Renaud Camus, 78, was told in an email from the British Home Office that his electronic travel authorization had been canceled.
A French writer and philosopher who espoused the “Great Replacement” theory has been barred from entering the United Kingdom after the British government deemed his visit would go against “the public good.”
Renaud Camus was set to give a speech on immigration in England next week.
He told The Epoch Times that he had been refused the electronic travel authorization (ETA) needed to enter the UK.
Camus was informed of this decision via an email, confirmed by The Epoch Times, which read, “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.”
The email added that Camus “could not appeal this decision” but said that if he still wished to travel to the UK, he could apply for a visa so his circumstances could be considered in more detail.
“I was supposed to come to the UK for two things, for the more precise and immediate. One was a meeting of the Homeland Party next week, and then I was also invited to speak at the Oxford Union next month,” he said.
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“I asked for an ETA [electronic travel authorization], which was granted, and then yesterday, I received an email from the Home Office saying that I was not permitted to go into the United Kingdom.”
The 78-year-old, who has written extensively on the subject of unchecked immigration into Europe, most famously in his 2011 essay Le Grand Replacement (The Great Replacement), has visited the UK without issue on numerous other occasions.
“For me, Britain has always been the home of free speech and certainly not calling for any violence, or anything like that,” he said.
“I even wrote two books about Britain, about places, writers’ houses, and artists’ houses. Two volumes.”
He says he has never before encountered difficulties traveling abroad and has always condemned and denounced violence.
Ethan Rundell, founder of Vauban Books, the independent publisher of Camus’s work in English, said: “The decision to bar Renaud Camus from entering the United Kingdom puts the lie to Keir Starmer’s pretense that he values free speech.”
Camus was due to visit the UK to give a talk arranged by the Homeland Party, a controversial ethno-nationalist political group that has advocated for “remigration,” which it describes as “a comprehensive emigration policy, introduced by democratic means.”
The group believes in “jus sanguinis” (law of blood) ie. that membership of a nation is a matter of ancestry, and that a nation is defined as an ethnic group.
