Thaïs d'Escufon is 26 years old. She may also be the most systematically targeted figure of France's identitarian youth. As spokesperson for Generation Identity, she became in 2020 the first French-speaking right-wing influencer to break into the mainstream. The movement was dissolved by government decree in 2021, and the pressure never let up. Convicted, then acquitted on appeal in September 2022, over the Defend Europe operation in the Pyrenees. A Twitter account, a TikTok account, some fifteen Instagram accounts, all suspended, hundreds of thousands of followers erased. Hired by Cyril Hanouna as an Europe 1 columnist in August 2024, dropped after a single broadcast. She recently broke her silence on the toll it's taken, and called for solidarity. Voxeuropa met her to hear, in her own words, what commitment costs in twenty-first-century France.
Your political commitment began at 18, within Generation Identity. What led you to take the step into activism at that age, and what did you hope to accomplish at the time?
I believe my commitment was born from both a family inheritance and a personal shock.
I grew up in a French, Catholic, right-wing family of noble descent. I was raised with a visceral love of France, lulled by stories of illustrious ancestors who took part in our history. I felt a personal bond with her; attachment to our landscapes, our culture, our civilization has always been part of me. It was simply self-evident, and a deep source of pride, to belong to this great people.
But I understood that this self-evidence was under threat when I enrolled at Mirail University in Toulouse. I found myself at a university heavily marked by the left, situated at the heart of a neighborhood that had already been replaced, known as one of the hubs for jihadist departures from France.
My ideas there were, quite obviously, a small minority. This strange mix made it impossible to express my convictions without immediately being targeted by the antifascist activists who were very present on campus.
I therefore confronted, in concrete terms, our country’s demographic transformation, finding myself, on several occasions, the only young white Frenchwoman in the metro carriage. That inevitably produced something in me. I understood that my very existence, and what it represented, could no longer be taken for granted. I felt as though I had become a foreigner in my own country.
At 18, I decided to join Generation Identity because I found young people there who resembled me: they had ideals, courage, and above all they refused to watch France disappear without doing anything.
Very quickly, I became one of the most committed female activists. I discovered the direct actions, the flyposting actions, police custody, in short, the adventure! I felt I belonged to a generation that refused resignation. Generation Identity gave me the momentum to move from observation to action.
The dissolution of Generation Identity by government decree in 2021 marked a turning point. How did you experience that decision, and what did it teach you about the limits of the right to association in France? (Also briefly explain why, at the outset)
Personally, the dissolution of Generation Identity was a real shock that deeply affected my morale at the time.
When you dissolve a movement, you tear apart a community, one that represented a second family for me. I had devoted a great deal of my time and energy to Generation Identity, and I had taken significant risks by putting my face and my name on it. From that point on, you publicly own ideas that will follow you for years. I was barely 21, and I had already experienced very heavy media exposure, since I had become Generation Identity’s spokesperson just as the movement reached the peak of its visibility. I began very early to live with censorship, frozen bank accounts, hostile television appearances, harassment, threats, and intimidation from antifascist activists. That is young, 21, to become a kind of pariah.
On the substance, this decision shows that freedom of association and freedom of expression exist only as long as you keep to the dominant pro-immigration and antiracist discourse. Generation Identity was a youth movement, militant and spectacular, certainly, but our actions were always peaceful. And yet we were presented as a quasi-paramilitary threat on the grounds that some activists practiced combat sports or wore matching colors during public actions. That is absurd. By that standard, any sports club or scouting movement could be dissolved.
It was an eminently political decision. The state decided to dissolve us because we were too effective.
But I did not want to give up. After the dissolution, I launched my YouTube channel to keep carrying the voice of everyone who had supported us, and to use the media exposure I had gained to keep spreading our ideas to as many people as possible.
You cannot dissolve convictions.
In France, statements made during a symbolic action in the Pyrenees first earned you a conviction, before an acquittal on appeal. In Germany, Martin Sellner has been banned from the territory for uttering the word “remigration” during a private meeting. Do you perceive a European coordination behind this repression?
I don’t know whether there is a formal coordination, but there is very clearly an ideological convergence among European elites.
Across Western Europe, you find the same reflexes: blaming indigenous peoples, a culture of shame, refusal to defend our borders, the sacralization of immigration, an inability to name demographic replacement, and a desire to pathologize any identitarian reaction. Those who say “we want to remain ourselves” are immediately presented as dangerous.
It’s a form of deterrence. They want identitarian activists to understand that their commitment can cost them their reputation, their job, their bank accounts, their freedom, and their future.
They are afraid that Europeans will wake up and understand that they share the same destiny. If we unite, the balance of power could shift very quickly. And that is a very good sign.
The European Digital Services Act, in force since 2024, places platforms under a moderation obligation, on pain of massive fines. Some of your successive bans predate this legal framework, but it has now institutionalized it. Do you think the digital repression you experienced individually is, with the DSA, becoming a permanent infrastructure for controlling speech in Europe? How do you face it?
Even before the Digital Services Act, I had already experienced this digital repression: Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook accounts suspended. Every time, you have to start over completely, and win back your audience while hoping not to be banned once again.
With the DSA, this logic is no longer just the result of platforms’ internal decisions; this censorship takes on an institutional form at the European scale. Platforms are pushed, under threat of massive fines, to over-moderate anything that could be considered “risky.” And naturally, identitarian, anti-immigration, or pro-remigration speech is among the first targeted.
How do you face it? First, by building our own media; we cannot go on depending forever on platforms that can erase us in a matter of seconds.
Then, you have to learn to play with the rules of the field and use cunning. Humor, in that respect, is a formidable weapon for working with insinuation.
But fortunately there are reasons for hope. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter changed something: I can see very clearly that censorship is far less stifling than it used to be. The others were forced to align at least partly with the competition and ease the pressure.
And finally, there is strength in numbers. The more of us there are speaking, the less they can silence all of us.
Identitarian figures across Europe face travel bans, legal proceedings, and frozen bank accounts. Does solidarity between movements truly exist when it comes to defending those who fall, or does it remain mostly rhetorical?
Yes, that solidarity exists. And I can say so all the more sincerely because, for a time, I had almost stopped believing in it.
I myself have been the target of these intimidation attempts: bank accounts closed, unable to get a loan, repeated legal proceedings, and so on. You can maintain a combative discourse, but after several years, that accumulation still wears you down. To be honest, there were several times I became discouraged.
Recently, before the verdict in yet another trial, I publicly shared my weariness. And in response, I received incredible support, from identitarians and patriots all over the world, from Europe to the United States, through Australia, all the way to Japan. Many people shared my story, wrote to me, and helped me financially. That moved me deeply.
So yes, real solidarity exists, and for my part it gave me a new breath of life.
You alone bear the financial cost of these proceedings. That raises a strategic question: can a movement of ideas that leaves its leading figures to face legal prosecution alone hope to endure?
It’s true that I’m alone in bearing the cost of these proceedings, but when I called for help, hundreds of strangers answered, and that means more to me than the support of any political structure.
Let’s be frank about it: in France, few of us hold a discourse as radical as mine. Even within the right, the cordon sanitaire the left imposes on us is too often reproduced. People grow wary of being seen with this or that person, and by trying so hard to remain acceptable in the eyes of our enemies, we sometimes end up losing sight of who our real allies are.
That’s a major strategic problem, because it abandons those taking the blows on the front line, and condemns us to discouraging the most courageous.
But I felt that real solidarity still existed, from influencers as well as from anonymous people, so too bad for the politicians. For me, that’s enough to give me the strength to keep going.
Looking at your trajectory over the past six years (the movement’s dissolution, convictions, digital censorship, an aborted attempt in radio), has the French system managed to silence you, or has it produced the opposite effect?
It has produced the opposite effect.
I won’t pretend that none of this affected me. There were moments when I felt demotivated. But the recent support I received during my latest trial made me even more determined. I understood that if so much effort was being put into making me disappear, it was because my voice carried weight.
They wanted to erase me from the landscape; I will be an even bigger stone in their shoe.
You were one of the first to carry an identitarian voice on social media in France. What is your view of the emergence of an alternative European media space (outlets like Voxeuropa, capable of relaying these voices without going through national gatekeepers)?
I obviously view this emergence very positively, and for me this kind of initiative is essential, because it allows us to reclaim our voice without waiting for permission from the mainstream media. Above all, it allows voices from different countries to support one another, because we share the same civilizational struggle.
These initiatives need to multiply, professionalize, and be supported. I believe the future of the identitarian struggle will largely pass through this: through our capacity to build our own networks of solidarity.
So, well done to you, and thank you for taking part in this European media reconstruction that we absolutely need.
Voxeuropa Herald is an initiative that shares the voices shaping Europe today: elected officials, essayists, philosophers, activists, artists and influencers. These portraits are collective responses to the crises shaking our Europe. Faced with the major upheavals of our times, Voxeuropa Herald gives a voice to those who, throughout Europe, share solutions and visions for the future. The message is clear : European realities call for European responses.
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