ABSTRACT
The Identitarian defense of Europe, through cross-national cultural combat, street protests, networking, travels, meetings, social media and political campaigns, and the making of formal and informal alliances, is ultimately driven by this wider idea of “otherness” that begets and reinforces the idea of Europe as a civilization and the notion of an European solidarity that extends both in territory and space and across communities and nations. On one hand, the Identitarians are in perfect continuity with previous nationalist formations and movements – at the heart of their identity construction thrives an Us-versus-Them dichotomy; a frame of belonging and non-belonging to the community and separating the natives from the outsiders. On the other hand, there is a discontinuity with the typical nationalism, or at least an intensification of a previous history of far-right pan-nationalism. Identitarian theorizations and actions are geared toward a wider spatiality – a territorial fluidity – that extends beyond nations.
