Renaud Camus
Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus (b. 10 August 1946) is a French novelist and nationalist writer. He is the inventor of the "Great Replacement", a theory that states that a "global elite" is colluding against the white population of Europe to replace them with non-European peoples. The particular term was popularized by Camus in his 2011 book Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement).
Life
Camus is a distinguished French novelist, essayist, diarist, and cultural critic. Born on 10 August 1946 in Chamalières (Puy-de-Dôme department), a small town near Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne region of central France, he was raised in a bourgeois family.
Camus pursued advanced studies in law, political science, philosophy, and French literature, including periods at Oxford and the Sorbonne. He emerged as a significant literary figure in the late 1970s and 1980s, notably through innovative works such as the autobiographical Tricks (1979), which offered a pioneering chronicle of contemporary gay life, and through his association with prominent intellectuals like Roland Barthes.
A prolific author, he has produced an extensive body of work—including novels, essays, art criticism, and especially a renowned multi-volume diary series—published primarily by respected houses such as P.O.L and Fayard. His contributions to French letters have earned him honors including the rank of Officer of Arts and Letters (1995) and the Prix Amic from the Académie française (1996).
Writings (excerpt)
Camus has authored over 150 books, including extensive diary volumes (his Journal), travel writings, art criticism, and further political reflections such as La Grande Déculturation and Les Inhéritiers.
- Tricks (1979) — His breakthrough autobiographical work chronicling gay encounters in a candid, pioneering style, often regarded as a landmark in contemporary French literature on sexuality.
- Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement, 2011) — A key polemical essay introducing his central concept of demographic and cultural substitution in Europe through mass immigration.
- Décivilisation (2011) — An essay critiquing perceived cultural decline and loss of civilization in modern society.
- You Will Not Replace Us! (2018) — Written directly in English for an international audience, summarizing his ideas on replacement, nocence, and related themes.
- Decolonisation: Remigration & the Law (recent self-published work) — A text framing mass immigration as a form of colonization requiring "decolonization" of Europe through remigration policies and legal measures.
Quotes
- "I am not against the Great Replacement because I crave violence, I am against the Great Replacement because I hate violence and Great Replacement brings it everywhere with it, along with disorder, misery, ugliness and filth." — Renaud Camus, in: Decolonization
- "The weapon that has done the most for the conquest of Europe, for its colonization by Africa, for its Islamization, for the destruction of Europeans in Europe, for genocide by substitution, more than family reunification, more than widespread nocence, more than the migratory submersion itself, is the accusation of racism. It has paralyzed three hundred million people and made them accept the unacceptable, the worst that could happen to them: their own annihilation, their erasure as a civilization.” — Renaud Camus, 25 March 2019
