In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, a friend published an excellent novel, and in one of the closing scenes, there is a dialogue between the main character and a professor he meets in a café in Athens. During their conversation, some of the fundamental concepts in the Western political lexicon, such as democracy and human rights, are interrogated. The dialogue highlighted how these concepts are eminently debatable and theoretically contested, which was very thought provoking because I, like most Westerners, took these concepts for granted, and just assumed that they were out there and part of nature, like the weather or the cosmos. I asked my friend where he obtained the material for this scene, and he replied from the works of French philosopher Alain de Benoist, and two in particular: Au-delà des droits de l'homme, and Démocratie: le problème. Intrigued, I decided to read them during the summer of 2025 (in their original French versions) and, similar to the scene in the mentioned novel, his ideas forced me to think in new ways about these largely unquestioned concepts in the Western political vocabulary.
De Benoist’s main argument in the first book is that the idea of human rights, as they are understood in the West, does not have a sound theoretical foundation. Human rights are understood as universal, independent of culture, history, or civilization, and as a birthright of all individuals. This belief is part of the general education system, enshrined in many legal documents (not the least, the UN Charter), and motivates many political parties’ and activists’ activities. In the mentioned texts we learn—or perhaps reminded is a better term—that the seeds of this idea emerged in a specific religious (Christian) and cultural (Western) context which is not universal. Other cultures and civilizations, for example, especially in the East, emphasized duty and responsibility to the collective rather than the idea of “rights” in opposition to society and/or state. On the question of democracy, de Benoist also employs historical analysis to show that the inventors of this regime—the ancient Greeks—had a very different understanding and practice than we moderns: similar to Eastern civilizations’ understanding, it was rooted in obligations towards, and participation in, the community, not in the idea of individual rights assumed to be distinct and/or separate from group (nation, culture, ethnicity, etc) membership.
Both texts were published two generations ago, and yet they have contemporary relevance, given the crisis of democracy that the West is currently experiencing. This crisis has many explanations, and the books under review may provide another one, namely, that the liberal focus on individual rights, both economic and cultural, in some cases has clashed with the collective interests of the community, generating various grievances. The populist backlash, animated by the demand for the restoration of the “people’s” sovereignty, attests to the sense felt by many that their political regimes are unrepresentative of the collective as they define it.
History of Human Rights
Ancient Greece and Rome did not have a conception of universal human rights. They had the concept of citizenship, but the practices that today we would call “rights”, for example, to property, or to vote, were strictly related to membership to a community, and were predicated on the obligations towards, and contributions to, said community. A major anthropological rupture occurred with the arrival of Christianity on the historical scene, which presupposed the existence of a relationship with God that was independent of the relationship to the group. Moreover, Christians introduced the revolutionary idea that human beings—all human beings—were created in God’s image, and possessed a soul which conferred a property called “dignity,” simply by virtue of being born as a member of humanity. Here, in fact, we have the seeds of modern human rights: the idea of universality, and the mystical notion there exists a substance called a soul which gives the individual instrinsic value independent of the collectivity.
It would take many centuries before this idea would take its contemporary secular form. The French and the American revolutions, in particular, were major turning points, although the latter more directly maintained the religious associations (“all endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”). It is generally understood that the French revolution was more secular, but Alain de Benoist shows that below the surface of the anti-religious rhetoric, the supernatural foundations were maintained, perhaps because it could not have been otherwise. Contrary to widely held views, the idea of human rights finds little justification in nature alone. Nature, in fact, is radically unequal, and provides little grounds for the ontological assumptions of human rights (freedom, universal reason, dignity, individualism, justice, etc).
The idea of universality, whether in religious or secular form, contains within it an intolerance of contrary ideas, and this tendency to not recognize the validity of alternative views makes wars more bloody. For example, the French revolution—which, it bears repeating, was an attempt to secularize religious ideas—was followed by the great terror and the revolutionary wars across Europe which led to far more deaths than the Crusades many centuries prior. One reason is that the revolutionaries were now fighting for “liberty”, and so ipso facto opponents did not have legitimate claims to authority.
Further evidence of its religious origin is that the idea of human rights has for many Westerners obtained a sacred character. To question them is similar to how it was to question God in pre-modern times, despite the fact that concept is constantly evolving; some human rights today would have been unthinkable only 20 or 30 years ago. One reason for the continuously changing panoply of human rights is that their radical individualist and anti-collectivist nature provides little grounds for placing limits on claims to them. Consequently, it contains the seeds of an inflation of rights, as individual desires more and more become the basis of rights claims.
As individual rights expand, unrepresentative institutions such as the courts settle disputes related to them; consequently, they arrogate to themselves more power to create laws which override public opinion or the legislatures that, in theory, express the views of the majority. The tension between the individual and the collective can become acute such that majorities in some societies have the perception—and in politics perception matters more than reality—that things have gone awry.
In contemporary politics, different political groups appropriate the language of human rights to further their ideology. Free-market liberals, for example, claim that individuals have rights to property, meaning to purchase, sell, invest, or trade with whomever they please, domestically or internationally. Actors on the contemporary left, meanwhile, apply this reasoning to cultural or identity domains—for example, the rights of individuals to migrate, or to affirm their sexual identity. Although both would claim to be defending the interests of groups (property owners in the first, minorities in the second), they are both, in fact, denying the right of the larger group—family, tribe, nation, religion, state, etc—to place limits in individuals’ claims.
Communities may have valid reasons for limiting the right, say, to property or migration, and yet in Western discourse, certainly among an element of the intelligentsia, this is rarely recognized. Many people, especially those outside of major cosmopolitan cities, may object to the changes in their countries or communities which may accrue as a result of the trade and migration perhaps because of an attachment to culture or tradition. This is one of the grievances which fuels populism, which is in some ways a reassertion of the claim that collective interests should override individual rights. For instance, protectionism in the form of tariffs is essentially saying: individuals do not have the right to trade with foreigners. Placing limits on migration, meanwhile, conveys the message that individuals do not have the right to freely cross borders. In both cases, limits on the individual are justified on the basis of some collective, or the wish to protect an aspect of society. From this perspective, it is sometimes amusing to observe parties on the left and right insulting each other on matters of policy, when the real dispute is on which individual rights—economic or cultural—to privilege. (It also highlights that the much aligned libertarians—a tiny minority of liberals—are the only ones who are actually coherent as they defend individual rights—economic and cultural—across the board).
Many contemporary commentators call populists “authoritarian” because they defend positions that violate individual rights, either economic or cultural. But this conflates liberalism and democracy, which is another tendency of contemporary Western discourse. The texts under review helpfully remind readers that the two are distinct and in many ways in tension. The etymological origin of the Greek“cracy” in democracy points to its meaning as a form of political rule, while liberalism, historically and etymologically, is an ideology about limiting government power over individuals. Thus, it is entirely logically possible to be illiberal and democratic, or conversely, anti-democratic and liberal. Indeed, it is this divide, rather than the left-right axis, which may better account for many contemporary political conflicts: populists, for example, fall squarely in the former, while many cosmopolitan elites in large cities are more likely to emphasise individual rights—to property or to migrate—whether or not the majority agrees.
The contested nature of the concept of democracy is also revealed when we consider that liberals and socialists have very different ideas of its meaning. Liberals adopt a rules-based definition: secure property rights, elections where many parties compete for power, and courts to adjudicate disputes. Socialists, meanwhile, look at underlying societal inequalities, arguing that democracy is more related to substantive societal outcomes.
The texts under review are mostly a critique of the first not the second conception; Alain de Benoist accepts the socialist critique of liberal forms of democracy but goes further by highlighting some more important conditions which are arguably sine qua non. One is group membership, which provides cohesion, a sense of shared destiny, and social trust, and it is these which ultimately provide the legitimacy of different political regimes, whether monarchical or democratic. It follows that democratic regimes without these traits can lack legitimacy, which is another way of saying consent, the opposite of which is coercion. A unified sense of group membership also allows political and social conflicts to occur peacefully, because conflicts are subsumed to higher principles to which all are committed or adhere to. For democracy to function properly, this sense of shared destiny should also motivate participation, or active citizenship, which was central to the Greek conception and which de Benoist argues provides a standard against which we can compare contemporary political systems. On these indicators, many Western countries fall short, with some showing that around half of citizens do not vote. Polarisation is endemic and indicates very low social trust. Much public opinion data which shows how majorities in the US and Europe do not believe that they can influence political outcomes. And citizens have many valid reasons for this perception, such as the role of wealth and lobbying in determining policy, or the general sense that leaders are not accountable for their decisions.
What is to be done, then, to address the crisis of Western democracy? De Benoist argues that referendums are a useful mechanism, as they help to accomplish several objectives. One is to override the will of the elite or the political class. There are moments in history when a political class and elite do not reflect the wishes of the majority and certainly not the preferences of those on the lower end of the social hierarchy. Another is to give citizens of all social classes, but especially those on the lower end, the possibility to decide on the laws and direction of their country.
Thus it is not surprising that populists around the world often demand referendums on major questions domestic or international. In a very important sense, they are demanding a return to Greek forms of democracy, in which there is widespread participation, and where ordinary citizens—who form the majority—and not the elite make decisions on policy. The wish for a referendum, whatever the public justification, reflects the widely felt sense that the other institutions of the policy—parliaments, regulatory agencies, schools, courts, etc—are making decisions not representative of what the majority wants, or that the political class is deeply corrupt and not trustworthy. The lesson from the Greeks is that allowing more referendums would enhance democratic participation even if majorites voted for policies that violated individual rights
