's concept of
eternal return
and
Michel Maffesoli
's post-modern sociological works.
Political scientist
Stephane Francois
has described archeofuturism as a combination of "post-modern philosophy, some elements of Western counterculture, and racism."
Influence
[
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]
In the 1980s, his work was translated into English, Italian, German, or Spanish, and Faye spoke at numerous conferences organized by
European New Right
groups. Although he had initially abandoned all political activities in the late 1980s, his first books and articles continued to be discussed among American activists of the nascent movement that was later called the "
Alt Right
".
Following his comeback to political writings, Faye renewed his links with GRECE and nationalist-revolutionary militants between 1998 and 2006. He became an important figure of "national-westernism", finding himself alongside European
far-right
militants the likes of
Gabriele Adinolfi
,
Pierre Krebs
,
Ernesto Mila
,
Pierre Vial
or
Galina Lozko
to defend the "future of the white world", as one conference organized in Moscow in June 2006 was entitled.
After 2006, Faye took part in conventions organized by the
American Renaissance
association led by
Jared Taylor
, and his ideas have been discussed by the American Alt Right website
Counter-Currents
.
His works from the second intellectual period have been translated into English by
Arktos Media
,
described as the "uncontested global leader in the publication of English-language
Nouvelle Droite
literature."
The writings of Faye and Alain de Benoist, especially their
metapolitical
stance, have also influenced American far-right activist
Richard B. Spencer
, Swedish
Identitarian
Daniel Friberg
, and the
Identitarian movement
at large.
As for de Benoist, Faye's writings were discussed in the American
New Left
journal
Telos
, founded by philosopher
Paul Piccone
.
According to Stephane Francois, Faye "is responsible for the doctrinal renewal of French
nativism
and, more widely, for the development of the European-American radical Right".
The translation of his books
Archeofuturism
and
Why We Fight
in English by Arktos in 2010 and 2011 made Faye into a "celebrity-intellectual" within the global New Right network.
Works
[
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]
- Le Systeme a tuer les peuples
, Copernic 1981.
- Contre l'economisme
, Le Labyrinthe, 1983.
- Sexe et Ideologie
, Le Labyrinthe, 1983.
- La Nouvelle societe de consommation
, Le Labyrinthe, 1984.
- L'Occident comme declin
, Le Labyrinthe, 1984.
- Avant-guerre
, Carrere, 1985.
- Nouveaux discours a la Nation
Europeenne, Albatros, 1985.
- Europe et modernite
, Eurograf, 1985.
- Petit lexique du partisan europeen
(collaborator), Eurograf, 1985.
- Les Nouveaux enjeux ideologiques
, Le Labyrinthe, 1985.
- La Soft-ideologie
(collaborator as Pierre Barbes), Robert Laffont, 1987.
- Le Guide de l'engueulade
, Presses de la Cite, 1992.
- Viol, pillage, esclavagisme, Christophe Colomb, cet incompris : essai historico-hysterique
, Grancher, 1992.
- Le Manuel du seducteur presse
, Presses de la Cite, 1993.
- L'Archeofuturisme
, L'Aencre, 1998. English translation:
Archeofuturism
, Arktos, 2010.
- La Colonisation de l’Europe: discours vrai sur l’immigration et l’Islam
, L’Æncre, 2000. English translation:
The Colonisation of Europe
, Arktos, 2016.
- Les Extra-terrestres de A a Z
, Dualpha, 2000.
- Pourquoi nous combattons: manifeste de la resistance europeenne
, L’Æncre, 2001. English translation:
Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance
, Arktos, 2011.
- Chirac contre les fachos
, GFA, 2002.
- Avant-guerre
, L’Aencre, 2002.
- Le coup dEtat mondial: Essai sur le Nouvel Imperialisme Americain.
, L’Æncre, 2004. English translation:
A Global Coup
, Arktos, 2017.
- La congergence des catastrophes.
, L’Æncre, 2004. English translation:
Convergence of Catastrophes
, Arktos, 2012.
- La Nouvelle Question juive
, Le Lorre, 2007.
- Sexe et Devoiement
, Les editions du Lore, 2011. English translation:
Sex and Deviance
, Arktos, 2014.
- L'Archeofuturisme V2.0 : nouvelles cataclysmiques
, Le Lorre, 2012. English translation:
Archaeofuturism 2.0
, Arktos, 2016.
- Mon programme: Un programme revolutionnaire ne vise pas a changer les regles du jeu mais a changer de jeu
, Les Editions du Lore, 2012.
- Comprendre l'islam
, Tatamis, 2015. English translation:
Understanding Islam
, Arktos, 2016.
- Guerre civile raciale
, Editions Conversano, 2019. English translation:
Ethnic Apocalypse: The Coming European Civil War
, Arktos, 2019 (foreword by
Jared Taylor
)
- Nederland
, posthumous novel, Editions Conversano, 2020.
References
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]
Bibliography
[
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]
- Bassin, Mark (2021). "Geopolitics or ethnopolitics? Guillaume Faye, the European far right, and the 'Russia problem'
".
Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy
. Routledge. pp. 103?120.
doi
:
10.4324/9781003105176-9
.
ISBN
978-1-003-10517-6
.
S2CID
238697212
.
- Camus, Jean-Yves
;
Lebourg, Nicolas
(2017).
Far-Right Politics in Europe
.
Harvard University Press
.
ISBN
978-0674971530
.
- Camus, Jean-Yves (2021). "Guillaume Faye, from New Right intellectual to prophet of the racial civil war".
Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-1000431902
.
- Francois, Stephane
(2008).
Les neo-paganismes et la Nouvelle droite, 1980-2006: pour une autre approche
. Arche.
ISBN
978-88-7252-287-5
.
- Francois, Stephane
(2019). "Guillaume Faye and Archeofuturism". In
Sedgwick, Mark
(ed.).
Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy
.
Oxford University Press
. pp. 91?101.
ISBN
978-0-19-087760-6
.
- Lamy, Philippe (2016).
Le Club de l'Horloge (1974-2002) : evolution et mutation d'un laboratoire ideologique
(PhD thesis).
University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis
.
- Maly, Ico (2022).
"Guillaume Faye's legacy: the alt-right and Generation Identity"
.
Journal of Political Ideologies
.
28
: 35?61.
doi
:
10.1080/13569317.2022.2045460
.
ISSN
1356-9317
.
S2CID
247141591
.
- Teitelbaum, Benjamin R.
(2017).
Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism
.
Oxford University Press
.
ISBN
978-0-19-021259-9
.
External links
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