Renaud Camus | |
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.jpg) Camus in 2019 | |
| Born | Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus (1946-08-10)10 August 1946 (age 79) Chamalières, France |
| Pen name | J. R. G. Le Camus[1] |
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Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus (/kæˈmuː/;French:[ʁənokamy]; born 10 August 1946) is a French novelist andconspiracy theorist. He is the originator of thefar-right "Great Replacement"conspiracy theory, which claims that a "global elite" is colluding against thewhite population of Europe to replace them with non-European peoples.[2][3]
Camus's writings on the "Great Replacement" have been translated on far-right websites and used to promote thewhite genocide conspiracy theory.[4] Camus has repeatedly condemned and publicly disavowed violent acts which have been perpetrated by far-right terrorists inspired by his theories.[5][6][7][8]
Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus[9] was born on 10 August 1946[10] inChamalières,Auvergne, a rural town in central France.[11][12] Raised in a bourgeois family,[13] he is the son of Léon Camus, an entrepreneur, and Catherine Gourdiat, a lawyer.[14] His parents removed him from their will after herevealed hishomosexuality. At 21, then asocialist, he participated inpro-LGBT marches during theMay 1968 events in Paris.[12]
Camus earned abaccalauréat inphilosophy inClermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, in 1963. He then spent a year at a non-university college,St Clare's, Oxford (1965–1966). He earned abachelor inFrench literature at theUniversity of Paris (1969), amaster in philosophy at theParis Institute of Political Studies (1970),[15][16] and twoMasters of Advanced Studies (DES) inpolitical science (1970) andhistory of law (1971) at theUniversity Panthéon-Assas. He taught French literature atHendrix College inConway, Arkansas from 1971 to 1972, then was a redactor in political science for the encyclopaedia-publisherGrolier from 1972 to 1976. He was also a professional reader and literature advisor at the French book-publisherDenoël from 1970 to 1976.[15]
After settling back in Paris in 1978, Camus quickly began to circulate among writers and artists the likes ofRoland Barthes,Andy Warhol andGilbert & George.[13] Known exclusively as a novelist and poet until the late 1990s, Camus received thePrix Fénéon in 1977 for his novelÉchange,[17] and in 1996 thePrix Amic from theAcadémie Française for his previous novels andelegies.[18][19]
Called retrospectively by some English-language media an "edgy gay writer",[13][19] Camus publishedTricks in 1979, a "chronicle" consisting of descriptions of homosexual encounters in France and elsewhere, with a preface by the philosopherRoland Barthes; it remains Camus's most translated work.[20]Tricks andBuena Vista Park, published in 1980, were deemed influential in the LGBT community at that time.[21][22][19] Camus was also a columnist for the French gay magazineGai pied.[22][13] This period of Camus's life has led the American magazineThe Nation to label him a "gay icon" who "became the ideologue ofwhite supremacy",[19] although Camus had rejected the concept of "homosexual writer" by 1982.[23]
Camus was a member of theSocialist Party during the 1970s and 1980s, and he voted forFrançois Mitterrand in 1981, winner of theFrench presidential election.[12] Thirty-one years later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he dismissed the party with the following remark: "The Socialist Party has published a political program titledPour changer de civilisation ("To change civilization"). We are among those who, to the contrary, refuse to change civilization."[24]
In 1992, at the age of 46, using the money from the sale of his Paris apartment, Camus bought and began to restore a 14th-century castle inPlieux, a village inOccitanie. In 1996, he had the epiphany which he said led to the concept of the "Great Replacement".[13] As of 2019, Camus still lives in the castle. Because he received government funding to assist in the restoration of the castle – which included the rebuilding of a 10-story tower removed in the 17th century – Camus is required to open it to the public for a part of the year.[20][19]
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Camus stated in an interview in 2016 with the British magazineThe Spectator that he began to develop his idea in 1996 while editing a guidebook about thedepartment ofHérault. He claimed that he "suddenly realised that in very old villages ... the population had totally changed" and added, "this is when I began to write like that."[13]
Camus supported for a time the left-wingsouverainist politicianJean-Pierre Chevènement, then voted for theecologist candidateNoël Mamère in the2002 presidential election.[12] The same year, he founded his ownracialist political party,[25] the Parti de l'In-nocence ("Party of No-harm"), although it was not publicly launched until the2012 presidential election.[13] The party advocatesremigration, i.e. sending all immigrants and their families back to the country of their origin, and a complete cessation of future immigration.[20]
He also declared that a key to understanding his "Great Replacement" theory can be found in a book about aesthetics he published in 2002, titledDu Sens ("Of Meaning").[13] In the latter, inspired by adialogue betweenPlato andCratylus, he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality, not a legal one; it is a form ofCratylism similar toCharles Maurras's distinction between the "legal country" and the "real country."[a][26] Camus also built on the earlier work ofJean Raspail, who published the dystopian novelThe Camp of the Saints in 1973, about immigration and the destruction of Western civilisation.[27]
He was a candidate in the2012 French presidential election, with a programme ranging from "serious proposals, such as the repatriation of foreign-born criminals", to unusual themes in French politics, such as "the right to silence, abolishing wind-farms, banning roadside ads, making sanctuaries of remaining unspoiled places, stopping the production of cars that can go faster than the speed limit, and recognisingIsrael,Palestine and aGreater Lebanon for Christians in the Middle East."[13] He failed to gain enough elected representativespresentations to be able to run for president, and eventually decided to supportMarine Le Pen.[24][28]
In 2015, Camus headed an initiative to launchPegida France alongsidePierre Cassen ofRiposte Laïque,Jean-Luc Addor of theSwiss People's Party, Pierre Renversez of the Belgian "No to Islam" and Melanie Dittmer of the German Pegida.[29][30]
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In December 2017, he declared: "The presidential election that took place [in 2017] was the last chance for a political solution. I don't believe in a political solution ... because in 2022, this time, it will be the occupants, the invaders [i.e. the immigrants] who will vote, who will be the masters of the elections, so anyway the solution is no longer political".[25]
In May 2019, Camus ran, along withKarim Ouchikh, for theEuropean parliament elections: "we shall not leave Europe, we shall make Africa leave Europe," they wrote to define their agenda.[31][32] During the campaign, a photograph of a candidate on his ballot kneeling before a giantswastika drawn on a beach re-emerged on social media. Camus decided to withdraw from the election, claiming that the swastika was "the opposite of everything [he had] fought for [his] whole life."[19][33] During the2022 French presidential election, he sided with the far-right pundit and presidential candidateÉric Zemmour.[34]
In April 2025, Camus had hisETA for entry into the United Kingdom withdrawn, with the BritishHome Office stating that his "presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good." This decision was not appealable.[35] This was as Camus planned to visit theHomeland Party's "Big Remigration Conference", which was scheduled to take place on 26 April 2025, and then to speak at theOxford Union within the same month.[36]
Since his 2010 and 2011 booksL'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence ("Abecedarium of no-harm") andLe Grand Remplacement ("The Great Replacement")—both unpublished in English—Camus has been warning of the purported danger of the "Great Replacement".[37] The conspiracy theory supposes that "replacist elites"[b] are colluding against the White French and Europeans in order to replace them with non-European peoples—specificallyMuslim populations fromAfrica and theMiddle East—through mass immigration, demographic growth and a drop in the European birth rate; a supposed process he labelled "genocide by substitution."[2][38] To promote his theory, Camus participated in two conferences organised byBloc Identitaire in December 2010 and November 2012.[25]
On 9 November 2017, Camus founded, withKarim Ouchikh, theNational Council of European Resistance, an allusion to the WWII FrenchNational Council of the Resistance.[39] The pan-European movement—with other members the likes ofJean-Yves Le Gallou,Bernard Lugan,Václav Klaus,Filip Dewinter orJanice Atkinson[40]—seeks to oppose the "Great Replacement",immigration to Europe, and to defeat "replacist totalitarianism".[41][42] In 2017 the French essayistAlain Finkielkraut caused controversy after he invited Camus to debate the "Great Replacement" on the literary talk showRépliques at the public radioFrance Culture. Finkielkraut justified his choice by arguing that Camus, who "is heard and seen nowhere, has shaped an expression that we hear everywhere."[6][43] After white supremacist protesters at the 2017Unite The Right Rally inCharlottesville, Virginia, were heard chanting "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us,"[44] Camus stated that he did not support Nazis or violence, but that he could understand why white Americans felt angry about being replaced, and that he approved of the sentiment.[45] In November 2018 he published a book directly written in English and intended for an international audience, titledYou Will Not Replace Us![46]
As of February 2023, he continued to defend the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory on hisTwitter account,[47] which had around 54,000 followers at the time of its permanent suspension in October 2021.[48] Camus's account was reactivated in January 2023 thanks to a policy of general amnesty announced by Twitter's new owner,Elon Musk.[49]
Camus has repeatedly said that he condemns the violent attacks and terrorism committed in echo with his ideas,[5][6][7][8] dismissing them as "Occupier's practices."[50] While he denies stigmatising all Muslims, Camus believes in an unbroken line between petty crime andIslamic terrorism: "all the terrorists are known by the police, not for terrorist acts or for religious extremism, but by petty larceny and bank attacks, or even by very small things like attacking old ladies in suburban trains, or conflicts between neighbours",[13] adding in another speech: "we are talking about the fight against terrorism: in my opinion there are no terrorists, not a single one. There are occupants who ... kill a few hostages from time to time to better remind us who the master is."[25]
I therefore believe that we are entering into an absolute necessity of a struggle that will no longer be political ... for which there are two main sources of inspiration: that of the Resistance and that of anti-colonial struggles. We are under occupation—I am absolutely not afraid of the word, I often speak of the second occupation ... We also follow the tradition of all anti-colonial struggles ... Algeria, which has become independent, has considered that it would not be truly independent without the departure of the settlers ... I also believe that there will be no liberation of the territory without the departure of the occupier or colonization, i. e. withoutremigration. All the major texts in the fight against decolonization apply admirably to France, in particular those ofFrantz Fanon ... Faced with this, I propose open resistance, that is, to revolt.
— Renaud Camus.Speech of the 10 years ofRiposte Laïque, 2 December 2017.
The scholars Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Ahmed Boubeker state that "the announcement of acivil war is implicit in the theory of the 'great replacement' ... This thesis is extreme—and so simplistic that it can be understood by anyone—because it validates a racial definition of the nation."[51] In April 2014 Camus was fined €4,000 for incitement toracial hatred after he referred to Muslims as "hooligans" and "soldiers" and as "the armed wing of a group intent on conquering French territory and expelling the existing population from certain areas" during a conference organised byBloc Identitaire and Riposte Laïque in December 2010.[52][13] In April 2015 theCourt of Appeal of Paris confirmed this decision.[53]
In his diary of 1994—published in 2000 under the titleLa campagne de France—Camus commented on the fact that the membership of a regular panel of literary critics on the public radio stationFrance Culture comprised a majority of Jewish members who, in his view, tended to discuss mostly Jewish authors and Jewish-related issues.[54][19] This accusation drew much criticism among some French journalists such asMarc Weitzmann orJean Daniel, who denounced Camus's remarks asantisemitic.[55][19] Oneeditorial, signed byFrédéric Mitterrand,Emmanuel Carrère,Christian Combaz andCamille Laurens, defended Camus in the name of free speech, while another, signed byJacques Derrida,Serge Klarsfeld,Claude Lanzmann,Jean-Pierre Vernant andPhilippe Sollers, contended that racism and antisemitism, as allegedly displayed by Camus in his diary, are not entitled to this freedom.[55]
Camus has since gained a number of defenders amongFrench-Jewish conservative thinkers, most notablyAlain Finkielkraut, who has taken his side in the controversy since 2000. "Demographic substitution", Finkielkraut said toThe Nation in 2019, is "not a conspiracy theory", but he dismissed Camus's frequent talk of "genocide by substitution".[19]Éric Zemmour, a French conservative journalist ofSephardic Jewish descent, is one of the most prominent mainstream advocates of Camus's theory.[43][56] Additionally, various right-wing and far-right French-speaking Jewish websites, such asDreuz.info, Europe-Israël orJssNews, have positively received Camus's conspiracy theory and have called their readership to study his books.[57]
The political scientistJean-Yves Camus and the historianNicolas Lebourg have noted that, contrary to its parent thewhite genocide conspiracy theory, Camus's "Great Replacement" does not include an antisemitic Jewish plot, which is, according to them, a reason for its success.[58] The French journalistYann Moix, who had accused Camus of being an antisemite in 2017, was fined €3,000 by a FrenchCourt of Appeal for libel on 13 March 2019.[59] Moix's conviction was overturned in January 2020 by theFrench Court of Cassation, judging that his comments "were the expression of an opinion and a value judgment on the personality of the plaintiff ... and not the imputation of a specific fact."[60]
Camus sees democracy as a degradation ofhigh culture and favours a system whereby the elite are guardians of the culture, thus opposingmulticulturalism.[26]
Camus, who isgay, has given support tosame-sex marriage.[22] He has said thathomophobia and opposition togay rights within conservative Islam justifiesanti-Muslim sentiment, and that the mainstreamleft has often prioritised defending Islam andanti-racism over criticisingMuslim homophobia.[26]
In a survey led byIfop in December 2018, 25 per cent of the French subscribed to the theory of the "Great Replacement"; as well as 46 per cent of the responders who defined themselves as "Gilets Jaunes".[61] In another survey led byHarris Interactive in October 2021, 61 per cent of the French believed that the "Great Replacement" will happen in France; 67 per cent of the respondents were worried about it.[62] The theory has been cited by the Canadian political activistLauren Southern in a YouTube video of the same name released in July 2017.[63] Southern's video had attracted in 2019 more than 670,000 viewers[64] and is credited with helping to popularize the theory.[65]
The "Great Replacement" theory is a key ideological component ofIdentitarianism, a strand ofwhite nationalism that originated in France and has since gained popularity inEurope and the rest of the Western world.[66]
Although Camus has repeatedly condemned and publicly disavowed violent acts perpetrated by far-right terrorists,[5][6][7][8] several far-right terrorists, including the perpetrators of the shootings inChristchurch (2019),El Paso (2019), andBuffalo (2022), have made reference to the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. The "Great Replacement" was used as the name of a manifesto by the terroristBrenton Tarrant, perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 Muslims and injured 40 others. Likewise, Tarrant's manifesto and the Great Replacement theory were also cited inThe Inconvenient Truth byPatrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the shooting at aWalmart store inEl Paso, Texas, that killed 23Latinos and injured 23 others.[67][68]Payton Gendron, who perpetrated the Buffalo shooting at aTops supermarket inBuffalo, New York, which killed ten people, all of whom wereblack, described himself as awhite supremacist and voiced support for the Great Replacement conspiracy theory of Camus in his manifesto.[69][70][71] About 28 per cent of the document was plagiarised from other sources, especially Tarrant's manifesto.[72][73]
Camus has condemned the Christchurch massacre and described the shootings as aterrorist attack, adding that Tarrant's manifesto had failed to understand the Great Replacement theory. Camus said that he suspected the attacks to be inspired by acts ofIslamic terrorism in France.[74] In a discussion withThe Washington Post, he said that while he was against the use of violence, he still supported a sort of "counter-revolt" against non-White immigration and had no issues with the majority of his supporters' beliefs.[75] The scholarJean-Yves Camus sees Tarrant's ideas as more extreme than Camus' replacement theory, and argues that they are more firmly rooted inJean Raspail's thinking.[7]
According to scholars, Camus' Great Replacement theory can only lead to acts of violence, by presenting non-whites as an existential threat to white people,[76][77] and immigrants as afifth column or an "internal enemy".[78] Camus' use of strong terms like "colonisation" and "Occupiers" to label non-European immigrants and their children (in analogy to theNazi occupation of France),[79][80] has been described by the philosopherAlain Finkielkraut as implicit calls to violence.[81]
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To [the theory of a replacement through mass immigration], that claims itself to be an observation or a description, is added in the "anti-replacist" vision a conspiracy theory which attributes to the "replacist" elites the desire to achieve the "Great Replacement".
This conspiracy theory, which was first articulated by the French philosopher Renaud Camus, has gained a lot of traction in Europe since 2015.
His views on "the great replacement" have been translated by far-right websites and used to reinforce the thesis that there is a "white genocide" at work.
He seemed surprised by the notion that his ideas could in any way be associated with the white nationalists marching in Charlottesville. He condemned the violence and insisted he has no connection to Nazism
Camus, now 72, told The Washington Post that he condemns the Christchurch attacks and has always condemned similar violence ... Camus added that he still hopes that the desire for a "counterrevolt" against "colonization in Europe today" will grow, a reference to increases in nonwhite populations ... France Culture is among the most highbrow radio programs in Europe, a French equivalent of NPR. Camus has also discussed the "great replacement" onRépliques, a program anchored by Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent French intellectual.
Jean-Yves Camus (no relation to Renaud), a French scholar of the far-right, sees Tarrant's ideas as more firmly rooted inRaspail's thinking than in great replacement theory. "The shooter is much more extreme than Renaud Camus," he said in an email exchange Friday. "Camus coined the term 'grand remplacement' to show his belief that the native European population is being uprooted by the non-Caucasian immigrants, especially the Muslims. Renaud Camus never condoned violence, much less terrorism." He added: "Raspail is another thing."
In fact, although white supremacists in the United States and elsewhere have long claimed the white race is under attack, the Great Replacement theory itself originated in France with philosopher Renaud Camus (though Camus himself rejects violence).
«L'Europe, il ne faut pas en sortir, il faut en sortir l'Afrique» ... «Jamais une occupation n'a pris fin sans le départ de l'occupant. Jamais une colonisation ne s'est achevée sans le retrait des colonisateurs et des colons. La Ligne claire, et seule à l'être, c'est celle qui mène du ferme constat du grand remplacement ... à l'exigence de la remigration», ajoutent-ils.
[transl. from French] This theory states that the indigenous French ("Français de souche") could soon be demographically replaced by non-European peoples, especially from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.
J'appelle à la révolte anticoloniale, moi, à la décolonisation, à la libération du territoire, au départ de l'Occupant, à son Grand Rapatriement qui peut seul nous protéger de la violence — certainement pas au terrorisme et aux massacres de masse, ces pratiques d'Occupant. [I do call for an anti-colonial revolt, for decolonization, for territorial liberation, for the Occupier's departure, for its Great Repatriation which alone can protect us from violence—, certainly not for terrorism and mass massacres, those are Occupier's practices.]
The success of that umpteenth incarnation of a theme launched immediately after World War II (Camus has personally declared his indebtedness to Enoch Powell) can be explained by the fact that he subtracted anti-Semitism from the argument
... claims it represents 'indigenous Europeans' and propagates the far-right conspiracy theory that white people are becoming a minority in what it calls the 'Great Replacement'
Camus, now 72, told The Washington Post that he condemns the Christchurch attacks and has always condemned similar violence ... Camus added that he still hopes that the desire for a "counterrevolt" against "colonization in Europe today" will grow, a reference to increases in nonwhite populations ... France Culture is among the most highbrow radio programs in Europe, a French equivalent of NPR. Camus has also discussed the "great replacement" onRépliques, a program anchored by Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent French intellectual.
Specifically, because it portrays the majority population as victims whose ethnicity is under existential threat, it may help to justify violence as a necessary mean to avert such threats (Bandura, 1999; Kruglanski et al., 2014).
Camus, now 72, told The Washington Post that he condemns the Christchurch attacks and has always condemned similar violence. [...] Camus added that he still hopes that the desire for a 'counterrevolt' against 'colonization in Europe today' will grow, a reference to increases in nonwhite populations.
The Occupation provoked among the French, and especially among the resisters, a very intense feeling of hatred [...] Moreover this occupation was made of persons in uniforms [...] How could you not provoke, with such an analogy, a hatred that some will judge salutary towards any immigrant they will meet [...]? It appears to me contradictory on your side to say that you condemn hatred, while at the same time drawing inspiration from that incendiary analogy to describe our times.
