(New York, N.Y.) – Last week, France announced it would implement a ban and begin the dissolution of Generation Identity (GI), a pan-European youth movement and ethno-nationalist group that seeks to stop globalization and what it views as the Islamization of Europe. The move comes after the group allegedly incited violence and racial hatred against migrants last month along the country’s border with Spain. According to French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, GI violated a law that prohibits “incitement to discriminate against a person or group because of their origin.”
The decision to ban GI came the same week of the French National Assembly’s passage of a new bill to combat Islamist extremism and violence. The bill was passed in response to a recent series of violent attacks in France last year, including the fatal stabbing of three in Nice, the beheading of Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb, and the stabbing of two bystanders near the former Charlie Hebdo office. Around the time of these attacks, police in Avignon shot and killed an armed man who was waving a gun and reportedly wearing a “Defend Europe” jacket from the GI group. The bill now heads to France’s Senate for final approval.
Founded in France in 2012 as the youth wing of France’s Les Identitaires movement, GI believes that white Europeans are falling victim to “the Great Replacement”— or, “the process by which the indigenous European population is replaced by non-European migrants.” GI ultimately seeks to reverse the “Great Replacement.” To realize its mission, the network has issued five demands: preserve European ethno-cultural identity, defend freedom of speech and opinion against far-left attacks, repatriate illegal immigrants to their countries of origin, promote regional development in African countries to stem emigration, and secure national borders. Today, chapters of this organization exist in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Belgium.
To read CEP’s France resource, please click here.
To read CEP’s Generation Identity resource, please click here.
To read CEP’s European Ethno-Nationalist and White Supremacy Groups resource, please click here.
