It was a beautiful weekend in May, from the 19th to the 21st, in the courtyard of the Château de Flaugergues, in Montpellier. The Tomorrow is Today Salon, organized by the Energy Movement for Earth Evolution, opened its doors… and a window onto a confusing universe. The event, to which L’Express went, was the occasion for a gathering between followers of esoteric practices, notorious conspirators and representatives of the most radical extreme right. Among them, Antoine Duvivier and Angelo Berardi. The first is the editor of the esoteric journal Uranus and the former spokesperson for the Brigandes, a group to which we owe exhibitions of mystical paintings and, above all, openly racist albums such as Get the hell out of here Or The Great Replacement. The second is the co-founder of the La Rose et l’Epée community, based in a former summer camp center in La Salvetat-sur-Agout (Hérault), where the Brigandes have been living since 2015. Standing on one of the stages of the Salon, they hold a conference mixing astrology, homophobia and identity talk, declaiming an anti-Darwinist discourse according to which the theory of evolution is a lie, since civilizations “have existed more than a hundred thousand years ago”, or affirm that the planets change their alignment and that “the change of astrological era” that we would experience reinforces “socialist ideas, globalization, homosexuality and gender issues in small children at school”.
A speech assumed by the organizer of the event, Hélène Labruyère, grand-niece of Joël Labruyère, artistic director of Les Brigandes and co-founder of the community La Rose et l’Epée. In the sights of the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Aberrations (Miviludes) for years, he is also at the origin of the association Les Arches. Created in 2019, it notably manages non-contract schools… where numerous breaches of the regulations in force have been observed and for which Miviludes has already received multiple reports. One of them, which concerns a Les Arches school located in the Oise, reports “change of school holiday dates without informing the parents, strong pressure exerted on the pupils, a lack of care of injured children, the promotion of not wearing a mask during the Covid and a guilt-ridden speech on the part of teachers”, indicates Miviludes.
From Nazi Occultism to the French New Right
This astonishing mix of genres between extreme right and esotericism is far from being anecdotal. These links have been known and described for years thanks, in particular, to the work of Stéphane François, professor of political science at the University of Mons (Belgium) and author of several books on the subject, including Nazi Occultism (CNRS), The Greens-Browns (The Waterfront) or Beyond the North Winds (Lyon University Press). According to him, the völkisch movement, born at the beginning of the XXᵉ century, constitutes one of the striking examples. “Its members, sort of anti-Semitic pre-hippies, pagan occultists or Christians, had already conceptualized the idea of racial roots associated with an ideology close to nature and against so-called official medicine, that is to say too Jewish, according to them, and idealizing the traditional Indian society”, explains the researcher. Nazism was born in this movement, and some of the highest dignitaries of the Third Reich were members of it, such as the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, as well as Hitler’s right-hand man, Rudolf Hess, a follower of occultism, of astrology, alternative medicine and passionate about homeopathy.
Many trends or ideological currents from the most radical right have been influenced by Nazi occultism or esotericism in general, explains Stéphane François. Among them, the French New Right, a deeply racist and scientist current of thought, and its neopaganism, the antimoderns and the Italian subversive right of the years of lead, with their “esoteric tradition”, or even certain neo-Nazis, neo-fascists and revolutionary nationalists who mix esoteric traditionalism with the doctrinal corpus of the radical right. The reverse also exists, since many occultists have been influenced by far-right discourses.
The trajectory of journalist Louis Pauwels, author of the expression “mental AIDS”, illustrates particularly well the intertwining between these two worlds. A great supporter of esotericism in the 1960s and 1970s, Pauwels gradually joined the New Right, of which he became a traveling companion. He moved away from the sulphurous movement a few years later in order to marry a less radical right, and convert to Catholicism. Then he founded, in 1979, Le Figaro Magazine, which retains, even today, an esoteric tinge – evidenced by its file of Une of July 28, devoted to haunted houses. We could also mention the case of Richard Walther Darré, SS general who was the disciple – like other Nazis, such as Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg or Wilhelm Frick – of Rudolf Steiner, father of anthroposophy, a current according to which certain “human races” have remained close to the animal kingdom and find themselves “degenerate from the spiritual point of view” (it also gave birth to biodynamics, which has met with great success, particularly in the wine sector).
In addition to the Tomorrow is today show, other recent examples confirm that these links continue. Louis Fouché, an anesthetist-resuscitator doctor “placed on leave” by the Public Assistance-Hospitals of Marseille (AP-HM), has become a leader of RéinfoCovid, far-right incubator with mystical tendencies, antivax and conspiracy theorists, about which Miviludes calls itself “vigilant”. Long member of the Colibris Movement, co-founded by Pierre Rabhi, he defends an esoteric vision of medicine, regularly evokes the “energies that come from elsewhere”. He also does not hesitate to appear in videos with former fellow travelers of the essayist Alain Soral, co-founder of Equality and Reconciliation, nor to invite Yannick Lescure, a youtubeur who defines himself as ” National Socialist”. He has also given videoconferences with Thierry Casasnovas, who has been touting the health benefits of raw food for more than a decade and has been monitored by Miviludes for just as long. Indicted for multiple charges, including the illegal practice of medicine, on March 10, Casasnovas led conferences in circles of the association Egalité et Réconciliation and invited Dieudonné, in 2019, on the occasion of the Rencontres de regeneration.
These links are also expressed in French journals and publishing houses. “The far-right editions of Lore publish books by Jacques Baugé-Prévost, an openly Nazi Canadian naturopath, indicates Stéphane François. Spartadirected by the far-right militant Philippe Baillet, evolves very clearly in Nazi esotericism and is linked to the Lyon-based publishing house Akribeia, Holocaust denier and supremacist, without forgetting the Pardès editions, which evolve in the middle of the esoteric extreme right close to Julius Evola, an Italian extreme right ideologue.” The publishing house Ars Magna (“great art”, in reference to alchemy) was founded by Christian Bouchet. The latter is the main French translator of Julius Evola, but also the publisher of Alexandre Douguine, a Russian theoretician versed in esotericism and mysticism, known for his ultranationalist and neo-fascist positions.
This intricacy between esotericism and the far right can also be observed across the Atlantic, where it has never been so well highlighted as on January 6, 2021, the day of the attack on the Capitol, in Washington, by members of the extreme right, fans of Donald Trump and the QAnon conspiratorial movement (convinced of fighting a vast pedo-satanic network). Who doesn’t remember Jacob Chansley, the self-proclaimed shaman wearing coyote fur and buffalo horns, taking a selfie in the US Senate Chamber? If he was sentenced to more than two years in prison, he will also have marked the collective imagination and embodied a heterogeneous movement, but sharing a certain attraction for the occult and the far right. “In interviews with new age spiritualists in Southern California, many said they recognized a dozen former friends and colleagues in the footage of the Capitol attack: people who practice yoga, meditation, magnetism and who promote dubious food supplements”, reports an American journalist in an investigation by the Los Angeles Times.
The other fringe of the “defiant”
“Esotericism does not only consist in having the cards drawn, it is also to question rationalism, and in particular science, and to refuse the existentialist nothingness, embodied by our modern societies bathed in a neoliberalism which appears unbridled and almost solely centered on the value of work, analyzes Damien Karbovnik, doctor in sociology, teacher-researcher in the history of religions and specialist in contemporary esotericism at the University of Strasbourg.There is a need to re-enchant the world, to believe in destiny , to the marvelous, that coincidences are meaningful and that we are all connected to each other, because we are beings steeped in existential angst who need answers. As such, esotericism can appear as an excellent reservoir from which to draw in order to fill a spiritual need, or to reject a science that is too “cold” and rational. It then gets on well with the extreme political currents that reject institutions, whether political, economic, media or scientific.
Of course, not all esotericists embrace racist and supremacist theories. Moreover, the composite portrait of the followers remains difficult to establish, if not impossible. First, because the practices have exploded since the end of the 2000s to the point of becoming mainstream. Today, esotericism appeals to a wide variety of people and, in the first place, to those who are most in search of meaning and metaphysical nourishment, disappointed by religions in decline. “When I started my sociological research on esotericism, many colleagues told me: ‘It’s too marginal and delusional a subject, not socially significant enough.’ From now on, I am told that it is too popular”, laughs Damien Karbovnik.
Nevertheless, researchers observe that the most extreme esoteric practices, especially those that totally reject science, established facts and rationality in general, tend to attract people who are particularly defiant of the institutions of society. Among them, a majority find themselves depoliticized, as described in the book-investigation The Dissidents (Robert Laffont), by journalist Anthony Mansuy. “In the circles of classic popular esotericism – cartomancy, horoscope… – you can find everything, and it is no longer so much a question of left or right, but of disengagement from society and politics, abounds Damien Karbovnik. But if you look at the most well-known theorists and gurus, they have a strong tendency to lean to the right.” It is around them that the other fringe of the “defiant” who still wants to get involved in the life of the city is concentrated. “They reject politics which they consider decadent and want a return to strong politics. Far-right esotericism is the promotion of a traditional, counter-revolutionary, highly hierarchical society, ruled by an ‘elite true’ and anti-rational”, concludes the researcher.