Bloc identitaire

Identity Bloc Bloc identitaire
Leader	Fabrice Robert
Founded	6 April 2003
Headquarters	BP 13 06301 Nice Cedex 04
Ideology	French nationalism White nationalism, Identitarism
Political position	Nouvelle Droite
International affiliation	None
European affiliation	None
Colours	orange, blue
Website
http://www.bloc-identitaire.com/
Politics of France Political parties Elections

The Bloc Identitaire is a regionalist nativist^[1] French and Europeanist activist movement. It was founded in 2003 by some former members of Unité Radicale and several other nationalist sympathizers, including Fabrice Robert, former Unité Radicale member, former elected representative of the National Front (FN) and also former member of the National Republican Movement (MNR), and Guillaume Luyt, former member of the monarchist Action française, former Unité Radicale member, former director of the youth organization of the FN (FNJ). Luyt claims inspiration by Guillaume Faye's works in the Nouvelle Droite movement.

The Bloc Identitaire aims to be a "rally for young French and Europeans who are proud of their roots and of their heritage". It opposes "imperialism, whether it be American or Islamic".

The Bloc identitaire runs the nationalist press agency and website Novopress, that has associates in most of Western Europe and North America.^[2]

The Bloc Identitaire is a composite of a number of strains of political thought including Catholic social teaching, direct democracy, regionalist decentralisation, non-Marxist European socialisms and Yann Fouere's concept of a Europe of 100 flags.^[3]

The Bloc identitaire has been accused of intentionally distributing several popular soups containing pork in order to exclude religious Jews or Muslims; in Strasbourg, Nice, Paris, and in Antwerp with the association Antwerpse Solidariteit close to the Vlaams Belang. These so-called "identity soups" ("soupes identitaires") have been forbidden by the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin in Strasbourg on 21 January 2006, and called "discriminatory and xenophobic" by MEP Catherine Trautmann (PS) in a 19 January 2006 letter to the High authority for the struggle against discrimination and for equality (HALDE).

This ethno-regionalist movement has also organised a campaign against the rap group Sniper in 2003, which was taken out by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and translated itself in the cancellation of several concerts of the band. UMP deputy Nadine Morano interpolated Interior Minister (UMP) Nicolas Sarkozy on this theme, while 200 UMP deputies, led by François Grosdidier, tried without success to censor several hip-hop bands. Sarkozy criticized the hip-hop group as "ruffians who dishonour France."

In 2004, the Bloc identitaire also organized a campaign against Italian writer Cesare Battisti, one-time member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism, who was wanted in Italy for an assassination carried out during the years of lead in which he denies responsibility. Battisti accused the "cell of the Italian embassy" of having "financed" the Bloc identitaire's campaign against him (in Ma Cavale, p. 160). Battisti was convicted to life sentence in his homeland for a total of 36 charges, including participation on four murders. The French government would subsequently decide to extradite him to Italy, but Battisti escaped to Brazil where he was granted political asylum.

In November 2012 the Generation Identitaire, the youth wing of the BI, occupied the mosque in Poitiers, the site where Charles Martel defeated an invading Muslim Moorish force in 732.^[4]

In Austria there is a partner organisation named Identitäre Bewegung. Similar groups also exist in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the Czech Republic.

References

External links

• First official website
• Second official website
• Generation Identitaire
• Interview with Fabrice Robert in English
• In depth article on BI and mosque occupation