Great Replacement Theory (white replacement theory)

The great replacement theory, which is related to the White replacement theory, is an ethno-nationalist idea that states Western countries with majority White populations are having their populations purposefully replaced with people of color. The theory is popular with White nationalists, alt-right supporters, and hardline conservatives in Europe, the United States, Canada, and other nations. The great replacement theory originated in a 2012 book by French writer Renaud Camus, though it has roots in the White genocide theory. This theory has been an important talking point of White supremacists since at least the early twentieth century and has been incorporated into other racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Background

Racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have existed for centuries. One of the prime examples occurred during the Black Death pandemic in the mid-fourteenth century. As the bubonic plague spread across Europe, people began spreading rumors that the illness was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells. Later, other conspiracy theories stated that Jewish people used children’s blood in their religious ceremonies. Racist beliefs and conspiracy theories from Europe were brought to the Americas when colonizers settled there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the late eighteenth century, German academic Johann Blumenbach categorized what he believed were the five different races, and he noted that he believed Caucasians, the term he used for White people, were the most advanced race. Blumenbach’s categorization encouraged the mistreatment of other races by Europeans and people of European descent.

Blumenbach’s ideas became popular in the United States, where millions of enslaved Black people lived and worked in brutal conditions, and many White Americans were eager to find ways to justify this system. White settlers were also looking for ways to justify taking land from Indigenous Americans and claiming it as their own. Only a few years after Blumenbach’s writings, Thomas Jefferson suggested that Black people were inferior to White people in his 1785 document Notes on the State of Virginia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many White Americans feared that enslaved people would organize and eventually revolt. This belief that enslaved people would kill all White Americans if they gained their freedom was used to justify racist Jim Crow laws and segregation long after the end of slavery in 1865.

In 1916, American academic and supporter of the racist eugenics movement, Madison Grant, wrote a book called The Passing of the Great Race, which used pseudoscience to claim that the white “Nordic race” was superior and was in danger of dying off because of the proliferation of other “inferior” races. Tens of thousands of copies of the book circulated in the United States and Europe. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler read the book and later wrote to Grant, thanking him for publishing the book and calling it his “bible.” American presidents such as Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge also read and quoted the book. Other European leaders—even those from countries that fought against the Nazis, such as France’s Charles de Gaulle and Great Britain’s Enoch Powell—adopted versions of the idea. They also believed in the idea of reverse colonization, which claimed that people whose lands were once colonized by Europeans had begun to colonize Europe.

Soon, White people who agreed with Grant transformed his ideas into the concept of “White genocide,” or the idea that the White race would die off because of the immigration of non-White people into countries with majority White populations. The term genocide was coined in the early twentieth century to describe the annihilation or attempted annihilation of an entire ethnic group. White supremacists used the term White genocide to spread hate against people of color and to support their ideas that people of different races should not have children together. White supremacists claimed that people of other racial or ethnic groups, specifically Jewish people, were attempting to destroy the White race through falling White birth rates, the acceptance of multiculturalism, and immigration from countries without a historically large White population.

After the Holocaust in Europe during World War II (1939–1945) and the US civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, outright racism became less socially acceptable in many Western countries. Germany and other European countries passed laws banning Nazi iconography, and the United States passed laws that helped ensure people of color were treated equally under the law. Nevertheless, White supremacist groups and neo-Nazis continued to exist throughout the Western world. These groups continued to spread their ideas that White genocide was occurring and that immigration and other political and social factors were causing the White "race" to be eliminated.

In the 1970s, American neo-Nazis spread the idea that Jewish people were responsible for birth control and abortion, which they claimed Jewish people created with the intent of limiting White people’s birthrates and reducing the White population. The White genocide theory gained even more popularity in 1978 when a White supremacist and neo-Nazi named William Luther Pierce published a novel called The Turner Diaries. The deeply racist book imagined a White supremacist insurgency that kills off all non-White people and so-called “race traitors.” The book inspired the growth of new White supremacist groups, including a group called The Order, which took its name from the organization in The Turner Diaries. A White supremacist named David Lane was a member of The Order. He was convicted of playing a role in the murder of Jewish radio show host Alan Berg in 1984. The White genocide conspiracy theory remained one of the guiding principles of White supremacist groups throughout the end of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.

Overview

In the early twenty-first century, the White genocide conspiracy theory was talked about mostly by White supremacists and White nationalists. However, the ideas that fueled the theory—including the idea that the immigration of people of color to countries with majority White populations is harmful to those societies—became more mainstream in the 2010s. Even some individuals who held some views that were traditionally thought of as liberal or progressive adopted such beliefs. One person was French writer Renaud Camus, who had been known for supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ+) rights and some other left-wing causes. In 2012, he published a book called Le Grand Remplacement, which laid out his theory about the great replacement. Camus said that the main idea of the great replacement is that “you have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people.” French colonialism and the history of anti-Semitism in the country most likely influenced Camus’s beliefs about French citizens who were not of European descent.

Camus developed his book as he watched demographic changes happen in Europe, specifically in France, and wrote at a time when Islamophobia was growing in France and other countries against immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Camus noted that he saw women wearing burkas and hijabs, traditional veils worn by Muslims, and was upset with how common such outfits were becoming in France. The book characterized Muslim immigrants in France and other parts of Europe as invaders who wanted to conquer Europe. In the book, Camus argues about a great “replacement” happening in his own country, but he also gives examples of it happening in other parts of Europe and the United States. Camus points to the increased use of Spanish in the United States in the early part of the twenty-first century as evidence that a great replacement was happening there.

White supremacists and White nationalists took to reading and quoting Camus’s book. However, more mainstream figures, such as right-wing European politicians, also read the book and began using the phrase “the great replacement.” The idea spread quickly, and politicians such as France’s Marine Le Pen, who held staunchly anti-immigrant beliefs, helped its ideas spread more widely. The idea also became popular on the Internet and social media. The so-called great replacement theory became popular among members of the alt-right and even some extreme political conservatives. This was in part because the concept was not as inflammatory as the White genocide conspiracy theory, even though the ideas were closely related. Mainstream media pundits and politicians hinted at the great replacement theory by indicating the immigration was causing demographic changes, which these individuals believed was bad for Western society; it grew popular among people with xenophobic or nativist beliefs.

In 2015, as campaigning for the 2016 US Presidential Election ramped up, American business owner Donald Trump began his ultimately successful bid for the United States presidency by attacking immigrants coming into the United States, particularly those who were undocumented. During Trump’s campaign, he also called for a ban on people from predominantly Muslim nations entering the United States and also made many disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants and other Latino groups. While president, Trump referred to an influx of immigrants from Central America as an “invasion.” In 2017, early in Trump’s presidency, members of the alternative right, or alt-right, held a protest in the state of Virginia, during which a White supremacist drove into the crowd and murdered a counterprotester. Before the event, marchers shouted the chants, “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us.” These chants evoked the idea of the great replacement.

Although some political and social groups supported the idea of the great replacement throughout the 2010s, few mainstream figures referenced the theory by name. Nevertheless, in the 2010s, a number of White people living in Western countries attacked minority groups and referenced the Great Replacement as an inspiration for their violence.

In 2011, Anders Breivik, a Norwegian White supremacist, murdered seventy-seven people in a bombing in Oslo, Norway, and shooting at a summer camp in Utøya, Noway. He wrote a manifesto called “A European Declaration of Independence,” specifically citing the idea of White genocide. In 2019, an Australian named Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques in New Zealand, murdering fifty-one Muslims. Tarrant explicitly referenced the great replacement and white genocide in his manifesto, which he called “The Great Replacement.” Tarrant also cited Breivik as an inspiration for his attack.

In 2019, a White American named Patrick Crusius murdered twenty-three people inside a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. The Walmart was a common shopping place for Latinos in the area. Minutes before committing the massacre, Crusius posted a manifesto online. The manifesto was filled with anti-immigrant and White supremacist beliefs. The manifesto specifically cited the great replacement theory. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the shooting as domestic terrorism and a hate crime. These attacks continued in the US into the 2020s; in May 2022, an eighteen-year-old White supremacist murdered ten Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. In a manifesto posted online, the shooter specifically cited the great replacement theory as one of his motivating beliefs. In August 2023, a man displaying White supremicist symbols killed three Black individuals at a discount store in Florida. He also left behind a manifesto stating his intentions to specifically target Black people.

Although such attacks caused people across the political spectrum to speak out against racism, the ideas that fueled the attacks became even more mainstream in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Media pundits and elected officials continued to support the ideas that underpin great replacement theory. For example, in 2021, US news channel Fox News’s nighttime host, Tucker Carlson, was accused of espousing great replacement theory on his daily show, a popular program viewed by millions of Americans every day. The Anti-Defamation League, which was founded to fight anti-Semitism, accused Carlson of racism and of promoting the great replacement theory. Carlson and Fox News both denied the claim. Carlson specifically denied supporting the great replacement theory on his show, stating, “They said we were espousing something called the great replacement theory, a well-known racist fantasy.” Nevertheless, in September of the same year, Carlson used the exact verbiage of “great replacement” when talking about immigration and the policies of the Democratic Party, suggesting that Democrats wanted to increase immigration so that more people would vote for them. Carlson said, “This policy is called the great replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.”

Some people who believe in the great replacement theory support having different geographic territories for people of different races. Some people who support races living separately claim that they want White people to be separated from people of color without having to say that they believe White people are superior. Because the great replacement theory is less overtly racist and hysterical than the White genocide conspiracy theory, it is often more readily accepted by people outside of White supremacist circles. It gives its supporters room to argue that they are not racist but are instead simply fighting against attempts to erase their cultural identity. When ideas such as the great replacement theory become more mainstream, the dialogue around race, racism, and immigration changes significantly. As the 2020s progressed, the great replacement theory remained popular with alt-right groups in the US and conservative politicians. In February 2024, Republican representative Josh Schriver was criticized for creating a post on social media espousing his support for the theory and faced backlash from Democrats and social justice groups. 

Bibliography

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