Alain de Benoist was born on 11 December 1943 in Saint-Symphorien (now part of Tours), Centre-Val de Loire, the son of a head of sales at Guerlain, also named Alain de Benoist, and Germaine de Benoist, née Langouët. He grew up in a bourgeois and Catholic family. His mother came from the lower-middle class of Normandy and Brittany, and his father belonged to the Belgian nobility.
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