Identity and Its Discontents

Abstract

One of the primary forms of contemporary fascism is identitarianism, a far-right political and social movement that is oriented around the protection of European identities from the supposed threat of “replacement” by migrants through the machinations of liberal elites. In this paper, I critically analyze the ideology of identitarianism through a psychoanalytic framework. I take as my objects the writings of Dominique Venner, Alain de Benoist, and Guillaume Faye, who are some of the primary architects of identitarian thought and rhetoric. Applying the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of identification, where identity is the contingent result of psychic development, I argue that the identitarian need for identity betrays an anxiety of lack. Identitarians mobilize around the enforcement of an identity that they tacitly recognize as unfounded. In the face of such existential lack, identitarians exhibit a form of narcissistic identification, identifying with an idealized, or even mythical, version of European history. I supplement this account Freudian identification with Kleinian object-relations theory. Specifically, I argue that identitarianism can be best understood through Klein’s account of projective identification and the psychic phenomenon of envy. The narcissism of identitarianism is challenged by the existence of Others who they claim to feel threatened by. Ironically, they accuse migrants of “colonizing” the European continent. This is an example of projective identification, where the ego projects hated or abject parts of the self onto others. Unable to deal with the historical guilt of European colonialism and genocide, identitarians project it onto migrants, which, in turn, becomes the pretext for exercising eliminationist violence. Ultimately, I demonstrate that identitarians are envious of the identity the Other supposedly has and, despising their historical culpability in violence, they project that violence elsewhere, only to justify its very repetition. Hence, as a form of fascism, identitarianism is psychically tethered to mythology and violence.