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Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus
Enemy of the Disaster is the first authorized translation to appear in English of Renaud Camus' political writings and includes his notorious 2010 speech, "The Great Replacement." Though forty-two years have passed since his work was last translated into English, Camus is endlessly and irresponsibly discussed in the media, his vast and complex oeuvre reduced to a single phrase devoid of all context. In the English-speaking world, at least, he is the opposite of an author; he is a floating signifier, a rumor, an element in someone else's narrative.
This volume aims to change that. Spanning the years 2007-2017, its ten chapters present a very different Camus, one freed from the opportunistic glosses of “friend” and foe alike. Instead of a conspiracy theorist, the reader discovers a committed opponent of conspiratorial thinking of all kinds. Instead of a proponent of rightwing terrorism, one discovers the founder of a political party devoted to the promotion of civic peace. Above all, one discovers in Camus a man of culture, of the high European culture that he sees everywhere in retreat amid a generalized debasement of humanity. The book opens with a critical Introduction by its editor, Professor Louis Betty of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Betty seeks to free Camus from the various polemical misrepresentations to which he has been subjected in order to situate him in the context of recent French debates concerning immigration and identity, debates that have only become more intense since Camus first entered the fray.
Each chapter is thoroughly annotated to help non-French readers better navigate what might be unfamiliar references. Enemy of the Disaster will prove a precious resource to any serious student of contemporary France. The issues it addresses, however - issues, not just of immigration and identity, but of culture, education, and the future of humanity itself - resonate well beyond the French context. These are issues with which we all, sooner or later, will need to reckon. By showing us what we have so blithely abandoned in our mad embrace of an increasingly posthuman future, Renaud Camus helps us do just that.
This volume aims to change that. Spanning the years 2007-2017, its ten chapters present a very different Camus, one freed from the opportunistic glosses of “friend” and foe alike. Instead of a conspiracy theorist, the reader discovers a committed opponent of conspiratorial thinking of all kinds. Instead of a proponent of rightwing terrorism, one discovers the founder of a political party devoted to the promotion of civic peace. Above all, one discovers in Camus a man of culture, of the high European culture that he sees everywhere in retreat amid a generalized debasement of humanity. The book opens with a critical Introduction by its editor, Professor Louis Betty of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Betty seeks to free Camus from the various polemical misrepresentations to which he has been subjected in order to situate him in the context of recent French debates concerning immigration and identity, debates that have only become more intense since Camus first entered the fray.
Each chapter is thoroughly annotated to help non-French readers better navigate what might be unfamiliar references. Enemy of the Disaster will prove a precious resource to any serious student of contemporary France. The issues it addresses, however - issues, not just of immigration and identity, but of culture, education, and the future of humanity itself - resonate well beyond the French context. These are issues with which we all, sooner or later, will need to reckon. By showing us what we have so blithely abandoned in our mad embrace of an increasingly posthuman future, Renaud Camus helps us do just that.
232 pages, Hardcover
Published April 2, 2025
8 people are currently reading
271 people want to read
About the author
Renaud Camus
159 books58 followersRenaud Camus, writer, painter, photographer, was born in 1946. As a young man, Camus' ideas and writings were strongly influenced by his association with Roland Barthes, Louis Aragon, Marguerite Duras, and the Warholian circles. He is now the author of more than one hundred and sixty works, published for the most part by P.O.L, Fayard and now by "Editions du Château": annual volumes of diaries, novels, essays, elegies, eglogues, dictionaries, anthologies, writings on art, political writings, literary travel guides...
His works are marked by the question of meaning. It includes avant-garde texts, the "Eclogues", conceived as a response to the aporias of the Nouveau Roman, and "Burn Boats", an immense hypertext in perpetual growth. The political work is organized around the monumental "Du Sens" (P.O.L., 2002), "Le Petit Remplacement" (Chez l'auteur, 2017) and "Le Grand Remplacement" (Chez l'auteur, 5th edition, 2019).
Cultural animator of the Château de Plieux for a decade (exhibitions Jean-Paul Marcheschi, Eugène Leroy, Miro, Jannis Kounellis, Josef Albers, etc.), Renaud Camus is also the author of abstract paintings ("YHWH", "Alephs", "Enjambements") and figurative, as well as photographic albums ("The Day nor the Hour").
To fight against the industrialization of man and the massacre of landscapes, against a pan-economism that treats men as Undifferentiated Human Matter, and against the change of people and the violence it implies, the author founded the party of In-nocence (2002) and, with Karim Ouchikh, the National Council of the European Resistance (2017)
His works are marked by the question of meaning. It includes avant-garde texts, the "Eclogues", conceived as a response to the aporias of the Nouveau Roman, and "Burn Boats", an immense hypertext in perpetual growth. The political work is organized around the monumental "Du Sens" (P.O.L., 2002), "Le Petit Remplacement" (Chez l'auteur, 2017) and "Le Grand Remplacement" (Chez l'auteur, 5th edition, 2019).
Cultural animator of the Château de Plieux for a decade (exhibitions Jean-Paul Marcheschi, Eugène Leroy, Miro, Jannis Kounellis, Josef Albers, etc.), Renaud Camus is also the author of abstract paintings ("YHWH", "Alephs", "Enjambements") and figurative, as well as photographic albums ("The Day nor the Hour").
To fight against the industrialization of man and the massacre of landscapes, against a pan-economism that treats men as Undifferentiated Human Matter, and against the change of people and the violence it implies, the author founded the party of In-nocence (2002) and, with Karim Ouchikh, the National Council of the European Resistance (2017)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 17, 2024
I probably could have gotten even more out of this if I were at all conversant about current events in France, but there's so much here even without that.
Really really enjoyed this.
Really really enjoyed this.
January 12, 2025
Camus is a French author with over 150 books to his name, as well as a one-time Presidential candidate as the representative of a minor party, the party of In-nocence, which the editor translates as non-nocence, non-nuisance, non-pollution.
If you Google him, you will see him described variously as a conspiracy theorist, crypto-racist, and other nefarious shibboleths by Wikipedia, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, etc., which are definite indicators to me that he probably has something interesting and useful to say.
Which he does.
Enemy of the Disaster is a collection of four or five of Camus' major essays and/or speeches, and another half-dozen or so of his minor speeches, essays, and letters, including the full version of the speech he *wishes* he gave in full as the closing argument in his defense at trial for hate speech, which is actually a crime in France.
Several of these essays are very, very good, including the speech that sent him to trial, The Great Replacement, in which he argues that unfettered immigration is replacing Europe's historic cultures with third-world, mostly Arab hordes which seek not at all to be assimilated but simply to replace (in this case) French culture with their own.
Unless you've been living under a rock or are hopelessly infected with the liberal mind virus which engages in self-loathing and insists all others immolate themselves similarly, this observation seems self-evident. Camus, however, deals with the issue with admirable passion and clarity.
In his essay, The Second Career of Adolf Hitler, he argues that Hitler's death was succeeded by a resurrection around 20 years later, in which he had a second career even nastier than the first:
"The second career consisted in declaring before the world... that the ethnic distinctions and hereditary dimensions of civilization did not count, that origins were nothing, that native forms of belonging had no importance and that even if, by some mischance, these things had real existence and actual influence on the affairs of men and those of states, one must act as if this were not the case, ignore them in speech and action, deny them any relevance and forbid that reference be made to them."
Indeed.
Really good and recommended.
If you Google him, you will see him described variously as a conspiracy theorist, crypto-racist, and other nefarious shibboleths by Wikipedia, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, etc., which are definite indicators to me that he probably has something interesting and useful to say.
Which he does.
Enemy of the Disaster is a collection of four or five of Camus' major essays and/or speeches, and another half-dozen or so of his minor speeches, essays, and letters, including the full version of the speech he *wishes* he gave in full as the closing argument in his defense at trial for hate speech, which is actually a crime in France.
Several of these essays are very, very good, including the speech that sent him to trial, The Great Replacement, in which he argues that unfettered immigration is replacing Europe's historic cultures with third-world, mostly Arab hordes which seek not at all to be assimilated but simply to replace (in this case) French culture with their own.
Unless you've been living under a rock or are hopelessly infected with the liberal mind virus which engages in self-loathing and insists all others immolate themselves similarly, this observation seems self-evident. Camus, however, deals with the issue with admirable passion and clarity.
In his essay, The Second Career of Adolf Hitler, he argues that Hitler's death was succeeded by a resurrection around 20 years later, in which he had a second career even nastier than the first:
"The second career consisted in declaring before the world... that the ethnic distinctions and hereditary dimensions of civilization did not count, that origins were nothing, that native forms of belonging had no importance and that even if, by some mischance, these things had real existence and actual influence on the affairs of men and those of states, one must act as if this were not the case, ignore them in speech and action, deny them any relevance and forbid that reference be made to them."
Indeed.
Really good and recommended.
July 24, 2025
Note: 4.5/5
Really quite damning and convincing. While Camus usually keeps a disconnected tone through most of these writings, if you connect well enough with the material, then the emotion comes out very strongly. It's difficult not to cringe in the pain and rise up in the anger that Camus embodies in some more of the inflammatory sections, particularly the speeches ("Speech before the 17th Chamber").
Camus' prose is also something really special. Though at times (like in The Great Deculturation) it becomes more so like philosophical works, with sentences that take up paragraphs and paragraphs that take up pages. His insights are incredibly clear and definitive but sometimes trying to untangle them can be a bit much. This criticism is mostly limited to the example above.
As mentioned in other reviews, a compilation of pre-published essays/speeches is always hard because you don't want too much repetition. Here though the repetition is the point as the entire book centers around one idea (The Great Replacement) and so each essay necessarily has to touch upon it. Considering that it's also such an incredibly divisive and misunderstood idea, going into at length if well worth the effort.
This should probably be required reading for anyone in Europe and America for that matter.
Really quite damning and convincing. While Camus usually keeps a disconnected tone through most of these writings, if you connect well enough with the material, then the emotion comes out very strongly. It's difficult not to cringe in the pain and rise up in the anger that Camus embodies in some more of the inflammatory sections, particularly the speeches ("Speech before the 17th Chamber").
Camus' prose is also something really special. Though at times (like in The Great Deculturation) it becomes more so like philosophical works, with sentences that take up paragraphs and paragraphs that take up pages. His insights are incredibly clear and definitive but sometimes trying to untangle them can be a bit much. This criticism is mostly limited to the example above.
As mentioned in other reviews, a compilation of pre-published essays/speeches is always hard because you don't want too much repetition. Here though the repetition is the point as the entire book centers around one idea (The Great Replacement) and so each essay necessarily has to touch upon it. Considering that it's also such an incredibly divisive and misunderstood idea, going into at length if well worth the effort.
This should probably be required reading for anyone in Europe and America for that matter.
July 4, 2025
This is an unusual book. It is clearly very well written and the author is very skilled and also cuturally very aware. I was a little limited by my ignorance of some of the French controversies but despite this it is still understandable. His propositions about the deculturalization of Europe are compelling and he is aware of the current oikophobia of our intelligenstia. However, his belief that out decline in culture is related to the rise of Islamic culture is harder to understand as he really shows no causal connection between the two. Indeed, much of his concern on this matter could be derived from his own racial animus on the matter. It is this latter aspect which causes most concern as it is this aspect, rather than, say, a decline in literary standards or church attendance figures, which attracts readers from the extreme right - the racist thoughts appeal to them It would be a better book were these aspects absent but they are not and any prospective reader should be aware os this.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews