According to American ethnographer Benjamin Raphael Teitelbaum, Identitarians advocate “a seemingly non-hierarchical global division to create a ‘pluralism’ where differences between peoples are preserved and celebrated.” [Teitelbaum (born 1983) is an ethnographer and political commentator. An associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and former head of Scandinavian Studies at the same institution, he is best known for his ethnographic research on far-right groups in Scandinavia and his commentary on immigration, and is frequently cited as an expert in Scandinavian and American media.
Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus [born 1958, is a French-Jewish scholar specializing in nationalist movements in Europe and calls himself an “anti-totalitarian leftist”] agrees and defines the Identity Movement as centered on the Nouvelle Droite’s concept of ethnopluralism (or “ethno-diversity”): “every people and culture can flourish only in the territory of its origin; ethnic and cultural mixing (métissage) is considered a factor of decline; multiculturalism as a pathogenic project, producing crime, loss of orientation and, ultimately, the possibility of an “ethno-racial war” in European countries, between ethno-racially Europeans and non-indigenous Arabs of the Maghreb (Northwest Africa), in any case Muslims.”
European identity movements often use a yellow “Lamda” symbol on a black background, commemorating the ancient Battle of Thermopylae between the Greeks led by the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) and the Persians. It symbolizes a modern pan-European struggle against foreigners and Muslims, and non-Europeans in general.
The connection of Muslim immigration and Islam with the concept of ethnopluralism is indeed one of the main foundations of Identitarianism, and the prediction of a future ethnoracial war between whites and immigrants is central to Identity theorists. In their worldview, “ethnomasochism” (hatred of one’s own ethnicity) and xenophilia (love of foreigners) contribute to a “Great Replacement” of white Europeans, leading to an eventual risk of their extinction. They argue that this replacement can be stopped, and a potential civil war avoided, only by ending pro-multiculturalism, pro-immigration, and anti-racist policies.
However, they doubt that such measures will be taken, because the elites and the general public do not recognize the threat they are clearly warned about. In 2016, Fey stated clearly that: “…. ethnic civil war, like a baby snake breaking its eggshell, is only in its very modest beginnings.” Earlier, he had declared “total ethnic war” between “genuine” Europeans and Muslims in his book “The Colonization of Europe” in 2000, which …. earned him a criminal conviction for “inciting racial hatred.” However, these calls for ethnic violence, also demonstrated by Pierre Vial’s incitement of a “war of liberation” against “ethnic colonization”, are opposed by other Identity thinkers and groups. For example, Alain de Benoist rejected Fey’s “intensely racist” ideas regarding Muslims after the publication of that book in 2000.
Pan-European nationalism – According to Identity thought, identity should be defended on three levels: local/regional, national and cultural, with the nation-state acting as the intermediate bridge between regional roots (in the sense of the German Heimat) and participation in European culture. Rejecting traditional far-right notions of Europe as simply a collection of nation-states, they imagine a “Europe of 100 Flags” as a mosaic of diverse regional communities united by a common cultural heritage. [It is a concept developed by the Breton nationalist Yann Adolphe Fouéré (1910-2011) in his book “The Europe of 100 Flags” (“L’Europe aux Cent Drapeaux”, 1968). In it, he proposes reshaping European borders from existing nations into smaller regional states, in a way that more closely resembles a map of the region in the Middle Ages, including the creation of states for Basques, Bretons and Flemish.]
Identitarians also reframe the concept of “biodiversity” as the multiplicity of European cultures, arguing that in the face of the homogenizing effects of global capitalism and uncontrolled migration, protecting biodiversity means preserving the unique cultural identities of the peoples of Europe through a devotional commitment to historical and cultural localism.
Academic Stéphane François argues that identitarian geopolitics should be seen as a form of “ethnopolitics.” In the Identitarian vision, the world is structured into distinct “ethnospheres,” each dominated by ethnically related peoples. They promote ethnic solidarity among European peoples and the establishment of a confederation of regional identities, which would eventually replace the various nation-states of Europe, which are seen as a legacy of the “dubious philosophy of the French Revolution.” While proponents of identity generally reject the European Union as “corrupt” and “authoritarian,” they also advocate a “political body at the European level that can stand up to superpowers such as America and China.” Views on Islam and liberalism – The identity movement strongly opposes the politics and philosophy of Islam, an opposition that some critics describe as covert Islamophobia. Adherents often protest what they see as the Islamization of Europe through mass immigration, claiming that it poses a threat to European culture and society. As the German identitarian writer Markus Willinger, a key activist in the movement, sums it up very clearly: “We don’t want Mehmet and Mustafa to become European!” This position is linked to the ideas of the Great Replacement, a theory that claims that a global elite is conspiring against the white population of Europe to replace it with non-European peoples.
As a proposed solution to this global conspiracy, identitarians present mass “remigration,” the repatriation and repatriation of immigrants, a project to reverse growing multiculturalism through a forced mass deportation of non-European immigrants (often including their descendants) back to their place of racial origin, regardless of their citizenship status. The Identity Generation has made frequent use of the term “Reconquest,” referring to the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.
However, identitarians do not all share a common vision of liberalism. Some see it as part of a European identity “threatened by Muslims who do not respect women or homosexuals”, while others, such as Daniel Friberg, describe it as the “disease” that contributed to Muslim immigration in the first place.
Relationship with fascism and Nazism – Identitarians have been labeled “racists” or “fascists” by their political opponents, although there is some debate among scholars as to whether “cultural nationalism” also constitutes “cultural racism”.
Scholar A. James McAdams has described the Identitarian movement as a “second generation” in the development of the European far-right’s fundamental critique of liberal democracy in the post-war era: “The first of these generations, centered around members of the French Nouvelle Droite (New Right), defined difference as a right (“right to difference”) to which all individuals are entitled by virtue of their common human nature. A second generation, epitomized in the pan-European Identitarian movement of the early 2000s, replaced the language of rights with the less demanding but essential demand for respect for the differences of others, especially those differences based on nationality.” Finally, in response to the degeneration of Identity thought into supposedly outright xenophobia and racism, a third generation of theorists emerged in the 2010s with the express goal of restoring the dignity of far-right thought.” [A. James McAdams is a political scientist, author, and academic. He is Professor of International Relations at the private Catholic research University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA. McAdams is best known for his research on communism, democratization, transitional justice, and far-right politics]
The Identity Revolution – “Our senses are mediated by our upbringing as members of a group with the same experience, language, and culture. … it is not just localism that makes us suspect that members of very different groups experience the world in the same way. …But because they have systematically different (and internally consistent) sensations in response to the same stimuli, members of different groups live in different worlds in a way.” – Reza Tzorjani, “Prometheus and Atlas”.
Giorgani approaches the challenge of reintroducing the “supernature” into Western culture through 20th-century continental philosophy, which allows him to exploit Bergson’s and Heidegger’s critical analyses of the empirical limitations of Modernity. In this respect, Giorgani’s approach again shows an indirect parallel to the Traditionalist approach to the same problem. Bergson’s reappropriation of intuition and the “vital drive” as a multi-layered reaction to the modernist/modern atrophy of the spiritual instinct not only validates Giorgani’s Archaeo-Futurist reintroduction of the “supernature” – it also validates the Traditionalist view of Modernity as a perceptual and conceptual “defect.”
Heidegger’s fundamental critique of mechanistic scientism as the cause of modern humanity’s artificially diminished spatiotemporal experience not only validates Giorgiani’s Archaeo-Futurist reassertion of primordial “supernatural” faculties – it also validates the Traditionalist insistence on the essential reality of humanity’s “magical” faculties. The contemporary atrophy of these ancient perceptual and conceptual faculties also explains the inability of modern humanity to confront its own existential identities. These are those which Traditionalist thought considers to be doubly specialized, communal and individual, according to race, nationality, gender, caste and profession. Only a degree of reappropriation of these faculties will allow for the rediscovery, reappropriation and reactivation of these identities.
Having appropriated Heidegger’s notions of specialized time (the bounded “time horizon” of the Cultural Circles (Kulturkreisen)) and specialized space (the protective spatial horizon of “Blood and Earth” (Blut und Boden)) as vital conditions for any authentic form of world-historical human existence, Giorgani discusses the danger of global, unbridled technological science, highlighting its extraordinary archetypal power to subjugate the entire natural world and all human cultures.
This power allows it to dissolve specialized time and specialized space through predictive projection and predictive models: it tends to alienate people from nature, from culture, and from community. In this respect, Giorgani’s Archaeo-Futurist analysis fits in with the classic Traditionalist thesis that the worldview of the modern The scientific world represents a grave danger to all forms of authentic identity. It is precisely at this point that Giorgani’s Prometheus and Atlas offers his most powerful post-political contribution to the Identity Movement: it offers a devastating philosophical “anti-deconstruction” of the Cultural Nihilist myth of cultural relativism – and recasts the incalculable value of authentic Western identity. Giorgani explicitly emphasizes the importance of re-appropriating what lies at the core of Western identity: the Indo-European cultural substratum, historically known as “Aryan.” Drawing from his free Iranian heritage, he boldly reclaims the term “Aryan” for the archetypal essence of Western identity, as represented in its original etymological meaning: “Noble.” In this way, he is able to re-explore the spiritual root of identity and the cultural-historical heritage of the Aryan-Indo-European peoples. As an Iranian-Persian, Tzorjani is psychohistorically imbued with the archetype we were taught at the University in the History of the Eastern Peoples: It is the inscription on the rocks of the Behistun pass that characteristically mentions the genealogical credentials of the Great King: “…I am Darius of Hystaspes, Arius, son of Arius….”
From both the Archaic-Futurist and the Traditionalist perspectives, this identity and this heritage are primarily spiritual in nature – they must both be earned and conquered. It is up to the Indo-European-Aryan generation of identity to claim its rightful heritage, so that the Indo-European people can once again inhabit the specialized worlds that are its rightful heritage. Outside of authentic identity there can be no authentic knowledge – only if the generation of identity relives authentic identity can it hope to acquire the necessary empowering knowledge.
Power begins where taboo ends: breaking the stranglehold of Cultural Nihilism on authentic identity is the first Rubik’s Cube that the Identity Revolution must cross. It is now up to the Western generation of identity to boldly follow in the footsteps of its philosophical pioneers. To demand an existential claim to the future, which lies beyond the imminent “event horizon” of Western history, that is, beyond the limit at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light, thus making the escape of any matter, radiation or light impossible, thus making any further historical development impossible!
