The British Government recently barred French writer Renaud Camus from entering the UK. His crime? Not actual incitement, not violence, not lawbreaking, but a controversial idea.
Camus, originator of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, was scheduled to speak at a Big Remigration Conference organised by the Homeland Party, as well as at the Oxford Union. His Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) had been approved. Then, abruptly, it was revoked. The Home Office declared that his visit was “not conducive to the public good”.
Meanwhile, Julius Malema, a South African political figure who openly sings “Kill the Boer” at rallies, glorifies racial violence and promotes land expropriation without compensation, was welcomed.
This is not a metaphor. Malema was allowed into the UK in May 2025 to address his supporters in London. The only reason for his delayed arrival was the May Day bank holiday. When he protested, the British High Commission issued a grovelling apology, assuring him the visa holdup was merely bureaucratic, not moral.
The message could not be clearer: ideas from the Right are criminalised, but hate from the Left is indulged.
Toby Young has recently laid this out in detail in his excellent interview on GB News in the wake of the Lucy Connolly appeal decision. His conclusion: the UK no longer defends free speech as a principle, it defends only approved speech. You can chant about killing white farmers, provided your politics check the right boxes. But offer a sociological theory about demographic change? You’re banned.
Let’s be clear: Renaud Camus’s theory is provocative. It raises uncomfortable questions about identity, culture and immigration. One can challenge or reject it. But to silence it entirely, while welcoming actual political violence wrapped in revolutionary chic, is not only hypocritical. It’s dangerous.
A society that punishes ideas but excuses incitement is not protecting its values. It is broadcasting its fear.
Camus, an elderly intellectual with no history of violence, was treated like a threat to national security. Malema, who has stood before crowds chanting genocidal slogans, was treated like a minor celebrity inconvenienced by airport queues. This isn’t policy. It’s ideology masquerading as law.
Once again, the UK has exposed the workings of its two-tier system. British citizens have been arrested for quoting Churchill, misgendering someone online or holding placards in silence. But a foreign politician calling for racial uprising is welcomed, because his fury flows in the approved direction.
Britain used to be a place where you could say what you thought, provided you didn’t call for violence. Now it’s a place where you can call for violence, provided you think what you’re told.
Renaud Camus was banned not because he posed a risk, but because he posed a challenge, a challenge to the dominant narrative. That makes him, in today’s Britain, more dangerous than a man who sings about killing his countrymen.
Malema is in. Camus is out. And that, sadly, tells you everything about who we are now.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the UK’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack page.
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