Thread by @LibrairieRCamus

Contrary to what everyone thinks, the expression #GreatReplacement has never referred to population projection models.

Its point is very different. What does it mean? How was it born? ⤵️ A thread ⤵️

Renaud Camus is a writer. His job is to name things, including what society does not want to see. There used to be one people in France, and suddenly, in a few decades, there are now several of them? He calls this phenomenon the "Great Replacement". 1/

No demographic curves, no birth rates, no figures, no dark conspiracies, no lurking ennemies. No, just a fact, in the open: where there was one people, there are now many. 2/

The face of France, which has been the same for centuries, has suddenly changed. If, in order to see the obvious, you need to brandish demographic projection tables, you are in part wrong. 3/

Because the fake is what dominates the public discourse. The situation is quite comical: We are dealing with a cataclysmic phenomenon — the very nature of a country, of a continent even, is changing — which should never be mentioned, at any cost. 4/

The situation is quite comical. Since it is considered bad to talk about this phenomenon, which is the 'blind spot' of Western societies, it has been said that it is a theory, a racist one, a 'conspiracy theory'. It is not. 5/

Wikipedia, whose articles are taken from the most serious press, provides a good example. The Great Replacement is described as a conspiracy theory conceived by racists who have been overwhelmed by globalisation. 6/

Here are two anecdotes are at the origin of the expression. The first is when Renaud Camus hears on the radio that to solve the problem of pensions in Spain, the government is going to resort to Moroccan immigration. 7/

It sounded like a transubstantiation operation: Moroccans were supposed to replace the Spanish ; as if people from different cultures, and often very hostile to each other, were interchangeable. 8/

Another anecdote: while writing "Le Département de l'Hérault", around 1999, the author noticed that it was now possible to come across veiled women in small villages in the depths of France. This was a new phenomenon. 9/

Renaud Camus, in his little book written directly in English, You Will Not Replace Us, traces the origin of the expression : 10/

It doesn't matter here whether this phenomenon is seen as good or bad: what matters is that it’s decisive. For Camus, the arrival of these new populations is a fundamental event: it opens a new era in Europe. 11/

This is enough to say: " Our time is the time of the civilizational change". Camus called this the "Great Replacement"; if you don't like the term, you can say, like Pope Francis in L'Ossevatore Romano : « we can speak today of Arab invasion. It is a social fact. » 12/

Nevertheless, it seems that it is Camus' expression that has won: all French public figures use it (even to deny it). This is certainly due to its literary force. 13/

This is what Salazar showed in his book entitled "Supremacists" (a title imposed by the publisher: Camus is of course not a "supremacist"): 14/

"Camus's work is the subject of detailed literary analyses that emphasize his links with the avant-garde of the 1970s and his intellectual connivance with the leading thinker of literary criticism at the time: 15/

"Roland Barthes, apart from the fact that even his critics recognize the originality of his approach in the genre he renews: the diary, but published on the spot, with all the hazards that this entails, a prestigious genre that belongs to French literary heritage. 16/

"...See how a writer doesn't have to define, like a merchandiser, or a politician, his product - he just has to play with words to get it right." 17/

"The American or English journalist who comes to "interview" Camus for a piece of news, like the Australian or Californian alt-rightist who quotes him, has probably not understood that the "hateful" expression "Grand Remplacement" enters a very long literary chain, 18/

going back in reality to the "Chanson de Roland" and the "Roman de la Rose" - and above all enters into a literary and physical evocation of France that runs through all of Camus's work. (…) 19/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_…

Because it's really not a question of numbers. The question raised by the Great Replacement is this one: do Europeans still have a real link with their past, which is not just neurotic self-blaming? 20/

It is common today to hear in France that there are not more immigrants than before (and that it would be racist to point it out anyway). But who can seriously hold this discourse, if they look for a moment at any video archive of Paris before the 80s? 21/

Another fakenews: Journalists wanted to show that in reality Camus had not invented anything at all, and that he was only taking up a neo-Nazi theory (no less). That's what you can read on Wikipedia. 22/

It's always the same method: denying the originality of the phenomenon ("no, nothing happens, Europe has always known migration"), and giving all its contradictors monstrous intentions - 23/

even if it means doing teratological genealogy ("do you know that your 'theory' comes straight from the neo-Nazis?"). 24/

The Great Replacement is therefore a name, a chrononym, like "Great Depression", and not a neo-Nazi theory, or whatever, that imagines Machiavellian villains plotting against Europe. 25/

Great Mortality : mid-14th century
Great Upheaval : mid and late 18th century
Great War : 1914-1918
Great Depression : 1929-1939
Great Replacement : c. 1980-?
26/

It is socially rewarding to celebrate the phenomenon (open-mindedness VS narrow-mindedness, etc.); whereas those who talk about the same phenomenon, but find it worrying, are presented as right-wing extremist conspiracy nuts. 27/

The expression "Great Replacement" says so brutally what it was good to pretend not to see, that the reaction was unanimous: it's racist, it's hatred, it comes from the Nazis, it's conspiracy madness. 28/

Open the book The Great Replacement, open You Will Not Replace Us. Name one line where you find hatred or conspiracy. You won't find anything. 29/

from the beginning of "You Will Not Replace Us" : 30/

I would like to show that all those who are trying to smear Renaud Camus, and to accuse him of all crimes, should start by reading him. It will give them a head start on their time and on their colleagues. 31/

I hear your objection: "Wait! Replacement presupposes an intention, the name "Great Replacement" presupposes many people behind this replacement, who are plotting to accomplish it!" 32/

No. This is completely wrong. 33/

As Camus says: "I wish it was just a "theory", or a "slogan"." For the Great Replacement refers to a very vast movement, involving entire civilizations. It is not a simple mechanism. It is a historical force. 34/

What is at stake is the great movement of history, in which only the great impersonal actors, such as the economy, industrial civilization, demographic forces, etc., can be distinguished. Camus never speaks of evil plotters, nor of a definite plan. 35/

On the contrary, this phenomenon is overwhelming everyone, all those who are caught up in its vast movement. There are groups that benefit from it, others that suffer from it; but there is no hidden agenda behind it. 36/

On the other hand, Camus, based on this observation, proposed theoretical structures to explain the phenomenon of the Great Replacement (which are not conspiracy theories, as you will have understood). 37/

It is, in a nutshell, a critique of capitalism and the industrial age. He sees in Taylor and Ford the founding fathers of an era which is gradually characterized by the gesture of replacement: 38/

“Replacing is the central gesture of contemporary societies. For better or worse, everything is being replaced by something else: something simpler, more convenient, more practical, easier to produce, more at hand and, of course, cheaper. 39/

Las Vegas displays a fake Venice in Nevada, Spain establishes a fake Las Vegas in Castilla, China has its own Paris near Pekin — a much safer place than the real one for the traveller and for the local dweller alike.” 40/

It is "global replacism":

This is the name proposed by the author for the historical force in which he recognizes the essence of post-modern contemporaneity. He denounces it as the main totalitarianism at work today in the West and in the world. 42/

The era of post-modernity is characterized by the liquid society, where everything that connects to the past must be suppressed, resulting in Undifferentiated Human Matter (UHM) that can be manipulated by the market and by industries. 43/

Industrial civilization, political thought reduced to pure economism, are in direct opposition to everything that could root man in a natural environment: lineage, name, heritage, distinction, the continuation of history. 44/

I hear a new objection: "but there is no replacement, that's not true, there is addition, or race-mixing!" 45/

Camus answers precisely this question in The Great Replacement. There is replacement because two phenomena mix: the arrival of new populations and, at the same time, the destruction of the cultures of the native Europeans. 46/

These cultures are systematically denigrated, presented as guilty, criminal, at the root of all the evils of the world, of all inequalities. They are mocked, blamed, ignored, and finally presented as something to be destroyed. 47/

There are therefore two forces at work in the Great Replacement :
1. The change in population that France has been experiencing since the 1980s;

2. The great movement of guilt of the historical European culture, presented either as criminal or non-existent.
48/

The origin of this guilt is to be found in what Renaud Camus called, in a fascinating book, "La seconde carrière d'Adolphe Hitler" (The Second Career of Adolphe Hitler): 49/

To prevent the monstrosity of Nazism from reappearing, anti-racism was invented; but anti-racism has gone mad, and now seeks to destroy the culture that gave birth to it. 50/

Anti-racism was born, very legitimately, out of the Shoah. But anti-racism eventually led to making the Shoah impossible to teach, being rejected as a moral foundation by non-European pupils. 51/

Another falsehood: Renaud Camus is a far right author. Renaud Camus is an author of gay liberation, author of avant-garde texts, heir of structuralism, friend of Barthes and Marguerite Duras, and contemporary art critic: it doesn't fit very well with "far right". 52/

Camus has written dictionaries, a huge diary (now published directly online, renaud-camus.net/journal), topographies, poetry, eglogues, elegies, novels, he is also a painter, a photographer (and even, for those who know him, a singer). 54/

Camus is conservative, and this conservatism is mixed with very high artistic audacity (see the Eglogues, or Vaisseaux Brûlés, or Coral/Carol). Don't try to categorise him in the extreme-this or that: he will always escape you. 55/

Note that the philosophical or historical references of Renaud Camus are not to be found at the extreme right: Peter Sloterdijk, Zygmunt Bauman, Alain Supiot, Johann Chapoutot, Olivier Rey, Jean Vioulac. 56/

But I hear you, I hear you, be reassured. You still have an objection: "The Christchurch killer had a booklet on him called The Great Replacement!" 57/

By naming what should not be named, Renaud Camus has hit the nail on the head. His expression suddenly found itself in the spotlight, almost everywhere in the world. Even Macron employs him and his collaborators. 58/
valeursactuelles.com/politique/vide…

This expression was even taken up by the horrible Christchurch slaughterer, Brenton Tarrant, who never read a line from Camus, and most probably never even heard of him. His brochure never mentions Renaud Camus, nor any of his books. 59/

His booklet is a big mishmash, where a thousand figures and a thousand puerile theories intersect, between two calls for the murder of children or for hanging. 60/

A reading of Tarrant immediately shows that he is crazy, incoherent, and ultra-violent. Who does he cite as his main "inspiration"? @RealCandaceO, which is of course pure lunacy (or trolling). 61/

I did read this crazy pamphlet, and to say the least, Tarrant's ideas are worlds apart from Camus', on every level. 62/

Tarrant is incoherent, but one can identify the main features of his "ideology": he is ultra-populist, anti-individualist, anti-hedonist. His model is... Communist China. 63/

This is the opposite of Camus, whose morality and politics develop from the notions of freedom and individuality (his political model is England, for him individuation is the moral goal par excellence, 'Civilisation was invented to make solitude possible', etc). 64/

Tarrant is extremely violent, both in his ideas and in his actions. Whereas Camus is fundamentally non-violent and has written hundreds of pages on the concept of ‘in-nocence’ (civilization must be built around the idea of not harming others). 65/

At the centre of Camus' political thinking is the idea of demographic and economic degrowth. The competition to increase birth rates seems to him to be a complete nonsense, a madness, and an ecological disaster. 66/

Tarrant is obsessed with birth rates. 67/

In short, it would be possible to point out dozens of other features of Tarrant's ideology to see that this man has nothing in common with Renaud Camus, that he has never read him and has never been influenced by him. 68/

The only thing that connects them is that Tarrant decided to call his booklet 'The Great Replacement'. These words appear only in the title, and not once in the body of the text. Yet the content of the booklet could not be further from Camus' views. 69/

But the opportunity was too good for the enemies of Renaud Camus (and, as you will have understood, there is no shortage of that...) to accuse him of being at the origin of the attack, as if he had called for massacres. 70/

But the opportunity was too good for the enemies of Renaud Camus (and, as you will have understood, there is no shortage of that...) to accuse him of being at the origin of the attack, as if he had called for massacres. 71/

Confusing Camus' expression with an ultra-right wing conspiracy theory proves that one has never opened a single book by Renaud Camus. (Do not make the same mistake: amazon.fr/You-Will-Not-R…). 72/

I keep reading in your thoughts: "The original expression is certainly not a white supremacist conspiracy theory, but the New York Times, Wikipedia, and all the newspapers are formal: Renaud Camus is a far-right writer!" 73/

Renaud Camus, all his life, has faced the constant hostility of journalists, who have never read him, who have always attributed to him the darkest intentions, and who have not hesitated to arrange quotations, or translations, to present him as a monster. 74/

This hatred (which is real, as evidenced by the caricatures, the ultra-hostile articles, etc.) comes from the fact that Camus is not at all afraid to attack taboos, whatever they may be. 75/

In the 1980s, when it was still daring to be openly gay, Camus published "Tricks", a book in which he described his sexual adventures with casual lovers, just as you would describe your dinner at your grandmother's. 76/

What characterises Camus, and this is a characteristic trait of literature, is that he is absolutely not afraid to say what he sees, what he does, what he thinks. That's one of the roles of the writer: to name things. That's his job. 77/

"Tricks". Camus says what could not be said without instantly making everyone mad and hateful: homosexuality. 78/

"The Great Replacement". Camus says what cannot be said without instantly making everyone mad and hateful: the population change of Europe, which is being accomplished with violence. 79/

Why then do almost all journalists agree that Camus is a fascist villain? Because the contemporary Western neurosis is such that it doesn't want to talk about this brutal population change. 80/

This change is the elephant in the room, which nobody dares to name. Yet this elephant has already broken some of the furniture, and crushed a few people in the process. 81/

For reasons that would be too complex to explain in this already crowded thread, the overwhelming majority of the media wanted to pretend that this elephant simply did not exist, that nothing happened. 82/

Imagine an economist who, in 1929, proposed to call the new and terrible era that was being inaugurated in front of everyone "the Great Depression". No one would have thought to say: 83/

"What is this "Great Depression" theory? Who exactly are you blaming? Aren't you adding fuel to the crisis? Do you know that it comes straight from the Ku Klux Klan?" 84/

This is exactly the kind of language that Renaud Camus is being told today - for the very silly reason that it was fashionable for decades to claim that there was no population change in Europe, and that it was not accompanied by violence. 85/

Today, the taboo has changed a little - as it is no longer possible to pretend that there is no elephant, it is possible to talk about the animal, but only to pay tribute to it, and to make it clear that it is not responsible for any violence. 86/

Camus, as always, allows himself what infuriates all the guardians of the temple: he acts, speaks and writes exactly as if the taboo did not exist.He simply says what he sees: yes, the population is changing, and yes, the natives are slaughtered. 87/

Mainstream journalism, the "media", are no longer a counter-power, as they once were: they are the power. Camus allows himself to speak about this tragedy, this horror that is colonisation? Then he must be discredited at all costs. 89/

The worst article ever written is, from that point of view, the one by @jameskmcauley. Already, the illustration of the article sets the tone - a horrible, silly, nasty caricature. 90/

Diary of Renaud Camus, on the article: "There is in fact in these five or six pages a thousand times more concentrated hatred, insinuating, vexatious, methodical, tireless, and desire to harm, than I myself have expressed in a hundred and fifty books." 91/

For Mr McAuley, there is no Great Replacement, for the good reason that there always has been. Europe's population has always been a molten magma. 92/

The ridiculousness and absurdity of this position will come as a great surprise to historians. In a few decades, one quarter of the French population becomes African, but this is nothing but banal. And those who have the nerve to worry about it must be destroyed. 93/

(Everyone knows that no society can withstand such an upheaval - especially not a society that has decided to make a complete break with its past.) 94/

Contrary to what is tirelessly repeated, there is no hatred in making this observation: yes, there is indeed a substitution of one population by another, and yes, there is nothing peaceful about this substitution. 95/

There is nothing hateful about the fact that it has become almost impossible to find anyone in France who has not been a victim, or whose relative has not been a victim, of the violence generated by the population change. 96/ google.com/maps/d/viewer?…

This is what our friends on the other side of the Atlantic generally don't know: Among the thugs who commit crimes in France, an implausible, appalling proportion come from newly arrived populations. 97/

This is the great taboo of our time, and the one that Renaud Camus has tackled head-on. The victims are not allowed to speak out, on the pretext that it would be racist to see the reality. 98/

But when your cousin can no longer go out in the street without being harassed, when your colleague is traumatised by being strangled in a Parisian street, when your neighbor was raped one evening in a park, when throat cuttings are a daily occurrence, can you remain silent? 99/

Even if I were a leftist, even if I thought that Western civilisation was evil and responsible for all the evils of the world, I could not keep quiet and pretend that nothing was happening. 100/

This situation drives the French crazy. When, faced with journalists ready to give them social death, they timidly put forward the hypothesis that, since almost all their attackers were of immigrant origin, changing the population would not be a good idea, they are told: 101/

You are racists, there is no change in population, the number of foreigners is stable (!), and immigrants are an enrichment for France, moreover the indigenous populations in Europe do not exist and have never existed, and their culture is criminal. 102/

This "kettle logic" is permanently opposed to those who attack contemporary hypocrisy. This is why the current climate is so toxic: the false has become pervasive, and the people's trust in their government has been reduced to nothing. 103/

But how is it racist, or extreme right-wing, or fascist, or conspiratorial, to state the obvious: the French are victims of violence every day from newly arrived populations who don't feel French at all, and who don't want to be? 104/

The reality of violence (street harassment, "gratuitous" assaults, robberies, rapes, etc.) is devastating for the authorities, and forces them to deny it, forcing them to impose a nightmarish "living together" on their own population. 105/

— and thus to silence the one who brings the bad news, and who recommends to everyone to simply believe their eyes: Renaud Camus. 106/106