Generation Identitaire And The Call For Africa To Develop Its Own.

Last week I chanced upon a documentary on the Qatar based tv channel Aljazeera which immediately got me glued to my set; it was an investigative piece in France on a growing white Far right movement named Génération Identitaire, translated Generation identity in English.

The group is made of young people in France and other parts of Europe who seek to create an “Europe of nations”, they are mostly against multiculturalism, Islam and immigration in any form; what really motivates this group is the infiltration of Europe by people from other continents especially Africa and the Arab world, they argue that multiculturalism and immigration is a threat to the identity of Europeans now and the future to come.

The worrying trend is, the movement is gradually gaining grounds in other parts of Europe, they have won more white adherents and are pushing for European governments to buy into their agenda and initiate a re-migration process to deport non-Europeans back to their countries; the national rally a political party in France has been heavily linked with Generation Identity (GI), per the investigative piece, it came to light that key members of GI serve the National rally in various capacities. Their objective was to push for the election of Marine le Pen (Presidential candidate) in the immediate past French elections;

The alignment between the National rally (NR) and GI proved successful because key members of the GI agreed with the ideologies of the NR i.e French nationalism, national conservatism, right wing populism and anti-immigration. This was evident in the fact that during the French elections, Marine Le Pen shared the sentiment of Donald Trump as part of her campaign message, this was the need to check immigration and preserving the cultural identity of Europeans against the infiltration of people from other continents.

In fact there are moves by the American President to cease citizenship by birth, this did not come to me as a surprise; somewhere 2017, Defend Europe, an arm of GI, sourced funds to the tune of $228,656.00 from 3095 people with the object of purchasing a ship to sail the Mediterranean sea near Libya, their reason was to return any refugee to Libya before government forces locate and sail them to the shores of Europe.

Mark Willingus (born 1992), a notable writer of the group GI in one of his books “a Europe of nations” argued that “A person’s cultural identity is nearly unchangeable. Every person is moulded in early childhood, and this process can only occur again in absolutely exceptional cases…Under such circumstances, how should millions of people from the Global East suddenly become Europeans? They can’t… Our continent and our culture can’t survive if millions of non-Europeans live here. We can’t preserve our identity under these conditions… Europe and the Muslim world have always been diametrically opposed”; he again stated that “We go to class with 80% or more foreign-born students, knife-mad Turks, drug-dealing Africans, and fanatical Muslims.

The preceding paragraphs clearly sends the message that Europe and the Americas, a haven for Africans escaping the clutches of poverty and hardship might not be as it is now some time to come, its brings to bear the following issues;

1. The current generation of Europeans and Americans have developed a strong distaste for the presence of lots of migrants on their soils, they believe the land of their forefathers should not be inhabited by lots of “foreigners”.

2. That the infiltration of their land by foreigners will gradually lead to mixed race and eventually affect the identity of Europeans.

3. They do not understand why Africans and people of other continents cannot develop their land and make a haven for themselves but rather troop to their land for survival.

4. There is a growing sense of nationalism among these people, a fight against multiculturalism and immigration.

Some two years back, I encountered a black couple from the US who were in Ghana for holidays, they had come to my outfit to receive funds from relatives abroad, on inspecting their passport I enquired from the man if they were US citizens and he affirmed with the response “unfortunately”; I curiously asked the reason for his response and it was made known they were violently treated and arrested for a crime they did not commit by white police men in the US, they were in Ghana to finalize their building project and relocate from the US.

To confirm their story, I crosschecked from the web, and truly what the couple asserted was true;

These incidences bestows on us, the duty to work towards planning and execution of long-term policies to curb the migration of Africans to Europe and the Americas; all we have is Africa, and no other people can make it a haven but ourselves; this aligns with the concerns of Pan Africanists which include black citizens living in the diaspora.

It is sad to note that years after wrestling power from the colonial masters, most African countries are struggling to cater for its own people, the reason they travel to other peoples land to survive, the African problem is not lack of resources but poor planning and execution of plans, bad leadership, bribery and corruption and high level of illiteracy and know-how.

It’s expected that, in the medium to long-term future, the Generation identity and other white extremist groups will grow into a formidable force to press for an immigration-free Europe, work to hold onto their identity from threats of immigration. The message to Africa and other continents is that our welcome to their land is gradually on the decline; as the adage goes there is no place like home, Africa is all we have, the time is now for us to start developing our own.