translated from Spanish: Renaud Camus, the controversial gay writer author of "The Great Replacement" whose theories inspire white supremacism

Today, however, his ideas find greater echo in one of the most radical sectors of the global right: the flame white supremacism.
Moreover, his approaches seem to resonate behind the discourse of those responsible for the latest armed attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pittsburgh, and El Paso, USA.
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This is an additional paradox in the life of Camus, who has repeatedly rejected these forms of violence, but at the same time has welcomed the acceptance of his proposals in other countries.
But how did this author who in the 1960s lead the LGBT marches in Paris to become a reference author for the far right?
Avant-garde artist and activist
Camus was born in 1946 to a well-to-do family in the town of Chamalis, in the French region of Auvergne.
The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote the foreword to one of Renaud Camus’s books Towards the end of his adolescence he decides to assume his homosexuality, resulting in a break with his parents of more traditional values and who remove him from his will.
He studied in England and then traveled to Paris, where he graduated in Law and Literature before pursuing a master’s degree in Philosophy, with a specialization in Aesthetics.
It’s may be May’s ’68. Paris is a party of freedom and Camus participates in the demonstrations and festive marches as part of the so-called “homosexual component”.
In 1970 he traveled to the United States, where he spent several years in French literature.
It’s a good decade. He published his first novels and rubs shoulders with artists such as Gilbert & George and Andy Warhol.
In 1979, with a foreword by Roland Barthes he published his autobiographical novel Trickshe regarded it as a groundbreaking work for the blaming way in which he narrates his sexual adventures.
Gilbert & George are two renowned London-based plastic artists”The world of Camus is completely that of a new urban homosexual; (found) comfortable in half a dozen countries,” American writer Allen Ginsberg, icon of the Beat generation, tells of the book.
His image continues to rise to the point that in 1996 the exclusive French Academy gave him an appreciation for his career.
“The Great Replacement”
However, it will not be Camus’s literary career or his LGBT activism that will make him popular with the far right.
This link was born with his book “The Great Replacement”, a text he published in 2012 in which he exposed a conspiracy theory that white and Christian Europe is being invaded and destroyed by hordes of black or dark-complexion immigrants from Northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
Although the text has not been translated into English, his thesis has been accepted since its publication by supremacist groups in the United States.
So, for example, “they won’t replace us” and “Jews won’t replace us” were two of the slogans chanted by the far-right protesters who marched in Charlottesville, USA, in August 2017.
“They will replace us,” protesters shouted in CharlottesvilleThe next day, one of them deliberately lashed out with his car at a group of anti-fascist protesters, killing a woman.
Although Camus vehemently rejected this act of violence and deplored the mention of the Jews, he welcomed the acceptance of his idea across the Atlantic.
“I totally agree with the slogan ‘they won’t replace us’ and I think Americans have very good reasons to be worried about their country,” he said then.
Camus also fully rejected the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed and 49 wounded.
Before committing these massacres, the alleged attacker – a 28-year-old Australian man – posted a 74-page pamphlet online justifying his actions under the title “The Great Replacement.”
That theory was also mentioned by the man who last April attacked a synagogue in Poway, USA, causing one person to die and injuring several.
The idea resurfaced during the mass shooting that occurred on August 3 in the Texas city of El Paso, when a 21-year-old shot in a Walmart store and killed 22 people.
The El Paso attacker said his goal was to kill as many Mexicans as possible
. The self-confessed attacker said his goal was to “kill as many Mexicans as possible” and is credited with publishing a manifesto expressing that his action was a response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
A form of legitimation
Camus has tried to mark distance with each of these events, noting that “non-violence” is a central element of his philosophy.
In addition, he noted that his book “The Great Replacement” has not been published in English, so he doubts that those responsible for these attacks have read it.
The truth, however, is that his speech and the idea that the white race is in danger are widely present on the internet among far-right groups in the United States.
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This phenomenon responds, according to many analysts, that his theory fits very well with the new rhetoric that has been embraced in recent decades by white supremacist groups.
Many of these chose to change the argument of their “racial superiority” to the denunciation of a so-called “genocide” who would be victims of the “invasion” of their countries by people of other races.
Some groups have changed the discourse on the “superiority of the white race” to that of the victimization of the white breedHeidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based NGO told The New York Times which considers Camus’s texts to give “an academic and sophistication coating” to these racist ideas.
From Mitterrand to Le Pen
In an interview with the magazine The New Yorker, Camus noted that he does not conceive of races from a genetic but cultural point of view.
He stressed that he did not use the word “superior” to refer to any of them and said he would feel equally sad if “Japanese culture or African culture” were to disappear because of immigration.
The writer, who currently lives in a 14th-century mansion, argues in his texts that Europe is being subjected to a “demographic colonization” that is realized through the arrival of immigrants from the southern Mediterranean.
It ensures that they settle in the host country and have many children, while white Europeans have fewer and fewer descendants, thus giving way to a progressive substitution of each other.
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His ideological shift is also evident in his political preferences.
Thus, he went from voting in 1981 for the Socialist presidential candidate Francois Mitterrand to becoming in recent times a staunch defender of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the ultranationalist National Front.
Nevertheless, Camus denies being far-right and claims that he is simply one of so many voters who wants “France to remain French.”
Although he has repeatedly expressed his rejection of violence, in 2015 he was ordered to pay compensation to the French Association to Fight Racism for declaring that “immigration threatens French civilization” and that some Muslims were “thugs”, something that the court considered an “excessive attack to humiliate” this population.
In his eagerness to defend his positions, he created his own party and ran as a candidate for the European Parliament during last May’s elections but withdrew a few days before the vote, when a photograph of one of the candidates on his list was released lit up in front of a swastika.
At that moment, Camus gave up the race arguing that the swastika is “the opposite of everything I’ve fought for all my life.”