Holed up in a 14^th century castle in southwestern France is the philosophical architect of the far-right right race riots that have recently swept Britain and inspired White supremacists around the world.

77-year-old Renaud Camus is the man responsible for the “Great Replacement Theory.”

This race-driven conspiracy theory claims that a liberal elite is plotting the destruction of White civilisations by encouraging African and Asian immigrants to replace European culture with their own.

So who is Renaud Camus? For a start he is quite bright and quite driven. He has degrees in history, literature, philosophy and law and has taught at American and French universities and contributed to various encyclopaedias. At the age of 21 he came out of the closet to help establish a gay brigade during the 1968 student riots in Paris. For the next 20-odd years Camus established himself as one of France’s leading gay icons as an award-winning journalist and prolific author.

In 1992 Camus sold his Paris apartment and moved to the crumbling hilltop Chateau de Pilieux. While taking a break from restoring the castle to edit a local guidebook Camus noticed that the demography’s of the populations in France’s old villages had “totally changed,” and, in his view, not for the better.

He described this realisation as an “epiphany” which quickly morphed into The Great Replacement Theory. This was elaborated in three subsequent books: “Abedarium of No Harm,”  “The Grand Replacement “and “You Will Not Replace Us.”

Camus asserts that ethnicity plays a defining role in a country’s identity and he warns that “immigrants are flocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of their own populations.”

The immigrants, however, are not working alone, says Camus. No, they are being supported a wealthy liberal elite who see the immigrants as cheap labour for their industrialised economies. This liberal elite is comprised of Jews and white gentiles who suffer from a guilt complex tied to their imperial past. The Jews, however, are the ringleaders because of their control of international finance through the ages.

The answer to the alleged dilemma is both simple and complex. The simple part involves the immigrants: stop all migration and send back the immigrants – and those descended from immigrants – to their country of origin. Then comes the more complicated bit. White women must be encouraged to produce more babies to replace the immigrant work force. And finally, Camus would like to turn back the clock to a pre-industrial bucolic era when people were less materialistic, closer to the soil and the church and less concerned about other countries.

As for the government that would follow, Camus opposes democracy which he says has failed. Instead, he favours a system whereby an unnamed elite are guardians of the national culture. Who these guardians are, and how they are chosen, Camus leaves unsaid.

To help advance his theory, Camus’ writings are full of dog whistle terms such as “invaders” and “genocide.” He is particularly talented in drawing parallels between the 21^st century and wartime France. The Jewish-dominated liberal elite are “collaborationists.” The immigrants to Nazi invaders.

Renaud Camus did not stop at writing. In 2002 he formed the inappropriately named Parti de l’in-nocence (The Party of No Harm). This became the political vehicle for a failed bid for the presidency in 2012 and for a seat in the European Parliament shortly afterwards. In 2015 he headed an initiative to launch a French version of the anti-immigrant German movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). Recently he has said that the immigration problem has gone beyond a political solution because there are too many immigrant voters in the West.

Meanwhile his writings have been read, digested, tweaked and passed through the cyber portals of social media to influence millions of far-right activists. Among his mainstream supporters are Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from France’s National Rally. Even further to the right in French politics, Camus has become the guru of Eric Zemmour.

Outside of his home country, Camus chief supporter is Hungary’s Viktor Orban who has made the warnings explicit in the Great Replacement a key policy of his ruling Fidesz Party. Other adherents are the Netherlands Geert Wilders, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. There are echoes of Camus at Donald Trump’s rallies. His former adviser Steve Bannon is definitely a follower so is the Trump acolyte Tucker Carllson, who regularly used the Fox News platform to spread Camus’s views. Then, of course, Camus’s cry has been taken up by the ultimate conspiracy theorist—Qanon.

Camus claims to be opposed to violence while at the same expressing “understanding” of those who march with guns, throw Molotov cocktails and murder Blacks and Asians. There is no doubt, however, that White terrorists have adopted Camus’ theory, attached it to violence and taken to the streets.

Brent Harrison Tarrant, cited the Great Replacement Theory in the video that attempted to rationalise his attack which killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was also mentioned by Patrick Crusius when he killed 23 Latins in El Paso and by Poyton Gondron who murdered 10 in Buffalo, New York. In the past week the theories of a far-right pseudo-intellectual Frenchman have been used by British white supremacists to justify race riots across the country

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain". To subscribe to his email alerts on world affairs click here.