Rightwing Journalists Are Openly Backing the Guy Who Came up With the ‘Great Replacement’ Theory

Last week there was uproar at the Telegraph and GB News when French intellectual Renaud Camus was banned from travelling because the Home Office deemed his presence not conducive to the public good.

If you glanced at the coverage, you might also be outraged – an “anti-migration” philosopher banned from the UK, simply for trying to speak at a conference. What is the world coming to?

However, this description of the event glosses over crucial details which undercut the picture painted by the right-wing media of a harmless old man bullied by the state. In fact, Camus is a far-right philosopher who was planning on attending the conference of a fascist party.

Camus is the originator of the far-right, arguably fascist, Great Replacement conspiracy theory. His ideas are among the most cited in the resurgent fascist movements across Europe, though Camus and his publishers deny any link to fascism.

The theory states that there is an ongoing genocide of the white populations of Europe which is being deliberately orchestrated and carried out through immigration of non-white populations.

Its adherents argue that it is not a conspiracy theory, pointing to a speech in which Camus stated that those who support the Great Replacement were not doing it intentionally, out of self-interest but instead support “dogmas” that go against their interests.

This conveniently ignores two things. Firstly, the groups that he singles out as being responsible for supporting the Great Replacement against their own interest are “Jews, women, homosexuals, secularists, champions of freedom of thought and free speech”. The claim that Jews, women, homosexuals and various shades of leftist are undermining Western civilisations through encouraging the importation of subversive migrants that are an inherent threat to national identity, is one that would have been familiar to anyone living in the 1930s, even if the claim now is that these groups have done it by accident.

Secondly Camus does actually attribute intentionality to the supposed Replacement. His current iteration of the theory refers to immigration as “genocide by substitution” and in his public appearances he accuses political and cultural elites of forming a “genocidal bloc” that is actively eliminating the white European populations.

Camus also talks of so-called counter-colonisation – where people from former colonies come to Europe supposedly to take revenge on their former masters. He regularly cites Franz Fanon who defended violence as a method to achieve decolonisation of Algeria.

Camus personally advocates non-violence, but his fans pick up on what they perceive as violent undertones in his work. The mass shooters in Christchurch and Buffalo both cited the Great Replacement in their manifestos as part of the justification for the murders that they were going to commit.

Camus himself has also been convicted multiple times for racial hatred, including in 2019 for a post on social media which appeared to compare the Holocaust to immigration stating, “The genocide of the Jews was undoubtedly more criminal but still seems a bit small compared to global replacementism”.

As well as these convictions, Camus has repeatedly come under fire for statements about paedophilia based on an interview he gave in the 1990s, in which he cautioned against confusing “perfectly consenting, or even desiring” relationships between “adults and children of a reasonable age” and “the appalling facts which make the headlines or which unfortunately remain hidden, coercion, abuse of power, rape, kidnapping, murder, forced prostitution and pimping, which of course deserve all the punishments.”

In 2016 he clarified some of these comments claiming that the definition of child had changed since then. In his clarification he wrote that he would “firmly advise” a 25-year-old gym teacher to “abstain” from a relationship with a 14 or 15-year-old pupil, “but more out of prudence and respect for the law than out of firm moral conviction.”

Politically Camus has supported Marine Le Pen and the far-right extremist politician Eric Zemmour. In 2019 Camus stood for election to the European parliament, before withdrawing when one of his fellow candidates was filmed praying before a swastika she had drawn in sand.

On GB News, Matt Goodwin introduced Camus as a “very important and influential French intellectual” and asked Camus a series of softball questions asking him to elaborate on his theories for the GB News audience. (Prior to the interview, panellist Zoë Grüneweld agreed with the ban, stating that his theory had been cited by terrorists. Another panellist, Esther Krakue, said “I do feel a bit sorry for him, he’s constantly having to disavow the white nationalists that have taken up his theory.”)

Over at the Telegraph, columnist Michael Deacon wrote a quippy little article in which he said, “I’m reasonably confident that there are at least some members of the British public who subscribe to Mr Camus’s theory” and joked that if he came by dinghy and forgot his passport, “he’ll be able to stay for as long as he likes”.

Camus’ reason to visit the UK – which was that he was speaking at the “remigration” conference of the Homeland Party – was not given on GB News. Two of the three Telegraph articles on the subject mentioned this, but referred to Homeland as a “nationalist and anti-immigration” party. To describe Homeland in this way is to obfuscate their politics. Homeland was formed out of a split in the neo-Nazi movement Patriotic Alternative, and several members of the party have backgrounds in neo-Nazi movements or have made propaganda videos promoting Nazi apologia. “Remigration” is itself a euphemism on the far right for the deportations of non-white immigrants.

When Renaud Camus was interviewed on C News – GB News’ French counterpart – in 2021, Jean Yves Camus (no relation), a specialist on the French far right referred to it in Charlie Hebdo magazine as “fascism invited on prime time”.

If people want to make the free speech case for Camus being allowed into the country, they are more than welcome to, but they should be honest about who it is they are defending.