The Trans-European Mobilization of “Generation Identity”

Abstract

This contribution explores the transnational mobilization of the European new right youth movement Generation Identity (GI). Employing frame analysis on GI’s transnational protest events in the period 2015–2017, the chapter explores how the GI activists produce bases for collective action through the construction and assignment of protagonist and antagonist identities. GI premises the term “identity” on an ethno-pluralist understanding of society, which implies a wish for an ethnic segregation of the world’s population, and a nostalgic yearning for a time of European ethnic homogeneity. The movement thus hopes for a “future return” of a European continent free from non-European, especially Muslim, “others”, which should be achieved by battling today’s Universalist, multicultural, and egalitarian principles, together with mass-immigration and so-called “Islamization”. An analysis of the movement’s collective action frames during the European refugee crisis reveals that the GI groups create a protagonist identity around the notion of a “fighting community,” forming a symbolic European bulwark against their antagonists, i.e. the “invading” Muslim immigrants, and the European actors, who permit their residence on the continent. On the other hand, the antagonist identity construction revolves around portraying the pro-migrant actors and Western European governments as the villains, who act against the interests of the autochthonous European population. At the same time, by pointing to the negative consequences of particularly Muslim third country immigration, and questioning the migrants and refugees’ residence claims, GI is pursuing the overall ambition of returning Europe to its imaginary ethnically homogeneous roots.