Remigration? Fine — but for who, and how many? Between Alain de Benoist, the foremost philosopher of the New Right, and Jean-Yves Le Gallou, author of Remigration: For a Europe for Our Children, agreement on the diagnosis is not enough to mask disagreements over the modalities of remigration. It is a long way from reversing migration flows to reversing the course of affairs. Hence this debate on fundamentals, which obliges us to ask all the questions, the ones too often brushed aside: Who must leave? Based on what criteria? This is a taste of the conference to be held on Saturday, 31 October, in Paris: “Remigration – Let’s Open the Debate.”
— François Bousquet, editor-in-chief of Éléments, author of Anti-White Racism: The Forbidden Investigation.
ÉLÉMENTS: Alain de Benoist, in your latest editorial in Éléments, you raise the possibility of “implementing a policy of reversing migration flows.” Jean-Yves Le Gallou, for his part, speaks of remigration. Aren’t you quarrelling over the word more than the thing? What separates you: the scale, the means, or the very principle of remigration?
ALAIN DE BENOIST: The definitions of remigration given by those who wish to put it into practice vary a great deal. More than a matter of agreement or disagreement, the question is where remigration begins, and also where it ends. In his book on remigration, Jean-Yves Le Gallou lists the first categories targeted: illegal immigrants, parasites, delinquents, and so on. Up to that point, I am in complete agreement with him (and in agreement, too, on abolishing birthright citizenship). For all these categories, Jean-Yves Le Gallou lists perfectly acceptable grounds for expulsion. These grounds concern things for which the members of these categories can legitimately be reproached: things they have done (or should not have done), rules they have not respected, reprehensible conduct.
But these categories represent only a fraction of the population of immigrant origin: three million perhaps, at best. What about the others (the majority), to whom none of these grounds apply? In the ten pages of his book devoted to “repatriation,” Jean-Yves Le Gallou says little on the subject and leaves things vague. That is why questions can be raised. If one stops sanctioning individuals for what they have done and starts sanctioning them for what they are, one enters an entirely different perspective. One is no longer punishing delinquents; one is designating surplus people. So I would like to know whether the aim is to halt migration flows or to set in motion a process of ethnic cleansing. They are not the same thing. My political ideal is not a racist or segregationist state.
Races exist; recognizing this is in no way racist. For more than fifty years, the Nouvelle Droite [New Right] has advocated an antiracism of the ethnopluralist or differentialist type. Put plainly: neither apartheid nor generalized mixing. That position has never ceased to be mine. I have written three books against racism (one of them, published in Spain, is in fact titled Contra el racismo [Against Racism]), in which I explain why racist theories are, in my view, as false as they are harmful. Racism, the infantile disorder of the metaphysics of subjectivity, is in my eyes a modern ideology whose origins must be sought in the internal contradictions of universalist historicism. History has shown, moreover, that every politics founded on race is doomed to failure. I therefore condemn without reservation every form of racism (including of course, and first and foremost, anti-white racism). This also applies to Occidentalism when it dons the impolitical costume of “white nationalism.”
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ÉLÉMENTS: Alain de Benoist speaks of the “judges’ lock”; you speak of a JUGEXIT. Aren’t the various courts, French and European, the main obstacle to a policy of remigration today?
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: JUGEXIT means blowing up the judges’ lock. An example: politicians regularly propose depriving the parents of delinquent children of welfare benefits. But that is impossible as long as the Constitutional Council strikes down the laws. Others propose instituting mechanisms of national preference or national priority: again impossible without overriding the Constitutional Council. The Council of State1, the administrative courts, and the National Court of Asylum Law (CNDA) must also be shaken up. In short, political power must take back… power. And not only in France. The ordinary courts in Italy, the High Court of Justice in Great Britain, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe in Germany, and the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg are paralyzing powers that hold the upper hand over security and immigration policy.
ÉLÉMENTS: You have spoken, in connection with remigration, of a risk of political arbitrariness, even if it were a sovereign choice. So be it. But then why would the return of the political be legitimate against government by judges (or the rule of law) yet illegitimate when it comes to deciding the criteria for belonging to a political community? All things considered, doesn’t the choice of remigration fall under the categories dear to Carl Schmitt: Who decides? Who is sovereign? Law or the political?
ALAIN DE BENOIST. I have trouble understanding your question. Arbitrariness, which designates a decision not motivated by rational or logical necessity, is by no means synonymous with sovereignty. Wishing for the return of the political is one thing (and of course I subscribe to it); pointing to the need to avoid political mistakes, or recalling that political power can also degenerate — not into “dictatorship” in the Roman sense of the term, but into despotism or tyranny — is another. In a democracy, balance is established both by decision (from above) and by consent (from below), that is, by the conjunction of national sovereignty and popular sovereignty.
ÉLÉMENTS: It is one thing to say that the hand of the political must not tremble; it is another to determine the criteria for belonging to the French nation or to Europe. Take a third-generation Frenchman, a dual national, married to a Frenchwoman, with French children: on what basis does one decide that he must remigrate? And to where, given that such a man may never have set foot in his country (or countries) of origin?
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: There are a great many people to remigrate before we even reach the very real question of dual nationals: illegal immigrants (1 million), foreign delinquents at large (100,000 to 200,000), foreigners living mainly, if not exclusively, on welfare or unemployment benefits (2 million). And above all — above all — all new immigration must be stopped. Then there remains, of course, the question of dual nationals. Three categories must be distinguished: assimilated dual nationals (no problem); unassimilated but non-hostile dual nationals (they should be encouraged, without being forced, to go back: they will be better off in their country of origin); and unassimilated, hostile dual nationals. The last should be stripped of citizenship when they are delinquents or take part in demonstrations hostile to the French and to France. Put differently: the parents of delinquents and rioters must clear out along with their offspring. Let me add that many dual nationals have, as you put it, already “set foot in the country of origin”: they call it “going back to the bled”2. Here is how it works: they generally leave on an Algerian passport (or another) and come back on a French one.
ÉLÉMENTS: Alain de Benoist, you write that the partisans of remigration are “very great optimists,” because they believe the catastrophe is still avoidable, whereas you consider that “it has already happened.” Doesn’t your realism risk turning into fatalism? Jean-Yves Le Gallou, doesn’t your voluntarism risk mistaking wishes for realities?
ALAIN DE BENOIST: Do not confuse lucidity with resignation, or pessimism with amor fati. For having announced the decline of the West, Oswald Spengler was constantly accused of “pessimism”; today we can see how things stand. Had I ever been tempted by fatalism, I would certainly not have set out on the path I chose. I have always thought, on the contrary, that even in the darkest night one must work for the return of the light. But one must still remain realistic, as Julien Freund used to say. Politics consists in making possible what is necessary, not in making necessary what is impossible! Setting oneself the program of emptying France of nearly a third of its current population seems to me neither possible nor reasonable. One does not do good work by repeating like a mantra that “will is enough,” that one must not “drive Billancourt to despair”3, and that “faith moves mountains.” Sorry, but mountains do not move. And when one is waging war, one better harbor no illusions about the lay of the battlefield. Otherwise, the result is failure and disillusionment. One clarification in passing: the “catastrophe” you speak of corresponds, for me, to the domination of the world by the values of planetary capitalism. That is why I think that even if the immigration problem had never arisen (but it has!), we would still be living in an abject world.
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: One can indeed choose to do nothing. Provided one weighs the consequences:
The demographic tipping point when, in 8-15 years, European newborns will be a minority in maternity wards in France (and in other neighboring countries). In a word: the disappearance of the original identity.
The electoral tipping point in favor of the most pro-immigration parties of the left within 10 years. Perhaps sooner. Because the votes of native voters are split among the various parties, while the communal votes of minorities concentrate on the far left (in France on LFI, in Germany on Die Linke). In the end, this means the loss of sovereignty for the original people.
In short, if one acknowledges the Great Replacement (a demographic reality) and anti-white racism (a sociological reality), then one has no choice but to work for remigration by widening the Overton window and stressing the extreme urgency of remigration.
A clarification all the same about the numbers! Even in its most maximalist definition, remigration does not concern “a third of the French population.” Let us not hide behind our little finger4: everyone knows perfectly well that the problem is non-European immigration — Muslim and African in particular. So let us look at the figures: there are (excluding illegals) 4 million non-European foreigners; as foreigners, they have no right to permanent residence. As for non-European dual nationals, they number around 7 million. Once again, no worry about those who are assimilated. But the racailles5 who insult the French, burn down high schools, and assault “gwers”6 have no place in France. Alain de Benoist and our readers may rest assured: that does not add up to 23 million people!
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This book is an investigation in two parts. First, it uncovers the unspoken truths and lies behind the official discourse about “systemic racism.” Second, it plunges into the dirty underbelly of the everyday reality of anti-White racism.
Beyond an ideological critique, this book gives a voice to the victims — those who are silenced because acknowledging their suffering would shatter the dominant narrative. Through in-depth interviews, case studies, and an exploration of cultural context, Anti-White Racism reveals how insults, discrimination, humiliation, and violence experienced in everyday life form part of a larger normalization of racial hostility that official policy and the media seek to deny, but whose effects they can no longer hide.
In this courageous, unsettling, and richly documented investigation, François Bousquet exposes the rising reality of anti-White racism — and asks how long the silence can last.
ÉLÉMENTS: How can one defend remigration while proclaiming oneself liberal and capitalist? Isn’t there a contradiction in promoting a market economy based on the free movement of everything except people? In other words, how can remigration be carried out without at the same time opting for deglobalization?
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: One need only observe the facts: Japan is liberal, capitalist, and globalized, yet it remains closed to immigration. The United States is liberal, capitalist, and globalized, yet it has embarked on a policy of remigration, driven by Trump, Vance, and Musk. And I am not even going to talk about China.
In a market economy, adjustments happen through prices: if labor is scarce in a sector, then working conditions and wages must be improved.
National preference, which is currently prohibited, must also be legalized: as things stand, a restaurant owner (or a building contractor) has no right to choose French employees or employees of European origin. If he does, he will be criminally prosecuted and exposed to severe penalties. Here is a law that could be repealed with positive consequences for liberty and for identity.
And then let us look at the facts: even more than labor immigration, what we are suffering from is an immigration of welfare predation. Here again, let us take an example: the unemployment rate in Seine-Saint-Denis is 50% higher than the Île-de-France average, and that department has 84,000 households receiving the RSA and 949,000 beneficiaries of the various CAF benefits.7 It is the welfare state that acts as a suction pump for immigration. The Danish Social Democrats have understood this well: to protect their social model, they close off access to it to the whole world. In short, a great deal can be undertaken without making exit from globalized capitalism a precondition, as some do, or exit from the European Union, as others do.
I nonetheless acknowledge the effectiveness of communism in preventing immigration: in ten years of chavismo (2015–2026), not one immigrant entered Venezuela, but 5 million Venezuelans left.
ALAIN DE BENOIST: I wrote in the editorial of the latest issue of Éléments: immigration is an invention of capitalism, or at least one of its consequences. “The economy massively demands immigration,” proclaims Patrick Martin, president of the Medef8 — this at least has the merit of clarity. Market society obeys only the law of supply and demand. It knows nothing of peoples, only of individuals; it knows nothing of citizens, only of consumers. When capitalist countries refuse immigration, they can do so only in violation of their own principles. In other words, they cherish the causes whose consequences they refuse. That is the whole problem with liberal conservatism.
ÉLÉMENTS: Alain de Benoist, you recall the following trilemma: immigration, growth, or birth rate. With a falling birth rate, it is impossible to maintain both economic growth and ethnic and cultural continuity without immigration. Which of these terms would you sacrifice?
ALAIN DE BENOIST: Here too I gave my answer clearly in the editorial already mentioned: “In a period of demographic crisis, fighting mass immigration means no longer making growth an absolute.” That is why I reject both the choice of today’s European leaders, who imagine they can reconcile growth with “controlling immigration,” just as they imagine they can “moralize capitalism” or rely on “sustainable development,” and the choice of Japan, which is staking everything on robotics, thereby taking part in the great replacement of man by the machine (allow me to add that, if I am ill, I would far rather have an immigrant nursing assistant at my bedside than a robot!).
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: Ethnocultural continuity obviously takes priority. The population can decline, so long as it keeps its identity. It will be possible to set off again. If it is diluted in multiracial and multicultural chaos, that will be more difficult. In short, it is better to follow the model of Japan than that of England. As long as there remain Europeans of blood and spirit, everything will be possible.
ÉLÉMENTS: Citizenship or identity? National preference or civilizational preference? If belonging can produce no criterion other than legal nationality, what can be done to uphold European peoples’ right to their historical continuity?
ALAIN DE BENOIST: Civilizational preference. But perhaps the question should rather be: citizenship or nationality? If the European peoples wish to continue their history and give themselves a destiny, the first rule is to see what ought to be staring us in the face — namely, that we are entering a world of a kind never seen before. Jacobin nationalisms, like “the values of the one and indivisible Republic,” are no longer able to settle anything. Nations cannot become multicultural or multiethnic without disintegrating. That is not the case for empires (or federations). The Europe of the future will be built with all those it has managed to convince to take part in its imperial destiny.
JEAN-YVES LE GALLOU: This is a particularly delicate subject. Identity is the bedrock of the city.
Yet we have cheapened our citizenship by granting nationality automatically or semi-automatically, to people from elsewhere, very few of whom were able, willing, or knew how to assimilate to our culture and our civilization. It cannot be denied that there is a problem with certain dual nationals. For the short term, three directions seem desirable to me:
The abolition of deferred birthright citizenship — that is, the automatic acquisition of French nationality at 13 or 18 for the children of foreigners born in France;
A moratorium on naturalizations so as not to aggravate the problem;
Stripping unassimilated and hostile dual nationals of citizenship.
How can one not think of Renaud Camus’ words:
“It is with nations as with education: they have their foundation in segregation.”
Originally published in Éléments on October 5th, 2026
Translated by Alexander Raynor
READ Jean-Yves Le Gallou’s Remigration, brought to you by Arktos:
Conseil d’État: France’s highest administrative court, which also advises the government on legislation.
bled: Maghrebi Arabic loanword for the home village or “back home”
désespérer Billancourt: Renault’s Billancourt plant stood for the French working class. The phrase is usually credited to Sartre, I believe, as a later condensation of a line from his play Nekrassov (1955). It means withholding truths that would demoralize one’s own camp.
se cacher derrière son petit doigt: idiom for pretending not to see the obvious; “Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
racailles: “scum/thugs,” strongly associated with the banlieues i.e., migrant ghettos.
gwer: banlieue slang of Arabic origin, a pejorative for white French people.
RSA: revenu de solidarité active, France’s minimum-income benefit. CAF: Caisse d’allocations familiales, the family and housing-benefits agency.
Medef: France’s main employers’ federation.