Great Replacement conspiracy theory

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".

[16][15][17] This substitution, along with a use of simple catch-all slogans, has been cited as one of the reasons for its broader appeal in a pan-European context,[16][18][19] although the concept remains rooted in antisemitism in many white nationalist movements, especially (but not exclusively) in the United States.

[25] Europe also experienced an escalation in Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s–2010s,[26] and a migrant crisis in the years 2015–2016,[27] which exacerbated tensions and prepared public opinion for the reception of Camus's conspiracy theory.

[28][8] 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.

[42] 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.

[53][51] Scholars also highlight a modern similarity to European neo-fascist and neo-Nazi thinkers from the immediate post-war, especially Maurice Bardèche, René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz,[54][55] and to concepts advanced from the 1960s onward by the French Nouvelle Droite.

[57][58][59] Eurabia theory likewise involves globalist entities, that are led by both French and Arab powers, conspiring to Islamize Europe, with Muslims submerging the continent through immigration and higher birth rates.

Using Ruth Wodak's analysis that the slogan needs to be viewed in its historical context, Bauböck has concluded that the conspiracy theory is a reemergence of the Nazi ideology of Umvolkung ("ethnicity inversion").

[76][77] Prominent right-wing extremist websites such as Gates of Vienna, Politically Incorrect, and Fdesouche [fr] have provided a platform for bloggers to diffuse and popularize the theory of the "Great Replacement".

[82][9][83] In 2011, Marine Le Pen evoked the theory, claiming that France's "adversaries" were waging a moral and economic war on the country, apparently "to deliver it to submersion by an organized replacement of our population".

[84] In 2015, Guillaume Faye gave a speech at the Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm, in which he claimed there were three societal things being used against Europeans to carry out a supposed Great Replacement: abortion, homosexuality and immigration.

[94] In May 2019, National Rally spokesman Jordan Bardella was reported to use the conspiracy theory during a televised debate with Nathalie Loiseau, after he argued that France must "turn off the tap" from the demographic bomb of African immigration into the country.

In April 2019, Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Hard Line party, which is widely associated with the Great Replacement,[109] claimed that by the year 2040 ethnic Danish people would be approaching to be a minority in Denmark, having been outnumbered by Muslims and their descendants.

[116] In April 2017, a few months before he assumed the leadership of the AfD, Alexander Gauland released a press statement regarding the issue of family reunification for refugees, in which he claimed that "Population exchange in Germany is running at full speed".

[94][116] In October 2018, following Beatrix von Storch's lead, Bundestag member Petr Bystron said the Global Compact for Migration was part of the conspiracy to bring about systemic population change in Germany.

[116] In March 2019, Vice Germany reported how AfD MP Harald Laatsch [de] attempted to justify and assign blame for the Christchurch mosque shootings, in relation to his "The Great Exchange"[j] theory, by asserting that the shooter's actions were driven by "overpopulation" from immigrants and "climate protection" against them.

[122] A 2019 Lidl advertisement that featured a white Irish woman, her Afro-Brazilian partner and their mixed race son was targeted by former journalist Gemma O'Doherty as part of an attempt at a "Great Replacement".

"[129][130][131] Some participants in the 2022–2023 Irish anti-immigration protests such as Hermann Kelly and Derek Blighe support a Great Replacement theory, as well as referring to the influx of immigrants as an "invasion" and a "plantation".

[139] In March 2017, Thierry Baudet, leader of the right wing Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, promoted the theory after he claimed that the country's so-called elite were deliberately "homeopathically diluting" the Dutch population, in a speech about "national self-hatred".

Filip Dewinter, a leading member of the Flemish secessionist Vlaams Belang party, who had traveled to the Netherlands on the day of the protest to meet with Camus, named him as a "visionary man" to the media.

[2] In September 2018, Dutch author Paul Scheffer analyzed the Great Replacement and its political developments, suggesting that Forum for Democracy and Party for Freedom were forming policy regarding the demography of the Netherlands through the lens of the conspiracy theory.

Hope not Hate researcher Patrik Hermansson described the videos as prime examples of dog whistles due to using language and imagery that direct viewers to the conspiracy theory without explicitly referencing it.

[158] She was criticized by Canadian MP Colin Fraser at a House of Commons justice committee for not denouncing the concept,[159] while Nathaniel Erskine-Smith accused Shepherd of openly embracing the conspiracy theory.

According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were, "convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.

[171] The far right neo-Nazi youth group Action Zealandia has endorsed the Great Replacement theory, alleging that European identity in New Zealand is being threatened by economically driven non-white migration.

In 2022, Hindu nationalist Yati Narsinghanand was arrested on hate speech charges and spoke about the risk of a Muslim prime minister in 2029, which he said would lead to killings and forced conversions of Hindus.

[k][184] According to historians Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, along with sociologist Ahmed Boubeker, "the announcement of a civil war is implicit in the theory of the 'great replacement' [...] This thesis is extreme—and so simplistic that it can be understood by anyone—because it validates a racial definition of the nation.

"[19] Sceptical of Camus's description of second or third generation immigrants as being itself a contradiction in terms—"they do not migrate anymore, they are French"—demographer Hervé Le Bras is also critical of their designation as a fifth column in France or an "internal enemy".

[188][189] Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian terrorist responsible for the mass shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019, that killed 51 people and injured 49, named his manifesto The Great Replacement, a reference to Camus's book.

[191] Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the 2019 El Paso shooting, posted an online manifesto titled The Inconvenient Truth alluding to the "great replacement"[186] and expressing support for "the Christchurch shooter" minutes before the attack.