Orientations for Decisive Years

In this incisive essay originally published in 1982, Alain de Benoist reflects on the electoral defeat of the right and the rise of the left in France as symptoms of deeper transformations affecting European societies.Arguing that political power is first shaped on the terrain of ideas and culture, de Benoist explores how egalitarianism, economism, and the erosion of historical memory have narrowed the horizons of political imagination and confined Europe within the Cold War divide of East and West. Advancing a penetrating critique of the impasses and contradictions of liberalism, communism, and fascism, de Benoist envisions a sovereign, holistic, and continental European project freed from ideological, political, and economic clichés.More than four decades after it first sent shockwaves throughout France, Orientations for Decisive Years remains one of the defining texts of the New Right and poses a thought-provoking set of metapolitical guidelines for a new European renaissance in the 21st century. Read more