From Critique to Reaction: The New Right, Critical Theory and International Relations

Across the globe, radical conservative parties, transnational movements and ideas are influencing and even reshaping the landscape of international politics. From the United States to the European Union and beyond, populist and nationalist forces have come together in an “international nationalist” movement, challenging established mainstream norms, practices and institutions, leading some to declare the emergence of an unpredictable and unsettling “right-wing international.” These ideas and movements have attracted increasing attention in international political theory. Some researchers question why, in an era when vigilance toward such ideas is necessary, international relations theory contains no content concerning these reactionary currents. Others have begun excavating the marginalized or forgotten genealogies of radical conservative international theory, tracing their contemporary expressions, influences and implications. Given certain contemporary events, such research is crucial; if international political theory is to understand and respond to the challenges posed by the New Right, it needs to expand and deepen its investigations.

放眼全球，激进保守主义的政党、跨国运动和理念正在影响甚至改变国际政治的格局。从美国到欧盟以及其他地区，民粹主义与民族主义的力量在“国际民族主义的”运动中走到一起，挑战既有的主流规范、实践和制度，而这导致一些人宣称，一个不可预测和令人不安的“右翼国际”（right-wing international）出现了。这些理念和运动在国际政治理论中已经引起了越来越多的关注。一些研究者质疑，在一个有必要对这些理念保持警觉的时代，为什么国际关系理论中却没有任何有关这些反动思想的内容。其他研究者则开始挖掘被边缘化或被遗忘的激进保守主义国际理论的谱系，追寻它们在当代的表达、影响和含义。鉴于当代发生的某些事件，这类研究至关重要，如果国际政治理论想要理解和应对新右翼带来的挑战，就需要扩大和深化相关研究。

This article seeks to contribute to this research by combining two seemingly most unlikely partners: critical theory and the New Right. At first glance, this combination appears, at best, an impractical fantasy, and at worst, a perverse contradiction. From its inception, critical international theory has been largely defined as inheriting the mantle of progressive politics. Inspired by Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, early “critical” thought clearly diverged from conservative realist approaches, which failed to acknowledge the possibility of progressive change. Similarly, theories inspired by Jürgen Habermas sought to conceive political communities transcending territorial or nation-state boundaries, while critiques of neoliberal economics and global governmentality aimed to expose global power structures and inequalities, along with potential sources of resistance against them.

本文试图通过将批判理论与新右翼这两个看似最不可能的搭档组合在一起，为这种研究作出贡献。乍一看，这一组合在最好的情况下也只是不切实际的空想，在最坏的情况下则可能悖逆常理。从一开始，批判的国际理论（critical international theory）就基本上被定义为继承了进步主义政治的衣钵。受安东尼奥·葛兰西（Antonio Gramsci）和法兰克福学派的启发，早期的“批判”思想显然与保守的现实主义研究路径截然不同，因为后者未能认可进步主义变革的可能性。同样，受于尔根·哈贝马斯（Jürgen Habermas）启发的理论试图构想超越领土或民族国家边界的政治共同体，而对新自由主义经济学和全球治理术的批评则试图揭示全球的权力结构和不平等，以及可以抵抗它们的潜在的力量来源。

However, the intellectual resources and genealogies of critical theory are by no means the exclusive domain of progressive thinkers and movements. This article proposes a completely different, even unsettling possibility: the most effective appropriation of numerous critical ideas across contemporary Western societies comes neither from the liberal universities of the Atlantic world nor from the “progressive” movements of the political Left with which critical theory is usually allied. Quite the contrary, it comes from today’s radical conservatism. In fact, as we aim to show, many of the ideas and themes that have long been cornerstones of critical social theory and international theory—from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, to the Frankfurt School’s analysis of capitalist society and mass consumerism, to postmodernism—have been appropriated and mobilized by the New Right, thereby turning these critical theories to clearly non-progressive, and often reactionary, ends. These intellectual forms have developed outside academia, weaving insights from critical theory into new and mobilizing conservative ideologies, and seeking to combine this ideology with social forces that are increasingly playing an effective role in global politics.

然而，批判理论的思想资源和谱系绝非进步主义思想家和运动的专属领域。本文提出了一种完全不同的、甚至令人不安的可能性：当代西方各界对众多批判思想的最有效挪用，既不是来自大西洋世界的自由主义大学，也不是来自批判理论通常与之结盟的政治左翼的“进步主义”运动。恰恰相反，它们来自当今的激进保守主义。事实上，正如我们想要表明的那样，许多长期以来一直是批判的社会理论和国际理论之基石的观点和主题——从葛兰西的霸权思想，到法兰克福学派对资本主义社会和大众消费主义的分析，再到后现代主义——都被新右翼所挪用和调动，从而使这些批判理论被转而用于明显是非进步的、而且往往是反动的目的。这些思想形式在学术界之外发展，将批判理论中的观点编织成新的和动员性的保守主义意识形态，并试图将这种意识形态与在全球政治中日益发挥有效作用的社会力量结合起来。

The intention of this article is not to attribute responsibility for New Right ideas to critical theory perspectives, either directly or through indirect association. Rather, we aim to show how linking the New Right with critical theory helps us better understand the nature and characteristics of its contemporary struggle against the liberal order in politics and international relations. This connection also reveals an important theoretical and political challenge: today’s “critical” international relations theory often seems marked by self-doubt regarding its own theoretical foundations and practical significance, while the New Right rarely exhibits such hesitation. The New Right actively deploys critical theory themes for reactionary purposes, directly challenging the view that critical theory is inherently linked to progressive political ends. If critical theory, and international political theory more broadly, is to effectively confront the intellectual and political challenges posed by today’s New Right, it is essential to squarely face this theoretical and political strategy.

本文的意图并非以直接方式或通过间接关联而把新右翼理念产生的责任归之于批判理论的视角。相反，我们试图表明，将新右翼与批判理论联系起来如何有助于我们更好地理解它在当代政治和国际关系中对抗自由主义秩序的本质和特征。这种联系还揭示了一个重要的理论和政治挑战：如今的“批判的”国际关系理论似乎常常以对自身理论基础和实践意义的自我怀疑为标志，而新右翼却很少表现出这样的疑虑。新右翼积极地调用批判理论的主题来达到反动的目的，这对认为批判理论与进步主义的政治目的有着固有联系的观点提出了直接挑战。如果批判理论以及更广泛意义上的国际政治理论想要有效地应对当今新右翼带来的思想和政治挑战，那么正视这种理论和政治策略是非常必要的。

I. A Gramsci for the Right?

一、支持右翼的葛兰西？

The New Right referred to in this article denotes the intellectual vanguard that has provided much of the ideological impetus for the revival of the radical right in Europe, the United States and elsewhere since the end of the Cold War. This New Right takes various forms and expressions in different countries. In Europe, its historical origins are generally traceable to the French “Nouvelle Droite” organization founded in 1968 by Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Guillaume Faye, and other right-wing intellectuals associated with the Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne (GRECE). This right-wing organization’s agenda took shape against the backdrop of the intellectual and cultural movements and economic crises that profoundly shook Western societies at the time, triggering multiple ideological realignments.

本文所说的新右翼（New Right），指的是自冷战结束以来为激进右翼在欧洲、美国以及其他地区的复兴提供了大部分意识形态动力的思想先锋。这种新右翼在不同国家有多种形态和表现方式。在欧洲，它的历史渊源一般可以追溯到1968年由阿兰·德伯努瓦（Alain de Benoist）、多米尼克·韦内（Dominique Venner）、纪尧姆·法耶（Guillaume Faye）以及与“欧洲文明研究学习小组”(Groupement de recherché et d’études pour la civilization européenne)关系密切的其他军方右翼知识分子共同创建的法国“新右翼”（Nouvelle Droite）组织。当时的思想文化运动和经济危机大大震撼了西方社会，引发了多重意识形态重组，而这一右翼组织的议程正是在此背景下形成的。

A key move marking the emergence of the French New Right was its strategic marriage with Gramsci’s critical legacy, aimed at developing what Venner then called “right-wing Gramscianism.” This signified a major shift in strategy within the French radical right. Previously, the French radical right had been guided by the “integral nationalism” of Charles Maurras, philosopher of the Action Française. Although Maurras insisted on the importance of decisive and confrontational political engagement, many of the young people who helped found the New Right in the late 1960s had been such activists; they firmly believed that broad intellectual and cultural activity was a prerequisite for successful political action. Organizing around GRECE, they abandoned the far right’s extra-parliamentary militant approach, pursuing instead a long-term strategy that de Benoist called “metapolitics.” This strategy was premised on the idea that all great political revolutions in modern European history had been achieved through evolution in the intellectual and cultural sphere.

标志着法国新右翼出现的一个关键举措，是与葛兰西的批判遗产的战略性联姻，其目的是发展韦内当时所谓的“右翼葛兰西主义”。这标志着法国激进右翼内部的策略发生了重大变化。在此之前，法国激进右翼一直以“法兰西行动”（Action Française）的哲学家夏尔·莫拉斯（Charles Maurras）的“整体民族主义”（integral nationalism）为指导。尽管莫拉斯坚持决定性的和对抗性的政治参与的重要性，但许多在1960年代末参与创立新右翼的年轻人都曾是这类活动分子，他们坚信广泛的思想文化活动是政治行动取得成功的先决条件。他们围绕“欧洲文明研究学习小组”组织起来，放弃了极右翼在议会外进行激进行动的路线，转而追求一种被德伯努瓦称为“元政治”(metapolitics)的长期战略。这种战略以这样一种观念为前提：现代欧洲历史上所有伟大的政治革命都是通过思想文化领域的演变而实现的。

Although culture and its relationship to political power had always played a significant role in the philosophy of the Counter-Enlightenment, de Benoist and his GRECE colleagues believed that the post-war right had seriously neglected this relationship. In its obsession with combating communism, it had embraced American free-market doctrines and a consumerist culture of cheap entertainment and technological fetishism. In contrast, the French New Right undertook a broad reassessment and critique of modernity, including a measured questioning of capitalism. The appropriation of Gramscian intellectual resources provided the New Right with new strategic perspectives and facilitated the blurring of traditional distinctions between Left and Right, aiming to neutralize the rhetorical force of left-wing Gramscian discourse while adding a revolutionary appeal and post-fascist intellectual credibility to radical right-wing positions.

尽管文化及其与政治权力的关系在反启蒙运动的哲学中一直扮演着重要角色，但德伯努瓦及其“欧洲文明研究学习小组”的同仁们都相信，战后的右翼严重忽视了这种关系。在痴迷于对抗共产主义的过程中，它拥抱了美国的自由市场教义以及廉价娱乐和技术拜物教的消费主义文化。与之形成对照的是，法国“新右翼”组织对现代性进行了广泛的重估和批判，包括对资本主义的有节制的质疑。对葛兰西主义思想资源的挪用为新右翼提供了新的战略观点，并为其模糊左右翼之间的传统区别提供了便利，其目的是抵消左翼运用葛兰西主义的话语所产生的雄辩力量，同时为激进的右翼立场添加某种革命的吸引力和后法西斯主义思想的可信度。

The New Right has multiple manifestations, and different theorists have carried out the above-mentioned appropriation in different ways. Nevertheless, overall, this appropriation expresses a common conviction: the ideological and cultural movements of the 1960s have successfully politicized all spheres of human activity; henceforth, parliamentary debate and government policy only confirm the outcomes of the culture war; the egalitarian principles of the Left have achieved hegemony in virtually all institutions of civil society, the state, and the international arena. In this situation, the New Right concludes that the only viable strategy to challenge the “cultural power” of its opponents is to turn the Left’s ideological critique against the Left’s own universalist categories and egalitarian common sense. Its aim is to reshape public debate at the meta-level of theory by rearticulating the ideas, concepts, and meanings through which people understand and define the world around them, and to provide the intellectual foundation for a political movement capable of challenging the Left and the mainstream liberal order.

新右翼有多种表现，不同的理论家以不同的方式进行了上述挪用。然而，总体而言，这种挪用表达了一个共同的信念：1960年代的思想文化运动已经成功地将人类活动的所有领域政治化了；从此，议会辩论和政府政策只会确认文化战争的结果；左翼的平等主义原则已经在几乎所有的市民社会、国家和国际机构中拥有了霸权地位。在这种情况下，新右翼得出如下结论：挑战其对手的“文化权力”的唯一可行策略，是将左翼的意识形态批判转而用于反对左翼自身的普遍主义范畴和平等主义常识。其目的是通过重新阐述人们用来理解和定义周围世界的理念、概念和意义，在理论的元层面（meta-level）重塑公共辩论，并为能够挑战左翼和主流的自由主义秩序的政治运动提供思想基础。

By the early 1980s, analogous organizations across Europe, such as the Italian “New Right” (Nuova Destra), the German “New Right” (Neue Rechte), and the French “New Right” (Nouvelle Droite), had all adopted similar methods, producing an important transnational network of publications, publishing houses, research groups, conferences, front organizations, and online platforms that constitutes what participants and observers now call the “European New Right.” In the 1990s, de Benoist and his associates also became major contributors to the journal *Telos*. This journal was the influential flagship of Frankfurt School critical theory in the United States—though always heterodox. In the view of its founding editor, Paul Piccone, this transatlantic post-Cold War alliance indicated that, in the face of an increasingly predatory neoliberal global governance regime, the traditional categories of Left and Right had become obsolete. Piccone reflected and even succeeded in promoting a repositioning of New Right ideology, claiming: “The French New Right—if it can still be placed anywhere on the right-wing spectrum—has redefined itself by absorbing 95% of standard New Left ideas. But, in general, there is no longer anything that can be defined as ‘Right.’”

截至1980年代初，意大利“新右翼”（Nuova Destra）、德国“新右翼”（Neue Rechte）以及法国“新右翼”（Nouvelle Droite）等遍及欧洲的同类组织均采用了类似的方法，产生出一个由出版物、出版公司、研究小组、会议、前沿组织和在线平台组成的重要的跨国网络，构成了参与者和观察家如今所说的“欧洲新右翼”（European New Right）。1990年代，德伯努瓦及其同仁还成为《泰勒斯》（Telos）杂志的主要撰稿人。该杂志是法兰克福学派批判理论在美国的具有影响力的旗舰——尽管一直属于非正统。在其创刊主编保罗·皮科内（Paul Piccone）看来，这一跨大西洋的后冷战联盟表明，面对愈发具有掠夺性的新自由主义全球治理体制，传统的左右翼范畴已经过时。皮科内反思甚至成功地推动了新右翼意识形态的重新定位，他声称：“法国新右翼——如果仍有可能将其继续放在右翼光谱中的任何位置上——已经通过吸收95%的标准的新左翼理念重新定义了自身。但是，总的来说，已经不再有任何东西可以被定义为‘右翼’。”

This characterization of the New Right’s intellectual strategy as a bridge transcending Left and Right is naive and highly misleading. For the core of its Left-inspired aims is a systematic effort to disseminate the right-wing ideas and visions typical of some distinctly conservative figures in the history of Western political thought. This is not merely a matter of opening up new research, producing new editions, making new translations, and launching new commentaries to introduce well-known, forgotten, or previously unpublished texts to a new generation of readers. It is also a conscious strategy of cultural hegemony that seeks to shape the European New Right’s identity, collective self-understanding, and agenda by constructing its own intellectual history and genealogy. The New Right traces back to the counter-revolutionary tradition of writers such as Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Louis de Bonald. But above all, it seeks to inherit the legacy of thinkers of the 20th-century “Conservative Revolution,” such as Arthur van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, and Julius Evola. As we will see later, its goal is not to restore a golden age destroyed by the Industrial Revolution and the advent of mass democracy, but to articulate new, anti-liberal ideological alternatives that seek to radicalize some of the most powerful dynamics of modernity in order to accommodate traditional communitarian and spiritual “values.”

这种将新右翼的思想化战略描述为超越左与右的桥梁的做法是幼稚的，而且具有强烈的误导性。因为，其受左翼启发的目标，核心是系统性地努力传播西方政治思想史上一些立场鲜明的保守派人物典型的右翼理念和愿景。这不只是开创新研究、制作新版本、进行新翻译、展开新评论,以便让新一代读者接触到众所周知的、被遗忘的或以前未曾发表过的文本的问题。这也是一种有意识的文化霸权战略，它试图通过构建自己的思想史和谱系来塑造欧洲新右翼的身份认同、集体自我理解和议事日程。新右翼回溯了约瑟夫·德迈斯特（Joseph de Maistre）、胡安·多诺索·科尔特斯（Juan Donoso Cortes）和路易·德博纳尔德（Louis de Bonald）等作家的反革命传统。但是，最重要的是，它试图继承20世纪“保守主义革命”思想家的遗产，如阿瑟·范登布鲁克（Arthur van den Bruck）、奥斯瓦尔德·斯宾格勒（Oswald Spengler）、恩斯特·荣格尔（Ernst Jünger）、卡尔·施密特（Carl Schmitt）和尤利乌斯·埃弗拉（Julius Evola）等人。正如我们稍后将要看到的那样，其目标并非恢复被工业革命和大众民主的到来所摧毁的黄金时代，而是阐明新的、反自由主义的意识形态替代方案，这些替代方案试图将现代性中一些最强大的动能激进化，从而容纳传统的共同体主义和精神“价值观”。

In the United States, these efforts to link renovated conservative ideas with specific social forces are closely related to the historical development of the paleoconservative movement. In the mid-1980s, intellectual historian and Schmitt scholar Paul Gottfried, together with historian Thomas Fleming, coined the term “paleoconservatism” in an attempt to revive the driving forces of the Old Right, aiming to counter the growing influence of neoconservatism and the neoliberal strand within conservatism—both of which were often confusingly labeled “New Right” in the United States and Britain at the time. In the view of paleoconservatives, this mainstream conservatism was actually a “neoliberal” version of conservatism that reinforced the power of the liberal order rather than providing a foundation for a genuine conservative revival. In seeking to develop an “alternative Right,” they also turned to Gramsci.

在美国，这些将革新后的保守主义理念与特定的社会力量联系起来的努力，与旧保守主义运动的历史发展密切相关。1980年代中期，思想史学家和施密特研究者保罗·戈特弗里德(Paul Gottfried)与历史学家托马斯·弗莱明(Thomas Fleming)一起创造了“旧保守主义”（paleoconservatism）一词，试图复兴老右翼（Old Right）的推动力量，目的是对抗新保守主义以及保守主义中的新自由主义脉络日益增长的影响力——后两者在当时的美国和英国同样常常令人困惑地被指认为“新右翼”。在旧保守主义者看来，这种主流保守主义实际上是保守主义的“新自由主义”版本，它重新强化了自由主义秩序的力量，而不是为真正的保守主义复兴提供基础。为了寻求发展“另类右翼”（alternative Right），他们也求助于葛兰西。

Few thinkers have explored these issues as deeply as the influential writer and columnist Sam Francis. Like the European New Right, Francis emphasized the importance of waging a cultural struggle against the prevailing liberal order. In his view, the problem for conservatives was: “While we will find much in the conservative tradition to teach us what we want to preserve and why we want to preserve it, we find almost nothing in conservative theory to guide us in the strategies and tactics for challenging the dominant authority. Instead, we need to look to the Left to understand how the politically subordinate, culturally dispossessed majority of Americans can regain their legitimate position as the dominant and creative core of American society.” Around the same time that Gramscian intellectual resources gained attention in international political theory, Francis suggested that if “America’s cultural right is to reclaim that culture from those who have usurped it, one will find it beneficial to study Gramsci’s thought.”

很少有思想家像有影响力的著作家和专栏作家山姆·弗朗西斯（Sam Francis）那样深入探讨这些问题。像欧洲新右翼一样，弗朗西斯强调了通过开展文化斗争来反对盛行的自由主义秩序的重要性。在他看来，保守派的问题是：“虽然我们会在保守主义传统中找到很多东西，来教导我们什么是我们想要保存的，以及我们为什么想要保存它，但我们在保守主义理论中几乎找不到用以指导我们挑战主流权威的战略和战术。相反，我们需要向左看，以理解政治上处于从属地位、文化上被剥夺的大多数的美国人如何才能恢复其作为美国社会的主导性和创造性核心的合法地位。”大约在葛兰西主义思想资源在国际政治理论中得到重视的同时，弗朗西斯建议，如果“美国的文化权利是要从那些篡夺了美国文化的人那里夺回这一文化，那么人们将会发现研究葛兰西的思想是有益的”。

Francis argues that conservatives have ceded control of cultural institutions, products and power to liberal elites. Consequently, even when conservatives win elections, they are unable to exercise genuine political power. Francis draws on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, insisting that real political power ultimately depends on the recognition granted by the ruled classes, because the ruled classes and those who determine the existing distribution of goods — together with the institutions behind them that decide how this distribution occurs and define the limits of permissible disagreement in that process — are all grounded in shared values, perceptions, beliefs and prejudices. Thus, within this framework, a class-based interpretation of history is not necessarily confined to open struggle between oppressor and oppressed; instead, it may reveal a process in which the ruling class successfully avoids confrontation by cultivating among the oppressed a complex mixture of support, apathy and compliance — what Gramsci calls “consent” or “contradictory consciousness.” Therefore, “in order to challenge the dominance of any established authority, it is necessary to build a counter-hegemonic cultural apparatus, a ‘counter-hegemony’ (or what the New Left called a ‘counter-culture’) independent of the dominant cultural machine and capable of producing its own belief system.”

弗朗西斯认为，保守派已经将文化机构、产品和权力的控制权拱手让给了自由派精英。因此，即使保守派在选举中获胜，也无法行使真正的政治权力。弗朗西斯引用葛兰西的霸权理论，坚持认为真正的政治权力最终取决于被统治阶级所遵从的承认，因为被统治阶级与决定现有商品分配的人——连同这些人背后决定这种分配如何发生并决定该过程中可容许分歧的限度的制度——都是立足于共同的价值观、认知、信仰和偏见。因此，在这个框架中，对历史的阶级性诠释不一定拘泥于压迫者与被压迫者之间的公开斗争；相反，它可能揭示了一个过程，在该过程中，统治阶级通过在被压迫者中培养一种支持、冷漠和顺从的复杂混合物——葛兰西称之为“同意”（consent）或“矛盾意识”（contradictory consciousness）——而成功地避免了对抗。因此，“为了挑战任何既定权威的支配地位，有必要建立一个与之抗衡的文化机构，一个独立于占支配地位的文化机器并能够产生自己的信仰体系的‘反霸权’(或新左翼所称的‘反文化’)”。

Despite his focus on cultural struggle, Francis still believes that socio-economic class remains a key part of political transformation. In fact, he argues that the experiences and failures of radicals within the New Left exposed the limitations of a purely cultural strategy detached from the social forces — especially the working class — capable of successfully advancing it. From this perspective, a key weakness of the New Left lies in the fact that its counter-cultural politics clashed with the bulk of the working class, whom the New Left dismissed as conformist or blindly self-confident. Francis and his fellow Old Right conservatives disagree with this accusation. Instead, they argue that, driven by economic insecurity and cultural resentment within the white industrial working class, the mobilisation of the working class is a potential catalyst for radical conservatives to challenge the liberal order. Their goal thus became to provide an analysis of liberal cultural power and its weaknesses, and to construct a cultural strategy capable of mobilising the aforementioned groups into a counter-hegemonic force — that is, a political identity and ideology.

尽管专注于文化斗争，弗朗西斯还是相信，社会—经济阶级仍然是政治转型的关键部分。事实上，他认为，新左翼中的激进分子的经历和失败暴露了单纯的文化战略的局限性，这种战略脱离了能够成功推进这一战略的社会力量——特别是工人阶级。在这种观点看来，新左翼的一个关键弱点在于这样一个事实，即它的反文化政治与大部分工人阶级相抵触，而新左翼将这部分人斥之为墨守成规或盲目自信。弗朗西斯和他的旧保守派同仁们不同意这种指责。相反，他们认为，在白人产业工人阶级（industrial working class）内部的经济不安全感和文化怨恨的激发下，对工人阶级的动员是激进保守派挑战自由主义秩序的潜在催化剂。因此，他们的目标变成了提供一种关于自由主义文化权力及其弱点的分析，并构建一种能够动员上述群体成为反霸权力量的文化战略，即一种政治认同和意识形态。

Over the past decade or so, this agenda has been advanced by a series of advocates of “alternative right” ideologies. They have attracted various publishing houses and media platforms, such as Counter-Current Publishing, the North American New Right, American Renaissance, and other white nationalist actors closely connected with European counterparts. In the version of white nationalism advocated by Greg Johnson, the so-called “metapolitics” of the European New Right is translated into two main activities in the American context: the first is education, namely “elucidating and disseminating forms of white nationalism applicable to the interests and perspectives of all white constituencies. This includes not only theoretical work in the ivory tower, but also artistic expression, topical cultural and political commentary, and all media that disseminate them”; the second activity aims to organise and develop “real-world communities that live according to our current vision and may become seeds of a future new order.” At present, political organisation is a systematic goal for the vast majority of the New Right, which will be combined with the goal of training new young cadres, undertaking what the Charlemagne Institute calls a “long march” through cultural, commercial and governmental institutions.

在过去10年左右的时间里，这一议程被一系列“另类右翼”意识形态的倡导者所推动。他们吸引了各种出版机构和传媒平台，如“逆流出版公司”（Counter-Current Publishing）、“北美新右翼”（North American New Right）、“美国复兴”（American Renaissance），以及其他同样与欧洲的参与者联系密切的白人民族主义行动主体。在格雷格·约翰逊（Greg Johnson）所倡导的白人民族主义版本中，欧洲新右翼所谓的“元政治”在美国背景下转化为两大主要活动：第一大活动是教育，即“阐明和传播适用于所有白人选区的利益和观点的白人民族主义诸形式。它不仅包括象牙塔里的理论工作，还包括艺术表达、具有话题性的文化和政治评论，以及传播它们的所有媒体”；第二大活动的目标是组织和发展“现实世界的共同体，这些共同体按照我们目前的愿景生活，并可能成为未来新秩序的种子”。目前，政治组织是绝大多数新右翼的一个系统性目标，它将与培训新的青年骨干的目标相结合，承担起查理曼研究所(Charlemagne Institute)所说的文化、商业和政府机构的“长征”。

II. Conservatism and the New Class: A Critique of Neoliberalism — A Turning Point

二、保守主义与新阶级:对新自由主义的批判——一个转折点

Of course, the New Right’s marriage with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is highly selective. Although Gramsci criticised the “economism” of the Second International, he still believed that the social bonds of class were ultimately more real than those of family, community and religion. His interpretation of “consent” and “contradictory consciousness” is constrained by a rationalist psychology and a revolutionary teleology that can only view workers’ discontent as the embryonic form of class consciousness — a class consciousness that Marx theorised as opposition to inhuman systems of exploitation. The New Right takes class seriously but evades the question of class consciousness. Instead, it suggests we understand late modern capitalism as part of a new “managerial society.” In this society, the adversary is not the abstract logic of extraction driven by the market and the profit motive of the bourgeoisie, but a deliberate mechanism of exploitation closely linked to the concrete driving forces of the so-called “New Class.”

当然，新右翼与葛兰西的霸权理论的联姻具有高度的选择性。尽管葛兰西批判第二国际的“经济主义”，但他仍然认为阶级的社会纽带最终比家庭、共同体和宗教的社会纽带更真实。他对“同意”和“矛盾意识”的诠释受到理性主义心理学和革命目的论的束缚，而这种目的论只能将工人的不满视为阶级意识——马克思对这种反对毫无人性的剥削制度的阶级意识进行了理论阐述——的雏形。新右翼重视阶级问题，但却回避了阶级意识问题。相反，它建议我们将晚期现代资本主义理解为新的“管理型社会”（managerial society）的一部分。在这种社会中，对手并不是由市场和资产阶级的利润动机所驱动的抽象的榨取逻辑，而是与所谓“新阶级”的具体推动力量密切相关的蓄意剥削机制。

The roots of this New Class theory can be traced back to late-19th-century critiques of Marxism and later critiques of Soviet-style communism. In the mid-20th century, Bruno Rizz and James Burnham relaunched a more systematic critique. Burnham argued that a “New Class” of skilled administrators, by using redistributionist ideology, had successfully gained power in government, industry and media — a phenomenon not unique to Soviet Russia but also a main feature of fascist regimes and welfare democracies throughout Europe and North America. The new managerial state emerging from these experiments “is based neither on a market economy nor on socialist equality.” Instead, it elevates a managerial stratum that has already captured the corporate economy into a class that now designs and delivers state-mandated social services and dominates technological development. Progressive elites began to dominate the “technocratic state” and turned its expanded new power to combating prejudice, providing social services and welfare, and punishing violations of freedom of expression and lifestyle.

这种新阶级理论的根源可以追溯到19世纪末对马克思主义的批评以及后来对苏联式共产主义的批评。20世纪中叶，布鲁诺·里兹（Bruno Rizz）和詹姆斯·伯纳姆(James Burnham)重新发起了更加系统的批判。伯纳姆辩称，一个由技术熟练的行政人员组成的“新阶级”，通过利用再分配主义的（redistributionist）意识形态，成功地在政府、产业和媒体中获得了权力，它并非苏俄所独有，也是整个欧洲和北美的法西斯政权和福利民主国家的主要特征。从这些实验中产生的新的管理型国家“既不是建立在市场经济的基础上，也不是建立在社会主义平等的基础上”。相反，它将一个已经俘获了法团主义经济体（the corporate economy）的管理者阶层提升为一个如今会设计和提供国家授权的社会服务并主导技术发展的阶级。进步主义的精英们开始主导“技术官僚国家”，并将其扩展的新权力转而用于打击偏见，提供社会服务和福利，并对侵犯表达自由和生活方式自由的行为进行惩罚。

The New Right uses the term “new class” in a similar way, referring to the growing social stratum of experts, including corporate executives, university lecturers, lawyers, computer programmers and bureaucrats—who occupy positions of economic and political power in the post-industrial “information” society. These elites control the mechanisms for the centralised organisation of the masses, and they have a vested interest in applying uncertain, yet “professional” and “therapeutic” knowledge to solve social problems. The “War on Poverty” and progressive reforms implemented through bureaucratic regulation, as well as the “rights culture” in which rights are increasingly determined by liberal experts and judges rather than by the public will, all embody this agenda and the way it empowers and rewards the new elite and its associated client groups. According to this account, the shift in the West since the mid-1970s from “New Deal”/social democratic liberalism to neoliberalism should not be interpreted as a market-driven withdrawal of state institutions from society, but rather as an administrative move from expanding material rights toward behavioural control. Cuts to expensive welfare benefits have been replaced by government commitments to cheaper, yet still generous, therapeutic and disciplinary programmes. These programmes maintain domination and promote the interests and expansion of the “therapeutic state” and the “administrative state”.

新右翼以类似的方式使用“新阶级”一词，用来指代与日俱增的专家这一社会阶层，包括公司高管、大学讲师、律师、计算机程序员和官僚——他们在后工业“信息”社会中占据着拥有经济和政治权力的位置。这些精英控制着对大众组织进行中央集权的机制，他们在应用不确定的、但却是“专业的”和“疗救性的”知识来解决社会问题方面拥有既得利益。通过官僚主义的监管实施的“向贫困宣战”和进步主义改革，以及权利越来越多地由自由派专家和法官而不是公众意愿决定的“权利文化”（rights culture），都体现了这一议程以及它赋权并奖励新精英和与之相关的客户群体的方式。根据这种描述，自1970年代中期以来，西方从“新政”/社会民主自由主义到新自由主义的转变，不应被诠释为一场由市场驱动的国家机构从社会中的退出，而应被诠释为一种从扩大物质权利走向行为控制的行政转变（an administrative move）。昂贵的福利待遇的削减被政府对更低廉的、但仍然慷慨的疗救性（therapeutic）和规训性（disciplinary）项目的承诺所取代。这些项目维持了统治，促进了“管理型体制”和“行政国家”的利益和扩张。

The Frankfurt School once discussed the oppressive contradictions of seemingly free capitalist societies in the 20th century; and, as many prominent New Right theorists acknowledge, their critique of neoliberal managerialism overlaps in important respects with those highly influential Frankfurt School discussions, and even draws inspiration from them. From the early 1940s to the late 1960s, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse wrote extensively on how capitalism, by co-opting the modernist counter-culture and transforming it into a commodity, barely avoided a fatal systemic crisis of legitimacy. By analysing how the emerging “culture industry” turned the expression of individuality into an instrument for administratively creating consumerism, they sought to explain how mass media had altered the process of socialisation previously carried out in the family and community, thereby producing individuals susceptible to manipulation by advertising and bureaucracy. In this one-dimensional, fully administered society, the space for critical forces seemed increasingly narrow, and the historical mission of the proletariat to lead modernity toward liberation appeared ever more implausible. In these accounts, while critical theory retained its belief in the power of negativity and its resistance to liberal capitalism, this resistance lacked a convincing historical process and agent.

法兰克福学派曾经论述了20世纪看似自由的资本主义社会的压迫性矛盾；而正如众多举足轻重的新右翼理论家所承认的，他们对新自由主义的管理主义（neoliberal managerialism）的批判在一些重要方面与法兰克福学派的那些极具影响力的论述相重叠，甚至从中获得了灵感。1940年代初至1960年代末，西奥多·阿多诺（Theodor Adorno）、马克斯·霍克海默（Max Horkheimer）和赫伯特·马尔库塞（Herbert Marcuse）撰写了大量文章，论述资本主义如何通过收编现代主义的反文化并将其转化为商品，进而勉强地避免了致命的系统性的合法性危机。通过分析新兴的“文化产业”如何将表达个性转变为以行政方式创造消费主义的工具，他们试图解释大众媒体如何改变了以往在家庭和共同体中进行的社会化过程，从而产生了容易受广告和官僚机构操纵的个体。在这个单向度的完全被监管的社会中，批判力量所拥有的空间似乎越来越小，而无产阶级引领现代性走向解放的历史使命似乎也越来越令人难以置信。在这些论述中，虽然批判理论保留了它对否定性力量的信念和对自由资本主义的反抗，但这种反抗却缺乏令人信服的历史进程和行动主体。

At the time, many conservatives and Cold War liberals agreed with the sociological analysis underpinning this pessimistic diagnosis. Although these thinkers did not in principle reject the continued rule of capitalism, they feared that the successful commodification of consumerism and counter-culture would lead to the internalisation of subversive tendencies into the normative structure of liberal capitalist institutions. This “hedonistic” or “decadent” culture was then eroding traditional values and solidarity, as well as the bourgeois worldview—the latter having historically guided liberal democratic societies to distinguish freedom from licence and provided them with a Stoic resignation to unavoidable racial and economic inequalities. Few captured these anxieties better than Daniel Bell. In his neoconservative analysis of the “cultural contradictions of capitalism”, Bell wrote:

当时，许多保守派人士和冷战时期的自由主义者都赞同支撑这一悲观诊断的社会学分析。尽管这些思想家原则上不排斥资本主义的持续统治，但他们担心，消费主义和反文化的成功商品化会导致颠覆性倾向内化为自由资本主义制度的规范结构。这种“享乐主义的”或“颓废的”文化当时正在侵蚀传统的价值观和团结以及资产阶级的世界观——后者在历史上引领自由民主社会将自由与放纵区分开来，并为这些社会提供了一种斯多葛式的顺从，以应对难以避免的种族和经济不平等。很少有人比丹尼尔·贝尔（Daniel Bell）更能捕捉到这些疑虑。在对“资本主义文化矛盾”的新保守主义分析中，贝尔写道：

(The trajectory of contemporary society has been) dominated by a modernist principle that subverts bourgeois life, while the lifestyle of the middle class is dominated by a hedonism that undermines the Protestant ethic which provides the moral foundation for society. The cultural contradictions of capitalism consist of the interaction of three elements: the modernist models developed by serious artists; the institutionalisation of those uncreative cultural forms by the “cultural mass”; and the hedonistic lifestyle promoted by the commercial marketing system. Modernism is exhausted and no longer threatening. Hedonism satirises it by imitating its tedium. But the social order either lacks a culture that provides a symbolic expression of any vitality, or lacks a moral impulse with incentive or coercive force. So what can hold society together?

（当代社会的发展轨迹已经）被一种颠覆资产阶级生活的现代主义原则所支配，而中产阶级的生活方式则被一种享乐主义所支配——这种享乐主义削弱了为社会提供道德基础的新教伦理。资本主义的文化矛盾由以下三者的相互作用构成：严肃的艺术家发展的现代主义模式；“文化大众”（cultural mass）对那些毫无创意的文化形态的制度化；商业营销系统推广的享乐主义生活方式。现代主义已经筋疲力尽，不再具有威胁性。享乐主义通过模仿其乏味来讽刺它。但是，社会秩序要么缺乏一种对任何活力进行象征性表达的文化，要么缺乏一种具有激励或约束力量的道德冲动。那么，什么才能把社会团结在一起呢？

For Western neoconservatives and other mainstream conservative forces, this dilemma required mobilising state institutions to introduce proactive, often punitive public policies and welfare reforms, designed to regenerate the normative consensus and individual “discipline” deemed necessary for stabilising liberal capitalist democracy. In contrast, New Right intellectuals have consistently opposed this strategy, viewing it as a deceptive ploy to legitimise the therapeutic state in the eyes of those with conservative inclinations. In their view, this strategy is highly hypocritical: it laments the erosion of national traditions and culture while ignoring the devastating role of economic neoliberal globalisation in that erosion. As Gottfried put it, neoconservatism exacerbates the “one-dimensionality” of late capitalist society because it conceives of values and identity as malleable, market-like commodities that can be freely purchased and exchanged to meet the system’s needs: “This provides a mode of social control; under this mode, subjects can be manipulated in exchange for access to certain comforts and services.” Francis also argues that the neoconservative appeal to the former “virtues” of republican or bourgeois liberal citizenship is very naive, fundamentally underestimating the power of the therapeutic state to implement cultural integration, commodification and social control. He contends: “Technology and its organised application not only tempt us with ‘luxuries’—and what we smugly call a ‘high standard of living’—but also offer those who know how to manipulate them a degree of power that even the most despotic tyrants of the past could not have imagined.”

对于西方的新保守主义者和其他主流保守势力来说，这种困境要求动员国家机构引入主动的、通常具有惩罚性的公共政策和福利改革，而这些政策和改革应被设计为可以重新产生被认为是稳定自由资本主义民主所必需的规范性共识和个人“规训”（discipline）。相比之下，新右翼知识分子一贯反对这种策略，认为这是一种欺骗性伎俩，旨在使管理型国家在那些具有保守倾向的人们那里得以合法化。在他们看来，这种策略非常虚伪：它哀叹对民族传统和文化的侵蚀，同时却无视经济新自由主义全球化在这一侵蚀过程中的毁灭性作用。正如戈特弗里德所言，新保守主义加剧了晚期资本主义社会的“单向度”，因为它将价值观和身份设想为可塑的市场类商品，可以随意购买和交换，以满足体制的需要:“这提供了一种社会控制模式；在这种模式下，主体可以被操纵，以换取获得某些舒适和服务的机会。”弗朗西斯也认为，新保守主义对属于共和主义者或资产阶级自由主义公民的昔日“美德”的吁求是非常幼稚的，从根本上低估了管理型体制实施文化融合、商品化和社会控制的力量。他辩称:“技术及其组织化应用不仅用‘奢侈品’——以及我们今天自鸣得意地称之为‘高生活水准’的东西——诱惑我们，而且向那些知道如何操纵它们的人提供了连过去最专横的暴君都无法知晓其程度的权力。”

Therefore, the challenge facing the New Right became that of finding a new path beyond the neoconservative Right (which is merely liberalism’s managerialism in disguise) and the failures of the New Left. In the New Right’s view, the New Left’s “critical” theory is analytically insightful but hopelessly abstract, elitist and ineffectual. Moreover, it actually reinforces the power of the managerial state rather than challenging it. Having failed to win the support of the trade unions and the formal organizations of the Old Left, the countercultural movements of the 1960s could neither produce their own discipline nor survive independently of the society they rejected. As a subsequent reaction, the new transnational social movements that arose from the frustrated democratic waves of the 1970s largely rejected party politics and formal, organized systems of representation, reorienting their activities toward the “global stage” and pursuing a postmodern, multicultural discourse of individual liberation—driven by a profound distrust of all political parties and state institutions. This new, multicultural “politics of recognition” demands the public affirmation of individual and group differences—differences that are not to be tolerated as pathological deviations by a grudging majority, but to be valued as ways of leading individual and collective lives.

因此，新右翼面临的挑战变成了在新保守主义右翼（the neoconservative Right）(它只不过是伪装的自由主义的管理主义)以及新左翼的失败之外寻找一条新道路。在新右翼看来，新左翼的“批判”理论在分析上很有洞察力，但却无可救药地呈现出抽象、精英化和无效的缺陷。此外，它实际上助长了管理型国家的权力，而不是挑战它。由于未能获得工会和那些老左翼的正式组织的支持，1960年代的反文化运动无法产生自己的规训，也无法独立地生存于被他们所拒绝的社会之外。作为后续反应，从1970年代被挫败的民主浪潮中兴起的新跨国社会运动在很大程度上拒绝了政党政治和正式的、组织化的代表制度，而将其活动重新定位为面向“全球舞台”，并追求后现代的、多元文化的个人解放话语——而这是由对所有政党和国家机构的深刻不信任所驱动的。这种新的、多元文化的“承认政治”要求公开肯定个人差异和群体差异——这些差异并不是要成为被大多数人所勉强接受的病态偏离，而是要成为引领个人和集体生活的有价值的方式。

For its advocates, this turn to identity politics represents a struggle for self-determination and human dignity, aimed at combating the hypocritical universalism of the establishment and the hegemonic culture of heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon whites. For the New Right, engaging in it is digging one’s own grave; Gottfried calls it “theocratic politics in a new key.” [13]13 Paul Gottfried, *Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy* (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 1. “Theocratic politics in a new key” refers to Gottfried’s argument that multicultural identity politics functions as a secularized form of religious moralism, imposing guilt and demanding conformity. Ironically, identity politics reinforces rather than resists liberal managerialism. Gottfried argues: “Identity as recognition is granted, which means (here the multiculturalists are politically correct) it is granted by those in power or those who want to seize power… (Identity) has a relational and confrontational content, and its own validity depends on those who grant political recognition.” [14]14 Ibid., p. 23. Since identity is something given or denied according to the needs and wishes of existing political institutions, it becomes another tool selectively used by managerial elites to empower minority groups at the expense of the established majority culture: “Multiculturalists constantly talk about tolerance, but not everyone can be given the same right to expression. Those granted victim status by group affiliation have the priority right to self-identification, while those identified as oppressors, such as Southern whites in the United States, have no right to take pride in a common past.” [15]15 Ibid., p. 24.

在其倡导者看来，这种身份政治的转向代表了一场争取自决和人类尊严的斗争，旨在对抗当权派虚伪的普遍主义以及异性恋和盎格鲁—撒克逊白人的主流文化霸权。而对于新右翼来说，投身其中就是自掘坟墓，戈特弗里德称之为“神权政治新解”（theocratic politics in a new key）。具有讽刺意味的是，身份政治反而强化而非抵制了自由主义的管理主义。戈特弗里德认为：“作为承认的身份是被授予的，这意味着(在此，多元文化主义者在政治上是正确的)被当权者或那些想要夺取权力的人所授予……(身份)具有关系性和对抗性的内容，其本身的有效性取决于那些给予政治承认的人。”由于身份是根据现有政治机构的需要和愿望来给予或拒绝的东西，因而它成为管理精英们有选择地使用的另一种工具，以牺牲既定的多数文化为代价来赋予少数群体权力:“多元文化主义者不断地谈论宽容，但不是每个人都能被赋予同样的表达权利。那些因群体归属而被赋予受害者地位的人有自我认同的优先权利，而那些被辨识为压迫者的人，如美国的南方白人，则没有权利对共同的过去感到自豪。”

The New Right sees the deliberative democratic theory of second-generation critical theorists as a key expression of the above form of liberal power. These critical theorists reformulated critical theory, moving it away from what was seen as a dead end that negated agency, toward universal communicative rationality. For example, Habermas’s typical claim is: “(At the level of global governance) democratic procedures no longer derive their legitimating force primarily—or even mainly—from political participation and the expression of collective political will, but from the universal accessibility of deliberative processes, whose structures are based on the expectation of rationally accepted outcomes.” [16]16 Jürgen Habermas, “The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy,” in *The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays*, trans. Max Pensky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 110. For New Right critics, what kind of people—which class—and what values will dominate what counts as “rationally accepted outcomes,” and how this will be determined, are beyond doubt. What they see in this formulation is not merely a philosophical argument, but a process—one in which critical intellectuals of the generation after 1968 [17]17 “1968” refers to the global wave of protests and social movements in 1968, particularly the May 1968 events in France, which are seen by the New Right as a watershed moment when the New Left’s countercultural energies were ultimately absorbed into the liberal system. are co-opted into the liberal capitalist system, becoming accomplices (or favored critics) of the very system they once proposed to overthrow. In the end, these theorists merely provide ineffective critique. Such ineffective critique offers only the appearance of resistance, with no chance of fundamentally challenging liberal institutions at the philosophical or practical level—Piccone calls it “false negation.” [18]18 Paul Piccone, “The Crisis of Liberalism and the Emergence of Federal Populism,” *Telos* 89 (Fall 1991), pp. 7–44. “False negation” denotes a critique that appears radical but in practice reinforces the existing order. Critique becomes ineffective critique, legitimizing power structures by providing a semblance of catastrophe, or degenerating into an individualistic, moralistic, and fleeting politics of anger. As de Benoist and Charles Champetier state in the *French New Right Manifesto for the Year 2000*:

新右翼将第二代批判理论家的协商民主理论视为上述自由主义权力形式的关键表达，这些批判理论家重新阐述了批判理论，使之脱离了被视为否定了能动性的死胡同，走向普遍的交往理性。例如，哈贝马斯的典型主张是:“（在全球治理的层面）民主程序不再仅仅从——甚至不是主要从——政治参与和集体政治意愿的表达中，而是从协商过程的普遍可及性中，获得合法化的力量，而协商过程的结构是以对理性公认结果的期望为基础的。”对于新右翼批评家来说，何种人——哪个阶层——以及何种价值观将主导什么是“理性公认结果”，以及这将如何确定，这些都是毫无疑问的。他们在这种表述中看到的不仅仅是一种哲学论证，而是一个过程——在这个过程中，1968年这代人之后的批判性知识分子被收编到自由资本主义体系中，成为他们曾经提议推翻的体系的帮凶(或得宠的批评者)。最后，这些理论家最终只不过是提供了无效的批判。这些无效的批判只提供了反抗的表象，却没有丝毫机会在哲学或实践层面从根本上挑战自由主义制度——皮科内称其为“虚假的否定”。批判变成了无效的批判，它通过提供一种灾难的假象而使权力结构合法化，或者沦为一种个人主义的、道德主义的和转瞬即逝的愤怒政治。正如德伯努瓦和夏尔·尚普捷（Charles Champetier）在《2000年法国新右翼宣言》中所指出的:

Critical thought cannot renew itself; it lacks strength, disillusioned by the failure of its goals, and has slowly transformed itself into a form of thought police, whose purpose is to expel anyone who deviates in any way from the current mainstream ideological dogma. Former revolutionaries have rallied around the status quo, while inheriting from their past lives a taste for purges and curses. This new form of betrayal relies on the tyranny of media-shaped public opinion and manifests itself as a hysteria for purification, a debilitating sentimentality, or selective righteous indignation… Reducing politics to the rational management of increasingly problematic growth excludes the possibility of radically transforming society, or even of openly discussing the ultimate goals of collective action. Democratic debate ultimately finds itself meaningless. People no longer discuss; they merely condemn… [19]19 Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier, “The French New Right in the Year 2000,” *Telos* 124–125 (Summer–Fall 2002), pp. 117–144.

批判思想无法自我更新，它缺少力量，因其目标的失败而幻灭，且已慢慢地将自己变成了一种思想警察的形态，其目的是驱逐所有以任何方式偏离当前主流意识形态教条的人。昔日的革命者已经团结在现状周围，同时从他们过往的生活中继承了对清洗和诅咒的嗜好。这种新形式的背叛行为依赖于媒体塑造的公众舆论的暴政，并表现为热衷于净化的歇斯底里、令人萎靡的多愁善感或有选择性的义愤填膺等形式……将政治简化为对日益成问题的增长的合理管理这一做法，排除了彻底改变社会的可能性，甚至排除了公开讨论集体行动最终目标的可能性。民主辩论最终发现自己变得毫无意义。人们不再讨论，而只是一味地谴责……

In this picture, critique has not, as Bruno Latour puts it, “run out of steam.” [20]20 Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” *Critical Inquiry* 30, no. 2 (Winter 2004), pp. 225–248. In the New Right’s view, the dissipation of critical energy accompanies the co-optation of critical theorists, who gain a modicum of power and a high degree of comfort (both psychological and material) in the process. As impractical theorists, so-called adversarial artists, or irrelevant “radical” academic philosophers, these self-proclaimed “critics” champion purely negative values or the virtues of “failure,” yet have actually become part of the New Class hegemony, [21]21 “New Class” refers to a concept in sociological theory, notably developed by figures such as Milovan Đilas and Alvin Gouldner, describing a class of technical intelligentsia and managerial elites who wield power through control of knowledge and administration, distinct from the traditional bourgeoisie. while becoming increasingly distant from actual political power and alienated from the majority of the non-elite population (contrary to their own declarations). As Faye declares: “The critical Left is neither reformist, revolutionary, nor conservative: it is a means of reinforcing the system… It claims to be anti-system, but it is the system. It claims to be the oppressed, but it is carrying out oppression.” [22]22 Guillaume Faye, *La Nouvelle société de consommation* (Paris: Éditions du Labyrinthe, 1988), p. 45.

在这幅图景中，批判并没有像布鲁诺·拉图尔（Bruno Latour）所说的那样“失去动力”。在新右翼看来，批判能量的消散伴随着对批判理论家的收编，后者在这个过程中获得了些许权力和较高舒适度（包括心理上和物质上）。作为不切实际的理论家、所谓的对抗性艺术家或不相关的“激进”学院派哲学家，这些自诩的“批评家”拥护纯粹的否定性价值或“失败”的好处，实际上却已经成为新阶级霸权（New Class hegemony）的组成部分，但又越来越远离实际的政治权力，并且疏离了大部分的非精英人口(尽管这与他们的宣言相反)。正如法耶所宣称的:“批判的左翼既不是改良派，也不是革命派或保守派：它是一种强化体制的手段……它把自己说成是反体制的，其实它就是这个体制。它把自己说成是被压迫者，其实它正在实施压迫。”

In sum, the New Right shares many features with the Frankfurt School’s critique of late modern liberalism, but the New Right sees the Frankfurt School as an insidious form of power politics that cultivates compliance and dependence through continuous abstraction and socio-cultural integration. However, in the conceptual framework that Adorno, Marcuse, and others constructed to understand these developments, the New Right also sees the Left intellectuals’ ambivalent and typically impotent inability to appreciate the diversity of working-class culture and to provide resources for common dignity, solidarity, and resistance. The New Right charges that, over the past fifty years, critical theory has slowly transformed from an ally of the largely proletarian and non-elite social strata into a condescending critic. Although critical theory retains a radical self-image, it has essentially evolved into a small but valuable tool for liberal managerialism and the globalizing demands and aspirations of its supporters. The New Right fully exploits both aspects of this diagnosis, strengthening its intellectual and strategic position in the broader counter-hegemonic struggle against contemporary liberal domination.

总之，新右翼与法兰克福学派对晚期现代自由主义的批判有许多共同特征，但新右翼却将法兰克福学派视为一种阴险的权力政治形式，通过持续不断的抽象和社会文化整合来培养顺从和依赖。但是，在阿多诺、马尔库塞等人用来理解这些发展而构建的概念框架中，新右翼也看到了左翼知识分子在欣赏工人阶级文化的多样性方面以及在为共同的尊严、团结和反抗提供资源方面表现出的既矛盾又典型的无力感。新右翼指责道，在过去的50年中，批判理论已经慢慢地从一个大部分无产阶级和社会非精英阶层的盟友变成了居高临下的批判者。尽管批判理论还保留着激进的自我形象，但实质上已经演变成为自由主义的管理主义及其支持者的全球化要求和愿望的一个虽然微小、但却有价值的工具。新右翼充分利用了这一问题诊断的两个方面，在反对当代自由主义宰制的更广泛的反霸权斗争中加强其思想和战略地位。

III. Postmodern Possibilities / Postmodern Populism

三、后现代的各种可能性/后现代民粹主义

Like Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, postmodernism appears on the surface to be largely resistant to conservative appropriation—though it is also not difficult to find a range of mainstream conservatives who have consistently denounced postmodernism’s supposed evils. However, the New Right has not consistently maintained its hostility to postmodernism. On the contrary, it combines critique with appropriation, seeking a seemingly paradoxical revaluation and repositioning of postmodern perspectives, turning them toward reaction.

像葛兰西和法兰克福学派一样，后现代主义对于保守主义的挪用在表面上似乎有很大的抵触——当然也不难发现一系列主流保守主义者一直在谴责后现代主义的所谓邪恶。然而，新右翼并不是一直坚持其敌视后现代的立场。相反，它将批判与挪用结合起来，寻求对后现代的观点进行一种看似矛盾的重估和重新定位，使其转向了反动。

On the one hand, the New Right agrees with left-wing critics such as Fredric Jameson that parts of postmodernism are best understood as an element of the “cultural logic of late capitalism.” The New Right claims that, far from providing a critique of capitalist society, postmodernism instead celebrates and supports global capital, the culture industry, and the demands of its associated political elites. Yet the New Right also finds much of value in postmodern perspectives. As one of its leading theorists points out, the mainstream postmodern position held by figures such as Jean-François Lyotard is characterized by an ironic, fatalistic, and pluralistic distrust of metanarratives, as well as skepticism toward liberal morality and “Enlightenment reason”—and the New Right shares this. In their view, what makes our era “post”modern is precisely the fact that, although it has lost all metaphysical credibility, the Enlightenment narrative remains central to the reproduction of the contemporary liberal order: “It survives through force and propaganda. But in thought, poetry, music, art, or literature, this metanarrative has produced no meaning and inspired nothing. For 100 or 150 years, it has not moved a single great mind.”

一方面，新右翼与弗雷德里克·詹姆逊（Fredric Jameson）等左翼批评家一致认为，后现代主义的某些部分最好被理解为“晚期资本主义的文化逻辑”的一部分。新右翼声称，后现代主义非但远没有提供对资本主义社会的批判，反而一味地赞美和支持全球资本、文化工业及其相关政治精英的需求。然而，新右翼也在后现代主义观点中发现了许多价值。正如它的一位主要理论家所指出的，让-弗朗索瓦·利奥塔(Jean-Francois Lyotar)等人所持有的主流后现代立场，其特点是对元叙事持一种讽刺的、宿命论的和多元主义的不信任态度，对自由主义道德和“启蒙理性”也持怀疑态度——而新右翼也是如此。在他们看来，让我们的时代成为“后”现代的恰恰正是这样一个事实，即尽管已经失去了所有形而上的可信性（metaphysical credibility），但启蒙叙事仍然是当代自由主义秩序再生产的核心：“它依靠强力和宣传而存在。但是，在思想、诗歌、音乐、艺术或文学领域，这种元叙事没有产生任何意义，也没有激发任何东西。100年或150年来，它没有打动一个伟大的心灵。”

For the New Right, this suspicion of the Enlightenment does not open up broad new prospects for political tolerance and for embracing and engaging with difference. On the contrary, the false universalism of the European Enlightenment provides an opportunity, through “provincializing,” to legitimately restore a fundamental and unique Western historical identity. This identity is not liberal reason, but rather “the troubling Dionysian, irrational, carnal, chaotic return of the human soul revealed by Georges Bataille or Roger Caillois, which opens up possibilities for reviving myth and a tragic and combative worldview, the origin of Western civilization and its most outstanding cultural achievements—what Spengler called the ‘Faustian spirit.’” As de Benoist and Champetier emphasize, affirming mysticism and the transcendent, emotional aspects of Western culture is not a matter of overcoming the crisis of modernity by returning to the past, but of restoring “certain premodern values” “within the decisive postmodern dimension.” In their view, “only at the cost of such a radical restructuring can anomie and contemporary nihilism be exorcised.”

对于新右翼来说，这种对启蒙运动的怀疑并没有为政治宽容以及包容和应对差异开辟广阔的新前景。相反，欧洲启蒙运动的虚假的普遍主义用“地方化”（provincializing）提供了一个可以理直气壮地恢复西方基本的和独特的历史认同的机会。这种认同并非自由主义理性，而是“乔治·巴塔耶（Georges Bataille）或罗杰·凯卢瓦（Roger Caillois）所揭示的人类灵魂中令人不安的酒神精神、非理性、肉欲、混乱的回归，它为复兴神话以及悲剧性和斗争性的世界观开辟了可能性，这种世界观是西方文明及其最杰出的文化成就的起源——斯宾格勒称之为‘浮士德精神’”。正如德伯努瓦和尚普捷所强调的，对神秘主义和西方文化中超越性的、情感性的方面的肯定，并不是一个通过回到过去来克服现代性危机的问题，而是“在决定性的后现代维度中”恢复“某些前现代的价值观”的问题。在他们看来，“只有以如此激进的重构为代价，才能驱除失范和当代虚无主义”。

In this context, the end of the Enlightenment project heralded by postmodernism is transformed by New Right intellectuals into an opportunity to reconstruct organic populism. This reconstruction attempts to rearticulate a racial politics discredited by its association with eugenics and historical fascism, using the less objectionable language of cultural relativism. Conceptually, this is accomplished through an “identitarian” theory of individual and collective self-determination, which frames identity as a continuous process of becoming under the constraints of historical experience and material conditions. Within this framework, identity “is not fixed forever; on the contrary, it allows one to constantly change without abandoning oneself”—that is, without losing the ontological security of existing as a member of a unique community of destiny.

在这种背景下，后现代主义所预示的启蒙计划的终结，被新右翼知识分子转化为重构有机民粹主义（organic populism）的契机。这种重构试图通过用文化相对主义中的那种不那么令人反感的语言，来重新阐述一种因与优生学和历史上的法西斯主义有联系而名誉扫地的种族政治。此举在概念上是通过一种有关个人和集体自决的“身份主义”（identitarianism）理论来完成的，该理论将身份框定为在历史经验和物质条件的限制下持续生成的过程。在这个框架中，身份“不是永远不变的，相反，它允许一个人在不放弃自我的情况下不断变化”——也就是说，不失去我们作为一个独特的命运共同体成员而存在的本体论意义上的安全感。

Thus, identitarianism affirms the value and importance of recognizing differences between cultures, races, ethnic groups, and civilizations—as well as the political processes and ideological mechanisms that maintain a healthy degree of separation and distance between them. As de Benoist puts it: “Groups and individuals alike need to confront ‘significant others.’” This is what New Right figures call “differentialism” or the “right to difference.” Although differentialism claims that there are no objective criteria for ranking cultural, racial, or ethnic groups, it presents itself as a racial-political response to the threat posed by liberal multiculturalism and interethnic and interracial marriage. As L. Tudor emphasizes in a survey: “When complete openness and mixing occur, people do not merely change in the usual sense, but lose themselves, or completely merge with another people, leading to the elimination of their identity.”

因此，身份主义肯定了承认文化、种族、族群与文明之间的差异——以及在它们之间保持健康程度的隔离和疏远的政治进程和意识形态机制——的价值和重要性，正如德伯努瓦所说：“群体与个体都需要面对‘重要的他者’。”这就是新右翼人士所说的“差异主义”（differentialism）或“差异权”（right to difference）。虽然差异主义声称不存在确定文化、种族或族裔群体等级的客观标准，但它却把自己塑造成对自由主义的多元文化主义以及族群和种族通婚所构成的威胁的一种种族政治的回应。正如L.图多尔（L.Tudor）在一项调查中所强调的:“当完全开放和混合交融发生时，人们不仅仅在通常的意义上发生了改变，而是失去了自我，或者与另一个民族完全融合，从而导致他们的身份被消除。”

It is safe to say that this conflation of Schmitt and Joseph Gobineau with poststructuralist platitudes about depriving alternative subjectivities will not satisfy the many sociologists in professional academic circles. However, identitarians have their own quasi-academic channels and alternative epistemic communities, through which they can challenge the “regimes of truth” of the new class and disseminate their own views. As Michael O’Meara readily admits, in this sense the New Right’s revolutionary conservatism does unfold within the cultural horizon of postmodernism:

可以肯定地说，这种将施密特和约瑟夫·戈宾诺（Joseph Gobineau）与后结构主义关于剥夺另一类主体性（alternative subjectivities）的陈词滥调混为一谈的做法，不会让专业学术圈子中的众多社会学家满意。但是，身份主义者有他们自己的准学术渠道和另一类认知共同体，而通过这些渠道，他们可以挑战新阶级的“真理体制”（regimes of truth），并传播他们自己的观点。正如迈克尔·奥米拉（Michael OMeara）乐于承认的那样，在这个意义上，新右翼的革命保守主义确实是在后现代主义的文化视野中展开的：

Accepting the inherent inconsistency of the world and the relativity of its different value orders does not require belittling or denigrating the European heritage. From an identitarian perspective, postmodernism’s fierce critique constitutes a powerful defense of the particularity of tradition, and of the fact that we are who we are only because we have made certain decisions to identify with and defend our specific system of truth. The constructive (i.e., artificial or cultural) character of historical narratives, the diversity of these narratives, and their openness are reasons for commitment, not despair, because the culturally relative “truth” that arises from one’s own self-identity is necessarily more meaningful than that which does not. The art of historical survival… therefore requires a people to guard—if necessary, even intolerantly—its myths, beliefs, way of life, language, institutions, and above all its genetic heritage, for only these can make it what it is and what it might become.

接受世界固有的不一致性及其不同的价值秩序的相对性，并不需要轻视或诋毁欧洲遗产。从身份主义者的角度来看，后现代主义的猛烈抨击构成了对传统的特殊性的有力辩护，也构成了以下事实，即我们之所以是我们，只是因为我们做出了某些决定来认同和捍卫我们特定的真理体系。历史叙事的建构性(即人为的或文化的)特征，以及这些叙事的多样性，还有它们的不封闭性，都是承诺的理由，而不是绝望的理由，因为产生于一个人自我身份的文化上的相对“真理”必然比那些并非产生于此的更有意义。历史上生存的艺术……因此就要求一个民族要有所戒备地——如果需要的话，甚至不宽容地——捍卫自己的神话、信仰、生活方式、语言、制度，以及最重要的基因遗产，因为只有这些才能使它成为现在的和可能的自己。

According to the thinkers of the New Right, the temporal-spatial dislocations and catastrophic demographic and environmental consequences brought about by globalization make the renewal of tradition and the revival of local communities imperative. As de Benoist and Champetier point out: “Tradition fosters the ritualization of social interaction and celebration, instills an awareness of the life cycle, and provides temporal markers. By emphasizing the rhythmic passage of years and seasons, the great moments of life, and the stages of the year, tradition nourishes the symbolic imagination and creates a social bond. These traditions must never be frozen in time but must always be in a state of renewal.” [28]28 Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier, “Manifesto for a European Renaissance,” trans. Tomislav Sunic, 1999. De Benoist is a leading figure of the French New Right (Nouvelle Droite). The New Right borrows the environmentalist language of the Left concerning “indigenous sovereignty,” insisting on the close connection between historical heritage, collective memory, and spiritual roots in the ancestral land, and opposing the cosmopolitan elite’s utopian vision that has no concrete link to any territory. In their view, protecting the ecosystem is inseparable from territorial sovereignty and the protection of “native” whites. For the theorists of the “French New Right” organization, as for Alexander Dugin in Russia and Johnson and his followers in the “American Renaissance” organization, the challenges of the 21st century call for a new synthesis of tradition and technology, in order to achieve a decisive break with modern egalitarianism and thereby reconstruct the relationship between the local and the global. Faye calls his own interpretation of this synthesis “archeofuturism”:

根据新右翼思想家的观点，全球化带来的时空错乱以及人口和环境的灾难性后果，使得传统的更新和地方共同体的复兴势在必行。正如德伯努瓦和尚普捷所指出的：“传统促进了社会互动和庆典的仪式感，灌输了对生命周期的认识，并提供了时间标志。通过强调年岁和季节的有节奏的流逝、生命中的伟大时刻以及一年中的各个阶段，传统滋养了象征性的想象，并创造了一种社会纽带。这些传统决不能冻结在时间中，而必须始终处于更新状态。”新右翼借用左翼关于“原住民的主权”的环保主义语言，坚持历史遗产、集体记忆与祖先土地上的精神之根之间的密切联系，反对世界主义精英的那种与地球没有任何具体联系的乌托邦愿景。在他们看来，保护生态系统与领土主权和保护“本土”白人是不可分割的。对于“法国新右翼”组织的理论家而言，就像对于俄罗斯的亚历山大·杜金（Alexander Dugin）和“美国复兴”组织中的约翰逊及其拥趸一样，21世纪的挑战呼唤对传统与技术进行新的综合，以实现与现代平等主义的决定性决裂，从而重构地方与全球之间的关系。法耶将他自己关于这种综合的解释称为“古代未来主义”（archeofuturism）：

Imagine a future society that combines technological progress with a return to traditional answers—answers that can be traced back into the mists of time. This is perhaps the true face of postmodernity… Can we imagine and foresee a scenario where the majority of people once again live in traditional societies with low energy consumption, greater social stability, and happiness, while (in the context of globalization) a minority continues to live according to the techno-industrial model? Will there be two parallel worlds in the future, one neo-medieval and one possessing super-science? Who will live in each of these worlds, and how many? All bold and creative thought must contemplate the unthinkable. I believe that archeofuturism—the explosive convergence of opposites—is the key to the future, and this is simply because the paradigm of modernity is no longer viable on a global scale.

请设想一个将科技进步与回归传统答案——这些传统答案可以追溯到时间的迷雾中——相结合的未来社会。这也许就是后现代性的真实面目……我们是否可以想象和预见这样一种情景:大多数人重新生活在能源消耗少、社会更加稳定和幸福的传统社会，而（在全球化的背景下）少数人继续按照技术工业模式生活？未来是否会有两个平行的世界，一个是新中世纪的世界，一个是拥有超级科学的世界？谁会分别生活在这两个世界中，人数又是多少？所有大胆和创造性的思想都必须思考不可思议之事。我相信，古代未来主义——对立事物的爆炸性交汇——是通往未来的关键，而这仅仅是因为现代性范式在全球范围内不再可行。

The New Right finds in the postmodern globalizing logic of liberal managerialism itself the possibility of realizing its vision of an alternative world order. The hedonistic ethics, relativist values, and therapeutic social practices of managerial liberalism tend to fragment society into ever more diverse groups, each with its own projects, identities, and interests, inhibiting collective action and weakening the capacity of the progressive state to fulfill its promises by appealing to collective solidarity, national identity, and unity. At the same time, and perhaps more importantly, liberal managerialism relentlessly undermines and attacks the economic and social positions of those who cannot or will not adopt or adapt to the rules of globalization. These include the “left behinds,” who are rooted in the local and view immigration or cultural cosmopolitanism as a threat. They cling to tradition and the communities and prejudices they have inherited, even as these are eroded by globalization; they are denigrated as backward, bigoted, dependent, in need of “reskilling” (if they are lucky) by the liberal elites, who are the condescending agents of their worsening economic plight and who also ignore and belittle their sense of social and cultural dislocation or alienation.

新右翼在自由主义的管理主义自身的后现代全球化逻辑中找到了实现其替代世界秩序的愿景的可能性。管理型自由主义（managerial liberalism）的享乐主义伦理、相对主义价值观和疗救性社会实践，倾向于将社会分割成更加多样化的群体，每个群体都有自己的规划、认同和利益，抑制集体行动，削弱进步主义国家通过呼吁集体团结、民族认同和统一来实现其承诺的能力。与此同时，也许更重要的是，自由主义的管理主义无情地破坏和攻击那些不能或不愿采纳或适应全球化规则的人的经济和社会地位。这些人包括“落伍者”（left behinds），他们固守当地，把移民或文化世界主义视为一种威胁。他们坚守传统以及他们所继承的共同体和偏见，即使这些正在受到全球化的侵蚀；他们被贬低为落后者、偏执者、依赖者，需要自由主义精英提供“技能再造”(如果他们幸运的话)，而自由主义精英是他们日益严峻的经济困境的居高临下的行动主体，并且还无视和贬低他们在社会和文化上的错位感或异化感。

Having abandoned the working class, the Frankfurt School vainly sought a new historical agent, and the New Right draws historical lessons from this tradition of the Frankfurt School, believing (and hoping) that the combination of economic disorder, cultural resentment, and mythic mobilization offers an opportunity to reverse this situation. For its advocates, the current moment is particularly suited to such mobilization. Currently, the economic sectors affected by globalization and population mobility are not only declining industries but also once-protected “new class” professional groups, threatened by offshoring and automation, while intergenerational inequality also provides an opportunity to attract young cadres. [29]29 “New class” refers to a concept in sociological theory, notably developed by Milovan Đilas and later adopted by thinkers like Alvin Gouldner, describing a stratum of technical intelligentsia and managerial professionals whose power is based on knowledge and organizational control rather than property ownership. At the same time, the decline of US geopolitical power weakens managerial globalism while strengthening the forces of “plurality” and particularist identity.

在放弃了工人阶级后，法兰克福学派徒劳地寻找历史的新行动主体，而新右翼从法兰克福学派的这一传统中吸取了历史教训，认为（并希望）经济失序、文化怨恨和神话动员的结合为扭转这种局面提供了机会。对其倡导者来说，当前的时机特别适合这种动员。目前，受全球化和人口流动影响的经济部门不仅仅是衰落的工业，还包括曾经受保护的“新阶级”职业群体，他们受到离岸外包和自动化的威胁，而代际不平等也为吸引青年骨干提供了机会。与此同时，美国地缘政治的衰落削弱了管理型全球主义（managerial globalism），同时加强了“多元化”的力量和特殊主义（particularist）的身份认同。

In this context, New Right thought seeks to create class, racial, or group self-consciousness among its objects of analysis, thereby helping to mobilize the “marginalized” groups it identifies, turning them into self-conscious driving forces. By linking the material and cultural contradictions of capitalism to the historical and concrete driving forces of the new class managerial elite in this way, New Right discourse provides a focal point for confrontation (a Schmittian identifiable enemy), [30]30 Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was a German jurist and political theorist whose concept of the political as a friend/enemy distinction is frequently invoked by New Right thinkers. thereby striving to create agents capable of overthrowing the system. Here, the admonition to recapture pre-modern insights into the power of myth plays an important role, and New Right theorists see themselves as the vanguard of these national and transnational movements. For those who follow in Francis’s footsteps, the primary ideological goal is to destroy the old American “myth” as an abstract universalist proposition (“human rights”) and replace it with “a new myth of the nation as a unique order of history and culture, demanding loyalty, solidarity, and discipline, and excluding those who do not or cannot integrate into its norms and interests.” [31]31 Samuel T. Francis (1947–2005) was an American paleoconservative journalist and columnist, a key intellectual influence on the US New Right.

在这种背景下，新右翼思想试图在其分析对象那里创造阶级、种族或群体的自我意识，从而帮助动员其所认定的“被边缘化的”群体，使他们成为具有自我意识的推动力量。通过以这种方式将资本主义的物质和文化矛盾与新阶级管理精英的历史的和具体的推动力量联系起来，新右翼话语为对抗提供了一个聚焦点(一个施密特式的可识别的敌人)，从而努力创造能够推翻体制的行动主体。在这里，关于我们要重拾对神话力量的前现代洞见的告诫发挥了重要作用，而新右翼理论家们将自己视为这些国家的和跨国的运动的先锋。对于那些追随弗朗西斯的脚步的人来说，主要的意识形态目标是摧毁作为抽象的普遍主义命题(“人权”)的美国旧“神话”，而代之以“作为历史和文化的一种独特秩序的国家的新神话，它要求忠诚、团结和纪律，并排斥那些不去或不能融入其规范和利益的人”

This strategy aims to break the cultural power of the ruling elite over the American middle class, thereby enabling the formulation of goals and strategies, rather than simply imitating and helping to replicate the goals and strategies of the managerial regime. As Francis explained in 1991, within this ideological framework, “America First” is not merely a slogan opposing the deracinated foolishness of liberal internationalism; it also represents a counter-hegemonic myth through which resistance to the system can be incited and transformed into a new cultural hegemony: “It should permeate the entire cultural life of the nation and become the foundation of our cultural and social identity, just as it does our politics and national policy… If this is not achieved, America will be no more secure, prosperous, or prioritized than it is today under the guardianship of its self-interested and self-appointed globalist masters.” [32]32 Samuel T. Francis, “The Nation as a Moral Community,” 1991.

这一战略旨在打破美国中产阶级对当权精英的文化权力的依赖，进而能够制定目标和采取策略，而不是简单地模仿和帮助复制管理型体制（managerial regime）的目标和策略。正如弗朗西斯在1991年所解释的那样，在这一意识形态框架中，“美国优先”不仅仅是反对自由主义的国际主义的去种族化愚蠢行为的战斗口号，它还代表了一种反霸权的神话，通过这种神话可以煽动对体制的反抗，并转化为一种新的文化霸权：“它应该贯穿于整个国家的文化生活，并成为我们的文化和社会认同的基础，就像我们的政治和国家政策一样。……如果做不到这一点，美国将不会比今天在其自私自利的和自封的全球主义主宰者的监护下更安全、更繁荣、更优先。”

IV. Conclusion

四、结语

The New Right is often portrayed as an anti-intellectual movement—a populist, nativist regression to a darker, more uncivilized age of “ignorance.” While this view is correct in some respects, it clearly underestimates the intellectual resources of the New Right and the challenges it poses. As we have attempted to show, important parts of these movements are not merely intermittent reactions to temporary economic or social disorder, nor the product of fleeting, charismatic leaders. The New Right has a long and complex theoretical genealogy that requires critical examination. Somewhat ironically, one area where this examination can begin is by using key themes typically associated with critical international political theory to reorganize certain parts of conservative ideology. The New Right draws strategic thought from Gramsci, learns lessons from the successes and failures of the Frankfurt School, and selects themes from postmodernism, attempting to mount a thorough critique of the contemporary global order and to provide the intellectual and ideological foundations for counter-hegemonic movements aimed at resisting and opposing this order.

新右翼经常被描绘成一场反智运动——一次民粹主义的、本土主义的倒退，回到一个更黑暗、更不开化的“无知”时代。尽管这一观点在某些方面是正确的，但它明显低估了新右翼的思想资源及其带来的挑战。正如我们试图表明的那样，这些运动的重要部分并不只是对一时的经济或社会混乱的间歇性反应，抑或是昙花一现的、有超凡魅力的领导人的产物。新右翼有着悠久而复杂的理论谱系，需要对其进行批判的审视。也许有点讽刺的是，这种审视得以开始的一个领域是，使用通常与批判的国际政治理论相关的关键主题来重组保守主义意识形态的某些部分。新右翼从葛兰西那里汲取战略思想，从法兰克福学派的成败中汲取教训，并从后现代主义中选择主题，试图对当代全球秩序进行彻底的批判，并为旨在抵制和反对这种秩序的反霸权运动提供思想的和意识形态的基础。

The New Right’s promise to transcend conservative nostalgia or neoliberal globalism through a postmodern synthesis of “aesthetic myth-making,” “superscientific futurism,” and “reconstituted ethnopluralism” is in many respects fantastical. Yet the temptation to view the New Right discourse examined here simply as an extension of historical fascism is one we should resist. The first wave of fascist movements that swept across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s was openly committed to militarism, imperial conquest, and violent extra-parliamentary and anti-parliamentary activity, operating in ways fundamentally different from the contemporary New Right. The metapolitics of New Right theorists also distinguishes their vision and activities from the delusional conspiracy theories of QAnon and other kindred groups—the kind that stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. However, by linking the cultural and material contradictions of late modern capitalism to the concrete driving forces of new classes and the groups they represent, the New Right’s critique of globalization does make them highly compatible with such violent conspiracy politics. Although managerialism is not a conspiracy theory, it can easily shelter one.

新右翼承诺，要通过对“唯美的神话创造”“超科学的未来主义”和“再造的种族同源政治”进行一种后现代的综合，来超越保守主义的怀旧情怀或新自由主义的全球主义，这在很多方面都是异想天开。然而，将本文所考察的新右翼言论仅仅视为历史上的法西斯主义的延伸的看法，是一种我们应当抵制的诱惑。1920—1930年代席卷欧洲的第一波法西斯运动，公然致力于军国主义、帝国征服以及暴力的议会外活动和反议会活动，其行动方式与当代新右翼根本不同。新右翼理论家的元政治也将其愿景和活动与“匿名者Q”（QAnon）及其他与之臭味相投的团体的妄想阴谋论区分开来——这类团体在2021年1月袭击了美国国会大厦。然而，通过将晚期现代资本主义的文化和物质矛盾与新阶级及其所代理的群体的具体推动力量联系起来，新右翼对全球化的批评确实使他们非常符合这种暴力阴谋论政治。尽管管理主义并不是一种阴谋论，但它却可以很容易地庇佑某种阴谋论。

Also clearly related to the rules of the fascist game is the revolutionary rhetoric deployed under special circumstances. Through this rhetoric, the New Right can articulate its critique to mobilize supporters. Marxist revolutionary thought identifies the motive force of collective action as rational class consciousness (which has a clear connection to universalist claims about the direction of historical development), whereas the New Right advocates a departure from universalist norms, which easily provokes (and strategically cultivates) violent emotions and tactics that lead to social division. The aim is to render centrist parties and reformist positions irrelevant by radicalizing the terms of public debate and dividing the electorate around various binary oppositions—supporters of globalization versus those who seek to undermine it, “ordinary” voters who wish to leave the European Union versus arrogant urban elites who wish to remain, those who wish to preserve traditional communities and their orthodox origins versus those who seek to abolish these established arrangements. The strategy is simple, but it has proven so effective over the past decade that some mainstream academic studies of contemporary right-wing populism have internalized and replicated these binary oppositions within their own analytical frameworks.

与法西斯主义的游戏规则明显相关的还有特殊情形下的革命性修辞。通过这种修辞，新右翼可以明确表达他们的批评，以动员支持者。马克思主义的革命思想将集体行动的动因确定为理性的阶级意识（这种阶级意识与关于历史发展方向的普遍主义主张有着明确联系），而新右翼却倡导脱离普遍主义的规范，这很容易引起(并在战略上培育)导致社会分裂的暴力情绪和策略。其目的是使中间派政党和改革派立场变得无关紧要，其方法是使公共辩论的措辞激进化，并围绕各种二元对立——全球化的拥护者与试图破坏者的对立，希望脱离欧盟的“普通”选民与希望留在欧盟的傲慢的都市精英的对立，希望保留传统共同体及其正统源头的人与希望废除这些既定安排的人的对立——对选民进行分化。这个策略很简单，但在过去的十年里被证明非常有效，以至于一些关于当代右翼民粹主义的主流学术研究都在自己的分析框架中内化和复制了这些二元对立。

In a 1967 lecture to students in Vienna, Adorno reflected on the then-recent electoral gains of the National Democratic Party of Germany, warning against the resurgence of right-wing radicalism only twenty years after the end of the Second World War. Adorno attributed this danger to the growing disappointment of young people with unrealized ideals of liberation and with the democratic deficit under increasingly technocratic mechanisms of government operation. Against those who hoped that the European Economic Community and other forms of transnational integration would once and for all expose nationalism as obsolete, Adorno reiterated Nietzsche’s warning that nationalist politics becomes particularly aggressive when the nation-state confronts its own impotence: “As a rule, it is precisely when objective circumstances have deprived convictions and ideologies of their substantive content that they take on a demonic, truly destructive character.” Adorno had no illusions that resurgent far-right leaders could find a place in managing Europe’s changing political order. All one could do, in the hope that the public would distance itself from these right-wing groups and movements, was relentlessly expose the deceptive character and destructive consequences of right-wing radicalism.

在1967年对维也纳学生的演讲中，阿多诺对德国国家民主党(National Democratic Party)当时刚刚获得的选举胜利进行了反思，警告人们不要让右翼激进主义在第二次世界大战结束仅20年后就卷土重来。阿多诺将这种危险性归因于年轻人对于未能实现的解放理想以及对于日渐技术官僚化的政府运作机制下的民主赤字日益失望。针对有些人希望欧洲经济共同体和其他形式的跨国一体化能够一劳永逸地暴露民族主义的陈旧过时这一点，阿多诺重申了尼采的警告，即当民族国家面临自身的无能时，民族主义政治会变得特别具有侵略性：“通常情况下，正是在客观形势剥夺了信念和意识形态的实质内容时，它们才会呈现出恶魔般的、真正具有破坏性的特征。”阿多诺并不幻想重新崛起的极右翼领导人可以在管理欧洲不断变化的政治秩序方面占有一席之地。怀抱着民众会远离这些右翼团体和运动的希望，人们所能做的就只是无情地揭露右翼激进主义的欺骗性特征和破坏性后果。

In retrospect, Adorno’s strategy was highly effective at the time—and, as we hope to show in this article, it remains highly important today. But the radical right of today has completely changed. It has strengthened its arsenal of “critical” theory and rhetoric, and adjusted its methods to make full use of unprecedentedly widespread new communication technologies to disseminate its message; it has also fostered an alternative reality that enables its message to attract large populations in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Reading the New Right through its appropriation of key themes from critical theory, we can see that, contrary to what is often suggested in the media and mainstream foreign policy literature, the ambition of this anti-globalization politics is not merely a return to an idealized picture of nineteenth-century nationalism. What the radical right most wants is to take control of globalization and establish an alternative order. In this order, capitalism flourishes, but is rooted in ideas about a shared civilizational heritage and myths about inherited communities and the orthodox origins of their traditions; in this order, the West is redefined to confront the cultural and demographic “threat” of Global Islam and the Global South.

回顾往昔，阿多诺的策略在当时非常有效——而且正如我们希望在本文中所表明的那样，该策略在当前仍然非常重要。但是，今天的激进右翼已经完全改变了。它强化了其“批判性的”理论和修辞的武器库，并调整了其手法，以充分利用空前广泛的新传播技术散布其信息；它还促成了另一种现实，使激进右翼的信息能够吸引欧洲、北美以及其他地区的大量人口。通过新右翼对批判理论关键主题的挪用来解读它，我们可以发现，与媒体和主流外交政策文献中经常提到的相反，这种反全球化政治的抱负不仅仅是回到19世纪民族主义的理想化图景中。激进右翼最想要的就是掌控全球化，并建立一个替代性的秩序。在这个秩序中，资本主义蓬勃发展，但又植根于关于共享文明遗产的观念中，以及关于被继承的共同体及其传统的正统源头的神话中；在这个秩序中，西方被重新定义，以对抗全球伊斯兰（Global Islam）和全球南方（Global South）的文化和人口“威胁”。

This situation urgently calls for “critical” research in every sense. Yet, precisely at the moment when reactionary theorists’ mobilization of their core themes is having a significant impact, critical international theory seems increasingly paralyzed by self-doubt and an apparent inability to connect itself to the broader political exigencies of the twenty-first century. As one international relations scholar recently noted, what is lamented in this literature is the growing disconnection between the “explanatory-diagnostic” aspect and the “prophetic-utopian” aspect of critical theory. Today, one increasingly wonders whether the negative dialectics—the great legacy of the Frankfurt School—has revealed its own negation; whether its still-visible Marxist roots have led to a Gramscian politics increasingly disconnected from a postmodern world; or whether postmodernism itself is merely an exhausted, diffuse, and increasingly hollow perspective that survives less by its own merits than by the lack of any obviously more compelling “critical” alternative.

这种情况迫切呼唤所有意义上的“批判性”研究。然而，就在反动理论家对其核心主题的动员产生重大影响之时，批判的国际理论却似乎因为自我怀疑，以及显然缺乏能力使自身与21世纪更广泛的政治紧要事态相关联，而日益陷入瘫痪之中。正如一位国际关系学者最近指出的那样，在这类文献中，令人哀叹的是批判理论中的“解释—诊断”方面与“预测—乌托邦”方面的日益脱节。今天，人们越来越想知道，否定的辩证法——法兰克福学派的伟大遗产——是否已经揭示了对它自己的否定；它那仍然可见的马克思主义根基是否导致了葛兰西主义的政治学与日益后现代的世界脱节；或者后现代主义本身是否只是一种枯竭的、弥散的、日益空洞的观点，它之所以能存续，与其说是因为它自身的优点，不如说是由于缺乏任何显然更有说服力的“批判性”选项。

Theoretically, each of these views has a certain degree of plausibility, and this is matched by a sociological insight that, as a vision historically always in search of an agent of change, critical international theory has become increasingly unlikely to find such an agent. The vanguard of thought, the working class, social movements—not to mention the more speculative hopes placed in a rising, progressive global “multitude”—all seem to have failed to assume their transformative mission, despite decades of effort by their self-appointed theoretical magicians. At most, we can say that various critical theories may have played a role in specific political struggles—gender, race, and environmental issues are perhaps the most active among these, and these issues often draw on theoretical inspirations beyond the scope of this article. But there also seems to be a self-doubt within contemporary critical international theories as to whether they can truly produce a “worlding” effect. To return to Latour’s frequently cited phrase: it is difficult to avoid the impression that critique has “run out of steam.”

从理论上讲，这些观点各自都有一定程度的合理性，而且与之相匹配的是一种社会学意义上的见解，该见解认为，作为一种历史上总是在寻找一个行动主体的愿景，批判的国际理论已经越来越不可能找到这种行动主体了。思想先锋、工人阶级、社会运动——更不用说对正在崛起的、进步的全球“诸众”（multitude）所寄予的更具猜测性的希望——似乎都未能承担起他们的变革使命，尽管他们自封的理论魔术师们已经付出了几十年的努力。我们最多可以说，各种批判理论可能在特定的政治斗争中发挥了作用——性别、种族和环境议题可能是这些斗争中最活跃的，而这些议题往往借鉴了本文范围之外的理论灵感。但是，在当代各种批判的国际理论中，似乎也有一种自我怀疑，担心它自身是否真的能产生“世界性”（worlding）的效果。再次回到拉图尔经常被引用的短语：我们很难避免这样一种印象，即批判已经“失去动力”。

By contrast, the New Right’s appropriation of critical-theoretical themes has not yet led to suspicion, paralysis or exhaustion. Quite the opposite: theories presumed to be “critical” have been appropriated and turned to radically conservative, even reactionary ends. This situation poses serious problems and challenges for critical international theory. As Nicholas Michelsen has recently pointed out, it shows that, contrary to the usual assumption, “critical” theoretical tools are not necessarily linked to “emancipatory” or more normative positions and goals. Moreover, if critique has “lost its momentum,” how should it relate to theoretical perspectives and movements that not only reject the suspicion of critical theory but regard it as a sign of weakness and decadence—a target to be attacked rather than a welcome form of skepticism? We cannot provide substantive answers to these complex questions within the limited space of this article. However, these are questions that scholars of critical international theory and others can no longer avoid, and we hope that the reconstructive interpretation offered in this study will help to better understand the nature of the challenges ahead.

相比之下，新右翼对批判理论主题的挪用尚未导致怀疑、瘫痪或枯竭。恰恰相反：假定具有“批判性”的理论已被挪用并转向激进保守主义的、甚至反动的目的。这种情况给批判的国际理论带来了严重的问题和挑战。正如尼古拉斯·米切尔森（Nicholas Michelsen）最近指出的那样，这表明，与通常的假设相反，“批判的”理论工具并不必然与“解放的”或更加规范的立场和目标联系在一起。而且，如果说批判已经“失去动力”，那么它应该如何与那些不仅拒绝批判理论的怀疑、而且将其视为软弱和颓废的标志——一个要攻击的目标而不是一种值得欢迎的怀疑主义——的理论视角和运动建立联系呢？我们无法在本文有限的篇幅内为这些复杂的问题提供实质性的答案。但是，这些问题是批判的国际理论学者和其他人再也无法回避的，我们希望本研究中提出的重构性诠释有助于更好地理解未来挑战的性质。

(Author bios: Authors: Jean-François Drolet, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London; Michael C. Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada; Translator: Xie Laihui, School of International Political Economy, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, National Institute of International Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

（作者简介：作者：让-弗朗索瓦·德罗莱（Jean-Franois Drolet），英国伦敦玛丽女王大学政治与国际关系学院；迈克尔·C.威廉姆斯（Michael C.Williams），加拿大渥太华大学公共与国际事务研究生院；译者：谢来辉，中国社会科学院大学国际政治经济学院，中国社会科学院亚太与全球战略研究院）

Online editor: Tongxin

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