This has been in the news lately, but it’s not defined very well or consistently in the references I’ve found.
One definition is that white people are gradually losing majority status in the US, which as I understand it is just statistically true. Do I have this wrong?
Another definition emphasizes the “complicity or cooperation of replacist elites” (this quote from the Wikipedia article), but I don’t get what “complicity or cooperation” means, unless it means essentially “failing to commit hate crimes”. How would anybody avoid being complicit or cooperative with a demographic population shift?
Does the definition include believing there is some strategic or tactical way elites are actually causing the statistical shift? Such as somehow getting people to come to the US, or somehow convincing white couples not to have children?
I, too, wonder the same. It’s pretty indisputable that white people are a smaller and smaller percentage of the population as the decades go by. What I am wondering is if GWRT claims that this is an intentional strategy, or simply describes what’s happening.
Whether white shrinkage is a good or bad thing is, of course, subjective. But the statement that America is becoming less and less white, and hence white people wield correspondingly less and less political clout, is a pretty fair, factual thing to say. Even liberals tout that all the time.
What I’ve heard is that Democrats are bringing in millions of illegals to vote Democratic, so yes, they believe people are actively causing the demographic shifts.
Remember those caravans of migrants from Central/South America that never showed up? They’re suggesting elite democrats (and Jews?) are organizing those types of things in order to “replace” the white majority.
That’s ignoring the fact that no one is being replaced. Even if the Left was organizing those caravans, no one is replacing anyone. No one is being asked to leave the country and be replaced.
I don’t want to directly link to it since this is FQ, but Seth Meyers did A Closer Look on it yesterday that might be worth a watch, at least to get a cursory understanding.
OK, but even if it were, so what? That’s like my neighboring Texans claiming that liberals are trying to turn Texas purple/blue by bringing in millions of liberals from New York and California. Not only is it pretty true, there’s not even anything illicit or shady about it; it’s a legit strategy to win.
It seems as ridiculous as if a football team were to complain that the opposing team was trying to wear them down by having a powerful offensive line.
Plus, if nonwhite people were conservatives, there can be zero doubt that conservatives would be trying to bring them in in droves likewise.
The only way that would be legal (and being legit would still be questionable, kinda like gerrymandering) is if they were all moved to Texas, became residents, waited the correct amount of time, if applicable, then registered to vote and voted.
What Replacement Theory people are suggesting is that the left is bringing in droves of Mexicans to vote illegally. Trump has even stated, in no uncertain terms, that the left is paying these ‘illegals’ to do that. He’s been suggesting that since 2018 or 2019.
Remember the “they took our jobs” from South Park? That’s all part of this.
The people believing in this “theory” are racists. Deep down (or right at the surface) they are uncomfortable with people who are not like them, in any way. There being a deliberate project to make it so there are fewer people like them feel like a personal attack on them. And since this a “theory” in bullshit conspiracy territory some of them believe the next step will be straight up murdering them.
The politicians and media personalities flirting with these “theories” are either similarly broken or straight up sociopaths.
This has its origins in a book by French conspiracy theorist and white nationalist Renaud Camus (no association to the more famous Camus); who wrote a book in 2011 called Le Grand Remplacement
I read this Atlantic article on it a few years ago which goes into good detail ( How Anti-feminism Is the Gateway to the Far Right - The Atlantic); essentially Camus wrote his book, and it gained traction with French white nationalists. Over time, as things do, it got developed into English language white nationalist communities. On popular websites and social media groups frequented by English White Nationalists, many of the core ideas of Camus’ work were translated and adapted to local conditions.
The Canadian far right YouTube activist “Lauren Southern”, was an early influencer in popularizing Camus’ ideas on far right social media / internet in the English language world. There are direct links to the idea of Camus and the infamous chants during the Charlottesville incident of “The Jews will not replace us!” Like most things it has taken on a life of its own, the current fully Americanized form of this posits that evil elites, primarily associated with Jews and Democratic party elites, are running the Great Replacement.
[Camus’ original work is objectionable, but AFAIK does not make explicit claims that elites are deliberately replacing whites, he is more concerned with what he calls a destruction of European culture by the natural demographic scenario where non-white European immigrants are significantly out-reproducing white Europeans.]
The theory really is not that complicated–white nationalists believe that white people are being replaced by non-white people in terms of their place in society. They do not believe, literally, that individuals whites are being removed and replaced with individual non-whites, they refer instead to the changing composition of the country as white people die off, and at the lower age bands non-whites are reproducing at a higher rate, both through actual reproduction and through immigration.
If you’re looking for a logical backing to any kind of racist conspiracy theory, you’re not going to find it.
You have to start with some untruths.
Untruth #1: There is a such thing as “white culture.”
Untruth #2: Jews/globalists/elites are out to get us, and
Untruth #3: “They” (see #2) are out to destroy “white culture.”
These are your baseline, unassailable beliefs. Now you have to find an actual truth to slot in.
Actual truth: American demographics are shifting away from a white majority.
Mix them together, and you get your CT. Shifting demographics are the result of a global conspiracy to destroy white culture.
Most racist conspiracy theories work backwards. You start with the thing you don’t like and then play “pin the tail on the blood libel” to find your fictional cause.
I can see how it would gain traction in Le Pen’s France and Enoch Powell’s Great Britain: France and England were not immigrant nations, and when they became so, it was a visible sign of their collapsing overseas empires; with the Algerians, Jamaicans etc. loyalists coming in.
But how many of these American xenophobes were descended from Irish and German immigrants who were opposed by the Know-Nothing Party?
In the US, progressives generally support more immigration. Many conservative critics can’t imagine that anyone could possibly see immigration as a positive good (or alternately always try and put the worst possible spin on their ideological opponents motives), so the only possible explanation they can come up with for why progressives support immigration is that we think immigrants will support progressive politicians and thus support immigration to get more political power.
What they don’t, and maybe can’t, see, is that most progressives support more immigration is that we think immigrants generally make great Americans and help make us as a country stronger and more affluent.
It’s also worth pointing out that concerns over too many of the “wrong” sorts of immigrants are very old concerns indeed.
The difference between those concerns (which are themselves rooted in racism) and replacement theory is just a matter of adding a fictional intent. The Chinese Exclusion act was passed because “oh no, way too many Chinese people are coming.”
Replacement theory posits a cabal saying, “oh ho, let’s make sure way too many _________ people are coming.”
(A) It seems unlikely that most of these American xenophobes know enough about the facts of American history to be aware of the Know-Nothing Party, and
(B) Even if they do know about such earlier irruptions of anti-immigrant prejudice, they tend to believe that since their ethnic heritage is (currently classified as) “white”, they “belong” in American culture just as much as “pureblood” descendants of the Founding Fathers do, so anti-immigrant prejudice doesn’t rightly apply to them.
More than that, I think. These white people usually believe that they have the right to be dominant, because they are white. More than personal, these trends are attacking their God-given rights to have things their way. They don’t want to admit publicly that they are anti-democratic at their core, that they don’t care how many of “those people” there are who can vote, so they cling to conspiracy theories that “prove” that what is happening is not natural and would not happen without their secret and powerful enemies’ influence.
If reality has a liberal bias, you have to have something which allows you to blind yourself to reality.