Both Mirkovic and Gouillon, a naturalised Serbian citizen and convert to Orthodox Christianity, say Solidarité Kosovo is a strictly humanitarian organisation, but its roots are deeply entwined with the Identitarian movement.

At the time he founded Solidarité, Gouillon had just taken over as head of the Grenoble branch of Juenesses Identitaires, soon to be renamed Identitaires, the street movement and forerunner of Generation Identitaire.

He rubbed shoulders with figures such as Philippe Vardon, now chief of communications for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, and members of the far-right militant group Unité Radicale – Gaetan Bertrand, Fabrice Robert and Guillame Luyt – which was disbanded by the government in 2002 after one of its members tried to assassinate then French President Jacques Chirac. They went on to form Bloc Identitaire, of which Gouillon’s Juenesses Identitaires was the youth wing.

In 2012, Gouillon was the Identitarian party candidate for the French presidential election, but withdrew before the vote. He foreswore politics and in 2015 received honorary Serbian citizenship from the Serbian government.

Mirkovic was an activist with the far-right Movement National de la Jeunesse and a drummer in the 1990s’ French Identitarian rock band Elendil.

“In France, Solidarité Kosovo organises venues where it presents the unheard testimonies of Serbs from Kosovo and collects funds to help them at home,” Mirkovic told BIRN in a telephone interview.

“I’m very happy because, thanks to our work, we’re finally contributing to opening people’s eyes.”

Some observers of far-right trends in Europe, however, see in Solidarité Kosovo and its leadership the concept of far-right ‘metapolitics’ in action, a long-haul strategy of effecting political change by shifting opinion and culture.

These observers say the Identitarian movement uses ostensibly independent satellite associations to spread the message, reaching audiences the movement might not otherwise reach while protecting it from the potentially extremist actions of fringe followers.

A trademark of the movement is “the establishment of charitable groups, whose only scope is to enhance their propaganda,” said Simon Murdoch, a researcher with the British anti-fascist political action group Hope Not Hate, to BIRN.

French journalist Mathieu Molard, who has reported extensively on the ranks of the Identitarians and the French far-right for the independent online platform StreetPress, is in little doubt:

“Solidarité Kosovo is a small satellite of Generation Identitaire,” he told BIRN.

Mirkovic dismissed this, telling BIRN: “Of course it’s false that SK is a satellite association of GI, but since I am not SK’s spokesperson, I’m not entitled to give further details.”

BIRN put the same question to Solidarité Kosovo directly and Gouillon himself by email but received no reply.

In a 2018 study titled “Migration Crisis and the Far Right Networks in Europe; a Case Study of Serbia”, Marina Lazetic, a Bosnian-born, US-educated researcher of extremist movements, wrote:

“Radical far right movements disguised as humanitarian and human rights organisations helping Serbs in Kosovo have started multiplying, and nationalists from across Europe have started arriving in Serbia to support one of the few strongholds of white European civilisation in resistance against Muslims and Western aggressors.”

If the EU fails to take action, and make European integration more attractive to Serbs, Lazetic warned, “the rise of radical movements in the region could present a serious security threat.”

Observers of the European far-right say that, even before Vorkapic and Co created the Serbian branch of Generation Identity, the Identitarian movement had identified Serbia as a valuable tool in the ‘great replacement’ narrative. The latter would prove more resilient than the former.

Far-right rebranding