Journal of the History of Ideas

Abstract:

This article is an effort to examine the discourses of French identity in crisis by four disparate New Right and "neo-reactionary" intellectuals (Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Renaud Camus, and Alain Finkielkraut) whose work contributes to the anti-immigration, anti-Islam and identity-based thought of twenty-first-century France. It argues that shared discourse of French identity in crisis as a result of Muslim immigration provides a common ground for these intellectuals despite their diverse origins, their disagreement over how to define French identity, and their prescriptions for its salvation.