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Identity Bloc Bloc identitaire | |
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President | Fabrice Robert |
Founded | 6 April 2003 |
Preceded by | Radical Unity |
Headquarters | BP 13 06301 Nice Cedex 04 |
Newspaper | Novopress |
Youth wing | Generation Identity/Generation Identitaire (formerly) |
Ideology | French nationalism Ethnopluralism Identitarianism Anti-Americanism Anti-Islam Neo-fascism Factions: Neo-Nazism |
Political position | Far-right |
Colours | Black, Blue |
Website | |
les-identitaires.fr | |
Les Identitaires (English: The Identitarians), formerly the Bloc identitaire [1] (English: Identitarian Bloc), is an Identitarian nationalist movement in France. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Like the French New Right, scholars generally consider the movement far-right or sometimes as a syncretic mixture of multiple ideologies across the political spectrum. [2] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Les Identitaires contain a number of strains of political thought including nativism, Catholic social teaching, direct democracy, regionalist decentralisation, and Yann Fouere's concept of a Europe of 100 Flags. [5] The group additionally advocates an anti-American and anti-Islamic foreign policy, calling the United States and Islam the two major imperialistic threats to Europe. [4]
It was founded in 2003 by some former members of Unité Radicale and several other anti-Zionist and National Bolshevik sympathisers. It includes Fabrice Robert , former Unité Radicale member, former elected representative of the National Front (FN) and also former member of the National Republican Movement (MNR), and Guillaume Luyt, former member of the monarchist Action française, former Unité Radicale member, former director of the youth organisation of the FN, National Front Youth (FNJ). Luyt claims inspiration by Guillaume Faye's works in the Nouvelle Droite movement.
The movement is widely considered neo-fascist, although Les Identitaires does not consider itself as such. [3] [4] Génération Identitaire was banned in March 2021. [12] On 14 February 2023, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) released a report in which it classified Les Identitaires as a "white nationalist" and "Anti-Muslim" group. [13] [14]
It opposes "imperialism, whether it be American or Islamic," [4] and supports the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory. [15]
The Bloc Identitaire runs the agency and website Novopress, that has associates in most of Western Europe and North America. [16]
Novopress presents itself as an "international news agency" [17] founded by Fabrice Robert, a leader of the French nationalist organization Bloc Identitaire. [18] Among its managers is Guillaume Luyt, former leader of the Front national de la jeunesse. [19] Patrick Gofman is one of the editors of Novopress.info (French section). [20]
Novopress is politically geared towards nationalist, anti-Islamist and far right themes. As of 2008 [update] Novopress had 13 national editions in Europe and North America, including in Ireland, Italy and France.
The youth wing of Bloc Identitaire, called in France Génération identitaire, [1] or Generation Identity, expanded to other European states soon after its creation in 2012, including Generazione Identitaria in Italy and Identitäre Bewegung in Germany and Austria. [21] [22] Other youth wings are also present in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Hungary, and the United Kingdom and Ireland. France banned Generation Identity in March 2021. [23]
The Bloc Identitaire has been accused of intentionally distributing several popular soups containing pork in order to exclude religious Jews or Muslims; in Strasbourg, Nice, Paris, and in Antwerp with the association Antwerpse Solidariteit close to the Vlaams Belang. These so-called "identity soups" ("soupes identitaires") have been forbidden by the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin in Strasbourg on 21 January 2006, and called "discriminatory and xenophobic" by MEP Catherine Trautmann (PS) in a 19 January 2006 letter to the High authority for the struggle against discrimination and for equality (HALDE).[ citation needed ]
This ethno-regionalist movement has also organised a campaign against the rap group Sniper in 2003, which was taken up by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), leading to the cancellation of several concerts of the band. UMP deputy Nadine Morano interpolated Interior Minister (UMP) Nicolas Sarkozy on this theme, while 200 UMP deputies, led by François Grosdidier, tried without success to censor several hip-hop bands. Sarkozy criticized the hip-hop group as "ruffians who dishonour France."[ citation needed ]
In 2004, the Bloc Identitaire also organized a campaign against Italian writer Cesare Battisti, one-time member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism, who was wanted in Italy for an assassination carried out during the Years of Lead, in which he denies responsibility. Battisti accused the "cell of the Italian embassy" of having "financed" the Bloc identitaire's campaign against him (in Ma Cavale, p. 160). Battisti was convicted to life sentence in his homeland for a total of 36 charges, including participation in four murders. The French government would subsequently decide to extradite him to Italy, but Battisti escaped to Brazil where he was granted political asylum.
In 2010, they staged a protest in "resistance to the Islamization of France" at the Arc de Triomphe (relocated from an earlier planned site in Goutte-d'Or) where people would eat pork and drink grape juice or wine. [24] [25] In November 2012 the Génération Identitaire, the youth wing of the BI, occupied the mosque in Poitiers, the site where Charles Martel defeated an invading Muslim Moorish force in 732. [5] In June 2018, Facebook banned Generation Identity for violating its policies against extremist content and hate groups. [26]
In December 2018, Al Jazeera produced a documentary entitled "Generation Hate" featuring an undercover journalist who had infiltrated Génération Identitaire. The documentary included undercover footage of Génération Identitaire members in the northern French city of Lille racially abusing and assaulting migrant youths, advocating violence against Muslims, and alleged linkages between Génération Identitaire and Front National. [27] Génération Identitaire's actions were condemned by Mayor of Lille Martine Aubry and Prefect of the North Michele Lalande, who advocated prosecuting offenders for inciting hatred and closing down La Citadelle, which served as a meeting place for location Génération Identitaire members in Lille. Prosecutor Thierry Pocquet Haut-Jussé has also announced an investigation by the Central Directorate of Public Security into the activities of the Génération Identitaire members. [28]
On 11 July 2019, Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country's domestic intelligence agency, formally designated the Identitarian Movement as "a verified extreme right movement against the liberal democratic constitution." The new classification will allow the BfV to use more powerful surveillance methods against the group and its youth wing, Generation Identity. The Identitarian Movement has about 600 members in Germany. [29]
In August 2019, a French court sentenced three members of Generation Identity to a six-month jail term, fines of €2,000 each and loss of civic rights for five years, and fined the pan-European organisation €75,000, over an anti-immigrant operation in the Alps. Generation Identity president Clément Gandelin, spokesman Romain Espino and Damien Lefèvre were found guilty of "exercising activities in conditions that could create confusion with a public function". The case was that the operation, involving about 100 of their members at the Col de l'Échelle in April 2018, could have been mistaken for a police action. [15] [30]
On 3 March 2021, France banned Génération Identitaire (Generation Identity), as the Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said the movement incited "discrimination, hatred and violence". [12] A few weeks before, dozens of people protested in Paris against the dissolution. About 200 protesters were estimated to be present. [31] [32]
Jordan Bardella, at the time the spokesperson for the National Rally, posted statements of support for Génération Identitaire. As a result, Facebook removed the posts and suspended certain features of his account. [33]
Groupe Union Défense, better known as GUD, is a French far-right students' union formed in the 1960s. After a period of inactivity it relaunched in 2022.
Unité Radicale was a French far-right political group close to the Third Position and National Bolshevism thesis. It was founded in June 1998 from the merger of Groupe Union Défense and Nouvelle Résistance/Jeune Résistance/Union des Cercles Résistance, issued from Nouvelle Résistance, and dissolved on August 6, 2002. The group was led by Christian Bouchet.
The Nouvelle Droite, sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Various scholars of political science have argued that it is a form of fascism or neo-fascism, although the movement eschews these terms.
The European New Right (ENR) is a far-right movement which originated in France as the Nouvelle Droite in the late 1960s. Its proponents are involved in a global "anti-structural revolt" against modernity and post-modernity, largely in the form of loosely connected intellectual communities striving to diffuse a similar philosophy within European societies.
Guillaume Faye was a French political theorist, journalist, writer, and leading member of the French New Right.
The Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, better known as GRECE, is a French ethnonationalist think tank founded in 1968 to promote the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite. GRECE founding member Alain de Benoist has been described as its leader and "most authoritative spokesman". Prominent former members include Guillaume Faye and Jean-Yves Le Gallou.
Ethnopluralism or ethno-pluralism, also known as ethno-differentialism, is a far-right political model which attempts to preserve separate and bordered ethno-cultural regions. According to its promoters, significant foreign cultural elements in a given region ought to be culturally assimilated to seek cultural homogenization in this territory, in order to let different cultures thrive in their respective geographical areas. Advocates also emphasize a "right to difference" and claim support for cultural diversity at a worldwide rather than at a national level.
European nationalism is a form of pan-nationalism based on a pan-European identity. It is considered minor since the National Party of Europe disintegrated in the 1970s.
La Meute is a Québécois nationalist pressure group and identitarian movement fighting against illegal immigration and radical Islam. The group was founded in September 2015 in Quebec by two former Canadian Armed Forces members, Éric Venne and Patrick Beaudry. Neither are members of the group anymore. In 2018 the goal of La Meute was to prevent the Quebec Liberal Party from winning the 2018 Quebec general election. La Meute does not plan to become a political party, but rather "to become large enough and organized enough to constitute a force that can't be ignored".
The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a pan-European nationalist, ethno-nationalist, far-right political ideology asserting the right of the European ethnic groups and white peoples to Western culture and territories exclusively. Originating in France as Les Identitaires, with its youth wing Generation Identity (GI), the movement expanded to other European countries during the early 21st century. Its ideology was formulated from the 1960s onward by essayists such as Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Guillaume Faye and Renaud Camus, who are considered the main ideological sources of the movement.
Identitäre Bewegung Österreich is an Austrian far-right nationalist and Neue Rechte organization. Inspired by the French Bloc identitaire, it belongs to the pan-European Identitarian movement and is the Austrian branch of the organization known as Generation Identity (GI).
Martin Michael Sellner is an Austrian far-right political activist, and leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, which he cofounded in 2012. He is also involved in an important role within the Neue Rechte in Germany. He is considered part of the alt-right movement.
Identity Evropa was an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization established in March 2016. It was rebranded as the American Identity Movement in March 2019. In November 2020, the group disbanded. Leaders and members of Identity Evropa, such as former leader Elliot Kline, praised Nazi Germany and pushed for what they described as the "Nazification of America".
The National Council of European Resistance is a France-based pan-European far-right political organization co-founded by Renaud Camus and Karim Ouchikh on 9 November 2017 by analogy to the National Council of the Resistance. It has links to the identitarian movement.
Terre et Peuple is a far-right and neo-pagan cultural association in France founded by Pierre Vial and launched in 1995. Its positions are close to the Identitarian movement, although it precedes that movement and its terminology.
Remigration, or re-immigration, sometimes called "repatriation", is a far-right political concept referring to the forced or promoted return of non-ethnically European immigrants, often including their European-born descendants, back to their place of racial origin, regardless of citizenship status. This idea is especially popular within the Identitarian movement in Europe. Most proponents of remigration suggest leaving some residents with non-European background aside from the forced return, based on a vaguely defined degree of assimilation into European culture.
Europe-Action was a far-right white nationalist and euro-nationalist magazine and movement, founded by Dominique Venner in 1963 and active until 1966. Distancing itself from pre-WWII fascist ideas such as anti-intellectualism, anti-parliamentarianism and traditional French nationalism, Europe-Action promoted a pan-European nationalism based on the "Occident"—or the "white peoples"— and a social Darwinism escorted by racialism, labeled "biological realism". These theories, along with the meta-political strategy of Venner, influenced young Europe-Action journalist Alain de Benoist and are deemed conducive to the creation of GRECE and the Nouvelle Droite in 1968.
Atalante is a far-right, white nationalist group based in Quebec City, Canada. Their leader and founder is Raphaël Lévesque, lead singer for Quebecois skinhead band Légitime violence and leader of the earlier white power skinhead group Les Stompers.
The counter-jihad movement in France consists of various organisations and individuals such as Riposte Laïque and Republican Resistance, led by Pierre Cassen and Christine Tasin respectively, Observatory on Islamisation, and other groups such as those founded by Alain Wagner. The movement has cooperated with the Bloc Identitaire, Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum, Stop Islamisation of Europe, and has organised events such as the "Apéro Géant: saucisson et pinard", a happy hour gathering of wine and deli meat cold cuts whose ingredients include pork.
Thaïs d'Escufon, born August 28, 1999 in Toulouse, is a French far right activist. She was spokesperson of Génération identitaire from 2018 to its dissolution by the French government in 2021.
the group sent out a press release, calling upon "all Parisians … and French" to meet at the Arc de Triomphe Friday to eat ham and drink grape juice
thousands will gather to protest the presence of Muslims in France by drinking alcohol and eating sausage