page_title: GRECE
section_title: Creation and development: 1968–1977
hierarchical_section_title: GRECE / History / Creation and development: 1968–1977
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: J.-Y. Le Gallou à l'université d'été d'Academia Christiana, en août 2016.
context_page_description: The Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne, better known as GRECE, is an ethno-nationalist think tank founded in 1968 to promote the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite. GRECE founding member Alain de Benoist has been described as its leader and "most authoritative spokesman". Prominent former members include Guillaume Faye and Jean-Yves Le Gallou.
  GRECE is deeply opposed to multiculturalism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and distinguishes itself from other national-conservative organizations in its specific rejection of Christianity and endorsement of neopaganism. The group defends a non-reactionary "conservative revolution" aiming at the rejuvenation of pan-European identity and nationalism, while supporting the preservation and separation of ethnic groups and cultures. GRECE members have created and promoted the concepts of "ethnopluralism" and "archeofuturism".
context_section_description: GRECE was founded in Nice, Provence in January 1968 by European – mostly French – nationalist activists, and officially launched on 17 January 1969. Among the 40 founders were Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Giorgio Locchi, Maurice Rollet – who became its first president –, Pierre Vial and Jean-Claude Valla. Their aim was to establish a meta-political "laboratory of ideas" that would influence mainstream right-wing parties and the French society at large. In May 1969, they circulated an internal document advising their members not to employ "outdated language" that might associate the group with fascism, and to socialize with Europe's most important decision-makers in order to influence their policies.
  
  In 1969, Jean-Yves Le Gallou became a member of the Cercle Pareto, a students' club established in Science Po at the end of 1968 by Yvan Blot and closely linked to GRECE. They were joined by Guillaume Faye in 1970. GRECE launched its own review, Nouvelle École, in February–March 1968. Initially distributed exclusively among its members to hold debates in a semi-academic style, the review became public in 1969. From 1970 to 1982, Alain de Benoist worked has a journalist for the media outlets of Raymond Bourgine, Le Spectacle du Monde and Valeurs Actuelles.  Until its heyday in the late 1970s, however, the group remained mostly unknown to the general public. Its members were focusing on the organization of conferences to influence the elites, with cercles de réflexion ("thinking groups") emerging in many cities of France and even abroad: the "Cercle Pareto" in Science Po Paris, "Galillée" in Lyon, "Critique Réaliste" in Nantes, "Jean Médecin" in Nice, "Bertrand Russel" in Toulon, "Pythéas" in Marseille, "Erwin-de-Steinbach" and "Wimpfeling" in Strasbourg, "Stamkunde" in Lilles, "Henry de Montherland" in Bordeaux, "Erasme" in Brussels, and "Villebois-Mareuil" in Johannesburg.
  In September 1973, the magazine Éléments, which had been serving as the internal bulletin of GRECE until then, began its public circulation as the general public showcase of the think tank. Frustrated with GRECE's long-term meta-political strategy, several members including Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Yvan Blot established with Henry de Lesquen a group named Club de l'Horloge in 1974 to serve as an elite think tank seeking to adopt a more direct strategy, "entryism", that is the infiltration of political parties and senior public offices. Several of them joined mainstream right-ring parties like the Rally for the Republic and the Union for French Democracy. 
  In one of its few direct metapolitical interventions, GRECE called for the election of centre-right candidate Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency in 1974. In 1975 and 1976, the organization created CLOSOR, a committee seeking to influence France's high-ranking military personnel, and GENE, intended for the teaching professionals. Each of them had its own special bulletin: Nation Armée and Nouvelle Éducation, respectively. In September 1976, GRECE founded the publishing company Copernic to propagate the Nouvelle Droite worldview to a larger European audience. The following year, it published de Benoist's essay Vu de droite ("See from right"), which was awarded the Prix de l'Essai of the prestigious Académie Française in 1978.
caption: Jean-Yves Le Gallou in 2016.
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