Renaud Camus


Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus is a French writer and novelist. He is known as the creator 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.
Camus' views on "the great replacement" have been translated on extreme-right websites and adopted by far-right groups to reinforce their white genocide conspiracy theory.

Early life and career as a fiction writer

Family and education (1946–1977)

Renaud Camus was born on 10 August 1946 in Chamalières, Auvergne, a conservative rural town in central France. Raised in a bourgeois family, he is the son of Léon Camus, an entrepreneur, and Catherine Gourdiat, a lawyer. His parents cut him from their will after he revealed his homosexuality. At 21, then a socialist, he participated in pro-LGBT marches during the May 1968 events in Paris.
Camus earned a baccalauréat in philosophy in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, in 1963. He studied law at a non-university college, St Clare's, Oxford , earned a bachelor in French literature at the Sorbonne University in Paris, a master in philosophy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and two Master of Advanced Studies in political science and history of law at the University Panthéon-Assas. He taught French literature at the Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas from 1971 to 1972, then was redactor in political sciences for the encyclopedia publisher Grolier from 1972 to 1976. He was also a professional reader and literature advisor at French book publisher Denoël from 1970 to 1976.

Influential "gay writer" (1978–1995)

After settling back in Paris in 1978, Camus quickly began to circulate among writers and artists the likes of Roland Barthes, Andy Warhol, or Gilbert & George. Known exclusively as a novelist and poet until the late-1990s, Camus received the Prix Fénéon in 1977 for his novel Échange; and in 1996 the Prix Amic from the Académie Française for his previous novels and elegies. This period of Camus' life has led American magazine The Nation in 2019 to label him a "gay icon" who "became the ideologue of white supremacy," although Camus had rejected the concept of "homosexual writer" by 1982.
Called retrospectively by some English-language media an "edgy gay writer," Camus published in 1979 Tricks, a "chronicle" consisting of descriptions of homosexual encounters in France and elsewhere, with a preface by philosopher Roland Barthes; it remains Camus' most translated work. Tricks and Buena Vista Park, published in 1980, were deemed influential in the LGBT community at that time. Camus was also a columnist for the French gay magazine Gai Pied.
Camus had been during the 1970s and 1980s a member of the Socialist Party and voted for François Mitterrand in 1981, winner of the French presidential election. Thirty-one years later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he dismissed the party in those terms: "The Socialist Party has published a political program titled Pour changer de civilisation. We are among those who, to the contrary, refuse to change civilization."
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 in Plieux, a village in Occitanie. Several years later, he had the epiphany which he said led to the concept of the "Great Replacement". As of 2019, Camus still lives in the castle. Because he received government funds 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.

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory

Development (1996–2011)

Camus stated,, that he began to think up his conspiracy theory in 1996, while editing a guidebook about the department of Hérault. He claimed that he "suddenly realised that in very old villages the population had totally changed too," and added, "this is when I began to write like that."
Camus for a time supported the left-wing souverainist politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement, then voted for the ecologist candidate Noël Mamère in the 2002 presidential election. The same year, he founded his own racialist political party, the Parti de l’In-nocence, although it was not publicly launched until the 2012 presidential election. The party advocates remigration, i.e. sending all immigrants and their families back to the country of their origin, and a complete cessation of future immigration.
He also declared that a key to understanding his "Great Replacement" theory can be found in a book about aesthetics he published in 2002, titled Du Sens. In the latter, inspired by a dialog between Plato and Cratylus, he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality, not a legal one; it is a cratylism similar to Charles Maurras' distinction between the "legal country" and the "real country."
Since his 2010 and 2011 books L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence and Le Grand Remplacement —both unpublished in English—Camus has been warning of the purported danger of the "Great Replacement". The conspiracy theory supposes that "replacist elites" are colluding against the White French and Europeans in order to replace them with non-European peoples—specifically Muslim populations from Africa and the Middle East—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the European birth rate; a supposed process he labeled "genocide by substitution." To promote his theory, Camus participated in two conferences organised by the Bloc Identitaire in December 2010 and March 2011.

Political activism (2012–present)

He was a candidate in the 2012 French presidential election, with a program ranging from "serious proposals, such as the repatriation of foreign-born criminals", to unusual themes in French politics, likes "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 recognising Israel, Palestine and a Greater Lebanon for Christians in the Middle East." He nonetheless failed to gain enough elected representatives :fr:Présentation des candidats à l'élection présidentielle française|presentations to be able to run for president, and eventually decided to support Marine Le Pen.
during their 2019 European campaign
In 2017, French essayist Alain Finkielkraut caused controversy after he invited Camus to debate the "Great Replacement" on the literary talk show Répliques at the public radio France Culture. Finkielkraut justified his choice by arguing that Camus, who "is heard and seen nowhere, has shaped an expression that we hear everywhere."
On 9 November 2017, Camus founded, with Karim Ouchikh, the National Council of European Resistance, an allusion to the WWII French National Council of the Resistance. The pan-European movement—with other members the likes of Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Bernard Lugan, Václav Klaus, Filip Dewinter or Janice Atkinson—seeks to oppose the "Great Replacement", immigration to Europe, and to defeat "replacist totalitarianism."
In December 2017, he declared: "The presidential election that took place 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, who will vote, who will be the masters of the elections, so anyway the solution is no longer political".
After white supremacist protesters at the 2017 Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia were heard chanting "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us," 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. On November 2018, he released a book directly written in English and intended for an international audience, titled You Will Not Replace Us!
In May 2019, Camus ran, along with Karim Ouchikh, for the European parliament elections: "we shall not leave Europe, we shall make Africa leave Europe," they wrote to define their agenda. During the campaign, a photograph of a candidate on his ballot kneeling before a giant swastika 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 fought for whole life." As of March 2020, he still defends his "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory on his Twitter account, where he is very active and has more than 40,000 followers.

Views

On white nationalist terrorism

Camus has repeatedly said that he condemns the violent attacks and terrorism committed which echo his ideas, dismissing them as "Occupier's practices." However, his use of strong terms like "colonization" and "Occupiers" to label non-European immigrants and their children, has been described as implicit calls to violence.
Historians Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, along with sociologist Ahmed Boubeker, state that "the announcement of a civil 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." In 2014, Camus was fined 4,000€ in Paris for referring to some Muslims as "hooligans" and that they were "the armed wing of a group intent on conquering French territory," a case which he appealed.While he denies stigmatizing all Muslims, Camus believes in an unbroken line between petty crime and Islamic 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," 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."

Allegations of antisemitism

In his diary of 1994—published in 2000 under the title La campagne de France—Renaud Camus commented on the fact that the membership of a regular panel of literary critics on the public radio France Culture comprised a majority of Jewish members who, in his views, tended to exclusively focus discussion on Jewish authors and community-centered issues. This accusation drew much criticism from observers like French journalists Marc Weitzmann or Jean Daniel, denouncing Camus' remarks as anti-Semitic.
Camus has since gained a number of defenders among French-Jewish conservative thinkers, most notably Alain Finkielkraut, who has taken his side from the controversy for 2000 onward. "Demographic substitution," Finkielkraut said to The Nation in 2019, is "not a conspiracy theory," but he dismissed Camus' frequent talk of "genocide by substitution." On public radio France Culture in 2017, Finkielkraut stated that Éric Zemmour, a French conservative journalist of Sefardi Jewish descent, was one of the most prominent mainstream advocates of Camus' ideology. Additionally, various right-wing to far-right French-speaking Jewish websites, such as Dreuz.info, Europe-Israël or JssNews, have positively received Camus' conspiracy theory and call their readership to study his books.
Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus and historian Nicolas Lebourg have noted that, contrary to its parent the white genocide conspiracy theory, Renaud Camus' "Great Replacement" does not include an anti-antisemitic Jewish plot, which is, according to them, a reason for its success. French journalist Yann Moix, who had accused Camus of being an anti-Semite in 2017, was fined 3,000€ by a French Court of Appeal for libel on 13 March 2019. Moix's conviction was overturned in January 2020 by the French 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."

Democracy and multiculturalism

Camus sees democracy as a degradation of high culture and favors a system whereby the elite are guardians of the culture, thus opposing multiculturalism.

LGBT rights

Camus is openly gay and in favor of same-sex marriage. He has said that homophobia and opposition to LGBT rights within conservative Islam justifies anti-Muslim sentiment, and that the mainstream left has often prioritised defending Islam and anti-racism over criticising Muslim homophobia.

Influence

In a survey led by Ifop in December 2018, 25% of the French subscribed to the theory of the "Great Replacement"; as well as 46% of the responders who defined themselves as "Gilets Jaunes". The theory has been cited by Canadian political activist Lauren Southern in a Youtube video of the same name released in July 2017. Southern's video had attracted in 2019 more than 670,000 viewers and is credited with helping to popularize the theory.
The "Great Replacement" theory is a key ideological component of Identitarianism, a strand of white nationalism that originated in France and has since gained popularity in Europe and the rest of the Western world. It was also the name of a manifesto by terrorist Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian-born perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people and injured 50 others. Likewise, the manifesto of Brenton Harrison Tarrant and the Great Replacement theory were also cited in The Inconvenient Truth by Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, United States, that killed 22 people and injured 24 others.

Selected works

Novels
Chronicles
Political writings