Background: 1968–1973 The origin of the Carrefour de l'Horloge can be traced back to the "Cercle Pareto", a club established in
Sciences 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.
Emergence: 1974–1979 The Carrefour de l'Horloge was created as ''Club de l'Horloge'' on 10 July 1974 by Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Yvan Blot, Henry de Lesquen, Daniel Garrigue, and others. The founders, who graduated from high-ranked schools, regarded themselves as part of an elite
think tank whose project was diffusing nationalist ideas within the public sphere, and serving as a link between GRECE, mainstream politics and senior public offices in France.
Bruno Mégret joined the Club in 1975., prominent member of the Carrefour de l'Horloge.From 1975, Le Gallou served as a civil administrator at the
Minister of the Interior, where he tried to diffuse his political ideas in administrative reports. In charge of the redaction of a local study, he linked the social issues facing the city of
Chanteloup-les-Vignes with immigration, but his theories were toned down by his hierarchy in the final version. In March 1976, however, Le Gallou managed to have an article on the "economic assessment of immigration" published in the magazine
Administration, which was sent to all French
Prefects. Co-written by Le Gallou and Philippe Baccou, the article described immigration as "[posing] as many or more problems in the long term as it solves", and insisted on the "ethno-cultural" barriers to
integration: "in the future, the labour reserve will be situated in the remotest countries, where the population is less assimilable." Between 1974 and 1982, the Club invited to their conferences numerous high-ranking public servants and politicians, which represented half of the attendants, the remaining seats being filled by journalists, academics and businessmen. Among them were
Yves Guéna,
Michel Jobert,
Philippe Malaud,
Pierre Mazeaud,
Raymond Marcellin,
Michel Debré,
Jean Lecanuet,
Alain Madelin,
Michel Poniatowski,
René Monory,
Jean-Marcel Jeanneney,
Maurice Couve de Murville,
Edgar Faure,
Alain Juppé,
Lionel Stoléru, or
Jean-Louis Gergorin. In the 1970s, the Club de l'Horloge was for some time under the protection of French
Minister of the Interior Michel Poniatowski. Between 1974 and 1978, the progression of nativist ideas in the public discourse of Poniatowski can be attributed in part to the influence of the Club and the Nouvelle Droite, Poniatowski largely citing their works in his 1978 book ''L'avenir n'est écrit nulle part''. "From India to Iceland", Poniatowski writes, "almost all white populations have the same cultural origin and an ethnological kinship confirmed by the specific distribution of blood groups." However, apart from the local influence of Yvan Blot, who served as an Inspector General at the Ministry of the Interior under Poniatowski and
Christian Bonnet, the official policy of the government on immigration remained mostly of out reach of the Club's influence. The book
La Politique du vivant ("The Politics of living"), published in 1979 under the direction of De Lesquen, stemmed from GRECE theories on
sociobiology,
genetic determinism and
social Darwinism. The same year,
Henry de Lesquen was invited on the French TV literary talk show
Apostrophes to debate the
Nouvelle Droite. However, a media campaign against the Nouvelle Droite and the Club that denounced the "
Vichyst sympathies" of the French authorities damaged their public reputation in France. The ideological agenda of the Club during this period can be defined as a syncretism of neo-liberalism, right-wing nationalism, and eugenistic doctrines. Their advocacy of liberalism gradually clashed with the philosophy of GRECE, and with de Benoist in particular, who associated the idea with Americanism and materialism. Dismissing the long-term
meta-political strategy of de Benoist and GRECE—whose Le Gallou and Blot were former members—the Club de l'Horloge aimed at more immediate results, and instead favoured a tactic of
entryism inside the two French mainstream right-wing parties of the period, the
Rally for the Republic (RPR) and the
Union for French Democracy (UDF). Since the years 1979–80, the Club de l'Horloge has distanced itself from the
neo-paganism and
anti-capitalism of GRECE and the Nouvelle Droite, promoting instead a form of economic liberalism strongly tainted with
ethnic nationalism.
Club de l'Horloge: 1980–2014 , current president of the club and provocative blogger, is one of the main promoters of the concept of "
remigration" in France. The Club's strategy of
entryism began to show some success in the 1980s: Le Gallou entered the UDF in the early 1980s while many other lead members, such as Mégret (from 1975 to 1982), De Lesquen (1977–85), or Blot (1979–88), were already part of the RPR. As Le Gallou grew in importance, he developed and promoted the concept of "national preference", and served as a link between the Club and the far-right party
Front National (FN), which he joined in 1985. The Club de l'Horloge created in 1990 the "Lysenko prize", in reference to Soviet pseudo-scientist
Trofim Lysenko. The satirical award has since been attributed each year to a public figure who has, in their view, "contributed to spreading scientific or historical misinformation, with ideological methods and arguments".
Bruno Mégret coined in 1997 the word "re-information" to designate nationalist news outlets that opposed the mainstream media, a term that has since been widely used by far-right online websites in France.
Renaming and revival: 2015–present In September 2015, the Club de l'Horloge was renamed "Carrefour de l'Horloge", and merged with the smaller associations
Voix des Français,
Renaissance 95,
SOS Identité and the ''Mouvement associatif pour l'union de la droite''. The first meeting under the new name was organized on 16 January 2016 with
Charles Beigbeder,
Christian Vanneste, Blot, De Lesquen, and Le Gallou. The National Liberal Party (PNL) was founded in 2017 and publicly announced the following year to promote
national liberal ideas, and restore traditional French values and liberal economics through ideological influence rather than elected office. During the
2017 presidential election, Philippe Baccou, one of the prominent members of the club, was among the most influential political advisers of
FN candidate
Marine Le Pen. Carrefour de l'Horloge's president
Henry de Lesquen runs a YouTube channel totaling several million views through which he participated in popularizing the concept of "
remigration" in France, == Views ==