KJCKorea
Journal Central

This article reconsiders French non-conformism in the early 1930s by examining its transnational orientation toward Germany and the internal conflicts that this orientation generated. Grounded in the shared diagnosis of a “total crisis” of modern liberal civilization, the study shows that the search for political and intellectual “breakthroughs” shifted attention abroad, placing Germany at the center of non-conformist inquiry and giving Ordre Nouveau an interpretive advantage. Focusing on the “Letter to Hitler”(November 1933), the article highlights the divergence between Ordre Nouveau—who portrayed Hitler as a potentially “rectifiable” agent of a “total revolution”—and Emmanuel Mounier and Esprit, who rejected this premise by emphasizing the regime’s irreversible compromise with the existing order. The ensuing controversy severed previously cooperative ties and undermined the shared self-definition captured in the slogan “neither left nor right”, which Mounier publicly abandoned. The article concludes that the disintegration of non-conformism cannot be explained solely by the February 1934 crisis, but must also be understood as the cumulative outcome of conflicts triggered by divergent interpretations of Hitler and Germany, revealing the structuring role of transnational intellectual interactions.

The GRECE, which sought to seize cultural hegemony, tried to implement, through metapolitics, not only the dismantling of the humanism values ​​that had been passed down since the French Revolution, influenced by the Enlightenment, but also the formation of a new discourse based on 20th-century science. Through this metapolitics, Alain de Benoit and the GRECE attempted to exert influence over cultural power through the media, rather than directly seizing control of state institutions, thereby proposing a new right-wing strategy for domination. This new far-right group, calling itself the New Right, sought to gain cultural power through counter-cultural influence. They argued that inequality is a value that is more in line with the natural order and fiercely criticized the existing cultural power that has considered equality as a imperative social value.

This article examines how anti-Huguenot policies were implemented at the local level in the kingdom of France during the post-Revocation period, focusing on the case of Languedoc. Analyzing primarily on trial, interrogation, and investigation records involving the intendant of Languedoc, Nicolas de Lamoignon de Basville, the article explores the gap between the central government’s declarations and their actual enforcement in the provinces. In Languedoc, where strong Huguenot communities survived, nouveaux convertis and crypto-Huguenots employed various strategies to cope with forced conversion and persecution. These actions created significant challenges for local officials to engage in an endless and often futile effort to identify and distinguish between “sincere” and “false” conversions. Following the Camisard revolt and during the subsequent Regency period, government policy increasingly shifted toward de facto toleration and relaxation in dealing with the Huguenot issue. This article consequently argues that the early modern French state faced structural limits in its ability to fully control the inner religious beliefs of its subjects. It further emphasizes that the recognition of these limits paradoxically laid important groundwork for the rise of Enlightenment discourses on religious toleration in the eighteenth century.