In the face of the attacks against NGOs, it has become vital to distinguish between two radically opposed protests: those denouncing the inadequacies of aid in the name of universal emancipation and those rejecting it in the name of national interests. The confusion between these approaches, which has been skillfully orchestrated for decades, weakens the defence of humanitarianism. The strength of Joël Glasman’s article lies in helping us identify these two criticisms and in finding a way for one to be heard at the expense of the other.
The year now ending has seen an escalation in assaults on humanitarian action. In January, the US (United States) government announced the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the dismissal of nearly ten thousand of its employees.[1]The order called for a 90-day pause. In the following days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that he intended to continue “lifesaving” programmes, though he did not define what that … Continue reading In February, the German government called into question the work of NGOs on migration policy, echoing far-right rhetoric.[2]“Über 2.000 Forschende kritisieren Unionsanfrage” (“More than 2,000 researchers criticise the European Union’s request”), Forschung und Lehre (German research and teaching journal), 5 … Continue reading In March, the Italian government admitted to having spied on NGOs engaged in rescuing refugees.[3]Angela Giuffrida and Stephanie Kirchgaessner, “Italian government approved use of spyware on members of refugee NGO, MPs told”, The Guardian, 27 March 2025. In April, Libya expelled ten international NGOs, accusing them of attempting to carry out a demographic replacement of the native population with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.[4]Umberto Pellecchia, “What the spread of the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory means for humanitarian aid”, The New Humanitarian, 24 July 2025. These events unfolded as the Israeli government continued to justify the systematic killing of humanitarian workers in Gaza by equating humanitarian aid with terrorism.[5]OCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 – July Update (Snapshot as of 31 July 2025)”, 5 August 2025 ; UN News, “Number of aid workers killed in Gaza conflict, highest in UN history: … Continue reading The past year has thus made brutally visible a reactionary, anti-humanitarian worldview that had long been underestimated. This ideology does not merely regard humanitarian action as superfluous, but as a betrayal of national interests and patriotic values. As Donald Trump himself put it, “The foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”[6]President Donald J. Trump, Reevaluating and Realigning…, op. cit., https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reevaluating-and-realigning-united-states-foreign-aid
“Humanitarian organisations and social sciences undoubtedly failed to pay close enough attention to the attack that was coming.”
Humanitarian organisations and social sciences undoubtedly failed to pay close enough attention to the attack that was coming. While much ink has been spilled defending humanitarian work against, for example, decolonial and post-colonial critiques, reactionary nationalist critiques have gotten little notice. We have to distinguish between two critiques of contemporary humanitarianism: a “progressive” (left-wing) critique and a “reactionary” (far-right-wing) critique. This contrast is simplistic, but useful. It helps us understand that these two critiques of humanitarianism have old, and distinct, ideological roots that go back to the struggle between Revolution and Counter-Revolution more than two centuries ago. Putting these critiques of humanitarianism into order is now necessary. It starts with humanitarian action as it is championed today; in particular, its contemporary cornerstone: the principle of “humanity”.[7]For example, in the major “Code of Conduct”, “Humanitarian Charter”, etc. – type documents. See Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in … Continue reading This simplification fails to do justice to the complex history of humanitarian principles themselves (which we will not discuss here),[8]For the history of humanitarian principles, see: Daniel Palmieri, “Les principes fondamentaux de la Croix-Rouge : une histoire politique”, ICRC, 2015, … Continue reading or to the actual practices of humanitarian actors (which are certainly more complex than mere battles of ideas).[9]For this, one has to go back to the sociology of critique, which does a very good job of showing how humanitarian organisations integrate mechanisms of criticism and self-criticism. The pragmatic … Continue reading
Contemporary humanitarian action is defined as assistance to people in need, for the simple reason that they belong to humanity. It can come from the right or the left, be religious or secular, Dunantist or Wilsonian, progressive or conservative. It is not necessarily egalitarian. Humanitarian action has no issue with political, economic and social inequalities. It cannot, however, do without the principle of humanity, that is, the inherent dignity of every individual. It now faces two major types of critique.
Along with the humanitarian ideal, the progressive critique believes in equal human dignity. It believes that all human beings are equal. However, the progressive critique accuses humanitarian action of going against its own aims, or of not going far enough in fighting for social, economic or political equality, or – with ostensibly good intentions – playing into its enemiesʼ hands. The reactionary critique, on the other hand, starts from the assumption that human beings are fundamentally unequal. According to this school of thought, since human beings are unequal and engaged in power relations, helping the weaker is useless or even harmful. This critique attacks universal norms such as human rights or international humanitarian law.
The two types of critique are fundamentally opposed. They have their respective ideological roots in competing intellectual traditions. Yet “New Right” intellectuals have deliberately effaced that obvious contrast by taking the language of the progressive tradition and making it look reactionary, and euphemising the reactionary critique to make it look progressive. They have even given this strategy of confusion a name: “metapolitics”.[10]Razmig Keucheyan, « Alain de Benoist, du néofascisme à l’extrême droite “respectable” – Enquête sur une success story intellectuelle », Revue du Crieur, n° 6, 2017, p. 128-143. Thanks to help from the far-right media and some social networks, this ideological sleight of hand has been quite successful; it is hard to know sometimes whether words being used are progressive or reactionary.
The progressive critique
Western egalitarian thought goes back to the French Revolution. Equality is a far more recent idea than “liberty” (which comes from antiquity), “fraternity”, “mercy” or “charity”, which have animated Christian thought since the Middle Ages. The norm of equality between all human beings, the demand for equal civil rights with regard to the law, the requirement for political equality and then the demand for greater social and economic equality emerged in the late eighteenth century due to pressure from revolutionary movements (sans-culottes, communists, feminists and abolitionists). These ideas found their intellectual expression in authors like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Abbé Sieyès, François-Noël Babeuf, Olympe de Gouges, David Walker and many others.[11]For a good summary, see Shlomo Sand, Une brève histoire mondiale de la gauche, Éditions La Découverte, 2022. A number of traditions (Marxist, socialist, feminist, pan-Africanist, anti-colonialist, etc.) used the notion of equality as an ideological resource. The progressive critique applies to humanitarian action, just as it applies to any other action that, in its view, is an obstacle to greater equality between humans.
In their 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attacked the charitable organisations of their time. They condemned the “hole-and-corner reformers”, the “economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics”.[12]. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Penguin Classics, London, 2014 [1848]. To the Marxists, charity takes workers away from the only fight that matters, the class struggle. Charity is a bourgeois value that spreads capitalist ideology among people rather than encouraging them to fight against it. Aid lessens suffering, which ultimately makes inequalities tolerable. Contemporary Marxist authors are reviving these old critiques.[13]. For an overview of these widely diverse schools of thought, see Katharyne Mitchell and Polly Pallister-Wilkins (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Philanthropy and … Continue reading Mark Duffield, for example, argues that contemporary humanitarian action plays a role in the neoliberal governance of the world.[14]Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples, Polity Press, 2007 ; Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, … Continue reading He, like other Marxist writers, believes that todayʼs capitalism is based not only on exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, but also on exploitation of poor countries by rich ones. Poor countries are integrated into the global system if they are able to supply the raw materials and labour that the rich countries need, while other regions are relegated to the worldʼs margins. International humanitarian action aims, without saying so, at keeping peripheral populations at bay. In this way, it isolates the “surplus life” for which global capitalism has no use. In a similar vein, Alex de Waal has studied the relationships between humanitarian action and political regimes, concluding that humanitarian action renders rulersʼ responsibility for problems invisible, thus allowing bad regimes to continue. By blunting the impact of famines caused by such regimes, humanitarian action helps keep them in power.[15]Alexander De Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa, Indiana University Press, 1997.
The sociology of domination is another critical tradition. Didier Fassin, for example, relies on such work to analyse humanitarian aid as a form of moral government. Contemporary power becomes a “humanitarian government”.[16]Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, University of California Press, 2012. p. 1 Political power uses “the emotions that direct our attention to the suffering of others and make us want to remedy them” in order to remain in power.[17]Ibid. “Humanitarian reason” is seen as both a politics of solidarity (which recognises others as the same), but also as non-egalitarian (because humanitarian aid bars reciprocity). Compassion is “always directed from above to below, from the more powerful to the weaker, the more fragile, the more vulnerable”.[18]Ibid., p. 4. The sociology of domination offers a radical critique of humanitarian action based on the principle of equality.
Another progressive tradition is that of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and pan-Africanism. It decries the connections between colonisation and Western humanitarian action. In the view of Kwame Nkrumah, an anti-colonialist and Prime Minister then President of independent Ghana (1957-1966), international development aid is a ruse by which Western powers seek to influence the rest of the world: “[…] aidʼ turns out to be another means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a more cosmetic name”,[19]Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965, https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/nkrumah/nkrumah-neocolonialism.pdf because that aid comes with strings attached (e.g. trade rights, lower taxes, access to raw materials). The anti-colonial critique has not forgotten that the humanitarian argument has served the interests of colonialism. The Westʼs “civilising mission” was used in the past to justify imperial expansion. The Brussels Convention Act of 1890 asserted, point-blank, that colonisation was the best way to provide Africa with “the benefits of peace and civilisation”.[20]Original: “effectively protecting the aboriginal populations of Africa”; “assuring to that vast continent the benefits of peace and civilisation”). Cited by: Mairi S Macdonald, “Lord … Continue reading Current decolonial critiques rely on writers like Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, and W.E.B. Du Bois to point out the relationship between humanitarian action and western geopolitical interests and colonial era representations like the “white saviour”.[21]Lata Narayanaswamy, “Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector”, in Silke Roth, Bandana Purkayastha and Tobias Denskus (eds.), Handbook on Humanitarianism and … Continue reading That body of literature also points out the paucity of representatives from the Global South in the governing bodies of large humanitarian organisations, as well as the discrimination that occurs within those institutions.[22]Seye Abimbola and Madhukar Pai, “The art of medicine. Will global health survive its decolonisation”, The Lancet, vol. 396, no. 10263, November 2020, pp. 1627–1628, … Continue reading
The feminist critique looks at another form of inequality – gender relations. The demand for equality between people leads to a rejection of sex hierarchy, patriarchy and male dominance. Since the 1970s, feminist movements have criticised international organisations, while reviving a longstanding feminist internationalist tradition.[23]Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860, Oxford University Press, 2000 ; Denise Ireton, Responsible to the peoples of the world: Activist women, … Continue reading They stressed areas previously neglected by humanitarian action (access to education, abortion rights, the fight against rape and violence against women, womenʼs health care, etc.), as well as gender inequality within the organisations themselves (inequalities in power, pay and visibility). That criticism had a very large impact on international organisations (as evidenced by the UN resolutions regarding sex crimes in the 2000s and the creation of UN Women in 2010, for example), and is still relevant, as contemporary writers like Cynthia Enloe, Carol Harrington and Elisabeth Olivius demonstrate.[24]Elisabeth Olivius, “Constructing Humanitarian Selves and Refugee Others: Gender equality and the global governance of refugees”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 18, no. 2, … Continue reading
The egalitarian critique is sometimes radical. Writers from this critical tradition do not mince words. They talk about “neoliberal humanitarianism”, “imperialism”, “carceral humanitarianism”, “structural racism” and “systemic sexism”. Such criticism can be hard to hear. It can be seen as excessive or counterproductive. Humanitarian organisations can choose to be open to it or not (they have made changes in response to many critiques since the 1970s). They cannot ignore it. Humanitarian action and progressive critiques have a common goal: to defend the principle of equal human dignity.
The reactionary critique
Reactionary thinking takes its inspiration from the counter-revolutionary movement that, in response to the French Revolution, vehemently rejected the ideas of progress, equality and humanism. In the view of Edmond Burke, Joseph de Maistre, and Louis de Bonald, revolution leaves only ruin and disorder and it is tradition that must ensure the continuity of institutions. Counter-revolutionary thought prefers morality to reason, historical particulars to abstraction and nations to individuals. Counter-revolution rejects humanism, according to which every human being has inherent value and dignity. It rejects the individualism at the heart of humanism. It believes that other – collective – values (nation, honour, history, etc.) should take precedence.[25]Philosophers will excuse me for lumping into the single “counter-revolutionary thinking” category writings that, while all opposing the French Revolution, start from different premises. For a … Continue reading
Racist, antisemitic and colonialist intellectuals are inspired by counter-revolutionary thinkers. According to Paul de Lagarde and Heinrich von Treitschke, too much humanity – toward Jews and the sick, in particular – would inevitably weaken the entire race.[26]Christian Helfer, „Humanitätsduselei – zur Geschichte eines Schlagworts“, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 16, no. 2, 1964, pp. 179–182. To reactionary colonialists like Max Buchner, the principle of humanity was a threat to civilisation. For these reactionary intellectuals, the enemy is the Christian mission.[27]Max Buchner, Kamerun: Skizzen und Betrachtungen, Duncker & Humblot, 1887. Recall that in the late-nineteenth century, Christian missions did not question the idea of racial inequality. They accepted and justified colonisation. They did, however, believe that it should be accompanied by a social and cultural “civilising mission”. This was intolerable to a reactionary anthropologist like Buchner: “No-one can deny that humanity, in its overzealousness, helped make so-called savages more self-aware and dangerous. It is high time that we stop considering these other races with too much platonic love and too little selfish caution. […] Let us not forget that they [these other races] are also competition in the struggle for existence.”[28]Ibidem., p. IX [author’s translation].
The Nazis took these attacks against the principle of humanity the furthest. According to Alfred Rosenberg, the idea of humanity was a Jewish ruse to corrupt the Aryan race and destroy the German nation. “Thanks to the preaching of humanitarianism and the doctrine of human equality, every Jew, Negro and mulatto can become a citizen of equal rights in a European state; thanks to the humanitarian concern for the individual, there are hosts of luxury institutions for the incurably sick…”.[29]Rosenberg, Alfred, Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts, pp. 78-82. Aufl., München 1935, S. 203-204, cited in Junginger, Horst, Antihumanismus und Faschismus, pp. 166-167. English translation: The Myth … Continue reading To the Nazis, the destruction of groups they designated as enemies was a necessary step in saving the German race. As Adolf Hitler explains in Mein Kampf, “A stronger race will oust that which has grown weak; for the vital urge, in its ultimate form, will burst asunder all the absurd chains of this so-called humane consideration for the individual and will replace it with the humanity of Nature, which wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong.”[30]Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf, München 1934 [1925], p.38. Here, english translation from: Adolf Hitler, My Struggle, translated by James Murphy, Hurst and Blackett Ltd, 1939. According to the Führer, “the most humane task that mankind has to face” is the destruction of “defective people”.[31]Ibid.
The Nazi defeat in 1945 marked a break. It became difficult for reactionary intellectuals to openly defend racial theories, euthanasia and the destruction of their opponents. It was time for human rights and the Welfare State. Beginning in the 1970s, the New Rightʼs intellectual contribution consisted of reviving the reactionary tradition while distinguishing itself from fascism. Rediscovering the Conservative Revolution authors from the Weimar era (Ernst Jünger, Martin Heidegger, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Niekisch, Carl Schmidt, etc.), New Right authors could attack the principle of equality without immediately being associated with Nazism.[32]. See Stéphane François, La Nouvelle Droite et le nazisme, une histoire sans fin. Révolution conservatrice allemande, national-socialisme et alt-right, Éditions Le Bord de L’Eau, 2024. Those writers considered compassion for strangers pathological.
The New Right understands that it will take time to get back into power. They are working well upstream of the political fight, in the field of ideas, culture and representation. This is “metapolitics”: changing the frameworks of thinking in order to steer the public debate. It has launched magazines (Nouvelle École, 1968; Éléments, 1973; Krisis, 1988; Criticon, 1970; Junge Freiheit, 1986; and Sezession, 2003), publishing houses (La Nouvelle Librairie Éditions and Antaios), and think tanks (Groupement de recherche et dʼétudes pour la civilisation européenne, or GRECE; Institut Iliade; Polémia; and the Institut für Staatspolitik). Initially marginal, this new reactionary movement is now influencing the public debate.
The works of Arnold Gehlen are an example of this. His attacks on “moralism” in the 1960s have fed reactionary orthodoxy to this day.[33]Arnold Gehlen, Moral und Hypermoral. Eine pluralistische Ethik, Aula Verlag, 1986 [original edition 1969]. For new iterations of this idea, see Alexander Grau, Hypermoral. Die neue Lust an der … Continue reading Gehlen joined the Nazi party in 1933 and that membership propelled his academic career. As a philosophy professor in Königsberg and later in Vienna, he attempted to write a “Philosophy of national socialism”, but without success.[34]Ulrike Baureithel, “Arnold Gehlen. ‚Kalter Blick ‘in die ‚Wärmestuben des Liberalismus’”, in Ralf Fücks und Christoph Becker (eds.), Das alte Denken der Neuen Rechte. Die langen Linien … Continue reading In 1945, he evaded denazification but had to leave Austria. He finished his career as a sociology professor in Aachen in Germany.
Gehlen referred to “humanitarianism” as “indiscriminate love of oneʼs neighbour transformed into moral duty”.[35]Arnold Gehlen, „zur ethischen Picht gemachte[n] unterschiedslose[n] Menschenliebe“, 1986 [1969], p. 79. According to him, extending love of oneʼs neighbour to humanity as a whole was an absurdity. In his view, there are several forms of ethics with different anthropological roots. Love of oneʼs neighbour falls under the family or tribal ethic. It had its origins in the primitive community and could not go beyond that. Placing love of oneʼs neighbour above national interests and national honour is a grave error, “moral hypertrophy”.[36]Ibid.
Gehlen advanced three arguments against what he called “hypermoralism.” The first was historical. In his view, the philosophical origins of humanitarianism could be found in Greek and Roman antiquity when these civilisations were declining. That ideology was ostensibly created by a small group of philosophers (the Cynics and Stoics) as their states were collapsing in the face of Alexanderʼs empire. They elevated what were originally private moral values (compassion and mutual aid) at the expense of state values (honour and sovereignty). He viewed this as a morality of the weak, as both symptom and cause of civilisationʼs decline.
His second argument was political. The humanist ethic was incompatible with the need for power relations. Humanitarianism undermines state values. It is therefore a threat to the nation. The state can only be secure by using power and violence. Since the struggle for power is a zero-sum game, the state can only win at the expense of other entities. The battle for security is inevitable. To Gehlen, state sovereignty was not just a means, but a value in and of itself. Not only is the demand for charity a pointless financial burden on state resources, it is an attack on the very principle of sovereignty. The politics of the state require that security and national honour come first. The humanist ethic is an obstacle to those values.
His third argument was an anthropological one. According to Gehlen, the ethos of love of one’s neighbour originated from the biological instinct for preserving the family. Yet this instinct cannot be extended to abstract groups that do not know each other, like the nation or humanity as a whole. Those entities have other sources of morality, like the institutional ethic. According to Gehlen, the family ethic was originally limited to members of a given tribe or acquaintanceship group. But that family ethic was progressively overextended. Humanitarianism is a ruse devised by urban intellectuals to destroy patriotism.
With Moral und Hypermoral, Gehlen was reacting to the 1968 student and worker protests. But he was also settling scores with German intellectuals from the interwar period who resisted Nazism, because he held them responsible for Germanyʼs defeat. Gehlen attacked the Protestant intellectuals who claimed that Christian theology demanded opposition to Hitler. He accused that particular form of “humanitarianism” of having undermined German patriotism. Humanitarianism was, in his view, a ruse devised by intellectuals to weaken the state and the interests of the nation.
Gehlenʼs readers would not be surprised to find, in the Trump administrationʼs current attacks on USAID, a mixture of the “materialist” critique of power relations and the “moral” critique of intellectuals. By destroying USAID, the Trump government is not just claiming to save money or reduce “waste” of public resources. It is about protecting the “interests” of the nation, on the one hand, and protecting “American values”, on the other.[37]. President Donald J. Trump, Reevaluating and Realigning…, op. cit. The fight against humanitarianism is a fight against a “criminal” operation that undermines the stateʼs authority and against intellectual traitors to the nation: “A bunch of radical lunatics,” said Donald Trump, referring to USAID officials, and “a viperʼs nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” continued DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) director Elon Musk.[38]The Guardian, “What is USAid and why does Trump dislike it so much?”, 4 February 2025,https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/what-is-usaid-donald-trump-elon-musk-foreign-aid-freezes Attacks on humanitarianism and intellectuals have been, since Gehlen, the two faces of a single political project.[39]Éric Fassin, Misère de l’anti-intellectualisme. Du procès en wokisme au chantage à l’antisémitisme, Textuel, 2024.
The politics of confusion
Reactionary thinkers feel free to make words say the opposite of what they mean. They readily assert that Hitler was on the left and the Revolution was on the right.[40]Reactionary intellectuals now commonly equate the Nazi Party agenda with a socialist agenda. For example: Dinesh D’Souza, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, Regnery, 2017 ; … Continue reading Reactionary thinking is often expressed euphemistically. It no longer admits to being openly racist, antisemitic, sexist and inegalitarian, as it was in the habit of doing before the Second World War. It expresses itself politely and appropriates opposing ideas.
This politics of confusion is a deliberate strategy theorised by New Right intellectuals like Alain de Benoist.
Alain de Benoist got his political start in the Fédération des Étudiants Nationalistes (FEN), an anti-communist, racist group that defended French Algeria, supported the French terrorist group “Secret Army Organisation” (OAS) and were apologists for the apartheid regime in South Africa.[41]Fabrice Laroche (pseudonym of Alain de Benoist), in collaboration with G. Fournier, Vérité pour lʼAfrique du Sud, Éditions Saint-Just, Paris, 1965. He helped found the GRECE, a group that has long espoused European racism, initially expressed as biological racism and later reformulated as cultural racism.[42]On the close ties between the American, French and German New Right, see: Stéphane François, La Nouvelle Droite et le nazisme, une histoire sans fin…, op. cit. A darling of the New Right, he now advocates “ethno-differentialism”. According to him, all peoples have a “droit à la différence” (“right to difference”), the right to live as one chooses, provided that right is exercised at home, in oneʼs natural environment. Ethno-differentialism opposes, on principle, any kind of migration or mixing, which the New Right equates with genocide. The biggest problem to be fought against is thus cultural “contamination”. European culture must also be protected.[43]Razmig Keucheyan, « Alain de Benoist, du néofascisme à l’extrême droite “respectable”… », art. cit. It is in this sense that the apologia regarding diversity must be understood: “Whereas diversity is an asset, uniformity is always a loss.” To him, the enemy is “egalitarianism”, which he calls the “Ideology of Sameness”. Anything universal is bad: Christianity, Marxism, liberalism and human rights. This obsession with cultural “purity” leads to the glorification of separation, the historical expression of which is apartheid.
In Beyond Human Rights,[44]Alain de Benoist, Au-delà des droits de l’homme. Pour défendre les libertés, La Nouvelle Librairie, 2016 [English edition: Alain de Benoist, Beyond Human Rights, Arktos Media, 2024]. de Benoist attacks international law as an “overarching abstraction” that will destroy cultural diversity.[45]Ibid., p. 9. To him, human rights are both too universal (in the sense that they are supposed to apply to everyone everywhere) and too individualistic (in the sense that they apply to individuals independent of their social or cultural context).[46]Ibid., p. 10. These two failings conflict with the freedom of peoples, the freedom to preserve their traditions and their collective and individual practices. It is no surprise that de Benoist draws upon reactionary (Taine, Carl Schmitt, and Finkielkraut) and libertarian (Ayn Rand) authors. But he also cites liberals (Kant, Tocqueville, Raymond Aron and Jürgen Habermas) and even Marxists (Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Chantal Mouffe and Régis Debray). He even invokes non-Western, anti-colonialist and post-colonialist authors (Gandhi, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chung-Shu Lo). He feels free to draw from the works of people who, before him, criticised the universality of human rights. His attacks on the notions of “just war” and “the right of intervention” recall those expressed elsewhere by progressive writers.[47]Ibid., p. 131. He sees any argument against the universality of human rights, whatever its source, as worth using. All arguments are manipulated to drive a wedge into the “compassionate impulse” that plays into the hands of immigrationists.[48]Ibid., p. 12. De Benoist blames human rights for every ill. In his mind, they are responsible for nothing less than “the dislocation or eradication of collective identities”.[49]Ibid., p. 100. But his argument is falsely ecumenical, including authors from a wide range of intellectual traditions.
Such intellectual poaching is no accident.[50]I have borrowed this expression from: Sylvain Crépon, « Une littérature postcoloniale d’extrême droite ? Réflexion sur un “braconnage” intellectuel », in Collectif Write Back (dir.), … Continue reading It is part of a strategy of deception, an attempt to blend into the political discourse “like a fish in water”.[51]Razmig Keucheyan, « Alain de Benoist, du néofascisme à l’extrême droite “respectable”… », art. cit, p. 128. Political confusion is an explicit tool of the reactionary right. The antiracist norm that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century forced the far right to reinvent itself.[52]The Pleven (1972) and Gayssot (1991) French laws punished incitement of racist and antisemitic hate. It has had to adapt its ideas to an era in which they have become taboo. It has to do something to language before it can take power. “Metapolitics” is a way to inject categories of thought into the dominant thinking.[53]Ibid. See Alain de Benoist, « Pour un “gramscisme de droite” », 16e colloque national du GRECE, 1982 ; Jacques Marlaud, Interpellations. Questionnements métapolitiques, Dualpha, 2004, « … Continue reading If Alain de Benoist borrows critiques from both right and left, it is because they help him cover his tracks.
Distinguishing between the critiques to order to defend humanitarian action
The disorientation we are witnessing is therefore no surprise. The confusion is the result of reactionary ideas being disseminated in some parts of the media. Many words that originated in progressive thought have been appropriated and distorted by reactionaries, reaching the general public in an altered form. These words (“decolonisation”, “wokeness”, “politically correct”, “feminism”, “gender theory”, “intersectionality”, “critical race theory”, etc.) are used widely in the major media with reactionary framing, sometimes explicitly (Breitbart News, Fox News, CNews, Neue Züricher Zeitung, Bild Zeitung, X/Twitter, TikTok), and sometimes tacitly or even unwittingly (Le Figaro, Marianne, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt). These publications give words the opposite of their original meaning. Terms that come from an egalitarian tradition, forged in the fight for emancipation, are now “off limits” to those who defend humanism.[54]The term “off limits” is the one that reactionary author Christopher Rufo used himself. See : Joël Glasman, « Terreur postcoloniale : en Allemagne, la fabrique d’une panique morale », AOC … Continue reading They cause an almost allergic reaction. The New Right has succeeded in creating distance between public opinion and progressive thought. It has stripped the words of their meaning. Political confusion is the result of a longstanding effort to undermine.
“The far rightʼs identity-based irridentism has nothing in common with the strategic essentialism of minorities. Reactionary thought detests the very idea of mixing, miscegenation or hybrid ethnicity.”
Debates on “decolonising” the humanitarian sector are an example of this. The decolonial critique grew out of the anti-colonialist struggle. It is a critique of racism, consistent with the principle of humanity. With its critique of abstract universals and celebration of difference, such thinking could have at times been confused with anti-humanist critique, which it is not. This is not to say that decolonial approaches are exempt from criticism. They have their share of posturing, exaggeration and incoherence.[55]Michel Cahen, Colonialité. Plaidoyer pour la précision d’un concept, Karthala, 2024 ; Pierre Gaussens, Gaya Makaran, , « Peau Blanche, Masques Noirs. Les études décoloniales : autopsie d’une … Continue reading And some of these movementsʼ representatives are undeniably guilty of strategic essentialism, an old weapon of resistance against domination, which was countered early on by other anti-colonial thinkers.[56]On strategic essentialism, see: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography”, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ranajit Guha (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies, … Continue reading The strategic essentialist strategy is sometimes quite possibly counter-productive. Decolonial essentialism may unintentionally give reactionaries ammunition. But it makes no historical sense to blame these intellectual traditions for the triumph of anti-humanist thought and the far right. The far rightʼs identity-based irredentism has nothing in common with the strategic essentialism of minorities. Reactionary thought detests the very idea of mixing, miscegenation or hybrid ethnicity. It abhors egalitarianism.[57]Sylvain Crépon, « Une littérature postcoloniale d’extrême droite ?…», op. cit. Its goal is to disseminate the principle of inequality until it becomes commonplace, while claiming that the idea comes from the people themselves. That step is essential in preparing to assume power.
This article, slightly updated and modified, including its title, was first published on 21 March 2025 on the Centre de réflexion sur l’action et les savoirs humanitaires (CRASH) website of Médecins Sans Frontières France: https://msf-crash.org/en/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/how-not-mistake-enemy-two-critiques-humanitarian-action
The author and Humanitarian Alternatives would like to thank CRASH for agreeing to republish this text.
Translated from the French by the Crash team and edited by Thomas Young for Humanitarian Alternatives.
Picture credit : © Jatt Empire
