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Science and Remigration

Too often what passes for dissident politics is nostalgia and sentimentalism. Many movements are backward-looking and therefore self-refuting; we can’t return to the 1950s (or whatever is your preferred era) and, even if we could, we would end up back where we are today.

Therefore, it is refreshing when political movements offer forward-looking visions. One such vision is offered by the Foundation for the Continuity of European Nations (Fondation pour la continuité des peuples européens), a coalition of French engineers, scientists, and lawyers. This group has an attractive website whose URL means “Science and Remigration.” It has also developed projects such as STEM tutoring for young Europeans and an online archive of the European artistic heritage.

Last September, the foundation published a political program to foster European scientific progress and ensure our nations’ perpetuity. It is a positive vision for a restored France within a broader European civilization characterized by technological prowess. The images evoke the freshness and creativity of Europeans, the achievements of France’s industrial past, and contemporary European technological achievements.

The Foundation’s project has three pillars:

  1. Repatriation of non-Europeans.
  2. A natalist policy for middle- and upper-class working couples.
  3. Promotion of science, reindustrialization, and European mega-projects.

The authors emphasize that Western decline is both moral and demographic:

The West is in crisis. Bit by bit, it has been shriveling up, horrified by its past, crushed by the excessive weight of a world which it has borne on its shoulders for too long. . . .

[Europeans’] depression and replacement in their own countries is an unmatched catastrophe in world history. . . .

Europeans have fallen behind because of their general demoralization. For decades, our leaders have told us that we did not have the right to a future . . . .

Westerners are demoralized, even though Western civilization “is nothing less than that on which the modern world is built” and has contributed the vast majority of the scientific breakthroughs and inventions. The foundation wants to restore Europeans’ pride in their heritage and optimism for the future.

“Legal, just, and peaceful remigration”

The Foundation emphasizes that “[t]he good functioning of French institutions requires the restoration, insofar as possible, of the French territory’s ethnic homogeneity.” The lack of a common identity makes for contentious redistributionist politics and the breakdown of civic life. European heritage must not be watered down or shamed in a vain attempt to placate resentful, unassimilable outsiders.

The authors argue that “demographic and economic rationality implies a gentle remigration taking place over time, coupled with natalist policies making life easier for working couples, with an objective of breaking the ‘second-child ceiling.’” They avoid apocalyptic scenarios and instead offer measures that could be taken by a patriotic French government. Third-world migratory flows are to be reversed “through legal, just, and peaceful means.” In particular:

  • French citizenship would be withdrawn from criminal dual nationals (French citizens of North-African and Turkish descent typically retain their original nationality by default).
  • A monthly stipend of €450 for 10 years would be paid to non-Europeans if they returned to their homelands and gave up French citizenship.
  • A point system would cut welfare payments to households that include criminals.
  • Advertising campaigns in African and Middle-Eastern countries would dissuade would-be immigrants.
  • Subsidized tuition for foreign students (300,000 per year at a cost of €3 billion annually) would be ended.

The authors write: “[T]he major issue at stake is not immigration but remigration.” They also note that expanding the prison system – whose population has doubled since the 1980s – is not a solution; the problem must be tackled through repatriation.

“Breaking the third-child ceiling” for French couples

The Foundation proposes measures to boost French fertility, especially among the middle and upper classes: “Restoration of European fertility is an absolute priority in order to stabilize European countries and guarantee their continuity. The future belongs to those countries who will be able to reverse the fall in fertility.”

The program meets the needs of working women rather than keep them at home. It would include teleworking, childcare near workplaces, and support for mothers seeking to reenter the workforce. Following the Hungarian model, income tax would be reduced by 25 percent for families with four or more children.

The authors are willing to countenance alternative family models: They would offer assisted reproductive to single women, lesbians, and women over 35.

Fostering European science through mega-projects

The Foundation proposes ways to boost France’s scientific potential, and stop the brain drain: unabashed educational elitism, subsidies for innovative researchers, strong intellectual property protection, and financial incentives for researchers to file patents and publish research. The government’s “social equality and inclusiveness” criteria for research funding would end.

The authors put French scientific efforts in a broader European context, and emphasize that European immigrants can contribute to France’s recovery: “We are not against the idea of immigration, but we make a fundamental distinction between two very different immigration flows: African immigration and European immigration.”

They do not suggest withdrawing from the European Union and want to “weave a European destiny, cultivate [economic] liberalism, and maintain an open world with developed countries.” Automation in transportation, urban deliveries, assembly lines, warehouse management, and old-age assistance would help Europe manage demographic aging.

The authors believe European scientific mega-projects can inspire our people: “Great projects are vital to give European nations a goal, a destiny, and accomplishments that make them proud of their identity. They are what can guarantee the cohesion and inner fire necessary for our well-being.” A quadrennial Festival of European Sciences would celebrate innovators and scientists.

The authors would build on previous European projects, often undertaken outside the EU framework, such as Airbus, the Ariane rocket system, the European Space Agency, the Galileo satellite navigation system, and the Virgo experiment. New European projects and agencies, not linked to the EU, would study nuclear fusion and thorium fission, aerospace, quantum computing, AI and robotics, transport, and genetic medicine. They would ensure Europe’s energy independence and help it catch up with China and the United States.

A techno-optimistic vision for an identitarian Europe

One can certainly debate this or that point in the Science & Remigration program, but I praise its futuristic vision for France. The program’s biological realism and Promethean ambition remind us of visionaries of the past century, men such as Alexis Carrel and Charles Lindbergh.

All French politics should be grounded in ethnic and biological reality, an appreciation of French identity, and an understanding of economic and technological prowess as the basis of national power.

The Foundation has shared its political program with the French presidential candidates and will expand political activities. It is just one of the French identitarian groups that have emerged in recent years, along with Renaud Camus’ National Council for European Resistance, the Institut Iliade think-tank, and Daniel Conversano’s mutual support group Les Braves. These groups are part of an emerging identitarian subculture that is beginning to dominate French nationalism and which may, indeed, dominate French politics.