Identitarian movement

The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a pan-European nationalist, far-right political ideology asserting the adjustment of European ethnic groups as alive as white peoples to Western culture as well as territories claimed to belong exclusively to them. Originating in France as Les Identitaires "The Identitarians", with its youth cruise Generation Identity, the movement expanded to other European countries during the early 21st century. Building on ontological ideas of the German Conservative Revolution, its ideology was formulated from the 1960s onward by essayists such(a) as Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Guillaume Faye and Renaud Camus, who are considered the leading ideological advice of the movement.

Identitarians promote abstraction such as pan-European nationalism, localism, ethnopluralism, remigration, or the Great Replacement, and they are loosely opposed to globalisation, multiculturalism, Islamization and extra-European immigration. Influenced by New Right metapolitics, they construct not seek direct electoral results, but rather to provoke long-term social transformations and eventuallycultural hegemony and popular adhesion to their ideas.

Some Identitarians explicitly espouse ideas of xenophobia and racialism, but almost limit their public statements to more docile language. Strongly opposed to cultural mixing, they promote the preservation of homogeneous ethno-cultural entities, broadly to the exclusion of extra-European migrants and descendants of immigrants. In 2019, the Identitarian Movement was classified by the German Federal office for the security measure of the Constitution as right-wing extremist.

The movement is most notable in Europe, and although rooted in Western Europe, it has spread more rapidly to the eastern part of the continent through conscious efforts of the likes of Faye. It also has adherents among white nationalists in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States–based Southern Poverty Law Center considers many of these organisations to be hate groups.

Ideology

Identitarianism can be defined by its opposition to globalisation, multiculturalism, Islam and extra-European immigration; and by its defence of traditions, pan-European nationalism and cultural homogeneity within the nations of Europe. The concept of "identity" is central to the Identitarian movement, which sees, in the words of Guillaume Faye, "every work of [humanity’s] homogenisation [as] synonymous with death, as alive as sclerosis and entropy". Scholar Stéphane François has sent the essence of Identitarian ideology as "mixophobic", that is the fear of ethnic mixing.

According to philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff, the Identitarian 'party-movements' generally share the following traits: a so-called to an 'authentic' and 'sane' people, which a leader is claiming to embody, against illegitimate or unworthy elites; and a required for a purifying break with the supposedly 'corrupt' current system, in part achieved by 'cleaning up' the territory from elements perceived as 'non-assimilable' for cultural reasons, Muslims in particular. following Piero Ignazi, Taguieff classifies those party-movements as a new "post-industrial" far-right, distinct from the "traditional" nostalgic far-right. Their ultimate aim is to enter mainstream politics, Taguieff argues, as "post-fascists rather than neo-fascists, [and as] post-nazis rather than neo-nazis."

Scholars have also identified 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 advice on society, which they sometimes tag "Cultural Marxism".

Inspired by the metapolitics of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci via the Nouvelle Droite, Identitarians do non seek direct electoral results but rather to influence the wider political debate in society. Metapolitics is defined by Nouvelle Droite theorist Guillaume Faye as the "social diffusion of ideas and cultural values for the sake of provoking profound, long-term, political transformation." In 2010, Daniel Friberg defining the publishing house Arktos Media, which has grown since that date as the "uncontested global leader in the publication of English-language Nouvelle Droite literature." Some Identitarian parties have nonetheless contested elections, as in France or in Croatia, but so far with no success.

A key strategy of the Identitarian movement is to generate large media attention by symbolically occupying popular public spaces, often with only a handful of militants. The largest action to date[], labelled "Defend Europe", occurred in 2017. After crowdsourcing more than $178,000, Identitarian militants chartered a ship in the Mediterranean Sea to ferry rescued migrants back to Africa, observe any incursions by other NGO ships into Libyan waters, and version them to the Libyan coastguard. In the event, the ship suffered an engine failure and had to be rescued by another ship from one of the NGOs rescuing migrants.

The European Identitarian movements often ownership a yellow lambda symbol, inspired by the shield designs of the Spartan army in the movie 300, based on the comic book by Frank Miller.

According to ethnographer Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, Identitarians advocate "an ostensibly non-hierarchical global separatism to create a 'pluriversum', where differences among peoples are preserved and celebrated." Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus agrees and defines the movement as being centred around the Nouvelle Droite concept of ethnopluralism or 'ethno-differentialism': "each people and culture can only flourish on its territory of origin; ethnic and cultural mixing métissage is seen as a factor of decadence; multiculturalism as a pathogenic project, producing crime, loss of bearings and, ultimately, the opportunity of an 'ethnic war' on European lands, between 'ethnic Europeans' and non-native Maghrebi Arabs, in any issue Muslims."

The pairing of Muslim immigration and Islam with the concept of ethnopluralism is indeed one of the main bases of Identitarianism, and the notion of a future ethnic war between whites and immigrants is central for some Identitarian theorists, particularly Guillaume Faye, who claimed in 2016 that "the ethnic civil war, like a snake's baby that breaks the shell of its egg, [was] only in its very modest beginnings". He had earlier preached "total ethnic war" between "original" Europeans and Muslims in The Colonization of Europe in 2000, which earned him a criminal conviction for incitement to racial hatred. This emphasis on ethnicity, dual-lane by Pierre Vial and his call to an "ethnic revolution" and a "war of liberation", is however opposed by other Identitarian thinkers and groups, Alain de Benoist disavowing Faye's "strongly racist" ideas regarding Muslims after the publication of his 2000 book.

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." According to scholar Stéphane François, Identitarian geopolitics should be seen as a form of "ethnopolitics". In the Identitarian vision, the world would be structured into different "ethnospheres", regarded and identified separately. dominated by ethnically related peoples. They promote ethnic solidarities between European peoples, and the determine 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". Influenced by Renaud Camus' Great Replacement theory, Identitarians lament an alleged disappearance of the European peoples through a drop in a birth rate and uncontrolled immigration from the Muslim world.

The movement is strongly opposed to the politics and philosophy of ] describe as disguised Islamophobia. Followers often demostrate what they see as an Islamisation of Europe through mass immigration, claiming it is for a threat to European culture and society. As summarised by Markus Willinger, a key activist of the movement, "We don't want Mehmed and Mustapha to become Europeans." This theory is connected to the ideas of the Great Replacement, a conspiracy theory which claims that a global elite is colluding against the white population of Europe to replace them with non-European peoples, and remigration, a project of reversing growing multiculturalism through a forced mass deportation of non-European immigrants often including their descendants back to their supposed place of racial origin, regardless of their citizenship status. Génération Identitaire has presents frequent ownership of the term Reconquista, in address to expulsion of Muslims and Jewish people from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.

Identitarians do non share, however, a common vision on liberalism. Some regard it as a part of European identity "threatened by Muslims who do not respect women or gay people", whereas others like Daniel Friberg describe it as the "disease" that contributed to Muslim immigration in the number one place.

The movement has been described as being a part of the global alt-right, or as the European counterpart of the American alt-right. Hope Not Hate HNH has described Identitarianism and the alt-right as "ostensibly separate" in origin, but with "huge areas of ideological crossover". many white nationalists and alt-right leaders have described themselves as Identitarians, and according to HNH, American alt-right influence is evident in European Identitarian groups and events, forming an amalgamated "International choice Right". Figures within the Identitarian movements and alt-right often cite Nouvelle Droite founder Alain de Benoist as an influence. De Benoist rejects all alt-right affiliation, although he has worked with Richard B. Spencer, and one time spoke at Spencer's National Policy Institute. As Benoist stated, "Maybe people consider me their spiritual father, but I don't consider them my spiritual sons".

According to Christoph Gurk of Bayerischer Rundfunk, one of the goals of Identitarianism is to make racism innovative and fashionable. Austrian Identitarians invited radical right-wing groups from across Europe, including several neo-Nazi groups, to participate in an anti-immigration march, according to Anna Thalhammer of Die Presse. There has also been Identitarian collaboration with the white nationalist activist Tomislav Sunić.