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# The “Other Third Worldism” and its Afterlives
- URL: https://www.rubiconmag.com/library/other-third-worldism/
- Published: 2026-07-04T12:57:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-01T14:36:03.000Z
- Description: It would be wrong to dismiss a potential recrudescence of Third Worldism on the right. Often presented as a “Third Way” against both international communism and an American-led capitalist order, the fact that Third Worldism appeared in Europe was no mere accident.
- Author: John Campbell
- Tags: #Issue 1, #featured

Gabriel Mailhac

*L’autre tiers-mondisme: Des origines à l’islamisme radical* by Philippe Baillet, 2016, Akribeia, 475 pp.

It can only be difficult to present to an Anglophone audience a work that is massive, yet to be translated to English, and provincial in scope—as it concerns itself primarily with intellectual currents in France, Italy, and Germany—by an author as obscure as his editor. However, it would be a mistake to ignore Philippe Baillet’s *L’autre tiers-mondisme: Des origines à l’islamisme radical* (The Other Third Worldism: From its Origins to Radical Islamism) as he examines the genealogy of strains of thought dominant within contemporary radical right movements—particularly varieties of so-called “Third Worldism”—and the extent of their influence. The narrative in *L’autre tiers-mondisme* begins with the short-lived Free State of Fiume, founded in the aftermath of Italy’s defeat in World War I, by the charismatic Gabriele D’Annunzio. In this ephemeral polity, Baillet argues, one sees the first concrete manifestation of a nonleftist Third Worldism—most acutely in the Lega di Fiume, D’Annunzio’s proposed international alliance comprising the “League of Oppressed People” under Western colonial rule, as well as racial minorities in Europe and America, who would all partake in a revolutionary struggle against the order represented by the League of Nations. Regarding India, Baillet identifies “a true Paleo-Third Worldism” at work in Fascist Italy’s relations with leaders of the Indian independence movement, especially Subhas Chandra Bose. Here was a first attempt at a broad anticolonial internationalism coalescing against a victorious America, Great Britain, and France. D’Annunzio summed it up, in October 1919, when he announced a “new crusade of all poor and free men, against the nations usurping and hoarding all riches, against the races of predators and against the caste of usurers who exploited the war yesterday to exploit peace now” (translations throughout are the reviewer’s own). Around the same time in Germany, National-Revolutionary voices, some of them core members of the “Left” wing of the NSDAP such as Gregor Strasser in 1925, advocated participation in the anti-imperialist initiatives of the Lega di Fiume.

Nonetheless, mainline fascist movements would not follow this line in their foreign policy—aiming to supplant the British Empire’s position rather than calling into question the legitimacy of imperial rule or colonialism. Just like the Italian Fascists, the National Socialists would soon clarify their hostile stance to this new doctrine, with Hitler even calling the idea of a League of Oppressed Nations nothing but an incapable “coalition of cripples” in *Mein Kampf*. Although this trend was marginalized in Germany after the purge of SA leaders, this did not stop some from pursuing its ideas in think tanks, publications, and congresses, establishing relations with not only Third World nationalists but also communists.

Within the National-Revolutionary movement, Baillet shows that a fascination with Islam emerged, extending far beyond geopolitical considerations. According to his typology, this other form of Third Worldism has two distinct facets: one political and strategic, “secular and realist-Machiavellian,” focused on building alliances to fight “imperialism”; and another, “idealist and metapolitical,” nurtured by a deeper interest in non-Western cultures, sometimes fueled by a disdain for the West and often leading to bizarre life choices. This latter variety is first illustrated by National-Revolutionary Friedrich Hielscher, a close friend of Ernst Jünger (whose attraction to the Islamic world could merit a whole chapter, especially given his ties to figures studied here), who was also involved in organizing underground networks undermining the Third Reich after the NSDAP’s left wing was banished—networks that likely collaborated with the Soviets during the Second World War (i.e., the Red Orchestra). However, Hielscher did not go as far as Johann von Leers—who also introduced Hielscher to the Islamic world. Von Leers pushed his sympathy to its limits by converting to Islam, taking the name Omar Amin in homage to his friend Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Philippe Baillet begins the chapter on Von Leers by dispelling some of the legends surrounding him. Many misconceptions, prevalent in both popular and radical worldviews, stem from exaggerating the importance of “second fiddles.” These figures, due to the chaotic circumstances following the Axis’s defeat, were able to push their own agendas as if they represented the German regime, thereby creating a warped picture of what National Socialism truly was. Most importantly, he refutes the myth that Leers was a key member of Goebbels’s entourage. In fact, as Baillet shows, their relationship was poor; Goebbels considered him a mere “jack of all trades.” Born in 1902 in Western Pomerania, Johann von Leers studied law and later spent a short stint working as an attaché to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of the Far East from 1926 to 1928\. His fluency in multiple languages compelled him to consider a career in diplomacy, but he ultimately chose the more lucrative path of political writing, becoming one of the most prolific writers in the Third Reich. In 1927, he met Syrian engineering student Muhammad Nafi Tschelebi, founder of the first Islamic Center of Berlin (*Zentralinstitut Islam-Archiv-Deutschland*), and introduced him to Hielscher, whom he met that same year at the Berlin *Hochschule für Politik*. After leaving his diplomatic post, he joined the NSDAP in 1929 and became close to the influential Berlin left wing of the party, which later put him in a difficult position as this faction was ultimately suppressed.

Baillet highlights both his position within the regime (to the left, with modernist views on culture and society, making him relatively marginal) and the roots of some theoretical views he maintained throughout his life, which could be found in these National-Revolutionary circles (notably: “anti-imperialist solidarity, a sympathy for Islam, and Russophilia”) and his spiritual evolution. Having been involved in Völkisch circles, Leers was particularly influenced by Herman Wirth’s literature on a “Nordico-Atlantic” tradition, which combined a matriarchal tendency with the belief in an ancient primordial monotheism—an element that resonates with certain teachings of Islam. But another element in Leers’s worldview was absolutely central: his fanatical antisemitism (or rather, as he insisted on calling it out of admiration for Arabs: “anti-Judaism,”) which extended to an opposition to Christianity on the basis of its Jewish heritage. In a 1959 letter to Ernst Jünger, he wrote:

> Considered from the spiritual point of view, the way more and more important groups of Germans turn to Islam, the religion of freedom and of zeal for God, would represent a successful evasion from the “Christian West” internment camp that the imperialists and their lackeys impose by force. It would be an escape to God and in freedom.

His opposition to the Christian West also led him to develop sympathies for the communist bloc, at least out of strategic considerations. In an earlier letter to Jünger, he stated:

> Despite all my reluctance, I am of the opinion that we could escape these desolate lands we find ourselves in if we oriented ourselves towards the East rather than towards the West. We could talk, in brief, of two imperialisms, one capitalistic, the other socialistic. I would tend to lean a lot more towards the second rather than for the first, were I to make a decision.

The Third Reich classified antisemitic writings into three categories: *Kampfschriften* (combat writings,) *Aufklärungsschriften* (informational writings,) and *wissenschaftliche Schriften* (scientific writings.) Leers was decidedly in the first category, which was relatively vulgar and often polemical. Baillet notes, referencing Leers’s biographer, that he was a unique case; he was likely the only author who openly called for not only expelling Jews but also for their complete extermination. He described Judaism as “biologically hereditarian criminality, religious syncretism with a strong influence of belief in demons,” and viewed it as his “duty to apply the right of hot pursuit towards the Jews in all countries in order to destroy and exterminate them;” further adding that:

> \[I\]n so far as it is possible to prove the hereditarian criminal aspect of Judaism, each people has not only the moral right to destroy hereditarian criminals, but more than that, any people that fosters and protects the Jews becomes guilty of the same crime as a person cultivating cholera bacillus without respecting the mandatory protective rules.

After the defeat of the Axis powers, Baillet speaks of the inauguration of an “era of networks.” Some Germans and collaborators of the Axis first found refuge in South America and the Orient. Johann von Leers, for example, spent time in Argentina before being invited by the Mufti of Jerusalem, a prewar acquaintance, to Egypt, where he died in 1965\. There, he became an advisor to President Nasser, converted to Islam, and developed ties with radicals through extensive correspondence. Among his close friends were Jünger, Maurice Bardèche, and Francis Parker Yockey. The Axis powers would fall but not this new virulent idea.

To return back to Baillet’s typology, another significant figure is studied, one who represents the realist-Machiavellian strand; a relatively obscure Belgian whose influence was strong and very lasting: Jean Thiriart. Formerly a Trotskyite, he would go on to become a Nazi collaborator during World War II and devoted much effort in the postwar era to give this “realist” Third Worldism a perfected doctrinal form in order to create an elite cadre of revolutionaries he named the “Political Soldiers.” To achieve this, he devoted the small fortune he made as a pharmacist to the diffusion of his ideas, which were coupled with strategic efforts toward building effective alliances with the Third World in favor of creating a Pan-European unitary state against both the capitalist and communist blocs. One can look to his declaration in 1967 that the United States of America, or as he termed it “American imperialism,” is “the main enemy” of Europe. This new enemy, Thriart implored his followers, ought to be fought by an alliance of European nationalists and non-European anti-colonial forces. Thiriart was a pioneer in this regard: the French New Right only started to develop such a line a decade afterward.

However unsuccessful his efforts were politically speaking—which, according to Baillet, might have been partly caused by his profound lack of interest in and even disdain toward the non-European world—his framework has been a major inspiration for intellectuals such as Alexandr Dugin and many others on the Western radical right, especially in Italy. In the 1960s, at the margins of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the legalist neofascist party founded in 1946, National-Revolutionary groups emerged that were no longer content with it, first under the combined influence of Julius Evola and references from the “Fascist Left,” and then of Thiriart and local antennas to his movement. In French Evolian circles, a “revolutionary Traditionalist” group congregated around the magazine *Totalité* (1977–1987), sharing much with these Italian radicals, and in particular with one figure: Claudio Mutti. With such figures, we find ourselves again returning to the idealist and metapolitical type of Third Worldism.

Born in 1946, Mutti emerged as one of the earliest militants of the Italian branch of Thiriart’s Young Europe during the 1960s. His sustained interest in Islam, evident in his writings from the 1970s, culminated in his conversion—likely in the mid-1980s—when he adopted the name Omar Amin in honor of Johann von Leers, sharing a passionate anti-Judaism with him. Unlike previous figures, Mutti is not only a militant but also a distinguished author and editor. Philippe Baillet, a cofounder of *Totalité*, published articles and, most crucially, translations from Italian in the journal and met with Mutti several times. While Baillet offers a retrospective critique of this period, he does not shy away from expressing admiration for this controversial figure:

> I will not conceal the fact that, as a young militant, I was fascinated for several years by this fanatical and polyglot intellectual (he speaks or reads French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, has some knowledge of Russian and now masters Quranic Arabic), able to go with ease, be it in a conversation or in his works, not only from Guénon to Evola, but also from the Neoplatonists to a particular Sufi master, from Sombart to Spengler, from Walter F. Otto to Mircea Eliade. Moreover, throughout the “Years of Lead” Mutti faced ruthless repression—which ended up in a lifelong “professional ban” for thoughtcrime, since he was excluded from the scholarly career that was opening to him—with great courage, never bending the knee.

However interesting and talented Mutti is, Baillet stresses certain practices of his that are all too common in these militant ideological circles, and in particular, the “undue manipulation” of certain authors or currents, through cherry-picking quotations and exaggerating their significance. As an example, he notes the way authors such as Julius Evola or Friedrich Nietzsche are characterized as Islamophiles in Mutti’s works, through the use of decontextualized quotes which lose almost all value when put back in their original place and when confronted with the author’s broader worldview. Among other practices, the use of references to emblematic anti-Christians who can be misconstrued as Islamophiles, such as Frederick II Hohenstaufen, or the emphasis on a cultural continuity between Europe and Islam, with the idea of a pre-Christian monotheistic tradition that they conciliate with the Islamic idea of their faith as recapitulatory, as a return to a primordial, Abrahamic belief. Another aspect, more tied with the Traditionalist framework, is stressed by Mutti: greater cohesion could be attained if militants all adhered to a common tradition, easily practicable as Islam, due to the absence of clerical mediation needed in the execution of its demanded daily rituals.

With the idea of a primordial tradition, it was impossible not to mention the name of a far more famous convert to Islam whose influence, although covert, was extremely important in the twentieth century in all fields of culture: René Guénon. Baillet does that in the two next chapters, on Guénon first, and then on two important followers of his: Frithjof Schuon and Michel Vâlsan, the former representing a shift from Guénon towards syncretism, and the latter, strict Guenonian orthodoxy coupled with Islam. Despite having been notably indifferent to politics, Guénon has been part of the radical right’s canon for decades, a state which Baillet questions due to serious empirical shortfalls in his work.

Several aspects of Guénon’s work are overlooked on the right, Baillet stresses. For example, Guénon’s deep contempt for the West one finds in his 1921 *Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines:*

> The West, at least from the outset of the period called historical, in so far as it has had an intellectual life at all, has lived primarily by borrowing from the East, directly or indirectly . . . \[Westerners\] own civilization hardly goes any further back than the Graeco-Roman period

This sentiment was typical. Guénon envisioned the West’s redemption through an invasion by Asian powers, harbored a complete disregard and ignorance of Indo-European studies, an aversion to all European traditions except the Latin, and an idealization of the East:

> \[O\]nly a delusion and a blindness begotten of the most ridiculous prejudice could allow a man to believe that the Western mentality can win over the East, or that men who acknowledge no real superiority save that of the intellect will allow themselves to be seduced by mechanical inventions, which inspire them with a strong disgust and with not the slightest admiration.

Although he criticizes Guénon strongly, Baillet has great esteem for the man, whom he considers “one of the greatest French minds,” but he cautions that in order to combat Guénon’s questionable views effectively, “one should actually know them and take the exact measure of their influence,” especially since they tend to evidently foster Islamophilia in wealthy and powerful milieux in Europe and America.

After these prominent Third Worldists are presented, the book then delves into more recent ideologues, of far lesser interest in terms of originality, yet influential in France. Several names are evoked, such as Roger Garaudy, prominent communist intellectual who converted to Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam, and became involved in anti-Zionist causes and Holocaust revisionism in his last years; Carlos the Jackal, the Marxist terrorist and convert to Islam; and the ex-communist Alain Soral, a self-declared pickup artist (PUA) who appeared on TV regularly and authored several best-seller books—although his success would be cut short after he voiced antisemitic remarks, leading to his blacklisting from French media. Following this, in 2007, Soral founded *Égalité et Réconciliation*, a fusionist “right” (its motto being “values of the right, left of labor”) internet platform and publishing house catered to Muslim and traditional Catholic alike with anti-Zionist talking points, interviewing historical revisionists, conspiracy theorists, Russian nationalists, Eurasianists, and Duginites—Soral for example wrote a foreword to the French translation of Dugin’s *Fourth Political Theory* in 2012\. Just a few years prior, he had taken up the position as a speechwriter and advisor for the Front National, advocating for building bridges between native French workers and immigrants, seen as natural allies due to their moral conservatism—which was ultimately a failure; he would quit the Party in 2009 after a clash with party leadership.

These figures illustrate the diffusion and popularization of Third Worldist tendencies in various strata of the French intellectual and political landscape, often at the cost of extreme simplification. One can also see some cross-generational doctrinal and even psychological constants among adherents to this tendency: a frustration with “the System,” the USA, Zionism, or Jews; the romanticization of foreign cultures and religions as saviors of a decadent European civilization (be it the Third World, the “Eurasian bloc” or Islam,) a conspiracy-centric framework, a morbid fascination with the occult, and an attraction to “spirituality” and “tradition” in a loose sense. One feature Baillet also emphasizes is how polymorphic the “Islamophile party” is in the West: he cites influential members of the media and cultural world, high-ranking officials and diplomats, NGO personnel, businessmen, and scholars who all agree that a demographic displacement of Europe via immigration from the Third World is not only inevitable, but maybe even beneficial. Some go as far as to even endorse a wholesale Islamic conquest of European society.

The last chapters, less pertinent to the topic of Third Worldism, explore several other paths and currents that Baillet considers instructive in their advantages but limits too. Among them, what he calls Anglo-Saxon conservatism and its emphasis on the importance of prejudice, seen as a collective immune system to noxious foreign influences; but also more recent militant European intellectuals. For example, Guillaume Faye, who was a Third Worldist in the 1980s—although of the Machiavellian-Realist variety—before pivoting towards a rather prescient rejection of multiculturalism, and Renaud Camus, who has a great talent in describing with cutting simplicity—sometimes coining new terms—the taboo subject of demographic displacement in Europe: the feeling of dispossession among native Europeans, the dreary atmosphere induced by mass immigration, the decline in standards of living and aesthetic decay, and the general apathy of Europeans, obsessed as they are with more with abstract economic metrics rather than their concrete future: “\[A\]s if the survival of a nation as such was less important than its comfort as it makes its way to the dustbin of history,” wrote Camus in his 2011 best-seller *Le Grand Remplacement* (The Great Replacement.) Insights from American thinkers are also taken into consideration, in so far as they can offer prescient analyses of Europe’s changing demographics and maybe even political solutions: for example, Wilmot Robertson’s forgotten masterpiece on *The Dispossessed Majority* (1973,) Samuel Francis’s concept of Anarcho-tyranny, and Arthur Kemp’s *Nova Europa* (2013.)

This exposition cannot possibly do justice to the richness of a work on such an understudied topic, abounding with fascinating bits of history, references or insights. Recent world events and the evolution of several factions on the Western right make it an especially useful tool for analysis and perhaps even prediction of ideological trajectories. It would be wrong to dismiss a potential recrudescence of Third Worldism on the right. Often presented as a “Third Way” against both international communism and an American-led capitalist order, the fact that Third Worldism appeared in Europe was no mere accident. Europe’s own interests, especially when they seem to be threatened by subjugation, can induce alliances and sympathies that could seem puzzling from abroad or in hindsight. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front was well-known for its opposition to immigration and Islam while simultaneously maintained a friendly attitude to the Muslim world in its international relations, often taking its side in its deadly clashes with the United States. Strange bedfellows, indeed.