The Great Re-Replacement Theory

Nearly a year ago, I changed the focus of this blog to be about documenting the emerging trend toward authoritarianism that was initiated with the second term of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Since I started writing, Trump has emasculated Congress and, for the most part, had his way with the U.S. Supreme Court. Checks and balances have become a relic of the past. Trump routinely announces new laws through "truths" on his Truth Social social media network. For instance, he recently suggested that he will freeze credit card interest rates and institute new tariffs. Legally, these missives have the authority of graffiti on a bathroom wall. But most of the country seems to accept them as valid and, as such, they may as well be. But in addition to destroying our political system, Trump has been undertaking a massive effort to remake the demographics of America. Through his deportation and immigration policies, Trump is engaged in an obvious attempt to — for a lack of a better way to put it — make America White again. I am dubbing this effort "The Great Re-replacement Theory."

In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau published a report titled, "Demographic Turning Points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060." According to the data presented, the non-Hispanic White population of the United States was expected to contract in the coming decades, while the non-White population would grow. The report also highlighted the role of immigrants in population change. Using data from the same census, William H. Frey of Brookings published a report titled "The US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045, Census projects" that predicted, as the title suggests, that the non-Hispanic White population of the U.S. would become a minority by 2045. Non-Hispanic White Americans under 18 have already been a minority in the U.S. since 2020. This demographic change seems to have induced a sort of psychosis among many Americans.

Coincidental with the emergence of such data, a racist conspiracy theory known as the "Great Replacement Theory" began taking root. Proponents of this theory claimed that elites, especially those who were Jewish, were purposely encouraging the replacement of the White population by non-White immigrants. In 2017, during Trump's first term in office, White supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. During a march held the night before the rally, participants chanted "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us." Trump stumbled over demands that he condemn the event, eventually claiming that there were "some very fine people on both sides."

Then, in October 2018, Robert Bowers, a 46-year-old believer in the Great Replacement Theory, opened fire on the congregation of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bowers killed eleven people and wounded six in what was the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in U.S. history. Bowers was convinced that Jewish organizations were aiding Central American migrant caravans that were travelling toward the United States. In August 2019, Patrick Wood Crusius shot 45 people, killing 23, in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Crusius specifically targeted Hispanics and the shooting has been described as the deadliest anti-Latino attack in recent U.S. history. Before the shooting, Crusius published a manifesto that promoted the Great Replacement Theory and complained about a "Hispanic invasion."

In the years since those shootings, the Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly accepted by mainstream Republicans. The MAGA leadership is dominated by those who are convinced that there has been an organized effort to attract migrants in order to dilute the power of White Americans. This has often been expressed as a claim that Democrats support "open borders" because they expect the newly arriving migrants to become Democratic voters. This is the "light" version of the Great Replacement Theory. By the time that Trump took office a year ago, not only he but his top lieutenants were convinced that demographic trends presented a threat to Republican rule, if not American society as a whole, and must be reversed.

During the 2024 election campaign, Trump and his supporters repeatedly claimed that Democrats were allowing migrants to enter the country so that they could vote in the election. For instance, during the presidential debate, Trump stated that "our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote." Vice President and reply guy JD Vance is another adherent to the Great Replacement Theory. In 2022 while running for the Senate, Vance told Fox News that Democrats "have decided that they can't win reelection in 2022 unless they bring a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here." Vance further claimed that "They are trying to transform the electorate of this country" and warned of an immigrant "invasion". During the presidential campaign, Vance promoted the lie that Haitian immigrants were eating pet cats and dogs. This racist fabrication was adopted by Trump and used to encourage hatred of non-White immigrants.

Another supporter of the Great Replacement Theory is Elon Musk, who once served as a special governmental employee in the Trump Administration and remains a close associate. Musk regularly tweets statements consistent with believing the racist conspiracy. Just recently, Musk retweeted a post by a well-known White supremacist saying that "Every blue state has maintained a Democrat hegemony for decades by importing millions of foreigners, and then allowing those foreigners to siphon off billions of tax dollars. It's all just a vote-buying scheme." The idea that Democrats have attempted to replace White voters with immigrants is now well-ingrained among Republicans.

Support for the Great Replacement Theory was coupled with promises by Trump to engage in mass deportations. To that end, Trump empowered Stephen Miller, perhaps the strongest supporter of the Great Replacement Theory within the administration. Just last month, Miller took to X to rant about immigrants and what he sees as their detrimental effect on the United States. He claimed that the United States "engaged in a vast, consuming project of self-loathing, self-denigration, and the redistribution of our national resources to the states and peoples of the undeveloped world." Because of this, Miller claimed, the United States had lost its technological edge. Like much of what the Trump administration believes is fact, Miller's claims were mostly wrong. Immigrants have made significant contributions to technological advance in the United States.

It is impossible not to connect the Trump administration's belief in the Great Replacement Theory and the ongoing mass deportation effort. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol have specifically targeted non-White immigrant communities. While the occasional immigrant of European origin is caught up in the process, the effort is almost entirely aimed at the non-White population. Often, the deportation efforts are combined with propaganda campaigns aimed at demonizing those being targeted. For instance, authorities conducted a military-style raid on a building in Chicago that included personnel rappelling from a helicopter. The public was told that the building had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members. Ultimately, not a single individual detained in the raid was charged, and the government only alleged that two of those arrested had even tenuous gang ties. In Minnesota, the government would have us believe that anyone of Somali origin is involved in fraud. In reality, the fraud in question also involved non-Somalis, and only a very small number of Somalis were involved.

The Trump administration has gone to court to defend its policy of stopping individuals based on their perceived race or ethnicity and ability to speak English. This policy of profiling non-White minorities has resulted in a slew of so-called "Kavanaugh stops" in which U.S. citizens are stopped, detained, and sometimes held for days based on their skin color or ethnicity. While Trump and his minions claim that they are targeting the "worst of the worst," data consistently shows that this is not true. ICE and CBP are far more likely to detain a waiter at a restaurant or employee of a car wash than they are a gang member or other criminal. Statistics show that 70% of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions. The primary factor those being detained have in common is that they are not non-Hispanic White.

At the same time that the Trump administration is relentlessly targeting people of color for deportation, it has found one group whose immigration to the U.S. it supports. That is White South Africans. Just as Trump and others in his administration have lied about non-White immigrants to encourage hostility towards them, Trump and others have lied to create sympathy for their favored immigrant group. The Trump administration touts a non-existent "White Genocide" in South Africa to justify not only allowing White South Africans to immigrate to the U.S., but to actually encourage them to do so. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that flights of black and brown deportees are passing in mid-air flights of White South Africans coming to the United States. This is the real replacement theory, only it is not theoretical. It is actually happening.

You do not have to read between the lines to understand that the Trump administration is afraid of demographic trends that do not favor the non-Hispanic White population. Faced with losing majority status, Trump and many of his supporters have engaged in an all-out effort to slow or reverse the trend. They are targeting millions of immigrants, the vast majority of whom are either Hispanic or non-White, for deportation. At the same time, they are encouraging White South Africans to move to the United States. As such, Trump has engaged in the Great Re-replacement.