The “great replacement theory” kills. As far-right ideology infuses traditional conservative politics, the conspiracy theory that Arab, Black, Latino or Muslim immigrants are aided and abetted by liberal elites in a headlong drive to submerge white Christian civilisation has gained wide currency in the US and much of western Europe.
The great replacement theory was the motive for at least five mass killings over the past 13 years, and was specifically cited by perpetrators of three of those massacres. In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway saying he wanted to save Norway and western Europe from a Muslim takeover, which he accused the Labour Party of assisting.
In 2018, Robert Bowers killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history. In a message posted shortly before his rampage, Bowers blamed the Jewish-American charity HIAS, which helps refugees, saying the group “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.”
Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian who slaughtered 51 people in a mosque and an Islamic centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, entitled his 77-page manifesto “The Great Replacement”, borrowing the title of a 2011 book by the far-right French conspiracy theorist Renaud Camus.
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It is doubtful Donald Trump is familiar with the works of Renaud Camus or Houellebecq. But their insidious, racist ideology permeates his thinking
Five months after Tarrant’s massacre of Muslim worshippers, Patrick Crusius killed 23 Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the most lethal attack on Latinos in US history. Crusius wrote that he had been inspired by Tarrant. Payton Gendron, who shot dead 10 African Americans at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in 2022 also cited the great replacement as a motive.
The idea of a takeover by foreigners is not new. In the late 19th century, Boston senator Henry Cabot Lodge spoke out against the mass immigration of what he regarded as inferior Catholic and Jewish populations from Europe. But by giving white supremacists a scapegoat for white demographic decline – the “global elite” – and christening the alleged phenomenon with the catchy title “Great Replacement”, Renaud Camus popularised the idea.
[ French controversialist Michel Houellebecq takes another tilt at IslamOpens in new window ]
Renaud Camus is a friend to the Le Pen clan, who have brought the far-right perilously close to power in France. He influenced Éric Zemmour, the failed far-right presidential candidate who advocates the mass expulsion of Africans and Arabs, and he is close to Michel Houellebecq, the writer whose books hold the record for sales of contemporary French fiction throughout the world. Renaud Camus inspired Houellebecq’s 2015 novel, Submission, about a Muslim takeover of France.
In 2022, the philosopher Michel Onfray published an interview with Houellebecq in which Houellebecq stated that “the Great Replacement is not a theory but fact… Our only chance of survival is that white supremacism is becoming trendy in the US”. Houellebecq predicted there would be “attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafes frequented by Muslims” which he described as “acts of resistance”. He said the “Français de souche” or “real” French population don’t want Muslims to assimilate “but for them to stop stealing from and aggressing them… Or the other solution is for them to leave.”
The catch-all great replacement theory extends to any allegedly threatening ‘other’. Trump has labelled Mexicans ‘drug dealers, criminals, rapists’
It is doubtful that Donald Trump, who boasts of not reading books, is familiar with the works of Renaud Camus or Houellebecq. But their insidious, racist ideology permeates the thinking of Trump and his followers.
In 2017, then president Trump banned the entry of citizens from six Muslim-majority countries to the US. Responding to false allegations that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pet cats and dogs, and claims that Aurora, Colorado, has been taken over by Venezuelan gangs, Trump promised on September 13th to carry out “the largest deportation in the history of our country”.
Trump and his supporters have no regard for facts. On September 15th, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, told CNN it didn’t matter if the story of Haitians eating pets – which he spread – was true. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said.
The catch-all great replacement theory extends to any allegedly threatening “other”. Just as Houellebecq dismisses Muslims as thieves and aggressors, Trump has labelled Mexicans “drug dealers, criminals, rapists”.
In April 2020, Trump posted a message on Twitter: “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive order to temporarily suspend Immigration into the United States!”
[ While Mexico’s democracy has been weakening, migration is keeping the US quietOpens in new window ]
When Trump says that Democrats rigged the 2020 election and will cheat on November 5th, he echoes the core tenet of the great replacement conspiracy theory: that liberal elites are exploiting immigrants as a tool to perpetuate their hold on power. A 2022 poll by the Associated Press found that one-third of US adults believe there is an attempt “to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains”.
Election denialism prepares the way for Trump to dispute the result of the November 5th election if he loses. “Our elections are bad,” Trump said in his September 10th debate with Kamala Harris. “And a lot of illegal immigrants coming in, they are trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically and these people are trying to get them to vote and that’s why they are allowing them to come into our country.”