THE man behind a conspiracy theory cited by white supremacists and mass murderers has been booked as a conference speaker by a far-right political party led by a Scot.
Renaud Camus – who coined the term “the great replacement” – has top billing at an upcoming Homeland Party conference which will explore the idea of removing “illegal, unintegrated, and unwelcome migrants” from the UK.
The French author first used the term in a 2011 book, arguing it was the “replacement of a people, the indigenous French people, by one or others; of its culture by the loss of its cultural identity through multiculturalism.”
Camus’s idea of the “great replacement” has since spread beyond France and inspired far-right groups that claim Europe’s white majority is being replaced with Muslim people of colour in collusion with a left-wing, globalist elite.
Camus is now due to visit Britain next month as a guest of the Homeland Party, a political group active in Scotland that says nationalism should be based on land and the “law of blood” - which means membership of a nation is defined by ancestry rather than political decisions.
Party chair, Kenny Smith, Homeland’s de-facto leader, is from the Isle of Lewis and formed Homeland in 2023 after leading a breakaway faction from Patriotic Alternative, another far right group.
Camus’s UK trip comes as a report revealed there was a 73% increase in Islamophobic assaults last year in the UK, amid fears the “great replacement” conspiracy theory is spreading.
Critics of the term include anti-racism group Hope not Hate which said it has been “used to justify racism and even terrorism across the globe”. The Scottish Greens said the theory has been “pushed by some of the most extreme and racist conspiracy theorists of the fringes” and it is “having a terrible real world impact”.
Camus did not reply to a request for a comment but has previously condemned violence. The Homeland Party defended the French author and said he has “consistently promoted peaceful discourse and democratic solutions” and that he “cannot be blamed for the actions of individuals who have cited his work”.
In the most extreme cases, the great replacement has been used to justify the murder of non-whites. Converts include the white supremacist who named his manifesto after the theory and killed 51 people during 2019 attacks on New Zealand mosques.
The theory has also been cited by those behind attacks in the US, including the murders of 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue in 2018, 23 people at a Texas supermarket in 2019, and 10 people at a New York grocery store in 2022.
While Camus was fined by the French government in 2014 for inciting racial hatred against Muslims and north African immigrants, whom he called “thugs” and “colonisers,” he has disavowed terrorism, which he branded as “practices of the occupants”.
Far from being confined to the lexicon of fringe extremists, his theory has been promoted by far right political leaders around the world. They include US president Donald Trump, and the respective Italian and Hungarian prime ministers, Georgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán. It has also been used by Trump’s “special government employee”, billionaire Elon Musk.
Closer to home, the great replacement has been embraced by far right groups including the Homeland Party, which opposes “mass immigration” and whose activists delivered leaflets on the issue last month to homes in Glasgow and Inverurie.
The party – which has denounced violence – recently announced its booking of Camus to speak at its “Big Remigration” conference in England in April. The event focuses on the party’s aim to “facilitate and encourage” the return of “illegal, unintegrated, and unwelcome migrants” to their origin countries.
Homeland are also advertising the inclusion of an “MP from one of Europe’s largest nationalist parties” after hosting representatives of two foreign far-right parties at its 2024 conference, including Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Kenny Smith, Homeland’s chair, is a former member of the racist British National Party, and he recently expressed admiration for a far-right figure from Austria called Martin Sellner, who advocates the mass deportation of immigrants.
Until recently, Sellner was among the leading voices of the Identitarian Movement, which calls for an ethnically homogenous Europe. He was leader of Generation Identity, in Austria, a movement that was actively trying to recruit in Scottish universities six years ago, as revealed by The Ferret.
Sellner reportedly received donations from and communicated with the same New Zealand terrorist who adhered to the great replacement and murdered 51 people.
Videos from a far-right content creator, known as You Kipper, were shared by the terrorist days before the massacre. You Kipper now promotes Homeland and other far-right causes on social media.
Sellner advocates “remigration”, the same term adopted by Homeland to describe its mass deportation policy. Last October, Sellner was expelled from Switzerland after defying an entry ban. He was banned from entering the UK in 2018 and the US, a year later, on national security concerns.
Homeland’s Smith praised Sellner in a recent interview. He said: “Finally, sensible nationalists have taken control of these parties. When the AfD [Alternative for Germany] started they were pretty much a libertarian party but these people have now been pushed aside and genuine nationalists are in control, promoting sensible nationalism, very measured in their language – guys like Martin Sellner.
“You know, these guys have been talking for years in a very articulate way, in a sensible way, and they’ve kept the nutcases and the extremists out.”
David Lawrence, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, claimed that the Homeland Party are “desperate to establish links to larger and more influential groups and figures overseas, so it can inflate its own importance”.
He said Homeland had “attempted to court Martin Sellner, the figurehead of the international Generation Identity network and one of the best-known far-right activists” in Europe.
Lawernce also argued that Homeland are “attempting to walk a fine line by appealing to the broad British public while also recruiting” among the far right.
“Towards the latter, the invitation of Renaud Camus, an undeniably influential figure, has been seen as a coup,” said Lawrence.
Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman (below) said the great replacement has “fuelled attacks and atrocities while demagogues and hate preachers in the White House and across Europe have used it to justify the most cruel, authoritarian and racist policies”.
She added: “Whether they are calling themselves Homeland, Patriotic Alternative or anything else for that matter, the vile beliefs they stand for have no place in our politics.”
Homeland’s Smith told The Ferret that Camus is a “political thinker” who had rejected false theories that “Jews and Western elites” are behind the great replacement. He added: “No philosopher or political theorist can be held responsible for how their ideas are interpreted or misused by extremists. By degrees of separation, neither can we.”
Regarding Homeland’s immigration policy, Smith claimed that “the principle of remigrating illegal, unintegrated, and unwelcome migrants is legally viable, morally justifiable, practically feasible, and beneficial to society as a whole”. He added that “depriving criminal migrants of citizenship and deporting them is standard practice in governments worldwide”, including in the UK.
Smith defended Martin Sellner and claimed that “banning a law-abiding EU citizen from entering any country for no actual crime – simply for expressing legitimate political views – demonstrates the growing extremism of establishment authorities”.
He also accused Maggie Chapman MSP of trying to “silence political opponents”.
Sellner did not respond to our request for a comment.
Meanwhile, in a new report, the anti-hate crime charity Tell MAMA said it had recorded the highest number of anti-Muslim hate incidents since its foundation in 2011, with 6313 last year.
The report cited the great replacement as a growing concern and said: “In some examples, the most explicit references to the so-called “great replacement” came from the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, (aka Tommy Robinson) with one such post accruing over 400,000 views and using terminology about Europe’s apparent ‘suicide’.”
Homeland counts a member of a former neo-Nazi group, the Scottish Nationalist Society (SNS), among its ranks. The party said the former member of SNS – which disbanded prior to Homeland’s formation – had been involved as a “disenfranchised” teenager but had since “grown up”.
Homeland has also had at least three members appointed as community councillors in Scotland, including one who was accused of “abhorrent racism” by an MSP for arguing that black politicians and footballers are “clearly not” British.
The councillor claimed his comments were “not about race, but ethnicity and in-group preference”.
Last year, the Electoral Commission approved Homeland’s bid to register as a political party and field candidates in elections across Britain. This was despite comments from commission staff in documents seen by The Ferret accusing Homeland of breaking their own code of conduct by sharing “terrorist literature” and “antisemitic and racist” content.
Homeland dismissed the “spurious claims” and said the party enforces its code of conduct. The commission’s “junior staff” were determined to see the application rejected, it claimed.
