Renaud Camus

Renaud Camus is a French writer and aesthete who has been identified as part of a group of French writers and thinkers some term the 'new reactionaries'.

Camus lives 'in self-imposed isolation in a 14th-Century fortress in the wilds of Gascony'.

Renaud Camus, self-portrait from 26 January 2014, Paris. Author: Renaud Camus

Background

In the 1960-70s, Renaud Camus had befriended left-wing intellectuals such as Louis Aragon, the famous Communist poet and founder of surrealism, and Simone De Beauvoir, a feminist and existentialist scholar. Roland Barthes, the star of the Collège de France, had written the preface to Renaud Camus' most famous novel, Tricks, the cult-classic book of gay culture.

'New Reactionaries'

According to the BBC journalist Hugh Schofield, Camus has been classified as a member of a group some have termed the 'neo-reactionnaires' (new reactionaries): 'a loose group of writers and thinkers' who represent a 'new intellectual force in France' challenging 'the disastrous post-1968 left-wing consensus' and seeking to 'shake up debate on issues like immigration, Islam and national identity'. Critics believe they are 'providing spurious philosophical cover for the extremism of the Front National'.

Others deemed to be new reactionaries include writers Eric Zemmour and philosopher Alain Finkielkraut.

Views

Support for the Front National

Camus was reportedly spurned by French literary society after saying he would vote for Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National (FN) party at the 2014 election.

On immigration

Camus has argued 'there is nothing right-wing about me. But I just happen to think that today's immigration is the most important thing to have happened to France - ever'.

He coined the 'Great Replacement' (Grand Remplacement) theory, i.e the 'colonisation' of France by Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, which he claims threatens to 'mutate' the country and its culture permanently. 'The Great Replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people'. He prophetises an imminent 'civil war' people the 'indigenous French' and the 'arabo-muslim people'.

Involvement in politics

Camus has also formed a political party, "Le Parti de l’In-nocence" and adds position statements to its website almost daily, although the party remains insignificant in electoral terms.

On the 2016 version of the website is a quote from Franz Fanon, a known Algerian postcolonial author, speaking of the total colonisation and domination of African peoples by European masters. The strategy used by colonisers consists of both brute force, and of the destruction of indigenous culture and values (« L'asservissement, au sens le plus rigoureux, de la population autochtone est la première nécessité. Pour cela il faut briser ses systèmes de référence ; l'expropriation, le dépouillement, la razzia, le meurtre objectif se doublent d'une mise à sac des schèmes culturels ou du moins conditionnent cette mise à sac. Le panorama social est déstructuré, les valeurs bafouées, écrasées, vidées. »). The party seems to be, by pushing for the 'Grand Replacement' theory, using Fanon in a way that accuses Muslim migrants of colonising Europe in a similar way.

Court case

In 2014, Camus was convicted for incitement to hatred for a speech he gave in December 2010 at the "Assises internationales sur l'islamisation" (organised by Christine Tasin and Pierre Cassen), in which he spoke of his 'Great Replacement' theory. The court fined him 4,000 euros.

Camus appealed, but the sentence was reconfirmed in April 2015.