Towards great ethno-civilizations and spiritual empires?

Far-right parties and heads of state are often portrayed as nationalists. 

From the rallying cry of ‘America First’ to Orbán’s, Le Pen’s or Salvini’s tirades against the EU, the far-right wants to restore national sovereignty. 

Yet in a new scientific article published in reputabled scientific journal New Perspectives, senior researcher Manni Crone argues that alongside political parties with a nationalist agenda, an increasing number of voices on the radical Right are now promoting a world order in which cultures and civilizations—not nation-states—are to set the scene. 

Europe is a continent defined by ‘Christendom’; Russia by its Eurasian identity. If we are to believe scholar in International Relations, Christopher Coker, “we now live in a world in which civilization is fast becoming the currency of international politics." But why does this strand of the far-right prefer civilizations to nation-states?

To answer this question, the new essay zooms in on two main figures of the New Right, Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin. It shows how the New Right reinvents classical geopolitics to imagine a future polycentric world order in which large civilizations can finally push back against capitalist globalization and American hegemony.

The empires of the future are no longer underpinned by nation-states but by ethnopluralism—a ‘blossoming variety’ of local, ethnic polities.