International Migration and Replacement Theory

The Great Replacement Theory is rooted in racist, baseless beliefs about innate superiority and white privilege

The term ‘globalization’ gained currency in the 1980s. It was a part of the policy approach labeled ‘the Washington Consensus’, so called because it emerged out of the work done at the Washington-based institutions such as the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund. Globalization referred to the lowering — if not altogether removal — of the barriers to the movement of information, finance and goods across international frontiers. In Western Europe all restrictions on the movement of people were also removed. Once a foreign person had entered one member of the European Union, he or she could cross borders without the need for additional documents. The European Union approach to the movement of people produced population mixes some of which bothered local populations.

This lowering of barriers to all kinds of movements reshaped the world and significantly changed the nature of the global economy. Manufacturers and providers of services located themselves in the places that had distinct advantages. Final products were not produced in one location. Apple is a good example of how manufacturing came to be redesigned. Products such as laptop computers, iPads and mobile phones were designed in the company’s headquarters on the United States west coast but actual manufacturing and assembly was done in a giant factory located in China’s south. The factory that employed tens of thousands of people is owned by a Taiwanese company. Parts and components come in from a dozen or so places in East Asia and final product is assembled in the giant assembly plant. This reorganization of global industry had significant political consequences in the United States. They caused a lot of pain among the poorly educated and trained people. They became Donald Trump’s base of support.

What has come to be known as the replacement theory first became popular in France and then traveled to the United States. The particular term was popularized by the French writer Renaud Camus in his 2011 book, Le Grand Replacement. It focused in particular on the presence of Muslims in France with the fear that their growing number was leading to the destruction of French culture and civilization. France has the largest number of Muslims in the Western world, resulting mostly from migration from the Arab countries in North Africa once colonized by it. France fought and was defeated by the nationalist forces in Algeria. As has happened in the case of other European nations that had colonized parts of Asia and Africa, once the colonialists exited, they were followed by large numbers of people from the countries they had once colonized. The replacement theory went across the Atlantic to the United States and, as discussed below, motivated several deadly attacks on people of colour and non-Christians. Having found a welcoming home in the United States, it traveled back to Europe, in particular to countries such as Hungary and Poland.

Camus along with several others like him attributed the replacement hypothesis to international policies advocated by liberal elites who were called by them ‘replacists’. They were present in the government of France, the European Union, in various Washington-based institutions and in the United Nations.

On August 12, 2017, hundreds of people marched through Charlottesville in the American state of North Carolina carrying torches and wearing white gowns shouting, “We’ll no be replaced.” The slogan was initially raised in France and was aimed at that country’s Jewish community. The fact that they carried torches and wore white gowns was to remind those who were watching their march of the anti-Black Ku Klux Klan that was campaigning to keep the American black community in an inferior position to the white population.

Since then, numerous acts of violence have been committee by those who have declared themselves to be ‘white supremacists’. Each act resulted in several deaths. They were perpetrated by those who drew lessons from those carried out in the past. The most recent of these was in the city of Buffalo where a teenager well-equipped with weapons went to a supermarket frequented mostly by blacks belonging to the predominantly black community of the area. Ten people were killed, eight of them black. This occurred on May 14, 2022.

There was some reaction to the tragedy even among the traditionally conservative Republican Party’s (GOP) members in Congress. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism and white supremacy and antisemitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who told them,” tweeted Liz Cheney who represents Wisconsin in the House of Representatives. A commentator wrote in The Washington Post, “Cheney’s comments that came after the tragedy in Buffalo has forced something of a reckoning about how the racist ‘great replacement theory’ — that is the idea that immigrants are replacing native born Americans in some undesirable and politically calculated way — has gained traction on the right. Racists have long espoused the theory — as the Buffalo suspect apparently did — to suggest that Whites are being usurped. Meanwhile, in recent years, Republicans and conservative pundits have increasingly cast Democrats as favouring immigration in the hopes of diluting GOP’s political power. This idea was endorsed by former president Donald Trump. On September 9, 2016, while campaigning for the presidency, he espoused a version of the replacement theory pertaining to elections. “I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you are going to have people flowing across the border… and they are going to be legalized and will be able to vote, and once that happens you are not going to have one Republican vote.”

This growing sentiment in the United States led to several acts of violence not only in America but across the world. On October 27, 2018, a man killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue citing the idea that Jews have deliberately allowed ‘invaders’ into the United States. On March 15, 2019, a man killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand after writing a document invoking replacement theory by name and warning of an invasion by nonwhites. The replacement theory was fully endorsed by Tucker Carlson who has emerged as the most influential voice representing white nationalism on the American television. On September 2, 2021, in a monologue delivered on the program that he hosts, he said, “In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement’ — the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.” He added that President Joe Biden is in favour of “an unrelenting stream of immigration. But why? Well, Joe Biden has just said it: to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the third world.”

A poll released in early May found that the Great Replacement Theory (GRT) has entered the mainstream of American white politics with one-third of American adults saying there is a deliberate effort to replace native born US citizens with a wave of immigrants for political gain. The GRT is rooted in racist and baseless beliefs about innate superiority and unquestionable white privilege.