The Great Replacement: What does the racist theory that sows death and captivates the extreme right in the US say?

An 18-year-old self-described fascist, racist, and anti-Semite leaves his home and travels 200 miles to an African-American neighborhood in buffalo, in western New York. He walks into a supermarket and opens fire using an AR-15 assault rifle. Of the 13 victims, 11 are black. Stream the attack live. Payton Gendron had it planned for months. He had written a 180-page manifesto in which he praised the ideas of the racist Great Replacement theory.

“I am simply a white man seeking to protect and serve my community, my people, my culture and my race”. After the shots, the shock and the lament resounded like an old song that does not stop repeating in the US.

READ ALSO | Payton Gendron: Racist Buffalo Shooter Appears in US Courts

the of buffalo left 10 dead a week ago, but thousands have been killed by racist attacks in the United States in recent years. Before Gendron, horror had the faces of Robert Bowers or Patrick Wood Crusius, murderers of more than 30 people in 2018 and 2019. Both white supremacists, these attackers have in common their fascination with the Great Replacement, the same conspiracy theory that used by the man who murdered 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

This theory is a racist conspiracy belief that has been on extremist and white nationalist websites for quite some time. He argues that white populations are being deliberately replaced by immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and refugees around the world, primarily affecting Western European countries and the United States.

Attorney Benjamin Crump, right, joined by the family of Ruth Whitfield, a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting, speaks to members of the media, Monday, May 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) .

Alberto Rojas Lammers, a social justice political consultant based in Los Angeles, points out that an estimated one in three Americans believes in one of his two postulates. “They basically think that a group of people are intentionally working to replace ‘native-born’ Americans with immigrants for electoral gains and that immigrants lead to a loss of political, cultural and economic influence among native-born Americans. ”he tells El Comercio.

born in france

The idea that immigrants that belong to racial minorities could displace native white Europeans dates back to 20th-century French nationalism. But the term itself was coined by far-right French author Renaud Camus.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the reference institution in the study of extremism in the US, explains that Camus “falsely described non-white immigration to France from the decolonized Middle East and Africa as an attempt by a sinister elite ‘replacement’ of destroying native French demography and culture. White supremacy and codified anti-Semitism were part of the Camus narrative from the beginning.”

These ideas directly influenced the growth of the far-right anti-immigrant European ultra-nationalist movement in the following decade. One issue that obsesses the followers of this theory is that of the birth rate, which also leads them to view feminism and all the social achievements that can make women move away from “contributing to reproduction” with concern. .

“It’s the birth rates” was the first sentence the Christchurch shooter wrote in his own manifesto.

In power and beyond

This white supremacist theory it has become an engine of racist terror, inspiring a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the manifestation of far-right hate speech.

Ana Lucía Mosquera Rosado, consultant and researcher specializing in intercultural communication, diversity, gender and non-discrimination issues, points out that all the groups that are motivating hate currents and that reproduce white supremacist discourses use this theory to justify their actions, the same that have violent consequences for communities of color in the United States.

For the expert, the Great Replacement has become more popular due to what has happened in political terms in the United States, especially due to the speeches of members of the Republican Party and since the election of Donald Trump, who does not quote this doctrine directly, but that speaks of immigrants and racialized minorities as groups that want to take jobs away.

Former US President Donald Trump. (Photo: EFE) (EFE/EPA/ADAM DAVIS/)

“A breeding ground has been formed for this polarization to be generated on racial issues. These white supremacist groups are now much more visible, and in the Trump administration they had a legitimacy that they did not have before because the speeches have been validated and the violence has also been justified.says Mosquera Rosado.

Other factors that have promoted the dissemination of these ideas are social networks and the inefficient regulation of hate speech on their platforms, the always problematic possession of the use of weapons, as well as the presence of these speeches in some media. One representative of the latter is Tucker Carlson, a Fox News star and far-right figure who has repeatedly expressed concern about white Americans losing political and social power due to the country’s greater racial diversity.

Paradoxically, these types of theories or movements do not have a logical basis. “These theories are simply ideas that are repeated, that are perceived. They appeal to fear and construct non-white people as threats, whether it be to racial minorities or to the immigrant currents that are part of this equation of how complex the United States is as a society,” Mosquera Rosado concludes.

Source: Elcomercio