Great Replacement Theory

The Great Replacement (), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a debunked white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory
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. espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites,
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. the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of "replacist" elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview.

In history too, similar racist expressions have been made, which contributed to anti-immigration laws in many countries, including the USA. 1863, David Croly and George Wakeman, who coined the term "miscegenation," predicted that an influx of East Asian immigrants into California would result in a "composite race" of Chinese and Japanese people, eventually replacing the Anglo-Saxon majority. These fears were echoed in 1870 by a San Francisco correspondent for the North China Herald in Shanghai, who expressed concern about the rise of "Eurasians, or Amerasians" from Chinese immigrants, fearing this "mongrel breed" would become the dominant class. An extreme manifestation of these anxieties appeared in "The Battle of the Wabash", an 1880 short story in The Californian. Set in 2080, it depicted a dystopian future where Chinese immigration and miscegenation had diminished the white population to a subjugated minority under a tyrannical Chinese and Eurasian majority.

While similar themes have characterized various far-right theories since the late 19th century, the particular term was popularized by Camus in his 2011 book ''Le Grand Remplacement''. The book associates the presence of Muslims in France with danger and destruction of French culture and civilization. Camus and other conspiracy theorists attribute recent demographic changes in Europe to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal elites (the "replacists") from within the Government of France, the European Union, or the United Nations; they describe it as a "genocide by substitution".

The conspiracy theory found support in Europe, and has also grown popular among anti-migrant and white nationalist movements from other parts of the West; many of their adherents maintain that "immigrants reflocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of the native population". It aligns with (and is a part of) the larger white genocide conspiracy theory except in the substitution of antisemitic canards with Islamophobia. This substitution, along with a use of simple catch-all slogans, has been cited as one of the reasons for its broader appeal in a pan-European context, although the concept remains rooted in antisemitism in many white nationalist movements, especially (but not exclusively) in the United States.

Although Camus has publicly condemned white nationalist violence, scholars have argued that calls to violence are implicit in his depiction of non-white migrants as an existential threat to white populations., 23m05s. Several far-right terrorists, including the perpetrators of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, the 2019 El Paso shooting, the 2022 Buffalo shooting and the 2023 Jacksonville shooting, have made reference to the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. American conservative media personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have espoused ideas of a replacement. Some Republican politicians have endorsed the theory in order to appeal to far-right members of the Republican Party and as a way of signalling their loyalty to Donald Trump.

Background

Renaud Camus developed his conspiracy theory in two books published in 2010 and 2011, in the context of an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric in public discourse during the previous decade. Europe also experienced an escalation in Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s–2010s, and a migrant crisis in the years 2015–2016, which exacerbated tensions and prepared public opinion for the reception of Camus's conspiracy theory. As the latter depicts a population replacement said to occur in a short time lapse of one or two generations, the migrant crisis was particularly conducive to the spread of Camus's ideas while the terrorist attacks accelerated the construction of immigrants as an existential threat among those who shared such a worldview.

Camus's theme of a future demise of European culture and civilization also parallels a " cultural pessimistic" and anti-Islam trend among European intellectuals of the period, illustrated in several best-selling and straightforwardly titled books released during the 2010s: Thilo Sarrazin's '' Germany Abolishes Itself'' (2010), Éric Zemmour's '' The French Suicide'' (2014) or Michel Houellebecq's ''Submission'' (2015).

Concept of Renaud Camus

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was developed by French author Renaud Camus, initially in a 2010 book titled ''L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence'' ("Abecedarium of no-harm"), and the following year in an eponymous book, ''Le Grand Remplacement (introduction au remplacisme global)''. Camus has claimed that the name "came to im almost by chance, perhaps in a more or less unconscious reference to the ''Grand Dérangement'' of the Acadians in the 18th century.", 4m25s. As an epigraph to the later book, Camus chose Bertolt Brecht's quip from the satirical poem ''Die Lösung'' that the easiest thing to do for a government which had lost the confidence of its people would be to choose new people.

According to Camus, the "Great Replacement" has been nourished by "industrialisation", " despiritualisation" and "deculturation"; the materialistic society and globalism having created a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic, or cultural specificity", what he labels "global replacism". Camus claims that "the great replacement does not need a definition," as the term is not, in his views, a "concept" but rather a "phenomenon".

In Camus's theory, the indigenous French people ("the replaced") is described as being demographically replaced by non-white populations ("the replacing eoples)—mainly coming from Africa or the Middle East—in a process of "peopling immigration" encouraged by a "replacist power".

Camus frequently uses terms and concepts related to the period of Nazi-occupied France (1940–1945). He for instance labels "colonizers" or "Occupiers" people of non-European descent who reside in Europe, and dismisses what he calls the "replacist elites" as "collaborationist". In 2017 Camus founded an organization named the National Council of European Resistance, in a self-evident reference to the World War II National Council of the Resistance (1943–1945). This analogy to the French Resistance against Nazism has been described as an implicit call to hatred, direct action or even violence against what Camus labels the "Occupiers; i.e. the immigrants". Camus has also compared the Great Replacement and the so-called " genocide by substitution" of the European peoples to the Holocaust.

Claimed influences

Camus cites two influential figures in the epilogue of his 2011 book ''The Great Replacement'': British politician Enoch Powell's apocalyptic vision of future race relations—expressed in his 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech—and French author Jean Raspail's depiction of the collapse of the West from an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third World immigration, featured in his 1973 novel ''The Camp of the Saints''.

Camus also declared to ''The Spectator'' magazine in 2016 that a key to understanding the "Great Replacement" can be found in his 2002 book ''Du Sens''. In the latter he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality rather than a legal one, in a cratylism similar to Charles Maurras's distinction between the "legal" and the "real country". During the same interview, Camus mentioned that he began to imagine his conspiracy theory back in 1996, during the redaction of a guidebook on the department of Hérault, in the South of France: "I suddenly realized that in very old villages ..the population had totally changed too ..this is when I began to write like that."

Similar themes

White genocide conspiracy theory

Despite its own singularities and concepts, the "Great Replacement" is encompassed in a larger and older "white genocide" conspiracy theory, popularized in the US by neo-Nazi David Lane in his 1995 ''White Genocide Manifesto'', where he asserted that governments in Western countries were intending to turn white people into "extinct species". Scholars generally agree that, although he did not father the theme, Camus indeed coined the term "Great Replacement" as a slogan and concept, and eventually led it to its fame in the 2010s.

The idea of "replacement" under the guidance of a hostile elite can be further traced back to pre-WWII antisemitic conspiracy theories which posited the existence of a Jewish plot to destroy Europe through miscegenation, especially in Édouard Drumont's antisemitic bestseller '' La France juive'' (1886). Commenting on this resemblance, historian Nicolas Lebourg and political scientist Jean-Yves Camus suggest that Renaud Camus's contribution was to replace the antisemitic elements with a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Europeans. Also in the late 19th century, imperialist politicians invoked the ''Péril jaune'' (Yellow Peril) in their negative comparisons of France's low birth-rate and the high birth-rates of Asian countries. From that claim arose an artificial, cultural fear that immigrant-worker Asians soon would "flood" France. This danger supposedly could be successfully countered only by increased fecundity of French women. Then, France would possess enough soldiers to thwart the eventual flood of immigrants from Asia. Maurice Barrès's nationalist writings of that period have also been noted in the ideological genealogy of the "Great Replacement", Barrès contending both in 1889 and in 1900 that a replacement of the native population under the combined effect of immigration and a decline in the birth rate was happening in France.

Scholars also highlight a modern similarity to European neo-fascist and neo-Nazi thinkers from the immediate post-war, especially Maurice Bardèche, René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, and to concepts advanced from the 1960s onward by the French Nouvelle Droite. The associated and more recent conspiracy theory of "Eurabia", published by British author Bat Ye'or in her 2005 eponymous book, is often cited as a probable inspiration for Camus's "Great Replacement". Eurabia theory likewise involves globalist entities, that are led by both French and Arab powers, conspiring to Islamize Europe, with Muslims submerging the continent through immigration and higher birth rates. The conspiracy theory also depicts immigrants as invaders or as a fifth column, invited to the continent by a corrupt political elite.

Analysis

Demographic statistics

While the ethnic demography of France has shifted as a result of post-WWII immigration, scholars have generally dismissed the claims of a "great replacement" as being rooted in an exaggeration of immigration statistics and unscientific, racially prejudiced views. Geographer Landis MacKellar criticized Camus's thesis for assuming "that third- and fourth- generation 'immigrants' are somehow not French." Researchers have variously estimated the Muslim population of France at between 8.8% and 12.5% in 2017, and less than 1% in 2001, making a "replacement" unlikely according to MacKellar.

Racial connotations

In the words of scholar Andrew Fergus Wilson, whereas the islamophobic Great Replacement theory can be distinguished from the parallel antisemitic white genocide conspiracy theory, "they share the same terms of reference and both are ideologically aligned with the so-called '14 words' of David Lane We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"" In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that "since many white supremacists, particularly those in the United States, blame Jews for non-white immigration to the U.S.", the Great Replacement theory has been increasingly associated with antisemitism and conflated with the white genocide conspiracy theory. Scholar Kathleen Belew has argued that the Great Replacement theory "allows an opportunism in selecting enemies", but "also follows the central motivating logic, which is to protect the thing on the inside .e. the preservation and birth rate of the white race regardless of the enemy on the outside."

According to Australian historian A. Dirk Moses, the great replacement theory is a form of psychological projection in which Europeans—who enacted settler-colonial projects entailing the elimination and replacement of native populations by settler societies—fear the reverse may happen to them.

In German discourse, Austrian political scientist Rainer Bauböck questioned the conspiracy theorists' use of the terms "population replacement" or "exchange" (). Using Ruth Wodak's analysis that the slogan needs to be viewed in its historical context, Bauböck has concluded that the conspiracy theory is a reemergence of the Nazi ideology of ("ethnicity inversion").

Popularity

The simplicity and use of catch-all slogans in Camus's formulations—"you have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people"—as well as his removal of antisemitism from the original neo-Nazi "white genocide" conspiracy theory, have been cited as conducive to the popularity of the "Great Replacement" in Europe.

In a survey led by Ifop in December 2018, 25% of the French subscribed to the conspiracy theory; as well as 46% of the responders who defined themselves as "Gilets Jaunes" (Yellow Vest protesters). In another survey led by Harris Interactive in October 2021, 61% of the French believed that the "Great Replacement" will happen in France; 67% of the respondents were worried about it.

The theory has also become influential in far-right and white nationalist circles outside of France. The conspiracy theory has been cited by Canadian far-right political activist Lauren Southern in a YouTube video of the same name released in July 2017. Southern's video had attracted in 2020 more than 686,000 views and is credited with helping to popularize the conspiracy theory. Counter-jihad Norwegian blogger Fjordman has also participated in spreading the theory. It has also been promoted by the German edition of ''The Epoch Times'', a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper.

Prominent right-wing extremist websites such as Gates of Vienna, Politically Incorrect, and have provided a platform for bloggers to diffuse and popularize the theory of the "Great Replacement". Among its main promoters are also a wide-ranging network of loosely connected white nationalist movements, especially the Identitarian movement in Europe, and other groups like PEGIDA in Germany.

Political influence

Europe

France

Much of the European spread of the Great Replacement () conspiracy theory rhetoric is due to its prevalence in French national discourse and media. Nationalist right-wing groups in France have asserted that there is an ongoing "Islamo-substitution" of the indigenous French population, associating the presence of Muslims in France with potential danger and destruction of French culture and civilization.

In 2011, Marine Le Pen evoked the theory, claiming that France's "adversaries" were waging a moral and economic war on the country, apparently "to deliver it to submersion by an organized replacement of our population". In 2013, historian Dominique Venner's suicide in Notre-Dame de Paris, in which he left a note outlining the "crime of the replacement of our people" is reported to have inspired the far-right ''Iliade Institute'' main ideological tenet of the Great Replacement. Referring to the conspiracy theory, Marine Le Pen publicly praised Venner, claiming that his "last gesture, eminently political, was to try to awaken the French people".

In 2015, Guillaume Faye gave a speech at the Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm, in which he claimed there were three societal things being used against Europeans to carry out a supposed Great Replacement: abortion, homosexuality and immigration. He asserted that Muslims were replacing white people by using birthrates as a demographic weapon.

In June 2017, a ''BuzzFeed News'' investigation revealed three National Front candidates subscribing to the conspiracy theory ahead of the legislative elections. These included Senator Stéphane Ravier's personal assistant, who claimed the Great Replacement had already started in France. Publishing an image of blonde girl next to the caption "Say no to white genocide", Ravier's aide politically charged the concept further, writing "the National Front or the invasion".

By September 2018, in a meeting at Fréjus, Marine Le Pen closely echoed Great Replacement rhetoric. Speaking of France, she declared that "never in the history of mankind, have we seen a society that organizes an irreversible submersion" that would eventually cause French society to "disappear by dilution or substitution, its culture and way of life". Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, Le Pen falsely denied knowledge of the theory.

Former National Assembly delegate Marion Maréchal, who is a junior member of the political Le Pen family

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