The National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning charts how “great replacement theory” has become a dominant political idea of our time and ushered in an antidemocratic age.
Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.
The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.
In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.
About the Author
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is a professor of history and the founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research enterprise examining global racism. He is the author of the National Book Award–winning Stamped from the Beginning and the international bestseller How to Be an Antiracist and has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.
Praise For…
Praise for Chain of Ideas
“An exploration of the arguably premier racist trope of our time . . . A well-formed argument against the fashionably fascist thought that houses old wine in new skins.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] brilliant and eye-opening study . . . Kendi demonstrates [great replacement theory’s] long-standing ties to authoritarianism . . . and convincingly argues that the success of all authoritarians lies in their ability to redirect the legitimate grievances of the exploited away from their class interests and toward paranoid fantasy. Kendi closes with an astute blueprint for combatting this kind of politics that involves bolstering nonprofit media and civic education . . . A rousing call for solidarity across lines of class and race in order to fight fascism.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Praise for Stamped from the Beginning
“[An] engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America.”—The Washington Post
“Blending deep research and analysis with a powerfully intimate and personal voice, [Ibram X.] Kendi . . . grounds his argument in the present moment. . . . Brilliant, complicated and fascinating—Kendi renders this work of intellectual history as compelling as the juiciest biography.”—Los Angeles Times
Praise for How to Be an Antiracist
“What do you do after you have written Stamped From the Beginning, an award-winning history of racist ideas? . . . If you’re Ibram X. Kendi, you craft another stunner of a book. . . . What emerges from these insights is the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind, a confessional of self-examination that may, in fact, be our best chance to free ourselves from our national nightmare.”—The New York Times
“Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author’s own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism.”—NPR
