Carrefour de l'Horloge

The Carrefour de l'Horloge (literally The Clock Crossroad), formerly Club de l'Horloge (1974–2015), is a French far-right national liberal think tank founded in 1974 and presided by Henry de Lesquen. The organization promotes an "integral neo-Darwinist" philosophy, characterized by a form of economic liberalism infused with ethnic nationalism. Born as a splinter group from GRECE in the years 1974–79, the Carrefour de l'Horloge shares many similarities with the Nouvelle Droite, although it stands out by its defense of Catholicism and economic liberalism. Like the Nouvelle Droite, they use meta-political strategies to diffuse their ideas in wider society; however, the Carrefour de l'Horloge favours more direct methods, such as entryism into mainstream parties and senior public offices, along with the creation of catch-all slogans to influence the public debate. The group and its members have for instance coined terms like "national preference" and "re-information", and participated in popularizing the concepts of "Great Replacement" and "remigration" in France. The origin of the Carrefour de l'Horloge can be traced back to the "Cercle Pareto", a club established in Science Po by students associated with GRECE, an ethno-nationalist think-tank founded in January 1968 by Alain de Benoist and other far-right militants. The Cercle was founded at the end of the same year by Yvan Blot and other students hostile to the left-wing May 1968 unrests. He was soon joined by Jean-Yves Le Gallou (1969), Guillaume Faye (1970), Daniel Garrigue, and Georges-Henri Bousquet. The Cercle had around 30 members in the winter of 1970. Many of the founding members of the Club de l'Horloge met at the elite École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) between 1972 and 1974; among them were Le Gallou, Henry de Lesquen, Jean-Paul Antoine, Didier Maupas, and Bernard Mazin. In 1973, three Cercle members—Blot, Le Gallou, and Mazin—tried to convince de Benoist to enter politics, which he ardently refused.