An Interview with Renaud Camus on Israel, Trump, and the Terror of First Names

When I was growing up the joke was that if you cared about immigration, you probably read The Turner Diaries. I first heard about the idea of the Great Replacement from an English YouTuber named Shaun when I was 19 or so. He released a video criticizing Lauren Southern, confirming my belief that anyone who talked about the “Great Replacement” idea was racist and should be ignored.

But then at some point between 2017 and 2025, something happened.

Sweden has lost the monopoly of force within its borders. Britian has been shaken by controversy related a two-tier justice system, which broke the same time a report came out detailing how police ignored sexual crimes because of fear related to race and religion, and because of an existing culture of victim-blaming girls. Free speech in Europe has been weakened by anti-blasphemy violence and, decades later, terrorism in Europe has not abated. In the United States, 18% of the working population is now foreign-born, working on a legal and illegal basis. Legally present foreign-born workers depress wages, are more easily exploited, and impede unionization while illegal immigrants have strained government services as a net drain and have contributed to housing unaffordability. The story is the same in Europe. 

To combat inflation, President Biden allowed large numbers of illegal immigrants to enter the country as mass migration introduces competition into the labor market, suppressing wage growth, while also introducing more consumers to offset reduced consumer spending as Americans saved. President Donald Trump has been elected to a second term on a campaign of preventing mass migration. Liberal publishing outlets that engage in discussion about migration are coming around to the failure of integration, and 12 Senate democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act.

In other words, the right won on immigration, even with the term “mass migration.”

Renaud Camus, seventy-eight, has been talking about mass migration for decades. He is the most infamous writer on mass migration, accused by the left of antisemitism and criticized by the far-right for not being antisemitic. He has published two hundred books including a yearly diary. Their titles range from The Communism of the 21st Century to The Replaceable Human to The Aesthetics of Solitude. He did not begin his literary career writing about migration. He began as a little-known French writer, journaling about homosexual hookups, almost comparable in his early life to the too-honest gay and transexual artists of the podcast Seeking Derangements.

Recently, he was banned from entering Britain over his writing. This comes as his popularity has been rising on the fringes of the English-speaking world thanks to the hard efforts of Vauban Books, a new publishing house whose mission is to advance authentic dialogue across the Atlantic. Their collection of his writings, Enemy of the Disaster, has been popular on the intellectual fringe of the American right. There are even unconfirmed rumors that Vice President Vance has read the work himself. The White House’s language on immigration and war on the courts—at times—seem to take inspiration from Renaud Camus. Some members of this administration have expressed support for Renaud Camus’ writings.

He is most famous for his description of mass migration in Europe, which he calls the Great Replacement. He views mass migration in Europe to be the result of a three-way collision between changing education standards, global capitalism, and post-colonialism, which resulted in the vast influx of migrants into Europe, replacing Europeans in parts of Europe with non-Europeans. This theory is not on the fringes of society—though Camus is—as some polls have shown that at 44% of French people see validity in the theory, and 66% fear the possibility. The Southern Poverty Law Center has claimed 7 of 10 Republicans support an American variant of the Great Replacement idea.

To understand the most important and controversial philosopher of our times, The Meteor spoke at length to Mr. Camus about his views on mass migration. The interview covered a range of topics including Israel and Trump, the nature of meaning and Plato’s Cratylus, and what Mr. Camus calls the unbearable tyranny of first names:

Good morning and thank you for speaking with me today. To begin, how does the France that you grew up in compare to the France in which you live today?

Well, at the least, one can say that it is totally different, for one thing doesn't have the same population. So it is really, very, very different. I don't think anything can change a country more than changing its population.

Was this mindset of what you've called replacism, as present in the culture as it is today?

No, replacism, I would say, started at the end of 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century in America, replacers really took power only in the mid-seventies. I think.

What made you want to have a career as a writer?

I don't know. I write always. Not to have a career, not really a career man, but to be a writer. My career is not very successful, but I do write at least. Quantity is my forte.

And when you began writing, you weren't writing about migration or replacism. You were writing about totally different issues. At what point did you begin writing about issues of replacement and mass migration? And what caused you to move from other things to migration and replacement?

I started to think about the change of people at the end of the 19th century. But since I keep a diary which is published every year, I have been told—I've never reread it—but I've been told that the subject is mentioned much earlier. Of course.

That brings me to what you're most known, for in the West and in the English language media, which is the phrase, “the Great Replacement” which is often not paired with your other famous phrase, “the Little Replacement.” Could you describe to me, in short, what your argument about the Great and Little Replacement is?

Well, for one thing, I think most important is neither a Great Replacement or a Small Replacement, but global replacism, which is a theory. Whereas the other two are not theories, but anyway, a Small Replacement could be summed up this way, which is rather abrupt, the Small Replacement is a change of class and the Great Replacement is a change of race.

The Small Replacement is a change of class as the reference for culture. Before the Small Replacement, the official culture in France was either aristocratic culture, or mostly bourgeois culture, which had been the official culture of the country for about two centuries, from the second half of the 18th century to the second half of the 20th century.  As the Small Replacement implied, this culture was more or less abandoned.

First was music. There's been an enormous change in the meaning of the word music. And then all culture has changed, with no, no more reference to classical, French, European, or universal culture, but mostly pop culture. As it was pop music, which was the new meaning of the word music. When you speak about music today people immediately understand pop music as if it was the only music; which implies a tremendous anthropological change inside, not only did French culture go through this, it was in general, I think.

Could you explain another phrase which is that “a people that knows its classics cannot be replaced?” I'm sure that in French education they do teach classics of French history, and if they don't, you can correct me. But what is it precisely about what you've described as a change of class reference in education, or the way in which classics are taught that has resulted in people not knowing their own classics?

Well, I don't think they teach classical culture anymore, classical literature or history, in French school, or in any of the schools of the West for one thing, and it is one of the main prominent characters of the present situation. The educators, the educational system, has totally collapsed under the pretense precisely that culture and the traditional meaning of the world was a bourgeois thing, and was contrary to equality.

I'm not sure he's as famous in the Anglo-Saxon world, but I suspect so, he's called Pierre Bourdieu, he was very important in that, because he discovered [he laughs] what everybody had known forever, that people with cultivated parents have a kind of privilege in school, and privilege was suddenly considered inadmissible.

So, heritage what was taught by families outside of school, was sort of prohibited in school. That advantage had to disappear, not only in school, but also in universities. For instance, in the French School of Political Science [Institut d'études politiques de Paris] where I have been a student actually, there is a famous change in in the entry examination, where general culture is now prohibited. There's no more examination about general culture, because general culture is considered as a class privilege, and they don't want class privilege to interfere with entry in the School of Political Science and general culture is prohibited also in school, as a matter of fact, because it is considered as a privilege, so it has practically disappeared.

How does the shift from aristocratic education to general education, how does that get to what you call the Great Replacement?

Well, one implies the other.

If difference in classes was prohibited, difference in races could not exist anymore.

I think one of the great moments was the, to my mind, absolutely absurd proclamation of the non-existence of races which, paradoxically, imply a conception of races which was the conception of the worst racists, that is the conception of race limited to science or pseudoscience which was, if it had any signification at all only an absolutely tiny part of what race had been in the French language, and I think, in any language race was also cultural heritage, religious heritage and manners, and everything and was it not at all limited to the scientific conception of the thing.

If there was no races, the change of people becomes possible which was important for global replacement because global replacism is having humanity entirely interchangeable, commercially changeable, and this started by attacking races as the first step. Now, they are obviously attacking sexes. They don't want people to have genders or sexes, that also has disappeared.

What they want is to have humanity without any characterization at all, no culture, no heritage, no names, no races, no classes, and no sexes.

When you speak of race as more than this, you know scientific definition of race as the definition of race made by the worst racist, could you give me an example in, you know, maybe history and or literature, of what type of meaning of the word race you're referencing?

I've heard, you know discussion of the Anglo-Saxon race, for example, in historical literature going back to you know, the 15th century 16th century? Is that the type of meaning of race that you're talking about?

And I'm wondering if there's an example you have in your mind of the use of the word race in either French historical literature or other historical literature that you're thinking of.

I have thousands of examples. Race is one of the words which is more inscribed in French language and literature and poetry. It is everywhere, and I do think that the more a thing is, the more impossible it is to define it. To define the word race, you would need at least twenty different definitions, and I'm not sure that would be enough to circumscribe the bough of meaning that the word is, so rich it is, but it is everywhere in, in the French language, including in the French poetry it is in.

It is in Racine, it is in Mallarmé. It is in French history, for instance, one of the innumerable meaning is the word family or dynasty, a French traditional historian speaks about the French history of the three races, which are the three successive dynasties of our kings, the Merovingians, which are the first race, the Carolingians, which are the second race and the Capetians, which are the third race.

But it can be absolutely anything, since it is one of the richest words in French. Its signification is very plastic. It can be, you can use it to speak of the race of the avaricious, the race of the Sunday painter, the race of the adventurers.

And, for instance, the French race, which was very common, and the French, if you speak of the French race, you prove that you are not a racist in the modern sense of the word, because there is no such anything like a scientifical basis of the French race. French race would only be in the experience of living together for at least fifteen centuries without any or very few newcomers, except individuals, of course.

Could you share with me your thoughts on the modern definition of anti-racism, and how you understand anti-racism?

Yes, very gladly, because I think it's a very important matter. I think anti-racism has totally changed meaning. Anti-racism is a word rather modern. I think it appears immediately after the Second World War, and at that time, there was absolutely nothing which could be more legitimate than anti-racism.

It was mostly founded on the horror of the death camps. In French, plus jamais, never again.

Anti-racism has the most legitimate foundation in the will that the horror of the death camps would never happen again, and at that time it was intended for the protection of a few races which were mostly menaced landholders, including, of course, the Jews, the Blacks, American Indians, it could be all races in the world if they were under special protection if they were menaced. That was the first meaning of the world anti-racist which it had for about thirty years.

But it was totally reversed in the mid-seventies, with the proclamation, a very important event, of the proclamation of the dogma of the non-existence of the races, and anti-racism concentrated on that new meaning, which I think is totally absurd and very malevolent and which had terrible consequences, that races did not exist, and that you could not make the slightest reference to races, including your own. And that was exactly what was wanted by the replacists.

For global replacism, that is, that people could be treated as, say, as industrial product, and could be exchanged at will, as if they were things, products. So, antiracist, which at its origin was essentially antigenocidal, became genocidal, which made me think that in such circumstances, if antiracist has so clearly changed its meaning, the word racism should change its meaning symmetrically and start to mean what its name implies. That is, for one thing, the recognition of the existence of races, the recognition of its immense importance in the affairs of humanity, and the love of races, of all the races, the will of their happy coexistence in the world, the importance of which is in the essence of ecology, for instance, ecology is in a total contradiction, because it wants a defense of biodiversity—which I entirely agree with that—but at the same time many ecologists do not give any importance to the conservation of the human diversity, which is of course, just as important as the diversity of the fauna in general, or of the flora for the species.

I want to touch on one important point that you raised. In English language media a lot of the coverage of you and your work focuses on race and racism, Great Replacement and Little Replacement, white supremacist, not white supremacist, fascist, and so on.  But what I'm actually interested in discussing with you is the role of capitalism and corporations in this idea of mass migration. Because the question comes, who are the Replacers? And why do they want to do replacing?

Yes!

Oh, for one thing, you mentioned words which do not belong at all to my vocabulary, I’ve never spoke at all about white supremacy at all. And there was another, fascism, which this one is a very absurd word, which is devoid of any meaning. Fascism has become just an insult and has no meaning whatsoever most of the time, anywhere. I've never spoke of fascism or anti-fascism, and mostly I never spoke of white supremacy. I don't even understand what that means exactly.

But come to the most important questions who wants global replacement?

Yes.

And Great Replacement and Small Replacement. Who is behind it? That?

Yes.

Well, for one thing, I'm not sure it is “who.”

I don't think it is a group of people. I never thought about a group of people at one time decided to go in a room and decide the population of Europe, for instance, had to be changed. I don't think that at all.

I allude much more to logical and mechanical consequences than to an intentionality, I don't think that there has been intentionality worse than that, it's just mechanical, which is the reason why I draw what might be called in a book of mine, called Depossession, a precise history of what I call global replacism of which the origin in my mind is very clearly American, and is contemporary to what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. The first was English in the mid-18th century. The Second Industrial Revolution was clearly American; at the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th century, there are two main characters beyond that, two devils in the box of global replacism, being the rather modest intellectual figure of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the industrial figure of Henry Ford, which are in my mind the two creators of global replacism.

I find it interesting that you are telling a story of economics and history and yet you have so many people on the right and the left who insist that this is not an analysis of a historical process of change, in the same way that the transatlantic slave trade emerged, mass migration emerged as part of capitalism.

Instead, they call you a conspiracy theorist, and say that you are antisemitic, and I have even seen people who call themselves fans of yours insist that you are not paying enough attention to the Jewish role in mass migration.

It strikes me that, as a contemporary intellectual, one of the most important in the world in the Western world, you are in a bit of an odd place where you are offering a historical and economic account of human population transformation, and yet so many people insist upon a conspiratorial perspective.

Do you have any thoughts on why so many people, instead of taking the historical perspective, take the conspiratorial perspective?

Well, this conspiratorial perspective is totally foreign to me!

And well, it's very easy, it’s a change of people, and civilization in Europe is, at the same time, the most obvious thing. No one can deny it and practically no one is denying it anymore. And the thing which must not be mentioned, because it's so enormous and so important for the mechanisms behind it and the people who approve this mechanism, that anyone who mentioned it and cursed damnation, must be a monster, and is excluded from any circle! I’m a good example of it. I was expelled from all my, from all my publishers and I had a lot of process, and the change of people in Europe is the thing, par excellence, which has not to be mentioned. So, you are immediately covered with all the worst names and implications that the media can define you as. You are fascist. You are a Nazi, you are antisemitic.

You are anything which can destroy your image more efficiently. For instance, what's called antisemitic. There's no trace of antisemitism in my writings or character, and I certainly do not think that the Jews are behind global replacism. For instance, one of the main fathers of global replacism is Henry Ford, who was extremely antisemitic and of a great influence on Hitler.

His name is the only American name quoted in the first edition of Mein Kampf and Hitler had a portrait of Henry Ford in his office, and bestowed upon him the highest order of Nazi Germany, and there was considerable amount of experts coming from Nazi Germany to Detroit and Dearborn and Rivière-Rouge, who were at the center of the Ford Emporium, to be instructed in the way of mass production, mass industrialization, and Ford was also sending thousands of people to Germany to direct the mass industrialization of the country and also of the death camps.

Death camps were very much influenced in their practical organization by Taylorianism and Fordism.

And so was the concentrationary world in Soviet Russia, both of the other two totalitarianisms of the 20th century were, are, very much inspired by global replacism in its Taylorian and Fordian form.

Another thing is that the Jews are the first victim of global replacement and of Great Replacement in France. So, it would be hardly coherent that they would be the men responsible for it, since they are the first victims.

Even the places in Europe where they had survived the Second World War, they have to emigrate, from a city like Malmö in Sweden which had a Jewish community for hundreds of years. They all have to leave as a consequence of the Great Replacement.

So the paradox of anti-racism, as we mentioned it before, is that it was built on the horror of the Jewish martyrdom and the death camps, and it has conducted society to a point when the holocaust cannot even be taught in many classrooms, and, for instance, in France the most immigrationist party, called La France Insoumise considers the Great Replacement as a splendid thing, great trends for France, is also the most and practically the only anti-semitic party in France. So, I think the implication that the Jewish are behind the Great Replacement is absurd.

One has to admit that after the horror of the death camps, the Jews had any reason to have sort of a resentment, about what had happened. The intellectuals did encourage in the first step, the first time, immigration in Europe. But so has American power, which also had every reason to be discontent with European policy. In the first half of the century America had to interfere twice with European continental wars, and they certainly did want to make Europe a less important continent, an enterprise in which they entirely succeeded.

You've spoken of before your support for both Ukraine and Israel, and I think it would be interesting if you could tell me a little bit about your perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war and also share your thoughts on Israel.

I very much support Ukraine. And actually, I can’t understand that people can think differently, but obviously many people do think differently. But there is a European country which is invaded in the most cruelest way by a tyrant, which is a horrible dictator in his own country, and for territorial vindication as a real European country.

For one thing, I'm very European. I feel entirely European. I'm as European as I am French. Same thing. If you are French, you are European, but my culture is entirely European. I think Europe should be much stronger.

I think Europe has dropped out of history, and should come back to history, and should take Ukraine as a member of the European Union, for one thing, and defend it, and I think that Europe should have an army, like any other power in the world, and defend Ukraine against invasion.

I do not say that Russia is not European. Russia is a very important part of European culture and civilization. It has given Europe some of its greatest writers and composers, Russia could be European one day for sure if it wanted, if Russia was presentable, admissible, which at the present time it certainly is not.

But yes, I stand for Ukraine as being attacked.

I did think, at one point, and I still think, that people should decide what they want to be, there might be part, I'm not opposed to a revision of the boundaries, and may be part of Ukraine, which if a majority of people want it, and if people wanted Russian culture and Russian language, they can be Russian.

I have been calling for that for ages much before the invasion of Ukraine, I thought that if there was to be modification of boundaries that was quite admissible if people wanted it. But in exchange, Ukraine should be an entirely truly independent country, and, for instance, if Ukraine wanted to be part of Europe, it should be entirely part of Europe, because it is part of Europe. So it should be that belonging should be rationalized by official partnership to Europe.

But in the present situation of the war, after that horrible and incredibly cruel invasion, yes, I stand entirely with Ukraine.

And could you share with me your thoughts on Israel as well.

Certainly, I think Israel is the essential prototype of belonging. I think there is no country in the world which belongs more to its people, and for more ancient reasons, than Israel. It is the gold standard of belonging and appurtenance. It's also a great source of hope, because we have the extraordinary example of a people who had lost its territory and recovered it after 2,000 years of exile, and which even could resuscitate, give life again, to its language as an official language of a real country.

I think that Israel with Spain before it, with its many centuries of its colonial liberation from Arab Muslim domination, is practically the only example of decolonialism against the Arab or Mohammedan domination. I think Israel is a great example of decolonialism in the Middle East, people who has recovered its own country. And it's an example for all of us of a possible decolonization which I think should be our end, we should decolonize our countries and our continent.

To many of us it looks as if Israel is the colonizing power, and Palestine is the anti-colonial power. What would you say about that perspective, or what do you think that perspective misses?

I don't understand how Israel or the Jews could be the colonial power in Israel.

If Israel do not belong to the Jews, there is no reason in the world why France should belong to the French, and England to the English, or any country in the world to its original people. Israel is the country of the Jews. They can't be colonizers or colones in their own countries. What they are is liberators.

One never mentions, there are two enormous colonial empire in the world which have never decolonized, which are the Arab colonial empire and the Chinese colonial empire. Those are intact. They have never decolonized with two exceptions.

In the case of the Arabic colonial empires, they have lost Spain after a struggle of seven centuries, where the Spaniards have recovered their independence and liberty, and in Israel, which has also recovered its independence and liberty, how they are the essence of decolonization.

But maybe it's not perceived as such, because people do not see the Islamism or Arabic Islamism as a colonial power, whereas it is one of the most extended colonial power in the world. It has colonized all the ancient Christian states of the Middle East. It has colonized North Africa, which had been Christian for a very long time, and also Roman or Latin. It has colonized a great part of Africa and has taken an enormous role in making slaves in Africa.

So, Israel is so far the only decolonial power in near Asia. I think there should be also at least one Christian country in the Near East. Decolonialism in the Arabic, Islamic, or Arabic world in the Near Eastern world should include also at least one Christian state.

You speak a lot of decolonization, could you share with me your perspective on what you call European colonization or the colonization of Europe by others?

Many critics of yours might say, if you look at the foreign-born population of France, it is only 10% of the country. They are very poor. How could they colonize Europe?

Certainly, I think that a sense of colonization, at least in the Western tradition, since antiquity is a transfer of population. That is what colonization is, it started with the Phoenicians and the Greeks establishing what was called “colonies” in Sicily, in North Africa, in Sopho and Italy. What was called great Greece, that is a sense of colonization.

France had a great colonial empire, but it was more of an empire than colonization, except in Canada in the 17th and 18th century, and in Louisiana, [he laughs] and later in the 19th century, Nigeria.

French did not practice colonization proper because the French people didn't really wish to leave France. In Black Africa, the colonization was much more of an imperial, military, economical, diplomatic conquest, but colonization, there is not a single big French city in Black Africa. Add to those colonial authorities, there were very few people. There were just the military, the civil servants, a few merchants, a number of doctors, and also missionaries. The Black African population of France now is probably a hundred times more numerous than the French population of Africa at the time of the French colonization of Africa, which can hardly be called colonization in such circumstances, I think Europe is a hundred times more colonized now than it ever colonized itself.

It has not been huge transfer of population in other countries from Europe, with a few notable exceptions, at least for the French colonization, there were very little population transfer. What is the sense of colonization is population transfer, and in that exception of the term, which is more traditional, again, France and Europe are a hundred times more colonized than they ever colonized themselves.

One of the things that you and many other individuals across Europe speak a lot about, or at least have begun to speak about recently, is decolonization and re-migration.

As I think you've said before, in different podcasts and interviews, you’ve said that decolonization was peaceful in many places.

However, a key part of decolonization of European empires, of their imperial or colonial outposts, was moral guilt on behalf of European colonizers who joined forces with many in the anti-colonial resistance to proceed with peaceful decolonization.

Another big part, for example of Britain giving up its empire and its territories, was a sense of a new world, of a new moral world where nations belonged to national peoples.

Yet I do not think something similar could be repeated today, especially considering the very tense relationships between European nations and those states that generate most migration to them and in order to do peaceful decolonization or remigration that would require religious and moral figures, figures, maybe, like Cardinal Sarah of the Catholic Church to be very influential and popular.

Is there a path towards remigration or decolonization in Europe that is peaceful?

Yes, I certainly think there is a path.

As you mentioned yourselves, there have been many decolonizations which have been entirely peaceful, almost entirely peaceful, like the decolonization of Black Africa, so it should be no war of any sort. The colonizer one day has left, and I think such a thing could very well happen also in Europe, and with mostly, for instance, economical incentives. First of all, in giving away all the advantages that the colonisators have to colonize.

Europe is the first continent in the history of colonization which is paying for its own colonization. All the cost of the colonization of Europe is assumed by the Europeans. You have said it a while ago, I forgot to answer that, but the colonizers were poor, and how could they be colonisators, since they had no money?

Probably, they have no money. But there is what is called social transfer, and is, in fact, nothing else, but racial and colonial transfer, which pays for the colonization, and they are important for the mechanism.

We want colonization because they are consumers. What we are importing is not workers anymore. It is consumers. Even if people have no money, there will be the need to build tenements, houses for them to build roads and highways leading to those houses, to build hospitals, to build schools, and all that is a matter of consumption, so there is the easiest and most evident way to decolonize is to stop the institutions that colonize. And, for instance, the nativist policy which was, at the beginning, created to encourage natalisms of the indigenous population which have had the absolute contrary effect of encouraging the colonization, since now, people, including foreign people, are encouraged to have as many children as possible, so they will be, they will even be paid for them.

The rest of the world can't believe such eccentricity.

But if you go to one country you will be paid to have 5, 7, 12, or even 17 children, that has happened, especially since men may have several wives, and you are paid for that, and don't even have to work. So I think the first incitement to decolonization is stopping the incentivization to colonization.

I'm not opposed either to paying for people leaving, if they are citizens, the colonized country would pay for its decolonization and give a financial advantage to leaving the country. I think it would cost them, much less that colonization does.

I want to turn to a little bit of discussion about writing specifically, because, but before that, I want to ask you about two things. The first is your thoughts on nationalism. I have seen you before write that you are not a nationalist and reference the difference between the French definition of nationalism and the English definition of nationalism.

 Yes, I think the misunderstanding might be a difference, not of meaning, but of connotation of the words in the true language. If nationalism is the respect for the concept of nation, in that case I am a Nationalist. I think nations are very important, and should be kept, but in French, nationalism has a whole history, which is not entirely pleasant, and also a little bit ridiculous. I mean, if you speak of nationalism in French, it doesn't mean that you like the concept of nation, but that you think that your nation is superior to the other nation, which is not at all my case, and that you have a tendency to like the military and the flag, and all that.

There is a nationalism in France as a story to which I do not associate myself at all. I think the Resistance which are the great one, one of the few great example of opposition to conquest. The Resistance during the Second World War did not consider themselves nationalists. They were just, as I am, desperate and appalled by the conquest and the occupation of their country, and they didn't want that. That did not make them nationalists. It only made them resistant.

If I don't know if United States were invaded by, say, Russia, or China, or whatever, or Canada [he laughs] they would resist. Would they have to be nationalist for that? No, they would just be resistant wanting their country back. That's all.

That's why I said. But I'm not a nationalist.

Well, I didn't want to displease the nationalists in England, for instance, who have apparently given a different meaning to the world.

Could share your thoughts on Socialism?

I have not too many thoughts of Socialism. [he laughs]

I have been a member of Socialist party, when I was a very young man, a student for a few years it was very boring, actually very boring experience. But just because I thought socialism in France was the party for better treatment of the workers. Mostly, you know, better education for the poor, something like that, which it has been to a certain extent.

But socialism, as a concept, I never mention the term very much, either positively or negatively.

Thank you. I was curious for the reason that one of the major criticisms that people who talk about immigration or mass migration get frequently is that they do not actually care about mass migration, but rather they are serving the interests of the big capitalists who use mass migration to fearmonger and to get white workers in Western countries to vote to cut their own social welfare state. It’s a common idea. So, for example, in the United States right now, Donald Trump ran on a campaign of mass deportations, yet when he gets into the presidency, his priority seems to be austerity rather than mass deportations or restricting social welfare in terms of social security for our elderly, unions, for our workers.

And I also have seen this criticism made of Nigel Farage as well, which is that he ran on a campaign of providing more funds to the National Health Service but then cut the National Health Service once he was in power and used migration as a platform to launch this campaign, but did not actually exercise political power to reduce migration.

So, I wanted to get your thoughts on that, because I think it's one of the big topics of debate in the West.

Which is are the people who talk about mass migration sincere people? Do they really mean it? Or are they stooges for the capitalists, and I think that's a very big criticism that is brought up a lot.

What you just said is very complex. I'm not sure I understand everything.

One of the few things I can say surely is that, indeed, mass migration—and mass immigration has something to do and even very much to do with a certain form, a late form, of capitalism. What I call “global replacism” or “Davocracy.” The managerialisation of the human part by what I call Davos and all it stands for: the patrons, the big state and the big international companies is certainly capitalistic in any way of economical financial mechanism.

So being against that, being anti-replacist, which I am very much, it’s certainly a form of economical management of the world, I'm more anti-management or anti-managerial than anti-capitalist proper. What I am against is a certain form of late capitalism, its managerialisation of the world.

As for Trump, frankly, I don't understand or exactly know where he stands.

If he's anti-mass immigration, I approve of that, but I see him more as opposition to Davos and Davocracy, more like a civil war or palace opposition inside global replacism, than a real opposition to global replacism. What is more Davocratic than Elon Musk, for instance, what belongs more to global replacism than Elon Musk?

I’m not really pro-Tump except by accident, because there are certain aspects, involuntary aspects of his policy, which might have a fortunate consequence. For one thing, a very strange recent economic decision had the effect, if I understand right, that the international traffic and for instance the sea traffic, maritime traffic, was diminished by half. Which I think was the most excellent thing! I was…[he laughs]… I was very glad to learn that, and another thing, he doesn't want to pay for the military defense of Europe, which I think is totally right on that point. I don't see why the United States would be responsible for the military defense of Europe.

If only Europe didn’t ignore that, just out of a very shortsightedness of not wanting to pay for its own defense, which I think is very shameful. I think Europe should have its own defense and its own army, and if it is a consequence of Trump’s opinions and decisions that would be a very good thing, but except for that, I'm very anti-Trump, especially for ecological reasons, and also for the proclaimed desired invasion of Canada or Greenland, which is the reason why I have a Danish flag next to my name on X, for instance.

So no, I've never had any political or ideological sympathy for Trump. But that was not exactly your question. You also mentioned Farage but, I have never been partisan….is that that's the right word?

Yes.

…for Farage, for instance, for years he was the very incarnation of Brexit of Britain, leaving the European Union.

Of course, I think European Union is a total disaster, and even that its politics are criminal. But I think there should be a European Union, and I, of course, I think that Britain is an essential part of Europe, culture and civilization. Europe without England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, is not Europe at all. Europe is Great Britain, the United Kingdom is an essential part of what Europe is and should be. So, I was very much against Brexit effort, all the Europeans should fight together for the decolonization, and I think also, with recent ideas of expelling child rapists, or people without papers, or criminals is somewhat absurd. I think that is not at all the problem. The question, of course I do think that child, rapist and woman, rapist and criminal, of all sorts of people who kill, and sometimes torture old ladies should be expelled. Of course I think that, but that is not the essence of the matter. What we want is decolonization. All those criminals are just a consequence of colonization. I give the example of French Resistance.

It would be like for the Resistance to want people from the Gestapo who tortured French people in prison cellars. If the Resistance wanted those people to leave France, of course it would be a very good thing if they had left France, but asking for that had no meaning at all. It's absurd. What they wanted was the end of the French, the German occupation. The Nazi occupation of France, and Gestapo that were torturing people in prison cellars was just the most extreme consequence of that. But if you ask only for that, it seems to imply that you accept either the German occupational of France or the African or Asian colonization of England. That is not what you should ask for. What you should ask for is the liberation and decolonization of your country.

I don't know if I answered at least a few of your very numerous and complex recent questions.

You got it. You actually got to many questions I had. And there's one more actually related, though, which I was going to ask later, but I'll bring it up now, which is are you at all aware that you are actually very popular with the Trump administration as a writer? And there are many people within the administration that have read your work, and that have identified as advocates, or, I'd better say, “enemies of the disaster” as it were?

There are, for example, rumors that JD Vance has read, Enemy of the Disaster. I know there are persons working for this administration who like your writing.

And so, in a way, you know even with everything you said about Trump. He is the first “enemy of the disaster president,” the United States has elected, or at least his administration is. What are your thoughts on that?

No, I don't think that at all.

I don't know if I am as popular as you say in the Trump administration. I'm not sure if that might be a total misunderstanding. For one thing, my opposition to global replacism is entirely ecological. I think the worse thing for ecology is global replacement. I am an ecologist, and I don't think the Trump administration so far is very ecological or pro-ecology.

I think they want growth, I'm not at all, I don't think growth is an end which should be pursued at any cost. In any case, I'm against almost any sort of growth, be it being economical, financial, industrial, or demographical, and for reasonable de-growth.

Well, so sometimes there are coincidences in view. I entirely approve the speech of Vice President Vance when he was in Europe about mass immigration, for one thing, and about the state of the liberty of speech and liberty of expression in Europe, which I think is, as it said, totally inexistent, the most recent proof being my interdiction of access to the United Kingdom last week. [he laughs]

I think there might be some misunderstanding in my favor with the Trump administration. You say they have read Enemy of the Disaster, but of course well, I'm very grateful, it’s a very courageous American publisher that published that book, but I have never written any book called Enemy of the Disaster, which is just an anthology, and it's a very small part of my, even of my political, writing.

In the English language discussion of you, a lot of the ecological dimensions, a lot of the broader humanism is oftentimes made secondary to the discussion of mass migration.

So, for example, I read the article that you shared in the Hungarian Conservative which discussed your beliefs in English.

I was very enthusiastic because that is one of the best pieces ever written on my, at least my political, and if I dare say, philosophical writing.

Much of what you have written is, as you’ve said, what made it into the Enemy of the Disaster book and the Great Replacement speech, for example. But that is not a speech that gets at, you know, much discussion of the Little Replacement or of the classics of culture, or of humanism and ecology, or of even what you call degrowth attitudes.

And I think it's sort of an interesting story. It actually reminds me a lot of Baudrillard and how his translation into English, it faced obstacles, and it took time, and he wrote controversial things as well sometimes. And even, you know his language was very specific with simulacrum and simulation, and very modern, and it sometimes was difficult for an English language audience to grasp it.

And it kind of reminds me of, especially the discussion of anti-racist and racist, which are very hyper-modern terms.

One of the things that you said is, I don't know exactly how you said it, is “it's convenient to pretend that anti-racist does not have a new definition.”

And I think that's insightful. But I want to turn to writing a little bit more. And I think one of the interesting things to ask you is simply, how have you managed to produce so much writing in your life?

Yes, I have written a tremendous amount, that is true. As I said before, quantity is my forte. Well, I suppose I am a graphomaniac, which I am. I write every day. I work on several books at the same time. So, in sixty years of literary production, I have produced about two hundred books.

I like writing. I like writing, but that's what I do. I do it all the time, and I don't know if I am a good or a bad writer, but at least I’m determined, right?  

Are there any writers that you feel have influenced you the most?

Oh, yes, very much so.

I don't know where to start, going to, Günther Anders, certainly, you mentioned Baudrillard, which is, of course, very important. His simulacrum is essential to global replacism, and it's the relation to truth and forcedness, replacism is by a sense is a empire of lies, because if you replace something by something else, so something else is not the real thing. It is a copy, a simulacrum, a facsimile…I don't find the English words for industrial production, which is not the original thing, but copy, or… [he laughs] I don't even remember the French name. Anyway, we are living what I have called the forced reals. That is a forced reality, a world where everything is false.

There's also negative figure in my formation. [he laughs] I mentioned Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor as a foundator of global replacism. There is a further third figure which is sort of unholy spirit of global replacism is Edward Bernays who was very cynical about his view on publicity.

We, we live in a world where publicity is actually in the same times a novel, the poetry, the epic literature of reality. Everything is going through publicity. Yeah, even, of course, politics.

But to the contrary, of course, I was much influenced, as was Anders, strangely enough by Heidegger, and the late Heidegger, I think Heidegger is a very great ecologist, and he doesn't mention global replacism. But his conception, his study of man as a spare part, is absolutely essential in my mind, that is the exact reality. Now man is considered like an industrial spare part, something which can be replaced, and is used to replace at any moment.

Of all of the things that you have written throughout your life. Is there an article or book that you would hold up as your favorite thing that you have written or your best work?

Oh, I don't know, but there is a book which I consider my central laboratory, at least for the political and ideological and maybe philosophical part of my writing. Everything is coming from that. And that book is called Du Sens, which is On Meaning or Upon Meaning, and it's very much inspired by the reflection on Plato and the dialogue of Plato, called Cratille [Cratylus].

Well, you probably know as well as I do it's a dialogue between Cratille—Cratille or Cratile?—and Hermogenes.

I think Cratille works. We can say that. There are no rules here.

Hermogenes thinks that the meaning of a word is what is decided upon by a society, that you can give any meaning to any word anytime, and that his official decision.

And Cratille thinks that is not true at all, that the meaning of words is linked to history and to origin, and to the origin and the origin, and to all the accidents they may have made in the course of the etymological history.

And of course it's in Plato. It's only a matter of language, but I think it can be applied to anything. The best example being, of course, the names of nationality. For Hermogenes, if you decide that somebody is French, they’re French.

And Hermogenes always win, but Cratille never loses. [laughter]

And of course, to Cratille, being French is quite another matter, not a question of having the papers of the country. Very often in a meeting, when I was still invited on television, which, of course I've not been for ages, [he laughs] but, for instance, they very much enjoy putting me at the same table, in the same room for television with a Muslim lady, all veiled, and speaking hardly French, she would say that she was as French as me and from an Hermogenian point of view she was entirely right, and everybody in the television room was looking approvingly, she was indeed as French as me.

But if you know, evidently for Cratille, what she says has no meaning whatsoever, and if she is right being French has no meaning whatsoever. It doesn't mean that you know the French language, that you love French literature, that you are used to French language, that you cry in films with friends when France was in an especially bad situation, which has happened often in history, and this is a central subject of that book Du Sens, On Meaning, which is, as I said, was my central laboratory.

Do you have a favorite work of French literature?

Oh, I have many, probably Proust, but I have several, not only Proust could be also the Confessions of Rousseau, hundreds. but in fact, yes, I would say, what is it in English, "in search of lost time"?

Yes, In Search of Lost Time, by Proust?

Yes.

Writing about the topic of mass migration must be a hard job and yet you write about it prolifically. What is that like?

Well, it is something I could not not do. I had the feeling that mass migration is by far the most important phenomenon, not only of the present, but in the history of my country and my continent, my civilization in the last ten or fifteen centuries, because if you change the population of a country, the history of that country might go on. But it's—it will be the history of another people. It won't be your history anymore. You would be dead, which I am [he laughs] in a certain way. I am a ghost. It's a ghost speaking to you!

That’s scary.

Oh, no! Not scary! I’ve always had a very good relationship with ghosts.

You're right. There are many good ghosts, especially in Charles Dickens. It's all good ghosts.

Oh, yes.

I want to turn to another topic, which is that across Europe there has been a political situation where many gay and transexual persons vote for anti-migration parties. Recently, there was a lot of discussion with the recent AfD election in Germany about the fact that gay and transsexual people went for AfD at a much higher rate than others. Do you have any thoughts about that?

No, but it seems understandable, because like the Jews, they are among the first victims of mass immigration and the change of the population and civilization. Neither the Jews or the gays or the transexuals, are very popular with the new population of France, and many of the crimes committed by the replacers have them for victims so it's not very surprising that they would oppose replacement of the population.

I also want to touch on another issue, which is something that is unique to the European context, which is the question of surrogacy.

And the reason why I say that is because in the United States the idea of surrogacy for the birth of children, including, for example, for gay couples is almost completely uncontroversial. Very few people have any issues at all with surrogacy. However, I know that in Europe the situation is a little bit different. And again, in the article in the Hungarian Conservative, I forget the author's name. I should do better to remember…

Nathan Pinkoski.

Pinkoski.

I remember his name because I was grateful for that piece.

One of the things he mentioned as a part of replacism was surrogacy, and I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on the practice.

Oh, yes, very much so, of course. Surrogacy is in a sense replacement; it’s almost a synonym. It is an immediate replacement. If I understand well the word surrogacy, it’s having a replacement mother, is it not? It's very much of the essence of replacism.

I have just a few more questions, and I've already gone over time. So thank you for your patience. My first question is, in the United States, in Louisiana there are still a few people who speak French and they have had a great debate about rescuing their language, and the question they have is whether they should teach their children standard French or Cajun French, and I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on what French language they should prefer.

Well actually, I don't think they should prefer one. They should teach them both, as was the way in French when there was an educational system because they were conscious was there were a degree of cultural background in the language.

So if they could, just probably the first thing they should do should be to try and salvage their Cajun, or local language, which is certainly very precious, but they should take advantage of that, of course, to teach also classical and general French to have access to French culture at large, and especially to French literature.

I'm not sure someone who would speak only casual language could read Proust, or Mallarmé, they might have some difficulty. So, but I think it's very important, in even in France, to teach that there is such a thing as degree of language, and with the Small Replacement, le petite replacement, that has disappeared, and the only French surviving is, is the most common and incorrect French, which is a pity, I think one should be very conscious of the degrees of quality of language.

And that gets me to my final question, which is for people who oppose what you call replacism, is there a way to make yourself irreplaceable?

 Yes. Say “no.”

A big refusal in any way, in language, in the dress, in form, being irreplaceable is being a man and woman. Essentially, I think replaceability is an utmost crime, not only political but spiritual. What makes man, a man, a woman, a woman, or a human being? A human being is a character of being unreplaceable. That is the ideal of constructing oneself as a unique human being in in every respect. With the cult of form, I think the abolition of form is the main character of global replacism, since they want them replaceable. They don't want any form.

Ha! Which makes me think of something I hardly dare to mention, because everybody is very opposed to that, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. For instance, I think that a form of …hmm… what Heidegger was calling “American communism” and which, I must say I find unbearable, is the generalization of first name, immediately.

That is a sense of the abolition of the form of people. There is no distance at all between people, so they are voluntarily, voluntarily replaceable, because I, in the last two weeks, with that business of my prohibition of entry into the United Kingdom. I received a lot of letters and messages from people and journalists, and they called me “Dear Renaud,” which I think absurd, since they don't know me, and we have never met, and they signed the letter only by the first name. The first name is nothing at all. The first name cannot sign, if you have only a first name you do not sign.

A letter signed only by first name is the same thing as an anonymous letter. I stand for the name, which is the only thing which, for instance, engages your responsibility, and also which engages your inscription in history, in time, in lineage, in family, in heritage, and I think, that first name business, I really think is unbearable.

But no one understands that or approves me, that’s fine, very lonely on the subject!

It’s making oneself literally replaceable. It's spoiling the being of any defense, it’s making him immediately changeable. It's a sort of an industrial, mechanical, force. We were speaking of forcedness as the essence of replacement, and I mean, if people call you by the first name the first time you meet, and when you have never met them, and you are only professional relation, for instance, I have had to have, even a lawyer, for the problem of my being able to go to Great Britain, and he immediately calls me by my first name and his secretary, calling me by my first name. I think that that's totally absurd.

It's destroyed intimacy. If intimacy is general and immediate, it's a false intimacy. It's something totally unnatural and a fraud, precisely. I think people should defend the right distance. If you abolish distance between people, you can't complain after that that the Zulu are your immediate neighbors.

 So we are, for anti-replacists, it’s the difference of distance, distanciation, among other things.

[he laughs] So that’s to answer your question, but I had that at heart for a few days.

I'm glad I wrote to you saying, Mr. Camus, then, so that you did not immediately dismiss me out of hand. It actually reminds me of the German philosopher, Theodor Adorno, he wrote, he's maybe my favorite philosopher, ...

Oh! Well, we have that in common.

Yeah?

Oh yes! I adore Adorno. I wrote a book very much inspired by Adorno, called The Aesthetics of Solitude.

What you're saying about the first name is actually not very different from what Adorno says about the car door, which is that in the loud slam of a car door, you can hear fascism because it promotes mechanical industrial movements and a lack of care for things.

And like you, actually, Adorno did not even begin very political. He began writing operas and he was pulled into politics.

Yes, and quattros.

Yes, in high culture.

Very few people like his music, but he wrote very beautiful quattros. He was a pupil of Berg, and I'm sorry, it's not quattro in English. It's quartet, I think so. There is a very beautiful quartet by him.

Well, thank you, Mr. Camus. Those are all of my questions for you. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

You’re very welcome. Thank you. And vive Adorno!

Vive Adorno!

If you would like to read about my thoughts on Renaud Camus, please read this interview's companion article: Above the Village of Chamounix: A Left-Realist Defense of Renaud Camus.

Thank you for reading The Meteor Magazine.