The Great Replacement



The Great Replacement (French: Le Grand Remplacement), called "replacement theory" by Tucker Carlson in an attempt to reframe the conspiracy for his more moderate audience, is a racist, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, white nationalist, far-right genocide conspiracy theory originating in France, which asserts that the white Christian population of Europe, North America (United States and Canada), and sometimes Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa "is being systematically replaced with non-European people", specifically Muslims through mass immigration and low birth rates. All this is caused by a global élite gang of conspirators, probably based in Brussels, or, for the more racist theorists out there, the Jews. The theory is used interchangeably with the white genocide conspiracy theory.

A study done in May of 2022 showed almost a third of all adult Americans believe in some aspects of the Great Replacement.

Origins
The phrase originates with a 2012 book called The Great Replacement (Le Grand Remplacement) by French writer However, the same idea dates back earlier in the United States to a 1947 book by  titled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization. Bilbo was a racist KKK Democrat demagogue from Mississippi who was Governor and then Senator of the state. Roots of the replacement hoax arguably extend a century back, propagated then by white supremacist eugenicists Madison Grant, and Camus started out promoting white gay separatism in books such as Tricks: 33 Stories; according to Musab Younis:

Camus based his racist theory on ideas put forward in the 1972 book a novel by Jean Raspail, which describes "mass immigration destroying Western civilization" (and which enjoyed a renewed burst of popularity around 2011), and the Eurabia conspiracy theory. He formed the curiously-named political party "Party of No-harm" (French: Le Parti de l’In-nocence), which pushes a mix of left- and right-wing policies to no electoral success. Today, Camus is the acceptable face of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politics, appearing "plausibly high-minded, principally aesthetic, even well-mannered"; historian Mark Lilla called him "a kind of connective tissue between the far right and the respectable right".

Why it's BS
One of the common talking points is that the number of non-White babies born has been increasing. This entirely ignores the definition of "White", and relies upon an extremely racist form of special pleading known as "the one-drop rule". Why should the child of a White man and Black woman be "non-White" instead of "non-Black"? If you have a town that's made up of 50% Irish and 50% Italians, and everyone marries randomly, only a quarter of couples will be Irish-Irish and another quarter Italian-Italian and half will be Irish-Italian, and if we repeat the process, only 1/16th will be pure-Italian, and then 1/256th in the next generation. Were all the Italians "replaced" by spud-munchers, or is the town still half-Italian? So too with "non-White" people; of course the number of babies without any "non-White" ancestors will decrease over time in a free society.

Alt-right
The slogans "You Will Not Replace Us" and the more blatantly antisemitic and racist "Jews Will Not Replace Us" used by alt-right protestors during the violent Charlottesville riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA has been associated with, and is ostensibly derived from, The Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

Christchurch terrorist manifesto
Brenton Harrison, the Australian-born perpetrator of the Christchurch terrorist attacks, named his manifesto after this theory. Although the manifesto contained numerous references to the Great Replacement theory, the majority of the manifesto consists of a mix of unrelated white nationalist talking points and alt-right propaganda taken from the internet. The reaction to the manifesto attracted attention to other groups using comparable rhetoric, and led to Facebook banning white nationalist propaganda from their platform.

El Paso terrorist manifesto
Patrick Crusius of Allen, the perpetrator of Texas, was also influenced by the theory, and mentioned in his manifesto The Inconvient [sic] Truth a supposed "Hispanic invasion of Texas" and claimed he was "simply trying to defend my country from ethnic and cultural replacement brought on by an invasion" as well as praising the aforementioned Brenton Harrison Tarrant and his manifesto. Additionally, Crusius also read Tarrant's The Great Replacement manifesto.

Identitarians
The far-right white nationalist in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand is a major promoter of this theory.

2021 U.S. coup attempt
Fear of the Great Replacement was a significant driver of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt by Trump supporters. Arrestees were 6 times more likely to come from counties with declines in the percentage of non-Hispanic Whites in the population. Fear that Blacks and Hispanics are overtaking Whites increased the likelihood of being an insurrectionist by 3-fold in the second study. Fear that Blacks and Hispanics will have more rights than Whites increased the likelihood of being an insurrectionist by 2-fold in the third study.

Buffalo shooting
Another shooting that happened in Buffalo, New York, was caused by Payton S. Gendron, who wrote about the Great Replacement in his manifesto.