Identitarian movement
Essayists Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Pierre Vial, Guillaume Faye and Renaud Camus are considered the main ideological sources of the Identitarian movement.
It asserts that white Europeans face demographic and cultural extinction due to declining birth rates, extra-European immigration, and pro-diversity policies, a conspiracy theory that is known as the "Great Replacement".
[3][7][8][4] They are opposed to cultural mixing and promote the preservation of homogeneous ethno-cultural entities,[9][3] generally to the exclusion of extra-European migrants and descendants of immigrants,[10][11][12] and may espouse ideas considered xenophobic and racialist.
Influenced by New Right metapolitics, they do not seek direct electoral results, but rather to provoke long-term social transformations and eventually achieve cultural hegemony and popular adherence to their ideas.
[20] Strategies and concepts promoted by Nouvelle Droite thinkers, such as ethnopluralism, localism, pan-European nationalism, and the use of metapolitics to influence public opinion, have shaped the ideological structure of the Identitarian movement.
According to political scientist Stéphane François, the latter accusation, "though relevant in certain ways, [remains] incomplete, as it (purposely) [shuns] other references, most notably the primordial relationship to the German Conservative Revolution.
[29][30][31] New Right ethnonationalist thinkers played a pivotal role in shaping Identitarian ideology, with figures such as Guillaume Faye, Pierre Vial, Dominique Venner, and Renaud Camus insisting on the promotion of homogeneous regional, national, pan-European, and white ethnic identities.
[2][26] From the 1990s onward, Venner, Vial and Faye pushed for a stronger commitment to the Identitarian struggle, arguing that metapolitics alone was insufficient, and calling for a cultural revolution against multiculturalism, Islam, and globalism.
[37] After 2012, the French Identitarian movement expanded across Europe, spawning the creation of chapters, offshoots, and like-minded groups, eventually forming a loosely connected pan-European network.
[40] According to Richards, the Syrian civil war (2011–), the subsequent European migration crisis (2015), growing economic globalisation, and escalating instability and terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa (spreading into Europe) created conditions that radical-right groups, including the Identitarian Movement, exploited by appealing to widespread anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments.
Additionally, Identitarianism emphasises metapolitics and activism (combining ideological dissemination with direct action, including propaganda campaigns and political agitation), a call for radical solutions to alleged threats of white extinction (such as remigration, national preference in employment and welfare, and the reconquest of immigrant-dominated areas), and a civilisational struggle against non-Europeans (portraying white European identity as existentially threatened and drawing on historical narratives of Christian and Western achievements).
[6] Scholars have also described the essence of Identitarianism as a reaction against the permissive ideals of the '68 movement, embodied by the baby boomers and their perceived left-liberal dominance on society, which they sometimes label "Cultural Marxism".
[33] Inspired by the metapolitics of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci via the Nouvelle Droite, Identitarians do not seek direct electoral results but rather to influence the wider political debate in society.
[13][14][26] Through education and counter-hegemonic narratives to challenge liberal multiculturalism and globalism, they seek to win the "war of ideas" by shifting public discourse on ethnic identity, immigration, and Islam, believing that a "silent majority" of white Europeans will eventually embrace their solutions.
[26] Identitarian theorist Guillaume Faye defines metapolitics as the "social diffusion of ideas and cultural values for the sake of provoking profound, long-term, political transformation.
[40] In 2009, Daniel Friberg established the publishing house Arktos Media,[17] which has grown since that date as the "uncontested global leader in the publication of English-language Nouvelle Droite literature.
[52] In their worldview, "ethno-masochism" (the hatred of one's own ethnicity) and xenophilia (the love of foreigners) contribute to a perceived "Great Replacement" of white Europeans, leading an eventual risk of extinction.
[58] Identitarians generally dismiss the European Union as "corrupt" and "authoritarian", while at the same time defending a "European-level political body that can hold its own against superpowers like America and China.
They promote ethnic solidarities between European peoples, and the establishment of a confederation of regional identities that would eventually replace the various nation states of Europe, which are seen as an inheritance from the "dubious philosophy of the French Revolution".
[66] At the same time, Bar-On notes that some Identitarian leaders, including Fabrice Robert, the founder of Bloc Identitaire, and Martin Sellner, had a past linked to neo-fascist or neo-Nazi activity.
[27] In 2019, political scientist Cas Mudde wrote that although Identitarians claim to share the slogan "0% racism, 100% identity" and officially subscribe to ethnopluralism, "the boundaries between biological and cultural arguments in the movement have become increasingly porous.
Finally, in response to the degeneration of Identitarian thinking into outright xenophobia and racism, a third generation of theorists emerged in the 2010s with the expressed aim of restoring the respectability of far-right thought.
[86] Drawing upon thinkers of the Nouvelle Droite and the Conservative Revolution such as Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt or the contemporary Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin, it played a role in the rise of the Pegida marches in 2014–15.
[88] In August 2016 members of the Identitarian movement in Germany scaled the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and hung a banner in protest at European immigration and perceived spread of Islam.
[89] In September of the same year, members of the Identitarian movement erected a new summit cross in a "provocative" act (as the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported) on the Schafreuter, after the original one had to be removed because of damage by an unknown person.
[94] Their discussions resulted in a new British chapter being officially launched in late October 2017 with Tom Dupre and Ben Jones as its co-founders,[95] after a banner was unfurled on Westminster Bridge reading "Defend London, Stop Islamisation".
[124][125] In late 2019, the Dominion Movement was largely replaced by a similar white supremacist group called Action Zealandia,[126] after its co-founder and leader, a New Zealand soldier, was arrested for sharing information that threatened NZ security.
Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, was a believer in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, named his manifesto after it, and donated €1,500 to Austrian Identitarian leader Martin Sellner of Identitäre Bewegung Österreich (IBÖ) a year prior to the terror attacks.
[132][133][134] The Austrian government later opened an investigation into Sellner over suspected formation of a terrorist group with Tarrant and the former's fiancée Brittany Pettibone who met Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell.
During the “Freedom Convoy” protests in Ottawa, Steeve Charland acted as the leader and spokesperson for the Farfadaas, a group that opposes COVID-19 health measures and whose members are recognizable by their leather vests marked with an expletive hand gesture.
