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.
History
Background: 1968–1973
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.
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.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.