The Transatlantic Circulation of the ‘Great Replacement’: from Anti-Immigration Conspiracy Theory to Racialized Voter Fraud Narrative

The Transatlantic Circulation of the ‘Great Replacement’: from Anti-Immigration Conspiracy Theory to Racialized Voter Fraud Narrative

Cecile Leconte

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Keywords: Great Replacement, Circulation of Ideas, Republican Party, Voter Fraud, White Democracy

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On August 11, 2017, hundreds of individuals representing anti-Semitic and white supremacist groups—and protesting the removal of General Robert E. Lee’s statue from a public park—gathered for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a two-day event that triggered extreme violence and resulted in the death of a counter-protester. The extremists opened the rally by chanting “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us”—a clear reference to the Great Replacement theory coined seven years earlier by French far-right writer and novelist Renaud Camus.

Until then confined to exchanges between U.S. alt-right activists and European Identitarians,[1] the phrase “Great Replacement”[2] erupted into the U.S. public sphere thanks to a violent, insurrectional, deliberately orchestrated, and heavily mediated event.[3] Coined by French writer Camus and theorized in a 2011 book,[4] the phrase refers to an alleged process of demographic and civilizational substitution. According to Camus, Europe—particularly France—is experiencing an irreversible transformation in which the “historic,” “native,” “old-stock” population is being steadily replaced by populations mainly from Africa and the Maghreb. This substitution amounts to a genuine “counter-colonization,” a “genocide by substitution,” supposedly orchestrated by segments of the political elite (e.g., liberals, left-wing forces) and international organizations. The idea behind the Great Replacement is certainly not new. It crystallizes—wherever it circulates—long-standing imaginaries of “submersion,” of a numerically or socially dominant ethnic group being made a minority by groups allegedly intent on inverting relations of domination. However, the phrase is new. Not only does it capture, in a short formula, a clear-cut idea (that of ethnic substitution) while being broad enough to adapt to different contexts; it can also be understood as a motto—a call for action in the face of an emergency. This manifests itself in the fact that those who believe in the Great Replacement are more likely than others to justify violence as a way to achieve political ends.[5] Indeed, in the wake of Charlottesville, the Great Replacement, which Camus himself used as a mobilizing frame inciting rebellion against the “replacement elites,” gave rise to ultraviolent appropriations. Several far-right terrorists have explicitly invoked it in attacks targeting Jews[6]—accused of organizing the Great Replacement (Pittsburgh, 2018)—or groups perceived as threatening the demographic predominance of whites and/or Christians: Muslims (Christchurch, 2019), Hispanics (El Paso, 2019), African Americans (Buffalo, 2022). Yet such uses did not prevent its appropriation, from 2021–2022 onward, by leading MAGA figures and Republican elected officials—up to the current vice president of the United States.

This article seeks to answer the following question: How did a phrase originating in the French literary far right, coined by a relatively obscure writer, travel across the Atlantic to the United States, where it was appropriated not only by violent extremist organizations (which might have disqualified its use) but also by politicians tasked with exercising government authority? As is argued below, while the expression “Great Replacement,” stripped of explicit references to race, allows conservative politicians to refurbish old-style racism and fears of race substitution in new clothes, its global success owes much to the ongoing internationalization of far-right organizations and movements, as well as to the emergence of a transatlantic marketplace for far-right ideas.[7]

This article starts by situating the wider context in which the Great Replacement circulates, namely the emergence of a global far right that increasingly shares frames and narratives. It then analyzes the specificity of the Great Replacement in relation to other, immigration-related conspiracy theories, explaining why the Great Replacement can be understood as a sanitized version of white supremacism, able to adapt to different cultural and political contexts. After tracing the initial stages of the Great Replacement’s trajectory in the United States, the article focuses on its appropriation within the Republican Party during the last two electoral cycles (2022 Senate election, 2024 presidential election). The upshot is that the Great Replacement, reframed as Voter Replacement, has allowed MAGA Republicans—now overwhelmingly dominant within the party—to erode white Trump voters’ trust in the electoral process (e.g., the “Big Lie”), by activating both an old fear (demographic and political “minoritization” of the white population) and an equally long-standing belief (the illegitimacy of the non-white vote).

The Rise of the Global Far Right and the Spread of Its Ideas

While the internationalization of far-right forces since the late 19^th century is certainly nothing new,[8] the current “wave” of far-right politics is characterized both by the “normalization” of the far right (as a result of increasingly porous borders between the far right and conservatism) and by the fact that its ideology has become global[9]—an idea captured under the term “global far right.”[10] Beyond the increasing interparty networking displayed at hyper-mediatized conferences (e.g., the Conservative Political Action Conference), three actors especially play a role in this increasing interconnectedness: keyboard activists, who have largely contributed, notably, to the development of a transatlantic marketplace of far-right ideas,[11] as well as “movement parties,”[12] i.e., hybrid actors that rely on traditional and nontraditional action repertoires (e.g., the French Les Identitaires or the Italian CasaPound) and subcultural, nonparty organizations (e.g., European Islamophobic organizations such as Fortress Europe, the English Defence League, or PEGIDA). They make up a large ecosystem, beyond parties that compete in the electoral arena. The understanding of the far right as a “social movement” refers to this ecosystem, aiming to capture both the exchange of resources and informal division of tasks between these actors and the blurring of lines between “radical populists” (still loyal to democracy) and “extremists” (who try to undermine or even abolish democracy).[13] These actors, together with a host of “conservative” editors, essayists, think tanks, etc., have developed a narrative shared among far-right actors across borders. The narrative is made up of three core beliefs: the existence of left-wing intellectual and cultural hegemony; the fact that left-wing forces are trying to silence conservative voices via censorship; and the presence of an existential threat to conservative ideas, values, and ways of life, legitimizing acts of rebellion against it.[14] The “Great Replacement” ties in with that bigger narrative: Understood as a call for rebellion and insurrection, it has contributed to the emergence of a transnational emotional community, full of rage and anger, aggregating the different components of the far right as a social movement.[15] In terms of chronology, in the past five years, two events have accelerated the internationalization of these narratives: the Covid-19 pandemic,[16] and attempts by Trump and segments of the MAGA movement to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election results—notably, by spreading the “Big Lie” narrative.[17]

Indeed, next to transnational networking and the organization of joint actions and mobilizations, the internationalization of the far right also manifests itself in the diffusion of common frames and identities[18]—a phenomenon that is most obvious in the transatlantic marketplace of far-right ideas. The notion of “circulation” is of special interest here, as it refers to the trajectory of an idea across social spheres and/or across linguistic/national borders, without assuming either the centrality of any specific actor or a linear character of the trajectory from point A to point B. Two lessons from this literature on the circulation of ideas are of special interest here. First, it shows that the circulatory potential of an idea depends not only on its intrinsic characteristics but equally on the social properties and positions of the actors who promote it.[19] Thus, the discursive effectiveness of the phrase “Great Replacement” is rooted in the networks that carry it: identitarian activists and alt-right thinkers, but also essayists, intellectuals, and media figures with a “conservative” label and a wider audience, who contribute to euphemizing its violent and insurrectionary dimension and, due to their positions as mentors or advisors to high-ranking politicians, act as brokers between far-right fringes and power. Furthermore, the social history of ideas emphasizes the diversity of appropriations that a single idea—or a single phrase—can undergo depending on contexts of use.[20] The more malleable a reference or phrase is, the more appropriations it can generate. In that respect, as a “flexible political strategy encompassing various explanatory frameworks and elements,”[21] the Great Replacement appears broad enough to allow for multiple appropriations.

The ‘Great Replacement’ as Sanitized White Supremacism with Multiple Interpretations

The core idea behind the Great Replacement is that of an ethnic substitution of “natives” by a foreign-born population that is neither willing nor able to “assimilate.” As such, it is an unequivocally racist theory. Camus himself believes in the existence of irreconcilable differences between “races,” even if he claims to be understanding race as a cultural notion, rather than as a biological one.[22]

This apparent ambiguity allows for different appropriations of the Great Replacement: While the more extremist version, often coupled with anti-Semitism (accusing Jews of promoting mass immigration), insists on “race substitution,” the more “mainstream” version focuses on immigration as an existential threat to a given culture or way of life. Moreover, this framing of the Great Replacement as being mainly about the preservation of a given culture allows it to travel beyond the ranks of overt white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Indeed, whereas other, older expressions accusing elites of orchestrating the eradication of white populations—such as “white genocide,” an anti-Semitic notion marked by neo-Nazi connotations[23]—have not made it into the “mainstream,” the Great Replacement appears less radical because, by replacing “Jews” with “global elites,” it seems like a reformulation of the old theme of migratory invasion stripped of the anti-Semitic dimension it long carried in both Europe and the United States since the late 19^th century[24]—even if Camus himself is clearly not without ambiguity on the issue of anti-Semitism.[25]

Moreover, even if the main targets of the Great Replacement are ethnic diversity and immigration, Camus embeds his theory within a wider, anti-globalist discourse that further obscures the inherent racism of his thinking. Indeed, for the French writer, the Great Replacement refers more broadly to the advent of an individual deprived of any “national, ethnic, or cultural” distinctiveness, deprived of any sense of history or culture—an abstract being, therefore easily replaceable, brought about by the homogenizing effects of globalization and the materialist worldview that underpins it. In that respect, Camus disparages what he calls “Davos-cracy” as the embodiment of remplacisme global (“global remplacism”), i.e., an alliance of “global elites”—in Camus’ mind “Davos, big financiers, banks, multinationals, hedge funds, and GAFAs”—that actively promotes mass immigration and treats “human stocks” as replaceable.[26] This makes the Great Replacement clearly compatible with an anti-neoliberal position lambasting “globalists”—a position that can be found within segments of the anti-capitalist left and with far-right actors such as the alt-right or the Nouvelle Droite (New Right).

At the same time, once detached from this “anti-globalist” dimension, the Great Replacement can also be combined with the ultra-liberal, anti-egalitarian, anti-diversity agenda of right-wing libertarians like Murray Rothbard.[27] The latter argue that global left-wing forces conspire to promote mass immigration in order to bring in future voters who will support large financial redistribution schemes and a robust welfare state, thereby harming thefunctioning of a free market. In a similar vein, the idea of the “replaceable” individual can also be mobilized by ultraconservatives in order to denounce progressive views and DEI policies. Beset by the idea that a so-called “gender ideology” has a negative impact on the birth rate of “natives,” far-right parties and groups in Central Europe,[28] for instance, cite the Great Replacement when accusing feminists and advocates of LGBTQI+ rights of trying to “replace” men with women and, more generally, of trying to replace traditional binary gender orders with a “fluid” regime in which individuals may change sex or identify with neither .

The Great Replacement can therefore be appropriated differently, depending on the political context. In France, it is embedded in a rhetoric of a dual decline: demographic decline—a “native” population is being threatened by immigration—and cultural decline—the “great deculturation,” another expression coined by Camus, which laments the disappearance of classical humanities and the French language in favor of a globalized mass culture. In the United States, by contrast, the literary and cultural registers are less present: The Great Replacement either refers to race substitution or is reformulated in electoral terms—a “great electoral replacement,” where Democrats favor immigration to dilute the weight of the white vote and secure political dominance. Depending on the context, groups targeted by the Great Replacement can differ: While in Europe the phrase mainly targets Muslims, echoing fears of an “Islamization” of Europe, in the United States it mainly targets immigrants and, in a less explicit way, non-white U.S. citizens.

How the ‘Great Replacement’ Initially Spread in the U.S.

During a first sequence, which begins in the second half of the 2010s, the Great Replacement is “imported” into the United States by three types of actors: activists of the alt-right influenced by theNouvelle Droiteand by French Identitarian theorists; communication specialists and opinion makers with ties to the alt-right who gained access to power in the U.S. during Trump’s first presidency; and right-wing journalists and editors operating in the “conservative” intellectual space.

Among alt-right theorists, the Great Replacement has been appropriated in an insurrectionary and anti-Semitic manner, stripped of any reference to Camus’ own writings or to the French literary figures with whom he is frequently associated in the United States. Alt-right theorists in particular—drawing in this respect on the writings of the French Nouvelle Droite and its main theorist, Alain de Benoist, regarding the centrality of the “battle of ideas”—conceive of themselves as the avant-garde of a “Euro-Atlantic metapolitics.”[29] Although the Nouvelle Droite did not coin the term Great Replacement, its core concept of ethno-differentialism (appropriated by Richard Spencer in a pamphlet entitled Why I Am an Identitarian)[30] dovetails seamlessly with replacement theory insofar as it posits the existence of “incommensurable” differences between peoples and cultures. This framework thus articulates a form of mixophobia that ultimately defends a racially segregated order in the name of the right to difference and respect for diversity. The adoption of the discursive apparatus of the Nouvelle Droite, which substitutes the notion of “culture” for that of “race,” enables alt-right actors to continue promoting a racist agenda—namely, the creation of a white ethno-state—as well as anti-Semitic ideas, under the guise of the “right to difference.”

From 2015–2017 onward, this neo-right lexicon was combined with that of the French Identitarians.[31] The Great Replacement occupies a central place within Identitarian ideology, which is obsessed with fears of a purported “Islamization” of Europe.[32] As co-organizers of the Unite the Right rally in 2017, Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo, are among the first importers of the French Identitarian lexicon and of the Great Replacement into the United States. Damigo, cofounder of a small group called Identity Evropa, modeled on Génération Identitaire (the youth organization of the French Identitarian movement), is inspired by the manifesto of one of the main French Identitarian theorists,[33] Guillaume Faye, who wrote Manifeste de la résistance européenne,[34] advocating revolutionary action to unite all movement-oriented far-rights against the supposed decline of European civilization. The presentation of Camus’ book by the writer himself[35] and by his publishers outside of France clearly places it within this extremist and insurrectionary movement: The title of the German translation calls for “revolt,”[36] while its English version, You Will Not Replace Us, published in 2018,[37] takes up the slogan that the white supremacist paramilitary groups that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 chanted. As for Spencer and Damigo, they have also been circulating the Great Replacement in radicalized digital spaces (e.g., 4chan, Gab, Telegram, Reddit), where manifestos, slogans, and supremacist memes have given replacementist discourse a viral and transnational dimension. Unlike European far-right movements, however—which seek to distance themselves from the anti-Semitism that long kept them away from power—their U.S. peers frequently endow the phrase with an anti-Semitic dimension: the Charlottesville marchers (“Jews will not replace us”), the perpetrator of the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 (who accused the Jewish NGO HIAS of co-orchestrating the Great Replacement), and, more recently, businessman and political entrepreneur Elon Musk.[38]

The Great Replacement has not remained confined to the margins of the alt-right. While the latter started losing influence after the Charlottesville terrorist attack, the Great Replacement continued to gain popularity. Acting as brokers of alt-right ideas within the sphere of power, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon sought to broaden the audience for the Great Replacement following Trump’s first election to the White House in 2016, which gave them key positions within the new administration. Both are readers of French writers whose novels, considered “must reads” by the far right in France and the United States, are interpreted as visionary prefigurations of the Great Replacement.[39] They include the late, ultranationalist Jean Raspail (author of the 1973 bestseller The Camp of the Saints,[40] which depicts the “invasion” of France by migrants with the help of well-meaning liberals) and others promoting a certain form of Islamophobia such as Michel Houellebecq (whose dystopia Submission describes the emergence of a Muslim theocracy in France[41]). Both writers are presented as prophets. Miller and Bannon try to circulate the Great Replacement in particular through Breitbart News, which, under Bannon’s influence, became the mouthpiece of the alt-right. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Miller—then a member of Senator Jeff Sessions’s staff—repeatedly urged editors at Breitbart News to compare Pope Francis with the pope depicted in The Camp of the Saints, where the naïveté of elites, including the Church, toward migration leads to Europe’s downfall,[42] and later to explicitly reference the Great Replacement in order to amplify the salience of illegal immigration,[43] a central issue in Trump’s presidential campaign. Bannon, for his part, has frequently compared the situation in France and the United States since Europe’s 2015 migration crisis to that depicted in The Camp of the Saints,[44] and he explicitly mobilized replacement theory during the 2016 campaign by declaring that “liberals attempt to change the nature of the country through immigration.”[45]

Beyond actors clearly associated with white supremacism, Camus’ expression is relayed by another type of actor who enables it to reach an even broader audience: “conservative” journalists and editors such as Ron Dreher and Christopher Caldwell, who have contributed to the circulation of the Great Replacement by disseminating Camus’ ideas in various publications, while imprinting them with a conservative framing stripped of associations with violent activism and anti-Semitism. In doing so, they have helped “sanitize” the formula and facilitate its diffusion beyond extremist milieus. Their argument rests on several interrelated claims: The Great Replacement is not a concept forged by a racist extremist but the work of a cultivated, “reasonable” man, a seeker of truth allegedly subjected to censorship targeting “free thinkers” in Europe (a framing that resonates strongly with the Trump agenda, which claims to defend members of far-right political parties supposedly persecuted in Europe); it is not a conspiracy theory but a simple observation, a “palpable reality”; this observation concerns the “civilizational collapse” of Europe under migratory submersion, foreshadowing the fate of the United States; and opposition to “replacement,” far from being extremist, constitutes a defensive reaction to an existential threat.

Dreher, an American conservative writer and editor based in Budapest who acts as a bridge between the U.S. and European far right and is often presented as the intellectual mentor of J.D. Vance, has popularized Camus’ ideas by reviewing his works in publications such as The European Conservative[46] and Atlantico,[47] as well as in his online diaries.[48] He portrays Camus as a free speech martyr, a “gay socialist” unlikely to sympathize with far-right extremism, and draws a parallel between the purported “war of decolonization” raging in Europe and the U.S. context, where mobilization against Trump’s immigration policy is allegedly supported by a replacementist establishment embodied, among others, by California Governor Gavin Newsom.[49]

An academic with ties to Dreher, Louis Betty, a professor of French studies at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, who translated and wrote a preface to Camus’ works, together with Vauban Books, Camus’ U.S. publisher—which has released several of his texts[50]—also play a role in circulating this framing of Camus as a respected intellectual and oppressed prophet. They depict him as a “heroic opponent of all forms of conspiratorial thinking” and a promoter of social peace.[51] Vauban Books presents itself,[52] meanwhile, as the advocate of European intellectuals allegedly victimized by “political correctness,” with an imaginary of fortification and defense of threatened territory.[53]

While not directly engaging with Camus’ writings, Christopher Caldwell—an editor and essayist affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a contributor to The New York Times, and the author of a 2009 book portraying Europe as rendered unrecognizable by “mass Muslim immigration” and on the brink of civil war (a work cited approvingly by Camus himself in 2012)[54]—explicitly mobilizes the Great Replacement in columns for the Claremont Review of Books and in an interview with Tucker Carlson on the latter’s YouTube channel. He paints a France that is “increasingly Muslim” and “on the verge of civil war,” where Éric Zemmour’s candidacy in the 2022 presidential election is said to testify to the growing salience of replacementist dynamics.[55] Caldwell notes the United States is becoming increasingly “brown,”[56] with immigration allegedly leading to the “elimination” of “Whites, Christians, and the middle class.”[57]

How the ‘Great Replacement’ Went Mainstream

From the early 2020s onward, the expression Great Replacement has circulated widely in the U.S. public sphere: Stripped of its reference to Camus and his writings, it circulates in “conservative” media, notably Fox News. Beginning in April 2021, the former star host of the network, Carlson, has contributed to the dissemination of the phrase by combining criticism of the Democrats’ immigration policy, fear of demographic “minoritization” of whites, and the conspiracy theory of “election stealing.” Amid intense media coverage of the arrival of migrants (particularly Haitians) at the U.S.–Mexico border, Carlson claims that Democratic immigration policy aims to “change the racial composition of this country and replace legacy Americans with obedient people from the Third World.”[58] Indeed, Carlson plays a key role in the mainstreaming of the replacementist narrative. According to a New York Times investigation dated April 2022, he had mentioned replacement theory in more than 400 broadcasts since 2016.[59] His shows, watched by millions, give this theme an unmatched audience within the conservative media space. Viral dissemination of his comments on YouTube and Twitter/X amplifies their reach to the point that the Great Replacement is perceived by a significant fraction of Republican voters as a plausible explanation for ongoing demographic and political transformations.[60] Following the Buffalo mass shooting (May 2022), supremacist figures such as David Duke (former leader of the KKK) even publicly thanked Carlson for having helped legitimize and popularize this idea,[61] illustrating the way in which Fox News serves as a bridge between the far right and mainstream conservatism. By autumn 2022, a third of Americans said they believe that the growth in the number of immigrants in the country means that America is in danger of losing its culture and identity—a figure that reaches 60% and 64% with Republican and Trump voters, respectively.[62]

This is precisely the moment, beginning with the 2022 Senate election,[63] in a context rather favorable to the Democrats, when replacementism—more and more frequently coupled with the theory of Voter Replacement—starts circulating within the Republican Party. The mainstreaming of this extremist theory within a major, governing party is certainly not specific to the U.S. In Europe, the Great Replacement (rather than the voter replacement version) has started being appropriated by several conservative politicians beyond far-right leaders such as Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán.[64] However, explicit references to the Great Replacement remains disputed within most conservative parties. This contrasts with the U.S. case, where the Republican Party, amid the influx of Tea Party and later QAnon activists, has turned into a far-right “movement party.”[65]

Approximately 15 Republican elected officials or candidates subsequently appropriated the Great Replacement formula from 2021/2022 onward,[66] particularly during the 2022 Senate campaigns.[67] Whereas a minority of them are former Republican officeholders who served during the George W. Bush presidencies (e.g., Eric Schmitt, a Senate candidate in Missouri), most are relatively young, identify with the MAGA movement (some are members of the Freedom Caucus in the Congress), oppose Republicans they deem too “moderate,” and actively support efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including through the use of physical violence. Many have expressed anti-Semitic views,[68] and some of them maintain close ties with supremacist, conspiracist, or even neo-Nazi groups. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is close to conspiracist circles linked to QAnon, placed the Great Replacement at the center of the platform of a new, “America First” caucus she attempted to create in the House of Representatives—a platform stating: “History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en masse into a country… The reality of large segments of our society, as well as the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity being put at unnecessary risk, is something our leaders can afford to ignore no longer.”[69] Although only a minority of Republicans who have explicitly embraced replacement theory hold significant positions of power within the party—such as Elise Stefanik, a former representative from New York and chair of the House Republican Conference (now Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations)—other more minor figures promoting the Great Replacement theory, such as Blake Masters (an unsuccessful Republican candidate in the 2022 Arizona senatorial race), were backed up by powerful figures of the MAGA coalition, such as Peter Thiel and Trump himself.

While the theme of the Great Replacement as a form of cultural, or even ethnic, “genocide” has been widely disseminated by a segment of the Republican Party, a specific variant of the theory—Voter Replacement—has, as noted above, gained increasing prominence within the party and the wider MAGA movement, particularly following Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie narrative from spring 2021 onward.[70] Trump had in fact already mobilized Voter Replacement during the 2016 presidential campaign, which he described as “the last chance for Republicans to win,” accusing Hillary Clinton, in the event of her victory, of seeking to legalize undocumented migrants in order to increase the electoral power of the Democratic Party.[71]

This serves to incriminate not only the Biden administration but also, in the context of internal struggles in the Republican camp—whose stakes concern the control exercised by Trumpists over the party—the “House Republicans,” who were supposedly not fully aligned with Trump and the MAGA movement. Vance, then campaigning in Ohio for the 2022 Senate election, thus accused both the Democrats and the “House Republicans” of wanting to replace American workers with migrants and “to bring into the country a large number of voters in order to replace those who are already there.”[72] Subsequently, the Great Replacement acquired a preeminent place during the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump supporters such as activist Charlie Kirk,[73] as well as Musk,[74] accused the “Democratic machine” of bringing large numbers of illegal migrants into swing states. The Internet was used to amplify the message, including through Musk’s X and TikTok. Meanwhile, Trump pursued an extreme politicization of the immigration issue, declaring, for example, in September 2024: “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them into our country.”[75] More recently, the victory of Zohran Mamdani—son of Muslim parents of Indian descent and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America—in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor was interpreted by Miller, as Trump’s adviser, as the result of “changed voters.”[76]

Belief in the reality of Voter Replacement has become a distinctive feature of Republican—and more specifically Trump’s—voters: while only 37% of Americans believe in it, 66% of Republican and 72% of Trump voters do.[77] Voter Replacement resonates strongly within these segments of the U.S. electorate, possibly because it echoes long-standing views of U.S. democracy as a “white democracy.”

‘Voter Replacement’ and the U.S. as a ‘White Democracy’

The history of the replacementist formula within the Republican Party unfolds in a particular context: the Big Lie, i.e., the discourse consisting in denying the legality of the November 2020 presidential election, to which all MAGA Republicans adhere, followed by the January 6, 2021, insurrection, described in 2022 by the Republican National Convention as “legitimate political discourse.”[78] In this context, it is a specific appropriation of the Great Replacement—the notion of the “replacement of the electorate,” i.e., Voter Replacement—that is mobilized by Republicans, as part of a broader challenge to the institutions of American democracy and a questioning of the legitimacy of non-white voters to participate in the exercise of political power. Camus himself uses the word in this way: In an interview included in the German edition of his book,[79] the writer cites the words of iconic left-wing figure Bertolt Brecht, “Would it not be possible for a government to dissolve the people and elect another?”[80] in support of his replacementist thesis. Today, this rhetoric has been taken up by certain leaders of the German far-right party AfD, who accuse former Chancellor Angela Merkel of having welcomed more than a million migrants in the summer of 2015 for electoral reasons.[81]

The U.S. case takes place in the broader context of the Republican Party’s transformation into a far-right party starting in the late 2000s. Nationalism and xenophobia thus became elements redefining the conservative label.[82] Beginning in the 2010s and the first Obama presidency (2009–2013), this radicalization manifested itself in the spread of racist and antidemocratic discourse within the party. First it was racism, reflected in the challenges to Obama’s Americanness (brought into the party beginning in 2010 by Tea Party activists) and the idea that the “system” was “biased” in favor of undocumented migrants.[83] Rejection of democratic rules then followed: The spread of the Big Lie narrative by Republicans did not stop in 2021 but in fact continued during the 2022 midterm election, contaminating the entire party. The Great Replacement made it possible to combine these two tendencies while undermining white Republican voters’ confidence in the electoral process. It also made it possible to keep the Big Lie narrative alive, even as Republican legal efforts to demonstrate the supposed illegality of the 2020 presidential election largely failed. Reformulated as Voter Replacement, the theory thus appears as a new way to discredit the institutions responsible for guaranteeing the legality of the electoral process and to mobilize the MAGA base, while maintaining—through its reformulation—the racist dimension of the Big Lie narrative.

The specificity of the appropriation of the Great Replacement by the American far right lies in the belief that “demographic replacement” is being implemented to carry out the political minoritization of white voters (presumed to vote Republican) by non-white voters that recently immigrated to the country (presumed to vote Democratic). This old fear of demographic and political minoritization of the white population of the United States, sometimes crystallized in the phrase “white anxiety,” has been reactivated by the Republican Party since 2021 in order to preserve what some have described as “minority rule”—i.e., the control of U.S. institutions by those who present themselves as the “natural” representatives of the white population. The study of social movements through the lens of framing theory shows that a movement’s frame is more likely to circulate—and even become dominant in public debate—when it resonates with the beliefs and social representations of the individuals to whom it is addressed, whether the goal is to convince them of the legitimacy of a cause or to mobilize supporters (a notion captured by the term “cultural resonance”).[84]

Voter Replacement theory thus activates an old imaginary dating back to the period before the Civil War—the anxiety over a possible slave revolt that would reverse relations of domination notably in those slaveholding states, where enslaved people represented up to 70% of the population in certain counties—which was replaced by the fear—starting with the granting of voting rights to African Americans from 1868 (at least de jure)—of losing control over the institutions of American democracy (critical legal studies have shown these to have been profoundly shaped by slavery and the question of “race” and conceived as the “property” of whites). It is, therefore, no accident that, beginning in 2021, Republicans and the far-right media ecosystem (including outlets such as Fox News) constructed, alongside the themes of electoral fraud and the Great Replacement, a moral panic around “critical race theory,” a body of academic work and pedagogical initiatives highlighting the centrality of slavery and racism in American history.

Thus, the Big Lie reiterates a discourse recurrent among white supremacists since the post-Civil War era, which aims to delegitimize African Americans’ right to vote (on the grounds that they are supposedly criminal and/or politically incompetent) and to present the exercise of this right by minorities as a threat to the integrity of the nation. White voters holding racist attitudes are thus presented with a supposed “dilemma”: either maintain their support for institutions that have historically been very favorable to them (notably because of the overrepresentation of Southern and rural states in the Congress), or reject the democratic system once non-white fellow citizens begin to occupy positions of power within those institutions.[85] Numerous studies have documented the presence of racist dispositions underlying adherence to the narrative of electoral fraud: In 2020, the cities most frequently mentioned (by Trump and his supporters on social media) in connection with supposed electoral fraud were those with majority-African-American populations (Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta); white voters were more likely to believe in fraud when it concerned majority-black cities and white voters with racist prejudices were far more likely than others to believe in electoral fraud in general.[86] The erosion of trust in the electoral process beginning in 2020 was strongest among white voters holding racist beliefs; they were also more likely than other white voters to describe the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol as “a protest that simply went too far” (rather than as an insurrection).[87] Similarly, Republican voters who express concern about political power being accessed by ethnic minorities are more likely than others to support insurrectionary forms of action, such as the use of force to achieve political ends or the refusal to recognize the results of democratic elections.[88]

The connection of the Great Replacement with the theme of electoral fraud thus appears as the latest formulation—by the American far right, now dominant within the Republican Party—of the racist imaginary that has existed since the beginnings of American democracy: the idea that the institutions of U.S. democracy are the “property” of whites, that citizenship is a racial privilege, and that “non-whites” are “anti-citizens” whose claims to equality in civil and political rights threaten this racist conception of citizenship.[89] The appropriation, by MAGA Republicans, of “electoral replacement” thus appears as the latest sequence in the struggle waged by white supremacists to defend their racist and unequal conception of American democracy.

Conclusion

The trajectory of the Great Replacement illustrates the singular path of a formula capable of crossing borders and changing registers without losing its polemical effectiveness. Created in the French literary margins by Camus, against a backdrop of rhetoric about demographic and cultural decline, it has transformed in the United States into an electoral and conspiratorial narrative mobilized against the political participation of minorities and against Democrats, who are accused of rigging the electoral process.

The appropriation of the Great Replacement by far-right terrorists who carried out deadly attacks on American soil in the name of fighting supposed replacementism did not disqualify the formula. This is due, on the one hand, to the social characteristics and positions of power or influence of those who spread the Great Replacement: While alt-right theorists and white supremacist activists served as intermediaries, it was opinion makers claiming the conservative label—some of whom gained positions of real power thanks to Trump’s election in 2016—who contributed most to the social acceptability of the formula and its circulation within the public sphere. It is due, on the other hand, to the cultural resonance of the replacementist framing, particularly as Voter Replacement. That echoes, among a segment of white voters, the long-standing fear of “double minoritization”: demographic and political. The transatlantic diffusion of the Great Replacement has seen the meaning of Camus’ expression change somewhat as the context changed, even though the phrase retains its central polemical function: designating an existential threat, constructing an internal enemy, and legitimizing exclusionary policies.

The specificity of the U.S. situation lies in the extent to which the Great Replacement has reached into the highest levels of government following Trump’s 2024 reelection. Proof of that is the current appropriation, by high-ranking Trump officials, of formulas coined by European Identitarians—such as the “civilizational suicide of Europe” (for which European migration policies are held responsible)[90] and “remigration”[91] (elevated to a national priority by the Department of Homeland Security).[92] However, polls and studies suggest that belief in the reality of the Great Replacement extends well beyond those segments of electorates holding a full-blown, extremist right-wing ideology,[93] be it in the United States or in Europe. Were it to reach further into the ranks of European conservative and European liberal parties,[94] the Great Replacement could well cement a lasting ideological alliance across the Atlantic.[95] For now, it remains proof of the emergence of a lexicon shared by what might be called the “transatlantic far-right.”

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[1] Born as an offshoot of the French Nouvelle Droite in the early 2000s, the Identitarian movement, mainly known via its youth organization, “Génération Identitaire,” evolved as a transnational network of activists centered on the preservation of white European identity, which it claims is under existential threat from multiculturalism, globalization, and the dual “perils” of immigration and Islam. See Fabian Virchow, “The Identitarian movement,” in Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right in Europe and the United States, ed. P. Simpson and H. Druxe (Lexington Books, 2015): 177-191.

[2] Renaud Camus himself rejects the term “theory” to describe his idea, which according to him stems from a mere empirical observation. In this article, the Great Replacement is considered as a conspiracy theory—in the sense of an explanatory model based on the idea of a malevolent plot—condensed into a syntagm, a formula.

[3] Patrick Burkart and Emily Blout, “White Supremacist Terrorism in Charlottesville: Reconstructing ‘Unite the Right,’” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 46 no. 9, (2021): 1624-1652, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1862850.

[4] Renaud Camus, Le grand remplacement : introduction au remplacisme global (Chez l’auteur, 2011).

[5] Mark Herold, “Who Believes in the ‘Great Replacement’? Political Attitudes and Democratic Alienation Among Supporters of Immigration-related Conspiracy Theories,” Social Sciences Quarterly 106 no. 2 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13481.

[6] On March 15, 2019, 51 people were killed in simultaneous terrorist attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter’s manifesto repeatedly and directly referenced replacement theory. Its title was “The Great Replacement.” On August 3, 2019, 23 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The terrorist targeted Latino shoppers, and his manifesto referenced the Great Replacement theory and fears of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” On May 14, 2022, a young man opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 11 Black people. In his manifesto, he explicitly cited the Great Replacement as justification for his act.

[7] The adjective “conservative” is used in this article to refer to actors who defend social conservatism, tough law-and-order policies, and varying degrees of nationalism without professing (explicit) white supremacism, even though many self-labeled conservatives do, in fact, defend ideas that can be considered right wing and make a purely strategic use of the conservative label.

[8] Richard Saull, Alexander Anievas, Neil Davidson, Adam Fabry, The Longue Durée of the Far-Right An International Historical Sociology (Routledge, 2020).

[9] Cas Mudde, The Far-Right Today (Polity Press, 2019).

[10] Rita Abramhamsen et al., World of the Right. Radical Conservatism and Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2024); Rodrigo Campos, “The International Turn in Far-Right Studies: A Critical Assessment,” Millenium Journal of International Studies 3 no. 3 (September 2023): 892-919, https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298231198992.

[11] Manuela Caiani and Linda Parenti, European and American Extreme Right Groups and the Internet (Lexington Books, 2015); Caterina Froio and Barath Ganesh “The Transnationalisation of Far-Right Discourse on Twitter: Issues and Actors that Cross Borders in Western European Democracies,” European Societies 21 no. 4 (2019): 513–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2018.149429.

[12] Castelli Gattinara, and Andrea Pirro, Movement Parties of the Far Right: Understanding Nativist Mobilization (Oxford University Press, 2024).

[13] Castelli Gattinara and Andrea Pirro, “The Far Right as Social Movement,” European Societies 21 no. 4 (2019): 447–462, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2018.1494301.

[14] Curd Knüpfer and Ulrike Klinger, « In-Groups and Outrage: How Narratives and Affect Shape Digital Surrogate Networks and Radicalize Right-Wing Parties,” in Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy, ed. S. Livingston and M. Miller Oxford University Press, 2025) : 122-145, 131, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197794937.003.0005.

[15] Michael Feola, The rage of replacement: far-right politics and demographic fear (University of Minnesota Press, 2024).

[16] Matia Zulianello and Petra Guasti, “The Demand and Supply of Pandemic Populism: A Global Overview,” Government and Opposition 60 no. 2 (2025): 560-579, https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2023.35.

[17] Kate Starbird, “Unraveling the Big Lie: Participatory Disinformation and the 2020 Election,” in Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy, ed. S. Livingston, and M. Miller (Oxford University Press, 2025): 32-61, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197794937.003.0005.

[18] Manuella Caiani, “The Transnationalization of the Far Right between Movements and Parties,” in Contentious Politics in the Transnational Arena, ed. C. Milan and A. Buzogány (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025): 214-215.

[19] See notably, for the case of the international circulation of neoliberalism: François Denord, “Le prophète, le pèlerin et le missionnaire,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 145 (December 2002): 9–20, https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.145.0009.

[20] Pierre Bourdieu, “Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 145 no. 5 (2002): 3-8, https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.145.0003.

[21] Matthias Ekman, “The Great Replacement: Strategic Mainstreaming of Far-Right Conspiracy Claims,” Convergence 28 no. 4 (2022): 1127-1143, 1128.

[22] Renaud Camus, Le Grand Remplacement. Introduction au remplacisme global, op. cit., 96.

[23] A formula circulating within the American neo-Nazi movement during the 1970s, it was theorized in 1995 by David Lane in the White Genocide Manifesto; a conspiratorial theory, it attributes to Western governments—under the influence of a supposed “Zionist Occupation Government”—the intention to eradicate “European culture” and the “white race.”

[24] Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, Far-Right Politics in Europe (Harvard University Press, 2017), 206–207.

[25] In his 2000 published book La Campagne de France, Camus refers to the “Jewish race” and laments the “over-representation” of Jewish journalists in one of the programs of the Public Broadcast Radio channel France Culture, triggering a public outcry; see Marc Weitzmann, “De l’innocence,” Les Inrockuptibles, April 18, 2000.

[26] Renaud Camus, La Dépossession ou du remplacisme global (Editions du Château, 2022), 757.

[27] Henry Maher, “The Neoliberal Great Replacement Theory: on the Racialization of Markets and Migration,” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 27 no. 1 (2025): 83-101, https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2025.2499827.

[28] Examples include far-right parties like the German AfD or subcultural groups like the Czech “Angry Mothers.” See notably Billy Holzberg, “The Great Replacement Ideology as Anti-Gender Politics: Affect, White Terror, and Reproductive Racism in Germany and Beyond,” in Transnational Anti-Gender Politics, ed. B. Holzberg, T. Ojeda  and A. Holvikivi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024): 183–202.

[29] Tamir Bar-On, “The Alt-Right’s Continuation of the ‘Culture War’ in Euro-American Societies,” Thesis Eleven 163 no. 1 (2021): 43-70, https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136211005988.

[30] According to him, the recognition of “incommensurable differences between different peoples and cultures” is what “true” respect for diversity his about; quoted in Matthew Lyons, “The origins and the ideology of the Alt-Right,” Political Research Associates, January 20, 2017, https://politicalresearch.org/2017/01/20/ctrl-alt-delete-origins-and-ideology-alternative-right.

[31] See Footnote 1.

[32] Fabian Virchow, “The Identitarian movement,” op. cit.

[33] Michael Peters and Tina Besley, “White supremacism: The tragedy of Charlottesville,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49 (14) (2017): 1309–1312; https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1370896.

[34] Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight: A Manifesto of European Resistance (Arktos, 2011).

[35] Pierre Bourdieu calls this “marquage,” i.e., a series of operations (such as choice of cover, preface writer, etc.) that orient the reception of a book; Pierre Bourdieu, “Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées,” op. cit., 5.

[36] Renaud Camus, Revolte gegen den grossen Austausch (Antaios Verlag, 2016).

[37] Renaud Camus, You Will Not Replace Us! (Chez l’auteur, 2018).

[38] Responding to a tweet from a far-right account referring to the 2018 Pittsburgh terrorist attack (whose perpetrator is said to have been inspired by the Great Replacement theory), which accused Jews of “pushing hatred against whites,” he wrote: “You have said the actual truth”; “White House criticizes Elon Musk over ‘hideous’ antisemitic lie,” BBC, November 17, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67446800. In another antisemitic appropriation of the “Great Replacement,” he accused prominent Jewish businessmen, such as George Soros and Jeffrey Epstein, of promoting electoral replacement by encouraging mass immigration; see H. Maher, “The neoliberal Great Replacement Theory,” op. cit., 96.

[39] Indeed, Camus himself dedicated his 2011 book, Le grand remplacement, in memory to Jean Raspail and to Enoch Powell, the late British xenophobic politician from the Conservative Party.

[40] Jean Raspail, Le Camp des Saints (Robert Laffont, 1973). A dystopian novel from 1973 depicting the inability of Western countries to prevent, due to moral weakness, the massive arrival of migrants from the Indian subcontinent and Africa. First published in English in 1975, it has been republished in English three times since, the latest time by Vauban Books in 2025.

[41] Michel Houellebecq, Soumission (Flammarion 2015). The English version of the book was published the same year in the United States; M. Houellebecq, Submission (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015).

[42] Simon Clark, “How white supremacy returned to mainstream politics,” Center for American Progress, July 1, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/.

[43] According to an investigation conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center; www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/stephen-miller.

[44] Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger, “This stunningly racist French book is how Steve Bannon explains the world,” Huffington Post, March 4, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_n_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03.

[45] Judd Legum, “Republicans have invoked the great replacement theory over and over again,” The Guardian, May 17, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/17/republicans-have-invoked-the-great-replacement-theory-over-and-over-and-over?fr=operanews.

[46] Louis Betty and Ethan Rundell, “‘There is nothing extreme about resistance to invasion’: An interview with Renaud Camus,” The European Conservative, August 16, 2024, https://europeanconservative.com/articles/interviews/interview-with-renaud-camus/.

[47] Rod Dreher, “Renaud Camus vs l’establishment,” Atlantico.fr, April 23, 2025, https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/renaud-camus-vs-lestablishment-grand-remplacement-wokisme-multiculturalisme.

[48] Rod Dreher, “Renaud Camus on the great replacement,” Rod Dreher’s Diary, Substack, August 16, 2024, https://roddreher.substack.com/p/renaud-camus-on-the-great-replacement.

[49] Rod Dreher, “Soumission ou guerre? La crise du grand remplacement arrive à Los Angeles,” Atlantico.fr, June 13, 2025, https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/soumission-ou-guerre-la-crise-du-grand-remplacement-arrive-a-los-angeles.

[50] They include: Enemy of the disaster. Selected writings of Renaud Camus, 2025; The deep murmur, preceded by elegy for Enoch Powell, 2024; Renaud Camus, The deep murmur, preceded by elegy for Enoch Powell, ed. Ethan Rundell (Vauban Books, 2024).

[51] Vauban Books describes the author of Enemy of the Disaster (a selection of Camus’ political writings that includes the text of a 2010 conference on the “great replacement”) as “a committed opponent of conspirational thinking of all kinds” and a man “devoted to the promotion of civic peace”; Renaud Camus, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus, ed. Ethan Rundell, (Vauban Books, 2024).

[52] The home page of Vauban book’s website presents the editing house as being specialized in the translation of—especially French—writers whose voices “are suppressed for not aligning with dominant narratives”; Homepage of Vauban Books, accessed May 14, 2026, https://vaubanbooks.com/index.php.

[53] Vauban books is named after Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a French aristocrat and engineer, appointed by Louis XIV as commissioner general of fortifications; a man associated, through the construction of numerous strongholds, with the “iron frontier” protecting the Kingdom of France from its “enemies.”

[54] Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (Allen Books, 2009).

[55] Christopher Caldwell, “France on the verge of civil war. The rise of Eric Zemmour,” Claremont Review of Books 21 no. 4 (Fall 2021), https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/france-on-the-verge-of-civil-war/.

[56] Christopher Caldwell, “The browning of America,” Claremont Review of Books 15 no. 1 (2014/2015), https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-browning-of-america/.

[57] “Christopher Caldwell: How Immigration Is Erasing Whites, Christians and the Middle Class,” Tucker Carlson’s YouTube channel, August 27, 2025.

[58] “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News, September 22, 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-biden-punishing-border-patrol-for-enforcing-the-law.

[59] “What to Know about Tucker Carlson’s Rise,” New York Times, April 30, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/business/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news-takeaways.html.

[60] “Nearly half of Republican voters agree with great replacement theory,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/09/nearly-half-republicans-agree-with-great-replacement-theory/.

[61] “A former leader of the KKK celebrated Tucker Carlson ‘finally’ sharing the white-supremacist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory,” Business Insider, October 22, 2021, https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-replacement-theory-david-duke-kkk-trump-2021-10?op=1.

[62] According to a poll conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst; “New National UMASS Amherst Poll on Issues Finds One-Third of Americans Believe ‘Great Replacement’ Theory,” University of Massachusetts, October 25, 2022, https://www.umass.edu/news/article/new-national-umass-amherst-poll-issues-finds-one-third-americans-believe-great.  

[63] On November 8, 2022, 35 of the 100 Senate seats were up for election.

[64] Examples include Valérie Pécresse, 2022 presidential candidate for the French conservative LR or Hans-Georg Maaꞵen, former head of the German intelligence agency and a former conservative politician of the CDU; Oliver Haynes, “European conservative parties are out of ideas, but absorbing the far-right isn’t the answer,” The Guardian, May 18, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/23/europe-centre-right-out-of-ideas-absorbing-far-right-not-the-answer.

[65] Sidney Tarrow, Movement and parties: critical connections in American developments, (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

[66] Will Ragland, “A list of MAGA Republicans who took the ‘great replacement’ theory mainstream,” Center for American Progress Action, June 18, 2022, https://www.americanprogressaction.org/article/a-list-of-maga-republicans-who-took-the-great-replacement-theory-mainstream/.

[67] Steve Peoples, “Republican Senate candidates promote ‘replacement theory,’” PBS, May 17, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-senate-candidates-promote-replacement-theory.

[68] They include, notably, senatorial candidate Blake Masters, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Rep. Scott Perry.

[69] America First Caucus Policy Platform; https://punchbowl.news/wp-content/uploads/America-First-Caucus-Policy-Platform-FINAL-2.pdf.

[70] On May 3, 2021, Trump issued a statement saying: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”; Zachary B. Wolf, “The 5 key elements of Trump’s Big Lie and how it came to be,” CNN, May 19, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/donald-trump-big-lie-explainer.

[71] Martin Pengelly, “Trump predicts demographics make 2016 ‘last election Republicans can win,” The Guardian, September 10, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/09/trump-demographics-2016-election-republicans-can-win.

[72] Peoples, “Republican Senate candidates promote replacement theory.”

[73] He stated in 2024: “The ‘great replacement’ strategy, which is well underway every single day on our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”; “State Dept threatens action against immigrants who praise killing of Charlie Kirk,” Democracy Now, September 12, 2025, https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/12/headlines/state_department_threatens_action_against_immigrants_who_praise_killing_of_charlie_kirk.

[74] Elon Musk, Interview with Tucker Carlson, 8 October 2024; https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1843375397024485778?lang=en

[75] Jude Joffe-Block and Odette Yousef, “How Trump is relying on a racist conspiracy theory to question election results,” NPR, September 14, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/09/13/g-s1-22583/trump-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory.

[76] He wrote in a post on X dated June 25, 2025: “Unchecked immigration fundamentally remade the NYC electorate. Democrats change politics by changing voters.”

[77] According to a poll conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst; “New National UMASS Amherst Poll on Issues Finds One-Third of Americans Believe ‘Great Replacement’ Theory,” University of Massachusetts, October 25, 2022, https://www.umass.edu/news/article/new-national-umass-amherst-poll-issues-finds-one-third-americans-believe-great.  

[78] Kyle Cheney, “‘What the GOP meant when it called 6th January ‘legitimate political discourse’,” Politico, February 15, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/15/gop-meaning-jan-6-legitimate-political-discourse-00008777.

[79] Renaud Camus, Revolte gegen den grossen Austausch (Antaios 2016).

[80] Excerpt from Bertolt Brecht’s poem Die Lösung (1954).

[81] Cécile Leconte, “La carrière militante du ‘grand remplacement’ au sein du milieu partisan de l’Alternative pour l’Allemagne (AfD),” Politix 126 no. 2 (2019): 111–134, 127, https://doi.org/10.3917/pox.126.0111.

[82] Lewis Verlan, “The Problem of Donald Trump and the Static Spectrum Fallacy,” Party Politics, 27 no. 4 (2021): 605–618, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068819871673.

[83] Daniel Galvin, “Party Domination and Base Mobilization: Donald Trump and Republican Party Building in a Polarized Era,” Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, 18 no. 2 (2020): 135–168, https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2020-2003.

[84] Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611–639, 619–622, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.611.

[85] Kevin Morris and Ian Shapiro, “On Fertile Ground: How Racial Resentment Primes White Americans To Believe Fraud Accusations,” Political Behavior (2025) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-025-10065-z.

[86] Idem.

[87] Tye Rush et al., “Catalysts of Insurrection: How White Racial Antipathy Influenced Beliefs of Voter Fraud and Support for the January 6th Insurrection,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 10 no. 1 (March 2025): 5–25, https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/rep.2025.9.

[88] Larry Bartels, “Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 no. 37 (2020): 22752–22759, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007747117.

[89] A representation summarized in the notion of “white democracy” or “Herrenvolk democracy”; see Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

[90] President of the United States, National Security Strategy of the United States, November 2025, 25.

[91] A key term of the Identitarian lexicon, “remigration” refers to the mass deportation of immigrants and even naturalized citizens accused of “replacing natives.”

[92] Odette Yousef and Alisa Chang, “‘Remigration,’ once a fringe idea, becomes a mantra for the Trump administration,” NPR, December 9, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/12/09/nx-s1-5630505/remigration-once-a-fringe-idea-becomes-a-mantra-for-the-trump-administration.

[93] Mark Herold, “Who believes in the ‘great replacement’? Political attitudes and democratic alienation among supporters of immigration-related theories in Europe,” Social Sciences Quarterly 106 no. 2 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13481

[94] Parties like Renaissance in France or the FDP in Germany.

[95] As is already the case between European far-right politicians like Viktor Orbán and MAGA Republicans; see Flora Garamvolgyi and Julian Borger, “Orbán and U.S. right to bond at CPAC in Hungary over great replacement ideology,” The Guardian, May 18, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/18/cpac-conference-budapest-hungary-viktor-orban-speaker.