Studying the Social Conditions that make Possible the Militant Commitment to the Extreme Right. Ethnography of the Training Camp of the “Identitaires” – France

This paper presents the results of an ethnographic study conducted at the training sessions organized by the French organization Les Identitaires. The Identitaires represent a fraction of the French extreme right: they emerged in the 1960s with the goal of building a modern image of fascism, adapting it to contemporary issues and disseminating it among the society and political elites. Les Identitaires, heirs of this movement, organize each year a one-week summer camp for young people (under-30), during which participants join training sessions which determine whether they will be accepted by the group. My ethnography focused on the conditions of accession to the group: by confronting my categories of thought/action with those of the group, I investigated the implicit expectations of the training, and I experimented on myself the process of ‘militant conversion’. The results show the relevance of factors beyond political ideology, in particular gender and social class.