Great Replacement

The Great Replacement (french: links=no, Grand Remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory
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disseminated 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 with 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 as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."

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 strategic replacement of antisemitic canards with Islamophobia. This replacement, along with a use of simple catch-all slogans, have been cited as 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 and the 2022 Buffalo 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 that began in 2015, 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. Commenting on the name, he has also declared that his theory was the "implementation in real life" of Bertolt Brecht's quip from the satirical poem '' Die Lösung'' that the easiest thing to do for a government was to change the people had the people forfeited its confidence.

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". Camus founded in 2017 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"., 23m05s. 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

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