Great Replacement conspiracy theory

Based on Wikipedia: Great Replacement conspiracy theory

In March 2019, a gunman walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and murdered 51 people. Before he began shooting, he published a manifesto online. Its title: "The Great Replacement."

The phrase has since appeared in the writings of mass shooters in El Paso, Buffalo, and Jacksonville. It has been repeated by prime-time cable news hosts watched by millions. And it all traces back to a French writer most people have never heard of.

This is the story of how a conspiracy theory moved from the margins of European nationalism to the center of global violence—and why it matters for anyone trying to understand why some white nationalists are so obsessed with ancient civilizations.

The Man Behind the Phrase

Renaud Camus is not a household name outside France. A novelist and essayist, he coined the term "Great Replacement" in a 2011 book of the same name—Le Grand Remplacement in French. But the idea had been percolating in his mind for at least fifteen years before that.

Camus says the concept first occurred to him in 1996, while he was editing a travel guidebook for the Hérault department in southern France. Walking through old villages, he noticed that the population looked different than he expected. Different than it had been. "I suddenly realized that in very old villages the population had totally changed," he told The Spectator magazine years later. "This is when I began to write like that."

The theory Camus eventually articulated makes several claims bundled together. First, that the ethnic French population—by which he means white Europeans—is being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants, particularly Muslims from Africa and the Middle East. Second, that this replacement is not accidental but deliberate, orchestrated by what he calls "replacist elites" in the French government, the European Union, and the United Nations. Third, that this amounts to a kind of genocide—what Camus terms "genocide by substitution."

Where did the name come from? Camus himself suggested it might have been an unconscious reference to the "Grand Dérangement"—the forced expulsion of French-speaking Acadians from Canada by the British in the 1750s. If so, it's a revealing choice: Camus positions modern white Europeans as victims of the same kind of ethnic cleansing their ancestors once inflicted on others.

The Language of Occupation

What makes Camus's rhetoric distinctive—and, critics argue, dangerous—is his systematic use of World War Two vocabulary.

He calls non-European immigrants "Occupiers" and "colonizers." He dismisses politicians and journalists who support immigration as "collaborationists"—the term used for French people who cooperated with Nazi Germany during the occupation. In 2017, Camus founded an organization called the National Council of European Resistance, a direct reference to the World War Two resistance movement that fought against Hitler.

Think about what this framing does. It transforms ordinary immigrants into enemy combatants. It transforms multicultural democracy into Nazi occupation. And it transforms anyone who pushes back against diversity into a heroic resistance fighter.

Scholars have argued that this language contains an implicit call to violence. If immigrants are truly "Occupiers," then what did the French Resistance do to occupiers? The historical answer involves sabotage, assassination, and guerrilla warfare.

Camus himself has publicly condemned white nationalist violence. But the logic of his metaphors points in one direction.

A Century of Similar Ideas

Camus may have coined the catchy phrase, but he did not invent the underlying fear. Anxieties about demographic replacement have haunted European nationalism for well over a hundred years.

In the late 1800s, French politicians worried about the "Yellow Peril"—the idea that Asian immigrants would flood into France and overwhelm the native population. The proposed solution was characteristically direct: French women needed to have more babies to produce enough soldiers to hold back the coming tide. Maurice Barrès, a nationalist writer of that era, warned in both 1889 and 1900 that immigration combined with declining French birth rates would lead to population replacement.

The antisemitic version came even earlier. In 1886, Édouard Drumont published La France juive (Jewish France), a bestselling book that accused Jews of plotting to destroy European civilization through intermarriage and racial mixing. This conspiracy theory—that a hostile elite was deliberately engineering demographic change—would prove remarkably durable.

After World War Two, neo-fascist and neo-Nazi thinkers in Europe kept these ideas alive in various forms. The French "New Right" (Nouvelle Droite) developed sophisticated-sounding arguments about cultural identity and ethnic continuity that dressed up the old fears in academic language.

Then came the concept of "Eurabia."

In 2005, a British author writing under the pen name Bat Ye'or published a book arguing that European governments were deliberately conspiring with Arab powers to Islamize Europe. Muslims would pour across the Mediterranean through immigration. Their higher birth rates would do the rest. The result would be a transformed continent—Europe as an extension of Arabia.

Scholars generally consider Eurabia theory a direct precursor to Camus's Great Replacement. Both involve a secret plot by elites. Both cast immigrants as invaders. Both invoke demographic statistics as evidence of an existential threat.

The American Parallel: White Genocide

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a nearly identical conspiracy theory had been developing under a different name.

In 1995, David Lane—a convicted member of a neo-Nazi terrorist group called The Order—published what he called the "White Genocide Manifesto" from his prison cell. Lane claimed that Western governments were deliberately trying to make white people an "extinct species" through immigration and racial mixing.

Lane is also the author of the infamous "14 Words," a slogan that has become a touchstone for white supremacists worldwide: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

The white genocide conspiracy theory and the Great Replacement are essentially the same idea with different packaging. The key difference is the enemy. In the American version, following older antisemitic traditions, Jews are typically blamed for orchestrating the demographic transformation. In Camus's European version, Muslims are the threatening demographic, and the enemy is vaguer—"global elites" rather than specifically Jews.

This substitution of Islamophobia for antisemitism has been cited as one reason Camus's formulation spread so effectively in Europe. Anti-Muslim sentiment is more socially acceptable in mainstream European politics than overt antisemitism. By removing the Jewish element, Camus made his conspiracy theory palatable to a broader audience.

But in practice, the two versions frequently merge. Many American white supremacists who invoke the Great Replacement explicitly blame Jews for engineering non-white immigration. The Anti-Defamation League noted in 2021 that the Great Replacement has become increasingly conflated with antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially in the United States.

What the Numbers Actually Show

Is there any factual basis for claims about demographic replacement?

Yes and no—mostly no.

Immigration to European countries has increased significantly since World War Two. The ethnic composition of countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom has changed. These are facts.

But the conspiracy theory claims much more than this. It claims that the change is deliberate, orchestrated by shadowy elites. It claims that the change represents an existential threat—that white Europeans face extinction or cultural annihilation. And it claims that the pace of change is so rapid that "replacement" will occur within a generation or two.

Academic researchers have consistently found these claims to be false or wildly exaggerated.

Consider France, the epicenter of Great Replacement thinking. Researchers estimate the Muslim population of France at somewhere between 8.8 percent and 12.5 percent as of 2017. That's a significant minority, but it's nowhere near a majority—let alone a "replacement" of the existing population. For comparison, the Muslim population was estimated at less than 1 percent in 2001, so the growth has been real but not the overwhelming tide that conspiracy theorists describe.

Geographer Landis MacKellar has criticized Camus's thesis for its fundamental assumption that third- and fourth-generation descendants of immigrants are somehow not French. At what point does a family become "native"? Camus's framework has no coherent answer because it defines Frenchness in terms of race rather than citizenship, culture, or self-identification.

Austrian political scientist Rainer Bauböck has drawn an even more disturbing parallel. He argues that the conspiracy theory's language of "population replacement" and "exchange" echoes Nazi ideology—specifically the concept of Umvolkung, or "ethnicity inversion," which the Nazis used to justify their own policies of ethnic cleansing.

The Psychology of Projection

Australian historian A. Dirk Moses has offered a provocative interpretation of why the Great Replacement theory resonates so powerfully with white Europeans and their descendants.

His argument is simple: projection.

European colonial powers spent centuries doing exactly what the conspiracy theory describes—replacing native populations with European settlers. The Americas, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Africa: all were transformed through immigration, demographic change, and the deliberate or accidental elimination of indigenous peoples.

Moses suggests that the Great Replacement theory represents Europeans' fear that what they did to others might be done to them. Having built their modern nations on the displacement of native peoples, they now project that same dynamic onto immigration to their own countries.

It's a kind of guilty conscience dressed up as demographic analysis.

Why It Spread

The 2010s provided near-perfect conditions for the Great Replacement theory to metastasize.

Europe experienced a surge of Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s and 2010s. Then came the migrant crisis of 2015-2016, when over a million asylum seekers entered the European Union, many fleeing wars in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Media images of crowded boats and desperate refugees created a visceral sense of being overwhelmed—even though the actual numbers, distributed across a continent of over 400 million people, were relatively small.

These events primed public opinion for Camus's message. He depicted population replacement as something happening rapidly, within one or two generations. The migrant crisis seemed to provide visual evidence that the replacement was already underway.

Camus was also not alone in articulating European cultural pessimism. A wave of bestselling books during the same period carried similar themes, often with provocatively direct titles: Thilo Sarrazin's Germany Abolishes Itself (2010), Éric Zemmour's The French Suicide (2014), Michel Houellebecq's novel Submission (2015)—which imagined France under an Islamic government.

The Great Replacement offered something these other works did not: a simple, sticky phrase. "You have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people." It's not a sophisticated argument. It doesn't need to be. Conspiracy theories spread through slogans, not peer-reviewed papers.

From Theory to Terrorism

Here is where the story turns darkest.

The Christchurch shooter titled his manifesto "The Great Replacement." He explicitly cited the theory as his motivation for murdering Muslim worshippers.

The El Paso shooter, who killed 23 people at a Walmart in 2019, wrote about a "Hispanic invasion of Texas" and referenced the same ideas.

The Buffalo shooter in 2022, who murdered 10 Black shoppers at a grocery store, published a lengthy document citing Great Replacement theory and its associated statistics.

The Jacksonville shooter in 2023 targeted Black customers at a Dollar General store. His writings invoked the same conspiracy theory.

These are not isolated incidents or coincidental references. The shooters explicitly described their murders as acts of resistance against demographic replacement. They saw themselves as defending their race against extinction.

Camus has condemned these attacks. He insists his theory does not call for violence. But critics point out that his own language—Occupiers, collaborationists, genocide, resistance—creates a framework in which violence becomes logical. If your people are truly facing extinction, if enemy forces are truly occupying your homeland, then what response could possibly be proportionate? The rhetoric of existential threat licenses extreme measures.

The Mainstream Breakthrough

Perhaps most troubling is how far beyond white nationalist circles these ideas have traveled.

In the United States, Tucker Carlson—who was, until 2023, the most-watched host on cable news—repeatedly promoted replacement theory on his Fox News program. He warned that the Democratic Party was trying to "replace the current electorate" with "more obedient voters from the Third World." Laura Ingraham, another Fox News host, made similar arguments.

These are not fringe figures broadcasting to small audiences. Carlson's show reached millions of viewers nightly. When mainstream commentators adopt the language and logic of a conspiracy theory, they do more than spread information. They legitimize it. They tell their audience that these fears are reasonable, these claims are respectable, this worldview is normal.

In France, the theory has penetrated even further into mainstream politics. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party (formerly the National Front), invoked replacement theory in 2011, claiming France's "adversaries" were waging war on the country "to deliver it to submersion by an organized replacement of our population." The National Rally has since become one of the most powerful political forces in France, winning a plurality in the first round of the 2024 legislative elections.

Survey data suggests the theory has significant popular support. A 2018 poll found that 25 percent of French respondents subscribed to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Among those who identified with the Yellow Vest protest movement, the figure was 46 percent. A 2021 survey found 61 percent of French respondents believed the Great Replacement would happen in France, with 67 percent saying they were worried about it.

These numbers should give pause. Conspiracy theories that command majority assent are no longer fringe beliefs. They are part of the political mainstream.

The Classical Connection

Why does any of this matter for understanding white nationalist obsessions with ancient Greece and Rome?

The Great Replacement theory relies on a particular conception of European civilization as a coherent, continuous tradition stretching back thousands of years. In this telling, there is an unbroken line from ancient Athens and Rome through medieval Christendom to modern Europe. White Europeans are the inheritors and guardians of this civilization. Immigrants from other parts of the world are, by definition, outsiders to it.

Ancient Greece and Rome play a special role in this mythology. They represent the supposed origins of "Western civilization"—its philosophy, its democracy, its art, its architecture. White nationalists point to the Parthenon and the Colosseum as evidence of what "their people" built. They invoke Sparta and Rome as models of militaristic societies that defended their cultures against foreign threats.

Of course, actual historians of the ancient world paint a more complicated picture. The Mediterranean civilizations that white nationalists claim as ancestral were not racially homogeneous. They interacted constantly with Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The "whiteness" of ancient Greeks and Romans is largely a modern projection onto societies that did not think about race in the same way.

But historical accuracy is not the point. The point is to construct a narrative in which white Europeans have a special civilizational inheritance worth defending—worth defending, if necessary, with violence. The Great Replacement theory provides the threat. Classical antiquity provides the heritage. Together, they create a story that gives meaning to racial anxiety.

The Path Forward

What can be done about a conspiracy theory that has inspired mass murder and captured significant popular support?

There are no easy answers.

Fact-checking helps at the margins. It's worth pointing out, again and again, that the demographic statistics don't support apocalyptic claims of replacement. It's worth noting that immigration trends are driven by complex economic and geopolitical factors, not secret conspiracies by shadowy elites.

But conspiracy theories are notoriously resistant to factual refutation. Their believers can always argue that the true statistics are being suppressed, that the fact-checkers are part of the conspiracy, that absence of evidence is itself evidence of how effectively the conspiracy operates.

Perhaps more useful is understanding why these theories appeal in the first place. People who feel economically insecure, culturally displaced, or politically powerless are vulnerable to explanations that name a clear enemy and promise a clear solution. Conspiracy theories offer certainty in an uncertain world. They offer community among fellow believers. They offer the dignity of being among the few who know the truth.

Addressing those underlying needs—economic security, cultural recognition, political voice—might do more to reduce the appeal of replacement theory than any amount of debunking.

In the meantime, the Great Replacement continues to spread. It has become, in the words of one scholar, "the master text of white nationalist terrorism." And it shows no signs of fading from our politics anytime soon.