During last week’s televised debate between a group of presidential hopefuls from France’s center-right Les Republicains (The Republicans) party, MP Éric Ciotti sharply parted ways with the other candidates when he endorsed “the Great Replacement” theory.
By using the phrase “the Great Replacement”—which describes the phenomenon of ethnic Europeans being demographically replaced by non-Western foreigners via mass migration and low birthrates—Ciotti swiftly distinguished himself from his competitors who’ve so far refused to acknowledge the factual validity of the theory, La Chaîne Info reports.
“Me, I am not afraid of this word. If we have to talk about Great Replacement, I will say Great Replacement. … It is the commentators who have prevented us from looking at reality. Some no longer dare to say what they see out of fear. In this campaign, I want to combat political correctness,” Ciotti began.
“Sixty-seven percent of French and 84% of Republicans use the term the Great Replacement,” Ciotti added, referring to a poll last month that revealed that 61% of the French public believe in “the Great Replacement” theory, while 67% are concerned the phenomenon is occurring or will occur.
“You can call this phenomenon what you want, but I wish that France remains French. We are the inheritants of a magnificent history: that of the light but also that of a Judeo-Christian civilization.”
Later in the week, Ciotti firmly defended his comments about the Great Replacement during a television segment on the news channel CNews.
“Why deny the obvious? We can see that our society is changing, moreover, I repeat, here again it is in the France Strategy which is placed alongside the prime minister who gave these figures which show that today there are more and more births in France linked to foreign parents or of foreign origin, this has accelerated considerably over the last ten or 20 years,” Ciotti declared.
“There are some who can be satisfied with it, such as Emmanuel Macron, and the left, who advocate a multicultural society. I am not satisfied with it. … I would like us to take measures today to stop the mass immigration that is fueling this situation and this change in society. It is mass immigration, mainly of Arab-Muslim culture, that is the cause of this modification, so we must tackle the source,” he continued.
“I wish for my children—our children—to live in a country faithful to its history,” Ciotti said. “But today, to use the words of (former) President Giscard d’Éstaing, we are amid a ‘migratory invasion.’ We are at a historic crossroads. We must regain control of our destiny, by toppling the politically correct taboos.”
Over the past several years, the term “Great Replacement”—originally coined by French writer Renaud Camus—has increasingly seeped into public consciousness via figures like Michel Onfray, a French writer and philosopher, and journalists like Tucker Carlson and Éric Zemmour, the latter of whom will likely run for the French presidency as well. The term, at this point, has become so ubiquitous that politicians can no longer afford to ignore it, as evinced by last Monday’s debate between France’s center-right presidential candidates.
Earlier this year, Michel Onfray—one of the brightest minds and loudest voices who’s consistently been willing to broach the taboo topic despite the consequences—said demographic data unequivocally confirms that the Great Replacement is real, despite claims by the mainstream press that it’s nothing more than a “far-right conspiracy theory.”
“Is there in fact a Great Replacement? Demographers say yes, there is. It is very simple. There are men and women, they procreate, you have a certain birth rate, you do the calculations, make projections, and it will show a graph,” he said.
“If someone on the left says ‘the Great Replacement, that is us’, the response is ‘very good,’ but if someone on the right like Renaud Camus says there is a ‘Great Replacement,’ they immediately cry ‘fascism’,” he added.
