The New Right and Third Worldism

The forgotten lineage of multipolar solidarity

Constantin von Hoffmeister shows how the Conservative Revolution and the French New Right anticipated today's multipolar world by calling for Europe to ally with Russia and the Third World against Atlanticist domination.

The multipolar movement of our time is often described as a reaction to American hegemony, yet its origins lie far deeper in European intellectual history. Long before the Cold War ended and the term “unipolar moment” was coined in Washington, thinkers of the German Conservative Revolution in the 1920s and early 1930s were already imagining a world beyond Atlanticist control.

They saw the dominance of Britain and later the United States as a force of suffocation, draining Europe of its independence and imposing a shallow, commercial spirit in place of rooted traditions. To them, the fate of Europe could not be secured through alignment with London or Washington, for that path would mean absorption into a Western bloc defined by materialism and liberal ideology. Instead, these thinkers believed that Europe must turn to its East, to Russia, and also to the colonized South, where peoples were struggling against imperialism. Their insight anticipated today’s BRICS formation, in which Eurasian and Global South nations seek common ground to resist the unipolar project and create a world in which no single power dictates the fate of all.

At the heart of this early current was Ernst Niekisch, who became one of the most radical voices of the interwar period. His book Hitler: A German Doom (1932) is a furious rejection of the idea that Germany should look westward. For Niekisch, the West was synonymous with decadence, plutocracy, and the empty promises of liberal democracy. He argued instead that Germany’s destiny lay in alliance with Soviet Russia, whose revolutionary energy offered the only real counterweight to the financial and industrial dominance of Britain and America. Germany would join the great Eurasian landmass in a common front of peoples rising against Atlanticist capitalism.

Beyond this, Niekisch extended his vision to the wider world, calling for solidarity with Asia and Africa, where the peoples under colonial rule were beginning to awaken and demand freedom. His advocacy of “National Bolshevism” was not merely an eccentric deviation from conventional politics but a bold expression of multipolar thinking: Germany should break its chains by fusing its own nationalist traditions with the anti-imperialist power of the Soviet Union, and by extension with the uprisings of the oppressed South. He foresaw that the global balance of power would only shift when the colonized joined hands with the great Eurasian landmass.

Ernst Jünger offered a parallel but distinct contribution to this tradition. In The Worker (1932), he described the rise of a new type of man who embodied the discipline, energy, and technological mastery of the modern age. For Jünger, the Worker was not a mere laborer but a symbol of mankind’s transformation into a figure capable of reshaping the earth. This notion stood in contrast to the bourgeois values of comfort and commerce that dominated the West.

Later, in works such as At the Time Wall (1959), Jünger reflected on the exhaustion of Western liberalism and the necessity for Europe to find new sources of strength. He was less directly political than Niekisch, but his sense of the West’s decline and his call for deeper, more elemental forms of renewal reflected the same theme: the future would not be found in imitation of Anglo-American liberalism but in the discovery of new forms of order arising from technology, myth, and destiny.

Another important voice of the Conservative Revolution was Friedrich Hielscher, whose thoughts about federalism were expressed most clearly in his book Das Reich (“The Empire”) (1932). Hielscher imagined a sacred Empire where the many peoples of Europe could retain their own traditions while uniting under a higher principle. Unlike the homogenizing tendency of liberal democracy, Hielscher’s federalism affirmed diversity within unity.

For Hielscher, the Empire was more than a political project; it was a religious epiphany of hierarchy and meaning. He imagined it as a structure in which peoples would find their rightful place, secured against both the centralizing tyranny of modern states and the leveling forces of global capitalism. His rejection of universalism set him against the Western project of liberal expansion, which he saw as flattening the organic life of cultures. Though his writings focused primarily on Europe, the logic of his federalism suggested solidarity with all civilizations resisting absorption into a single world-system. In this way, his thoughts can be read as an anticipation of today’s idea of civilization-states cooperating within a multipolar order. This principle lies today at the core of Russia’s and China’s self-understanding.

The broader philosophical framework for all of this was provided by Oswald Spengler, whose magnum opus, The Decline of the West (1918-1922), gave Europe a map of civilizational history. Spengler argued that civilizations are not interchangeable or stages on a single linear road but organic entities, each with its own soul and destiny, as well as growth and decay. He described Western civilization — or what he called the Faustian culture — as having entered its late stage, the age of Caesarism, where vitality had waned and politics became a matter of power rather than creativity.

Spengler’s insight was that civilizations follow their own destinies, each with its own inner form and rhythm of growth and decline. Europe and America, though both part of the Faustian world, differed in depth and destiny, with Europe embodying the spiritual heights and America expressing the more pragmatic, material side. By rejecting the idea of universal history and affirming the plurality of civilizations, Spengler provided one of the intellectual seeds of multipolarity. Spengler’s work taught Europeans that history is not a march towards a single liberal future but a contest of cultures, each rising and falling according to its own law.

This framework directly influenced the French New Right, which emerged after 1968 in opposition to both liberal capitalism and Marxism. Alain de Benoist, its leading thinker, drew from Spengler and the Conservative Revolution to develop a philosophy of civilizational pluralism.

In View from the Right (1977), de Benoist argued that Europe and the decolonizing South confronted the same adversary: the ideological and cultural domination of the United States, which sought to impose its liberal universalism across the globe. He wrote that NATO had reduced Europe to a military protectorate of Washington, and that the flood of American mass culture — Hollywood films, pop music, consumer brands — had created a form of cultural colonization more subtle but no less destructive than the old empires. Against this, he pointed to the struggles of the Third World as a source of inspiration.

By stressing this parallel, de Benoist gave intellectual form to a new idea of solidarity. He insisted that Europe could only regain its sovereignty by joining the same front of resistance as the peoples of the South. Just as Vietnam defeated the imperialist aggressor and Algeria broke free from French control, so Europe must break free from American dominance. Just as Latin America sought independence from Washington’s Monroe Doctrine, so Europe must escape the Atlanticist system. He saw in the liberation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America a mirror of Europe’s own quest for emancipation from hegemony. For de Benoist, these were not distant struggles but signs that history itself was turning away from the unipolar model.

This perspective amounted to multipolarity before the word existed. De Benoist’s critique of American cultural exports and his sympathy for liberation movements all pointed towards an ideal of a world organized around distinct civilizations rather than a single liberal order. His book was an early manifesto for what would later become the multipolar project: solidarity across continents, based on the defense of identity, sovereignty, and cultural integrity.

For the New Right, the ethnos — the organic community defined by shared heritage, language, and memory — formed the bedrock of political life. De Benoist argued that democracy could only function within a people bound by a common culture, since abstract individualism dissolves responsibility and belonging. His fellow thinker Guillaume Faye likewise stressed that identity is inseparable from ethnos: a Europe that forgets its peoples will be reduced to a market of consumers with no destiny. By affirming the ethnos, the New Right stood against both Marxist class reduction and liberal atomism, offering instead a vision where the people, as a living cultural organism, are the true foundation of sovereignty.

Faye carried these insights into the twenty-first century. His book Archeofuturism (1998) called for Europe to fuse its ancestral heritage with the most advanced technologies, creating a new synthesis that could renew European vitality. Unlike nostalgic traditionalists, Faye did not advocate a return to the past; he envisioned a leap forward that drew strength from myth while mastering modern science. He warned that the collapse of the liberal order would bring chaos, but also the chance for rebirth, and urged Europeans to prepare for a world of crises in which only strong identities could endure. Central to his prophecy was the idea that a small, technologically advanced elite could safeguard Europe’s survival, while the deeper cultural memory of its peoples would provide meaning and direction in a fractured age.

At the heart of Archeofuturism was Faye’s assault on egalitarianism, which he saw as the most destructive lie of modernity. He argued that nature itself is hierarchical, that excellence arises through difference, and that attempts to impose equality lead only to decline. For Faye, egalitarian ideology had weakened Europe by gnawing away at its traditions, sabotaging its identities, and denying the natural laws of life. Against this, he championed a Europe ready to embrace inequality of function and destiny, a Europe in which hierarchy, merit, and ethnos would guide the renewal of civilization. In this sense, his philosophy was both revolutionary and archaic: a call to move forward into the future while carrying the forgotten wisdom of the past.

This rejection of egalitarianism also anticipates the logic of multipolarity. Just as civilizations differ in form, depth, and destiny, so too must the world order reflect hierarchy and variety rather than uniform standards. Liberal universalism insists that all peoples must conform to the same model, ignoring real differences under the guise of fake equality. Multipolarity, by contrast, affirms that each civilization must follow its own path rather than submit to an artificial sameness. In linking the struggle against egalitarian ideology at home with the struggle against unipolar domination abroad, Faye provided us with one of the clearest bridges between the New Right and today’s revolt against globohomo.

In Why We Fight (2001), Faye set out his program more directly. He insisted that Europe must reject Atlanticist servitude and assert itself as one pole in a world of many. Central to his program was his call for a Euro-Siberian bloc: a grand strategic alliance between Europe and Russia, stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok. Faye argued that such a bloc would unite Europe’s technological power with Russia’s natural resources and strategic depth, creating a counterweight strong enough to resist American domination. Without this axis, he warned, Europe would remain a satellite, its destiny dictated by Washington.

Beyond Russia, Faye stressed that Europe must recognize Asia and the South as natural partners in the struggle against unipolarity. He pointed to the rise of China and India as signs that the world was already moving towards a multipolar balance. He welcomed the growing assertiveness of African and Latin American states, seeing in them proof that history itself was breaking out of the American mold.

For him, cooperation with these civilizations was not a concession but a necessity, since only by joining their revolt could Europe free itself from Atlanticist dependence. The great danger, in his eyes, was not engagement with Russia, Asia, or the South but continued subordination to the United States. American hegemony, he argued, meant cultural erosion: the spread of liberal ideology, consumer culture, and immigration policies designed to dissolve European identity. Subservience to Washington would not only strip Europe of sovereignty but also reduce it to a province of a global system with no roots in its history.

Seen in this light, today’s multipolar movement is not a novelty but the fulfillment of a long intellectual lineage. Russia presents itself as a civilization-state, drawing on Orthodox Christianity and Eurasian heritage. China advances its Belt and Road Initiative as a network of cooperation linking Eurasia with Africa and Latin America. India asserts its independence by balancing relations with Washington while strengthening ties with Moscow and Beijing. African nations such as South Africa, Mali, and Ethiopia demand equal treatment and turn to Eurasian partners rather than accepting Atlanticist overlordship. Latin American states, from Brazil to Venezuela, speak the language of sovereignty and integration. Together these forces embody the very principle that Niekisch, Spengler, de Benoist, and Faye each articulated: the world is plural, civilizations are diverse, and freedom requires resisting the false universalism of the West.

Today’s multipolar world is not only the heir of the Conservative Revolution and the New Right but the long-awaited realization of their vision. The call has been consistent for a century: break free from Atlanticist domination, affirm the plurality of civilizations, and forge alliances across continents. That call now resounds in practice, as Eurasia and the Global South give it flesh and power.

This article was originally published here.