Replace the Ruling Class
14th February 2022
If you google the words “Great Replacement,” your first hit will likely be a Wikipedia article which identifies the term as “a white nationalist conspiracy theory.” The article is part of two series, one on Islamophobia and one on discrimination. According to Wikipedia, the theory, “disseminated by French author Renaud Camus…states that, with the complicity or cooperation of ‘replacist’ elites, the ethnic French population—as well as white European populations at large—is being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.”
U.S. outlets repeat this account of Camus’s theory when they raise concerns that Great Replacement talk is being transposed into an American context. A CNN politics report claims that “far right White supremacist groups, conservative media personalities and some Republicans in Congress are trying to inflame nativist feelings among conservative Whites by warning that liberals want immigrants to ‘replace’ native-born Americans.” The Anti-Defamation League published a Great Replacement explainer which announced that “the racist conspiracy theory has well and truly arrived.” Other examples abound.
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The outlets which publish this kind of analysis are extremely diverse in tone and character, so it is striking that they all present almost exactly the same account of things, sometimes in identical language. From Wikipedia to ADL to Teen Vogue, the story is the same: a dangerous white supremacist conspiracy theory has made its way from the ugly chat rooms of the far Right to the very center of conservative punditry and political leadership. The elision between fringe anti-Semites and popular media personalities serves to underscore the theme that all conservatives, however ostensibly “mainstream,” have succumbed to radical extremism.