The Identitarian movement or “Identitarianism” is a pan-European nationalist, ethno-racial, far-right ideological movement focused on preserving white European identity, which is threatened by multiculturalism, uncontrolled Afro-Asian immigration, and globalization. Starting in France in the 2000s as the “Bloc Identitaire” (Identity Bloc), with its youth wing “Generation Identity (GI), the movement later expanded to other European countries in the 2010s. The ideology of Identitaire stems from the Conservative Revolution of the interwar period and, more directly, from the “New Right” (Nouvelle Droite), a far-right political movement that emerged in France in the 1960s. The nationalist essayists Alain de Benoist (born 1943), Dominique Venner (1935-2013), Pierre Vial (born 1942), Guillaume Faye (born 1943), 1949-2019) and Renaud Camus (born 1946) are considered the main ideological sources of the Identitarian movement.
Rooted in an anti-ecumenical, anti-globalization, anti-liberal, anti-Islamic, and anti-multicultural worldview, the Identitarian movement views ethnic, cultural, and racial identities as fundamental. It argues that white Europeans are facing demographic and cultural extinction due to declining birth rates, extra-European immigration, and pro-diversity policies, a conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement.” As a political solution to these perceived threats, the Identitarians support Pan-European Nationalism, Multifaceted Cultural Localism, “ethnopluralism”/“ethnopolyphony” and repatriation with the repatriation – re-immigration of Afro-Asian, mainly Islamic masses. They oppose cultural mixing and promote the preservation of homogeneous ethno-cultural entities, generally excluding non-European immigrants and descendants of immigrants, and may adopt ideas that are considered “xenophobic” and “racist”. Influenced by the metapolitics of the New Right, they do not seek immediate electoral results, but rather aim to provoke long-term social transformations and ultimately achieve “Cultural Hegemony” and “Popular Commitment” to their ideas.
The movement is most notable in Europe and, although it has its roots in Western Europe, has spread more rapidly to the eastern part of the continent through the conscious efforts of individuals such as Fey. It also has supporters among white nationalists in North America, Australia and New Zealand. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in the United States, considers many of these organizations … hate groups, characterizing them as … racist, separatist and in favor of ethnic segregation for whites. In 2019, in Germany, the Identity Movement was characterized by the infamous “Federal Service for the Protection of the Constitution” (“Verfassungschutz”, where the Director was ….the brother of the former Greek Socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis!) as “extremist and far-right”. In 2021, the French group GI …..was banned for “racial incitement”, “violence” and … “paramilitary ties”.
Origin and development – The ideology of Identitarianism is generally believed by scholars to have originated in the French “New Right” (Nouvelle Droite), a French far-right philosophical movement, formed in the 1960s with the aim of adapting traditionalist conservative and illiberal politics to a post-war European context and distancing itself from earlier, pre-war far-right nationalist ideologies, such as fascism and national socialism, mainly through a form of pan-European nationalism. The great Nouvelle Droite opposes liberal democracy and capitalism and is hostile to multiculturalism and the mixing of different cultures within a “gray” homogenized single society. While not ultra-nationalist, it is racialist because it identifies Europeans as a race. Strategies and concepts promoted by Nouvelle Droite thinkers, such as ethnopluralism, multi-faceted regionalism, pan-European nationalism, and the use of metapolitics to influence public opinion, have shaped the ideological structure of the Identitarian Movement.
Histroric Data – The ideas of Alain de Benoist and his brilliant Nouvelle Droite are often cited as particularly influential in the Identitarian movement. The Nouvelle Droite has been widely viewed by right-wing and left-wing establishment “ultra-democrats” as a neo-fascist attempt to legitimize far-right ideas across the political spectrum and, in some cases, recycle … Nazi ideas. According to political scientist Stéphane François, the latter category, “while relevant in some respects, remains incomplete, as it deliberately avoids other references, notably the Nouvelle Droite’s primal connection to the German Conservative Revolution.” [Stéphane François (born 1973), professor of political science at the University of Mons, is a French political scientist specializing in radical right-wing movements. He also studies conspiracy theories, political ecology and countercultures and earned a PhD in political science after his doctoral thesis on “The Paganism of the Nouvelle Droite”!.]
The initial prominence of the French core gradually declined, and then a nebula of similar movements, grouped under the term “European New Right”, began to emerge across the continent. Among them was the “Neue Rechte” of the Swiss Armin Mohler (1920-2003, who was private secretary to the great Ernst Jünger), also heavily inspired by the Conservative Revolution, which was another ideological source for the Identities movement. The Austrian Martin Michael Sellner (born 1989), one of the leading figures of the European Identitarian Movement and its leader in Austria, has been influenced by the theories of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. The leading Swedish Identitarian activist Daniel Friberg has also stated that he has been influenced by Ernst Jünger and Julius Evola.
Through their “think tank” with the acronym GRECE, the great figures of the Nouvelle Droite, friends and fellow activists Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, sought to emulate Marxist metapolitics, especially in the tactics of cultural hegemony, ferment and propaganda (“agitprop”), as well as social incomeism, which they firmly believed had allowed leftist movements to achieve cultural and academic dominance from the mid-20th century onwards. The ethnocratic thinkers of the New Right played a decisive role in shaping the ideology of Identity, with figures such as Guillaume Faye, Pierre Vial, Dominique Venner and Renaud Camus insisting on promoting homogeneous regional, national, pan-European and white ethnic identities.
The great warrior-thinker Dominique Venner and his magazine Europe-Action, considered the “embryonic form” of the Nouvelle Droite, played a decisive role in redefining pan-European nationalism as a “Confederated European White Nation” rather than a “nation-state.” From the 1990s onwards, Venner, Vial and Faye pushed for a stronger commitment of nationalists to the struggle for Identity, arguing that metapolitics alone was insufficient and seeking a radical cultural revolution against multiculturalism, Islam and globalization. In the 2000s, Camus and Faye introduced two of the movement’s defining concepts: the “Great Replacement” and the “Repatriation-Repatriation” of Afro-Asian immigrants.
According to academic Imogen Richards (senior lecturer in criminology at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia, School of Humanities and Social Sciences), “while in many ways the Identity Generation is characteristic of the ‘European New Right’ (ENR), the various promotions of capitalism and commodification by its representatives, including the defence of international trade and the sale of commodities, diverge from the anti-capitalist philosophy of contemporary ENR thinkers.”
The emergence – The neo-ethno-racial movement “Earth and People” (Terre et Peuple), founded in 1995 by the authors of the “Nouvelle Droite”, Pierre Vial, Jean Haudry (French linguist and Indo-Europeanist 1934, 2023) and Jean Mabire (French pagan and “Nordic” philologist, essayist and journalist, 1927-2006), is generally considered a precursor to the Identitaire movement. In the early 21st century, the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite influenced far-right youth movements in France through groups such as the “Jeunesses Identitaires” (founded in 2002 and succeeded the “Génération Identitaire” in 2012) and the “Bloc Identitaire” (2003). After 2012, the French Identitarian movement spread across Europe, creating branches, offshoots, and like-minded groups, eventually forming a loosely connected pan-European network. It also inspired similar movements in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even Chile.
According to Imogen Richards, the Syrian civil war (2011–), the ensuing wider European migration crisis (since 2015), increasing economic globalization, and the escalation of instability and terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa (which spilled over into Europe) created conditions that were exploited by a variety of radical right-wing groups, including the Identitaire Movement, to appeal to widespread anti-immigrant and anti-Islam sentiment.
Ideology – Identitarianism can be defined by its opposition to globalization, multiculturalism, Islam, and extra-European immigration, as well as its defense of traditions, pan-European nationalism, and cultural homogeneity within the nations of Europe. The concept of “identity” is central to the Identitarian movement, which considers, in the words of Guillaume Faye, “any form of homogenization of humanity as synonymous with death, as well as with hardening and entropy.” Academic Stéphane François has described the essence of Identitarian ideology as “mixophobic,” that is, fearing ethnoracial mixing.
Drawing on this unique perspective, Canadian Dr. Tamir Bar-On, Assistant Professor of Defense and Security Studies at the Rabdan Academy in the United Arab Emirates and a geopolitician, defines the Identitarian worldview through several key elements. These include anti-ecumenism (rejection of liberal and leftist political and social efforts that are seen as deliberate homogenizations of different peoples into a universal framework), identity centrality (viewing ethnic, cultural, and racial identities, particularly those of white Europeans, as fundamental and under threat), and demographic fears (centered on concerns about declining white birth rates, immigration, Islam, and multicultural policies, which are seen as leading to the so-called “Great Replacement”).
In addition, the Self-Respect emphasizes metapolitics and activism (combining ideological dissemination with direct action, including propaganda campaigns and political unrest), a call for radical solutions to threats of white extinction (such as immigrant repatriation, preference for national employment and social welfare, and the “reclaiming” of immigrant-dominated areas), and a cultural struggle against non-Europeans (depicting white European identity as existentially threatened and drawing on historical narratives of Christian and European achievement).
French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff (born 1946) argues that identitarian “party movements” generally share the following characteristics: a call to an “authentic” and “rational” people, whom a leader claims to embody, against illegitimate or unworthy elites; and a call for a cathartic break with the “corrupt” and “rotten” current system, achieved in part by “cleansing” the territory of elements considered “unassimilable” for cultural reasons, especially by Muslims.) [Taguieff specializes in the study of racism and anti-Semitism. He is a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research of France in a laboratory of the “Institut d’études politiques de Paris,” specifically the “Centre for Political Research.”]
Scholars have also described the essence of Identitarianism as a reaction to the tolerant ideals of the ’68 movement, embodied by the baby boomers and their left-liberal dominance of society, which they call “Cultural Marxism.” Bar-On aptly notes that, while Identitarian thinkers and more specifically the Nouvelle Droite criticize the liberal-left legacy of the events of May 1968, the Nouvelle Droite views the generation of 1968 as a “model” to be followed, precisely because it successfully “conquered” the media, academia, and other centers of intellectual influence.
Metapolitics – Inspired by the metapolitics of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci through the Nouvelle Droite, Identitarians do not seek immediate electoral results, but rather to influence the broader political discourse in society. Through education and counter-hegemonic narratives to challenge liberal multiculturalism and globalization, they seek to win the “War of Ideas” by shifting public discourse to national identity, immigration, and Islam, believing that a “silent majority” of white Europeans will ultimately adopt their solutions. Identity theorist Guillaume Fay has clearly defined metapolitics as “the social diffusion of ideas and cultural values, with the aim of provoking a profound, long-term, political transformation.”
In 2006, the Swedish Identitarians launched Metapedia as an alternative encyclopedia to promote New Right ideas and Identitarian thinkers and gain wider support. In 2009, Daniel Friberg founded the publishing house Arktos Media, which has since grown to be the “undisputed global leader in publishing English-language New Right literature.” Some Identitarian parties have, however, participated in elections, such as in France or Croatia, but so far without success. French-Jewish far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, who has been identified as a member of the Identitarian movement by some scholars, won 7.1% of the vote in the 2022 French presidential election.
A key strategy of the Identitarian movement is to attract constant media attention by symbolically occupying popular public spaces, often with just a handful of fighters. The largest action since 2019, called “Defense of Europe,” took place in 2017. After raising more than $178,000 through crowdsourcing, Identitarian fighters 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 report them to the Libyan coast guard!
