What is The Great Replacement?
“The Great Replacement” is a phrase coined by the French writer Renaud Camus. In an interview for American Renaissance, Mr. Camus explained it this way:
Genocide by substitution, or Great Replacement, or change of people and civilization, in short the destruction of the Europeans of Europe, is the XXI century’s crime against humanity.
Of his critics, Mr. Camus said this:
[H]ate has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are no expressions of hatred in my writings, nor any attacks on people. But hatred is the very effective name that the replacist power has chosen to give to any opposition to genocide by substitution, to any resistance to the Great Replacement, to the slightest objection to the change of people and civilization. By the way, beware when people start to speak of your hatred: It usually means that they want to kill you, or at least to finish you off, to silence you.
Is The Great Replacement a right-wing concept?
No. Mr. Camus is an irreligious homosexual and an environmentalist. Moreover, though they did not use the term, leftists talked about the phenomenon well before his book Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement) was published in 2011. In 1997, President Bill Clinton said this at the University of California, San Diego:
Within the next three years, here in California no single race or ethnic group will make up a majority of the State’s population. Already, five of our largest school districts draw students from over 100 different racial and ethnic groups. At this campus, 12 Nobel Prize winners have taught or studied from nine different countries. A half-century from now, when your own grandchildren are in college, there will be no majority race in America.
Liberals have written many books about replacement, many before 2011. The most famous is The Emerging Democratic Majority by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, published in 2004. Academics have written about population in non-partisan ways. An example is Barren States: The Population ‘Implosion’ in Europe, which was published in 2005. This is from Amazon’s description:
Globally, over sixty-four countries have fallen below generation replacement levels and countries in eastern and southern Europe are registering the lowest birth rates in the history of humanity. Demographers emphasize that these developments could have serious repercussions for society and public policy.
Whites are not only becoming a smaller share of America, whites are declining in absolute numbers as well. The 2020 census found that in the previous 10 years, the Asian population in the United States had grown by 35 percent, Hispanics by 23 percent, and blacks by 5.6 percent, while the number of whites declined by 8.6 percent.
For a list of books about The Great Replacement from varying political perspectives, see my blog post here.
Is belief in The Great Replacement “fringe”?
No. The Great Replacement is discussed by every major news outlet, many prominent commentators, and not a few politicians. Some examples:
Georgia is the premier battleground state in 2020. Democrats must invest, we must compete, and we must win. That’s why today I released The Abrams Playbook: The Strategy and Path to Victory in 2020.
— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) September 9, 2019
Check it out:https://t.co/TFBMq9TYIR
Georgia’s electorate is growing fast and changing rapidly. We need a strategy with big, early investments to take advantage of Georgia’s strengths by expanding the electorate, particularly with voters of color. pic.twitter.com/hGhwR259d9
— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) September 9, 2019
When really it shouldn't have been competitive. Because it's a district full of Republicans.
— Mkay (@JoyAnnReid) June 21, 2017
Trump’s coalition won the demographic battle. It’ll still lose the war. https://t.co/fqLkqXlTPK pic.twitter.com/Mz54rJEzXI
— Vox (@voxdotcom) November 15, 2016
https://twitter.com/pharaoh29082386/status/1526617044778614785
Gregory Hood has written about how often the Left talks about The Great Replacement:
- Verified Hate: The Great Replacement, January 6, 2020
- Verified Hate: The Great Replacement Is Back Again, May 18, 2021
- Why Do Leftists Celebrate White Decline?, August 25, 2021
- Verified Hate: Replacement Denialism, September 2, 2021
Are whites the only victims of replacement?
No. The Great Replacement affects whites more than any other group, but demographic change can dispossess other groups. In the United States, blacks have been pushed out of many cities and replaced by Hispanics. Here are figures for Los Angeles:
Year | Percent Black | Percent Hispanic |
1990 | 11.20 | 37.81 |
2000 | 9.78 | 44.56 |
2010 | 8.73 | 47.74 |
2020 | 7.93 | 47.98 |
From 2000 to 2010, Chicago’s black population decreased by 17 percent in the face of gains by Asians and Hispanics.
Is there anything else I should know about The Great Replacement?
I recommend these two videos: