Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus (; ; born 10 August 1946) is a French author. Originally known in France as a gay writer, he later became the originator of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory circulated in the Western far-right which claims a global elite is colluding against the white population of Europe to replace them with non-European peoples.
Camus's writings on the "Great Replacement" have been translated on websites and used to promote the white genocide conspiracy theory. Camus has repeatedly condemned and publicly disavowed violent acts which have been perpetrated by terrorists inspired by his theories.
Early life and education Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus was born on 10 August 1946 in Chamalières, Auvergne, a rural town in central France. Raised in a bourgeois family, he is the son of Léon Camus, an entrepreneur, and Catherine Gourdiat, a lawyer. His parents removed him from their will after he revealed his homosexuality. At 21, then a socialist, he participated in pro-LGBT marches during the May 1968 events in Paris.
In 1963, Camus earned a baccalauréat in philosophy in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne. He then spent a year at a non-university college, St Clare's, Oxford (1965–1966). He earned a bachelor in French literature at the University of Paris (1969), a master in philosophy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (1970), and two Masters of Advanced Studies (DES) in political science (1970) and history of law (1971) at the University Panthéon-Assas. From 1971 to 1972, he taught French literature at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. From 1972 to 1976, he was an editor in political science for the encyclopaedia-publisher Grolier. From 1970 to 1976, he was also a professional reader and literature advisor at the French book-publisher Denoël.
Career
Influential gay writer (1978–1995) After settling back in Paris in 1978, Camus quickly began to circulate among writers and artists the likes of Roland Barthes, Andy Warhol and Gilbert & George. Known exclusively as a novelist and poet until the late 1990s, Camus received the Prix Fénéon in 1977 for his novel Échange, and in 1996 the Prix Amic from the Académie Française for his previous novels and elegies.
Called retrospectively by some English-language media an "edgy gay writer", Camus published Tricks in 1979, a "chronicle" consisting of descriptions of homosexual encounters in France and elsewhere, with a preface by the philosopher Roland Barthes; it remains Camus's most translated work. Tricks and Buena Vista Park, published in 1980, were deemed influential in the LGBT community at that time. Camus was also a columnist for the French gay magazine Gai pied. This period of Camus's life has led the American magazine The Nation to label him a "gay icon" who "became the ideologue of white supremacy", although Camus had rejected the concept of "homosexual writer" by 1982.
Camus was a member of the Socialist Party during the 1970s and 1980s, and he voted for François Mitterrand in 1981, winner of the French presidential election. Thirty-one years later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he dismissed the party with the following remark: "The Socialist Party has published a political program titled Pour changer de civilisation ("To change civilization"). We are among those who, to the contrary, refuse to change civilization."
In 1992, at the age of 46, using the money from the sale of his Paris apartment, Camus bought and began to restore a 14th-century castle in Plieux, a village in Occitanie. In 1996, he had the epiphany which he said led to the concept of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. As of 2019, Camus still lives in the castle. Because he received government funding to assist in the restoration of the castle – which included the rebuilding of a 10-story tower removed in the 17th century – Camus is required to open it to the public for a part of the year.
Great Replacement
Development (1996–2011)
Camus stated in an interview in 2016 with the British magazine The Spectator that he began to develop his idea in 1996 while editing a guidebook about the department of Hérault. He claimed that he "suddenly realised that in very old villages ... the population had totally changed" and added, "this is when I began to write like that."
Camus supported for a time the left-wing souverainist politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement, then voted for the ecologist candidate Noël Mamère in the 2002 presidential election. The same year, he founded his own racialist political party, the Parti de l'In-nocence ("Party of No-harm"), although it was not publicly launched until the 2012 presidential election. The party advocates remigration, i sending all immigrants and their families back to the country of their origin, and a complete cessation of future immigration.
He also declared that a key to understanding his "Great Replacement" theory can be found in a book about aesthetics he published in 2002, titled Du Sens ("Of Meaning"). In the latter, inspired by a dialogue between Plato and Cratylus, he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality, not a legal one; it is a form of Cratylism similar to Charles Maurras's distinction between the "legal country" and the "real country." Camus also built on the earlier work of Jean Raspail, who published the dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints in 1973, about immigration and the destruction of Western civilisation.
Political activism (2012–present) He was a candidate in the 2012 French presidential election, with a programme ranging from "serious proposals, such as the repatriation of foreign-born criminals", to unusual themes in French politics, such as "the right to silence, abolishing wind-farms, banning roadside ads, making sanctuaries of remaining unspoiled places, stopping the production of cars that can go faster than the speed limit, and recognising Israel, Palestine and a Greater Lebanon for Christians in the Middle East." He failed to gain enough elected representatives presentations to be able to run for president, and eventually decided to support Marine Le Pen.
In 2015, Camus headed an initiative to launch Pegida France alongside Pierre Cassen of Riposte Laïque, Jean-Luc Addor of the Swiss People's Party, Pierre Renversez of the Belgian "No to Islam" and Melanie Dittmer of the German Pegida.
In December 2017, he declared: "The presidential election that took place [in 2017] was the last chance for a political solution. I don't believe in a political solution ... because in 2022, this time, it will be the occupants, the invaders [i the immigrants] who will vote, who will be the masters of the elections, so anyway the solution is no longer political".
In May 2019, Camus ran, along with Karim Ouchikh, for the European parliament elections: "we shall not leave Europe, we shall make Africa leave Europe," they wrote to define their agenda. During the campaign, a photograph of a candidate on his ballot kneeling before a giant swastika drawn on a beach re-emerged on social media. Camus decided to withdraw from the election, claiming that the swastika was "the opposite of everything [he had] fought for [his] whole life." During the 2022 French presidential election, he sided with the far-right pundit and presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
In April 2025, Camus had his ETA for entry into the United Kingdom withdrawn, with the British Home Office stating that his "presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good." This decision was not appealable.URL: https://x.com/KennySmithHP/status/1913260259495248280 Author: Kenny Smith, Homeland Party Chairman Tweet reads: "Talking about mass immigration and remigration openly and honestly is not "considered to be conducive to the public good" according to the Home Office. That sounds a lot like Communism to me!" Tweet and Reference dated 18th April 2025. This was as Camus planned to visit the Homeland Party's "Big Remigration Conference", which was scheduled to take place on 26 April 2025, and then to speak at the Oxford Union within the same month.
Views Great Replacement Since his 2010 and 2011 books L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence ("Abecedarium of no-harm") and Le Grand Remplacement ("The Great Replacement")—both unpublished in English—Camus has been warning of the purported danger of the "Great Replacement". The conspiracy theory supposes that "replacist elites" are colluding against the White French and Europeans in order to replace them with non-European peoples—specifically Muslim populations from Africa and the Middle East—through mass immigration, demographic growth and a drop in the European birth rate; a supposed process he labelled "genocide by substitution." To promote his theory, Camus participated in two conferences organised by Bloc Identitaire in December 2010 and November 2012.
On 9 November 2017, Camus founded, with Karim Ouchikh, the National Council of European Resistance, an allusion to the WWII French National Council of the Resistance. The pan-European movement—with other members the likes of Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Bernard Lugan, Václav Klaus, Filip Dewinter or Janice Atkinson—seeks to oppose the "Great Replacement", immigration to Europe, and to defeat "replacist totalitarianism". In 2017 the French essayist Alain Finkielkraut caused controversy after he invited Camus to debate the "Great Replacement" on the literary talk show Répliques at the public radio France Culture. Finkielkraut justified his choice by arguing that Camus, who "is heard and seen nowhere, has shaped an expression that we hear everywhere."
After white supremacist protesters at the 2017 Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, were heard chanting "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us," Camus stated that he did not support Nazis or violence, but that he could understand why white Americans felt angry about being replaced, and that he approved of the sentiment. In November 2018 he published a book directly written in English and intended for an international audience, titled You Will Not Replace Us!
As of February 2023, he continued to defend the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory on his Twitter account, which had around 54,000 followers at the time of its permanent suspension in October 2021. Camus's account was reactivated in January 2023 thanks to a policy of general amnesty announced by Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk.
White nationalist violence Camus has repeatedly said that he condemns the violent attacks and terrorism committed in echo with his ideas, dismissing them as "Occupier's practices." While he denies stigmatising all Muslims, Camus believes in an unbroken line between petty crime and Islamic terrorism: "all the terrorists are known by the police, not for terrorist acts or for religious extremism, but by petty larceny and bank attacks, or even by very small things like attacking old ladies in suburban trains, or conflicts between neighbours", adding in another speech: "we are talking about the fight against terrorism: in my opinion there are no terrorists, not a single one. There are occupants who ... kill a few hostages from time to time to better remind us who the master is."
The scholars Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Ahmed Boubeker state that "the announcement of a civil war is implicit in the theory of the 'great replacement' ... This thesis is extreme—and so simplistic that it can be understood by anyone—because it validates a racial definition of the nation." In April 2014 Camus was fined €4,000 for incitement to racial hatred after he referred to Muslims as "hooligans" and "soldiers" and as "the armed wing of a group intent on conquering French territory and expelling the existing population from certain areas" during a conference organised by Bloc Identitaire and Riposte Laïque in December 2010. In April 2015 the Court of Appeal of Paris confirmed this decision.
Allegations of antisemitism