The Identitarians

José Pedro Zúquete

Description

The Identitarians are a quickly growing ethnocultural transnational movement that, in diverse forms, originated in France and Italy and has spread into southern, central, and northern Europe. This timely and important study presents the first book-length analysis of this anti-globalist and anti-Islamic movement. José Pedro Zúquete, one of the leading experts in this field, studies intellectuals, social movements, young activists, and broader trends to demonstrate the growing strength and alliances among these once disparate groups fighting against perceived Islamic encroachment and rising immigration. The Identitarian intellectual and activist uprising has been a source of inspiration beyond Europe, and Zúquete ties the European experience to the emerging American Alt Right, in the limelight for their support of President Trump and recent public protests on university campuses across the United States.

Zúquete presents the multifaceted Identitarian movement on its own terms. He delves deep into the Identitarian literature and social media, covering different geographic contexts and drawing from countless primary sources in different European languages, while simultaneously including many firsthand accounts, testimonies, and interviews with theorists, sympathizers, and activists. The Identitarians investigates a phenomenon that will become increasingly visible on both sides of the Atlantic as European societies become more multicultural and multiethnic, and as immigration from predominantly Muslim nations continues to grow. The book will be of interest to Europeanists, political scientists, sociologists, and general readers interested in political extremism and contemporary challenges to liberal democracies.

Sujets

• Public Policy
• Political Ideologies
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Emigration
• Neo-Nazism
• Western
• Immigration
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268104245
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE IDENTITARIANS
THE IDENTITARIANS
THE MOVEMENT AGAINST GLOBALISM AND ISLAM IN EUROPE
JOSÉ PEDRO ZÚQUETE
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2018 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018036112
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-10421-4 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10423-8 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10424-5 (epub)
∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper) .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
This book is dedicated to my father and to the memory of my mother .
Europe is lying propped upon her elbows:
From East to West she lies, staring
Out, reminiscent—Greek eyes from the shelter
Of romantic hair.
—Fernando Pessoa
If the price of freedom is heavy, that of identity is doubly so.
The first can be given us by decree; the other is always up to us.
—Miguel Torga
CONTENTS
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
ONE Intellectual Foundations, Practices, and Networks
TWO Identity against Globalism
THREE Identity against Islam
FOUR For a New Geopolitics of Europe
FIVE Of Race and Identity
SIX The Coming War?
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1. Cover of Terre et Peuple magazine honoring Dominique Venner four years after his death (Summer 2017).
FIGURE 2. Poster for Polémia’s second “Forum of Dissidence” (November 19, 2016). It reads, “Decrypt, Disobey, Act.”
FIGURE 3. The logo of Génération Identitaire.
FIGURE 4. The logo of CasaPound Italia.
FIGURE 5. Image from the campaign Visages de la Reconquête (Faces of the Reconquest, launched in September 2016).
FIGURE 6. Logo, with the Spartan helmet in the middle, of the Identitarian boxing club/self-defense gym, The Agoge (founded in January 2017).
FIGURE 7. Logo of the “Identitarian and Patriotic” house La Citadelle in the city of Lille (open since 2016).
FIGURE 8. Image from the campaign “Show Your Face” showing Edwin, an Identitarian activist from Vienna.
FIGURE 9. Image from the campaign “Show Your Face” portraying Melanie, an Identitarian activist from Germany. It says, “Fights for our right to identity.”
FIGURE 10. The logo of Arktos, a publishing house currently headquartered in Budapest, Hungary (founded in 2009).
FIGURE 11. Right On podcast dedicated to the European Generation Identity, and featuring Austria’s Alexander Markovics as a guest (March 8, 2016).

FIGURE 12. T-shirt declaring “Eat the universalists,” from Austria’s Identitarian label Phalanx Europa.
FIGURE 13. Poster for CasaPound’s campaign of incentives to raise the birth rate of Italians of native stock (launched in January 2017) with the slogan “Fill the cradles, empty the welcoming centers [for refugees and migrants].”
FIGURE 14. Cover of the French Identitarians’ magazine depicting their “defense” of Calais against the “invasion of immigrants” (May–June 2016).
FIGURE 15. Meme from the Austrian Identitarians depicting the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and a quote from him: “The greatest hypocrites are those who call for open borders.”
FIGURE 16. Identitarian propaganda material for the joint mission Defend Europe (June 2017).
FIGURE 17. Meme of the French writer Jean Raspail created by Martin Lichtmesz for a 2010 Sezession campaign showcasing its Hall of Heroes.
FIGURE 18. Cover of an issue of Réfléchir & Agir dedicated to the “crusade against the modern world” and including an interview with Renaud Camus.
FIGURE 19. Photo of a demonstration by the Austrian Identitarians in Vienna “against the Great Replacement” (June 6, 2015). Courtesy of IBÖ.
FIGURE 20. Poster of the German-speaking Identitarian movement alerting the people about the “Great Replacement.”
FIGURE 21. Cover of Terre et Peuple magazine with the title “Crusade, Resistance, Reconquest” (Autumn 2005).
FIGURE 22. Poster/meme of Génération Identitaire: “Stop Islamization—We Are at Home!”
FIGURE 23. Meme created by the Austrian Identitarians depicting their stunt at the Turkish embassy in Vienna on March 22, 2017. Courtesy of IBÖ.

FIGURE 24. Meme created by the French Identitarians in support of their campaign to dissolve the Islamist organization UOIF (now French Muslims). It shows the words of the organization’s former president, the Sheikh Ahmed Jaballah: “The UOIF consists of a two-stage process. The first one is democratic, the second will put in orbit an Islamic society.”
FIGURE 25. Poster publicizing a Génération Identitaire demonstration in Paris (November 25, 2017) protesting the “terror” in Europe. “Against the Islamists let’s defend Europe,” it says. This demonstration was subsequently forbidden by the authorities, to the outrage of the group.
FIGURE 26. Poster from CasaPound’s NGO Sol.Id. advertising a food drive for Syria.
FIGURE 27. Advertisement for the Academia Christiana annual summer conference held with the theme “Identity against the New Tower of Babel” (Summer 2016).
FIGURE 28. Meme or propaganda material from the German Identitarian movement. It reads, “Europe, Youth, Reconquista!”
FIGURE 29. Cover of the Terre et Peuple magazine with the title “Russia Is Back” (Autumn 2008).
FIGURE 30. T-shirt bearing the words “Europa Nostra,” from Austria’s Identitarian label Phalanx Europa.
FIGURE 31. Demonstration of CasaPound in Rome, in honor of Dominique Venner (May 23, 2016). The banner reads “Europe revolts against fatalism!,” with the words surrounded by CasaPound flags, as well as Italian, French, and Spanish flags. Photo by Antonio Mele.
FIGURE 32. Meme created by the German Identitarian movement in January of 2017 in support of Donald Trump. The quote from Trump reads: “A nation without borders is not a nation.”
FIGURE 33. White nationalism goes populist. Meme advertising the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, with Richard Spencer center front (August 2017).

FIGURE 34. German Identitarian street campaign in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with an activist dressed as Pepe the Frog distributing propaganda leaflets.
FIGURE 35. Meme in support of the summer 2017 Identitarian Defend Europe mission depicting Pepe the Frog as the C-Star ship.
FIGURE 36. Meme from the German Identitarian movement advertising the need to rekindle the “fighting spirit” of Europeans. It reads: “Identity needs defense.”
FIGURE 37. Meme from the early incarnation of Génération Identitaire (Une Autre Jeunesse) depicting an ancient Spartan warrior with the message “We are the youth that chooses Thermopylae rather than softening and renunciation.”
FIGURE 38. T-shirt reading “Europa calling and I must go” sold by the German Identitarian movement shop. The bubble reads, “Oh my God, he is in love with his homeland.”
FIGURE 39. T-shirt reading “Defender of Europe” from the French Génération Identitaire online shop. It shows the Lambda sign and the image of the Spartan King Leonidas.
FIGURE 40. Antifa sticker against Generation Identity. This is the German version. It reads “Hunt Nazi Hipsters—Smash the Identitarian Movement.”
FIGURE 41. Covers of ( left ) Philippe Randa’s book Poitiers Demain (orig. pub. 1986) and ( right ) Fenek Solère’s The Partisan (orig. pub. 2014).
FIGURE 42. Cover of Modeste Lakrite’s L’Édit de Mantes , originally published in 2016.
FIGURE 43. Poster by the French Identitarians of Lyon advertising a book talk by Guerrilla ’s author, Laurent Obertone, at their Identitarian house, La Traboule (November 2016).
PREFACE
My purpose in writing The Identitarians: The Movement against Globalism and Islam in Europe is to inform readers of exactly what Identitarians have to say and how they imagine and present themselves. To accomplish this, it is vital to look at movements like this one from the inside out and not make hasty and uninformed assumptions about them. The type of knowledge that can be gained this way is necessary in order to gain a full understanding of the nature and appeal of Identitarian propaganda and social movements. With this premise in mind, it is crucial to bring home the point that the book is academic and ethnographic, not polemic, in nature. The attempt to understand and describe the Identitarian movement does not indicate approval or validation.
In today’s world, it is vital for scholars, politicians, and media figures, right and left and in between, not to simplistically dismiss the Identitarian phenomenon—whose social media and activist youthful base have been growing in Europe since the turn of the millennium, although its theoretical foundations were laid much earlier—as a marginal movement. Many of the sociocultural trends that feed it—above all, the perception of an ongoing multicultural and multiethnic transformation of traditional European societies and the related “sense of threat” to traditional European values and identities that it provokes—are likely to continue in the coming decades. So, too, will the Identitarian ethnocultural backlash.
In the end, my intent was to employ an ethnographical and phenomenological methodology in presenting this multifaceted