The Great Replacement

This article is about the demographic trend. For the article about the broader concept, see White genocide. For the left-wing "official" corporate media term, see Wikipedia:The Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement) is a white nationalist political term for the effort to study how the white Catholic French population, and white Christian European population at large, is being progressively replaced by non-European people, specifically Arab/Berber Middle Eastern, North African and Sub-Saharan African populations, through mass migration and demographic growth. The term was popularized by Renaud Camus in his 2012 book The Great Replacement (French: Le Grand Remplacement). It specifically associated the presence of Muslims in France with potential danger and destruction of French culture and civilization.

The opponents of these demographic trends attribute this process to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal elites from within the French Government and the European Union, specifically members of what they unofficially call the Shadow Party. The perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings is said to have been heavily influenced by this process, and named his manifesto The Great Replacement. The term itself has become increasingly problematic as a result, and commonly dismissed as a conspiracy theory for this reason, with proponents often being accused of racism.

Origins

The description of the great replacement theory can be traced back to the 1973 novel Le Camp des Saints by Jean Raspail, which depicts the collapse of Western culture owing to an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third World immigration. The novel, along with the popularization of the "Eurabia" concept developed by the Swiss-Israeli writer Bat Ye'or in 2005, set the ground then for Renaud Camus to develop and present his book entitled The Great Replacement in 2012. The ongoing replacement, or white genocide, has been strongly criticized by right-wing nationalist movements in the West.

Work of Renaud Camus

Renaud Camus has stated that "the great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people". Camus has argued that European culture, civilization and identity are being overrun by mass migration, especially from Muslim migrants, who are aided by a trans-national group of globalist elites, often claimed by some critics to be working on behalf of a wider conspiracy for world domination. These changes have since been widely studied and discussed in right-wing and white nationalist circles outside of France. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American organization founded and then led by Morris Dees, then condemned Camus for drawing attention to the Great Replacement.

Critics of the Replacement include not only right-wing populist parties but also a wide-ranging network of alt-right and Third Position protest movements (e.g., Germany's PEGIDA), ideological groupuscules (e.g., bloc identitaire), bloggers (e.g., Fjordman and Lauren Southern), and pundits. Éric Zemmour, author of The French Suicide and a candidate in the 2022 French presidential election, later described "the progressive replacement, over a few decades, of the historic population of our country by immigrants, the vast majority of them non-European".

Influence on other right-wing dissidents

Nationalist right-wing groups in France have condemned an ongoing "Islamo-substitution" of the indigenous French population, associating the presence of Muslims in France with danger and destruction of French culture and civilization.

This replacement of European peoples by Arab/Berber Middle Eastern, North African, and Sub-Saharan African immigrants is described as a deliberate goal being advanced by the policies of the French state, the European Union, and other political elites.

Prominent counterjihad websites such as Gates of Vienna, Politically Incorrect, and Fdesouche, as well as other right-wing sites, have provided a platform for bloggers to diffuse and popularize discussion of these trends outside the normal censorship channels restricting the European mainstream media.

White protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia were heard chanting “You will not replace us,” and, “Jews will not replace us.”, slogans which commentators believed were meant to indicate their willingness to resist being replaced over time.

Social effects

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian man accused of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, was influenced by his research of the Great Replacement process to name his manifesto after it. Camus condemned such violence, but reaffirmed his desire for a "counterrevolt" against an increase in non-white populations.

The perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, Payton S. Gendron, also endorsed the "Great Replacement" theory in his own manifesto.

Censorship of the term

Immigration and population replacement proponents have generally banned use of the term, or discussion of the underlying demographic changes, in mainstream media organs and in social media, as it is not considered politically correct. As such, it is usually derided by such organizations as a racist and discredited conspiracy theory. The so-called "conservative" media has generally gone along with these restrictions, but a few right-wing pundits, like Tucker Carlson, have started to make limited use of it in the 2020s.

See also

• Population replacement
• Counter-jihad
• Eurabia
• Kalergi plan
• White genocide
• Human biodiversity debate
• Islamization