European fundamentalism ? The theopolitics of Friedrich August von Hayek and Alain de Benoist

AUTEUR : SEBASTIEN PITTL

ABSTRACT

The article investigates the thinking of two intellectual figures whose work is in the centre of ideologies that can be regarded as forms of a European fundamentalism : the Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek, founding father and most important theorist of neoliberalism, and the French philosopher Alain de Benoist, key intellectual of Europe’s “new right”. The author deconstructs the hidden theological matrix which is at the heart of these ideologies. He outlines their relevance for the configuration of present and future African-European relations and analyses in which way they can be regarded as fundamentalist. It is shown how both ideologies claim to interpret the totality of reality using a binary logic of “either-or”, how both refer to some sort of divine being, and how they immunise themselves against critique. The analysis suggests that the common ground of as well religious as economic or political forms of fundamentalism lies not so much in the reference to a specific “truth” but in the will itself to have clear and strong distinctions.