The Intellectual as Culture Warrior Metapolitics and the European New Right

Abstract

A major development on the European far right since 1945 is the turn to a 'metapolitics' supposedly influenced by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Metapolitics, in this sense, deemphasizes electoral politics in favor of intellectual activism and the pursuit of 'cultural hegemony' as a prelude to seizing political power. This article examines the metapolitics of the European New Right (ENR) from a new theoretical and historical perspective. It argues that the literature of the US 'culture wars' better explains the ENR's practice than any reception of Gramsci. And it presents ENR metapolitics not as the strategic reformulation of interwar fascism but as part of a broad transatlantic backlash against the leftist successes of the 1960s. This approach better accounts for ENR intellectuals' function as 'culture warriors' specializing in demonization and mastery of the tools of public discourse.