« We are the Greenpeace of the far-right ! » A modern action repertoire on the far-right ? A case study of Generation identity

This paper explores how Generation identity (GI) activists act and why, answering core questions of this section “What forms of actions do non-party actors engage in, and what explains cross-country and cross-group variation? And why do some of them resort to political violence?" GI has gained more and more attention from academics in the past years. This growing body of literature focuses on its communication strategies (Bouron 2017; Cahuzac, François 2013; Casajus 2014) and their receptions (Froio, Castelli-Gattinara 2018) or on the diffusion of the identitarian “brand” (eg. Eckes 2016; Zùquete 2018). This paper focuses on a dimension that has not been systematically explored yet, despite its notoriety: GI’s action repertoire. How do GI’s activists act and why? How was their action repertoire built? To answer I rely on both protest event analysis of Agence France Presse (over 300 press releases, 2002-2018) and qualitative data gathered during an extensive field work (49 interviews with activists, ethnological observations and archives). This mixed-methods approach was implemented during my PhD thesis on the Identitarians (Jacquet-Vaillant 2021). I will show that GI has built a diverse action repertoire, which fulfills a wide variety of purposes. Confirming and complementing previous studies (Caiani et al. 2012; Giugni et al. 2005; Meadowcroft, Morrow 2017) I argue that this repertoire can be explained by structural (eg. POS), organizational (level of structuration of the group, its resources, culture and history) and relational factors (eg. reciprocal tactical adaptation). Indeed, GI has borrowed to progressive/environmental movements (eg. Greenpeace) and built a peculiar relationship to violence. This “hybridization” (Froio et al. 2020) makes its action repertoire unique, thus showing the ability of the far right to modernize its forms of contention. BOURON S., « Des « fachos » dans les rues aux « héros » sur le web », Réseaux, 202-203, 2017. CAHUZAC Y., FRANCOIS S., « Les stratégies de communication de la mouvance identitaire. Le cas du Bloc identitaire », Questions de communication, 2013. CAIANI M., della PORTA D., WAGEMANN C., Mobilizing on the Extreme Right : Germany, Italy and the United States, OUP, 2012. CASAJUS E., Le combat culturel. Images et actions chez les identitaires, L’Harmattan, 2014. ECKES C., « Ausbreitung der „Identitären Bewegung“ in Europa und ihre ideologischen Grundzüge », Journal Exit-Deutschland, n°4, 2016, p.100-114. FROIO C., GATTINARA P, « Quand les Identitaires font la Une », RFSP, vol.68, 2018, p.103-120. FROIO C., CASTELLI GATTINARA P., BULLI G., ALBANESE M., Casapound Italia, Routledge, 2020. GIUGNI M., KOOPMANS R., PASSY F., STATHAM P., « Institutional and Discursive Opportunities for Extreme-Right Mobilization in Five Countries », Mobilization, Vol.10, n°1, 2005, p.145-162. JACQUET-VAILLANT M. (2021), Le mouvement identitaire français. Pour une approche mixte des marges en politique, PhD thesis in Political Science, supervisor : Pr. Sylvie Strudel, University Paris 2 - Panthéon-Assas. MEADOWCROFT J., MORROW E., « Violence, self-worth, solidarity and stigma: How a dissident, far- right group solves the collective action problem », Political Studies, Vol.65, n°2, 2017, p. 373–390. ZUQUETE J. P., The Identitarians, ND University Press, 2018.