Renaud Camus, the "author" of the idea of "The Great Replacement"

 

Renaud Camus developed his conspiracy theory in two books published in 2010 and 2011, in the context of an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric in public discourse during the previous decade. Europe also experienced an escalation in Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s–2010s, and a migrant crisis in the years 2015–2016, which exacerbated tensions and prepared public opinion for the reception of Camus's conspiracy theory. As the latter depicts a population replacement said to occur in a short time lapse of one or two generations, the migrant crisis was particularly conducive to the spread of Camus's ideas while the terrorist attacks accelerated the construction of immigrants as an existential threat among those who shared such a worldview.

Camus's theme of a future demise of European culture and civilization also parallels a "cultural pessimistic" and anti-Islam trend among European intellectuals of the period, illustrated in several best-selling and straightforwardly titled books released during the 2010s: Thilo Sarrazin's Germany Abolishes Itself (2010), Éric Zemmour's The French Suicide (2014) or Michel Houellebecq's Submission (2015).

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was developed by French author Renaud Camus, initially in a 2010 book titled L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence ("Abecedarium of no-harm"), and the following year in an eponymous book, Le Grand Remplacement (introduction au remplacisme global). Camus has claimed that the name Grand Remplacement "came to [him], almost by chance, perhaps in a more or less unconscious reference to the Grand Dérangement of the Acadians in the 18th century." As an epigraph to the later book, Camus chose Bertolt Brecht's quip from the satirical poem Die Lösung that the easiest thing to do for a government which had lost the confidence of its people would be to choose new people.

According to Camus, the "Great Replacement" has been nourished by "industrialisation", "despiritualisation" and "deculturation"; the materialistic society and globalism having created a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic, or cultural specificity", what he labels "global replacism".  Camus claims that "the great replacement does not need a definition," as the term is not, in his views, a "concept" but rather a "phenomenon".

In Camus's theory, the indigenous French people ("the replaced") is described as being demographically replaced by non-white populations ("the replacing [peoples]") - mainly coming from Africa or the Middle East - in a process of "peopling immigration" encouraged by a "replacist power".

Camus frequently uses terms and concepts related to the period of Nazi-occupied France (1940–1945). He for instance labels "Colonizers" or "Occupiers" people of non-European descent who reside in Europe, and dismisses what he calls the "replacist elites" as "Collaborationist". In 2017 Camus founded an organization named the National Council of European Resistance, in a self-evident reference to the World War II National Council of the Resistance (1943–1945). This analogy to the French Resistance against Nazism has been described as an implicit call to hatred, direct action or even violence against what Camus labels the "Occupiers; i.e. the immigrants". Camus has also compared the Great Replacement and the so-called "genocide by substitution" of the European peoples to the Holocaust. 

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PS: Based on the numbers provided by Eurostat, the growth in the number of immigrants in the 27 countries of the European Union, between 2000 and 2024, was 55.56%. 

Muslims just show their power...

 

"Le Grande Replacement", by Renaud Camus

 

"(...)

In less than two decades, the theory (of Renaud Camus) has become a major idea, with as many as 60% of the French population believing some aspects of it. According to that survey, they are worried or at least concerned that they might be replaced. In the U.K. and the U.S., close to one-third of those polled believe that white people are systematically being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. Some in the U.S. fear that America might lose its culture and identity as a result. 

(...) 

PS: Com base em dados do Eurostat, o número de cidadãos estrangeiros na União Europeia (UE-27) tem vindo a aumentar de forma constante ao longo dos anos, impulsionado por um saldo migratório positivo. A tabela abaixo mostra a evolução do número total de cidadãos que não possuem a nacionalidade do país onde residem, abrangendo quer cidadãos de outros Estados-Membros da UE, quer cidadãos de fora da UE (nacionais de países terceiros).

Percentagem de Cidadãos Estrangeiros na UE-27 (2000-2024)

Ano População Estrangeira   População Total da UE    % da População Estrangeira
2000    ≈ 31,5 milhões        ≈ 429 milhões              7,34%
2005    ≈ 36,1 milhões        ≈ 441 milhões              8,19%
2010    ≈ 42,9 milhões        ≈ 449 milhões              9,55%
2015    ≈ 44,7 milhões        ≈ 450 milhões              9,93%
2020    ≈ 47,4 milhões        ≈ 447 milhões            10,60%
2024    ≈ 49,0 milhões        ≈ 450,4 milhões         10,88%

Estes números mostram que, embora a população total da UE-27 tenha crescido modestamente no período, o aumento da população estrangeira tem sido constante, resultando num aumento da sua percentagem. 

Woman is arrested and threatened with stoning after wearing a T-shirt saying 'Allah is lesbian' in Morocco

 

A feminist activist in Morocco was taken into custody and said she was threatened online with stoning after posting a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt with the words: 'Allah is a lesbian.'

Following a woman’s posting of a photo on her social media account, which depicts her wearing a shirt with phrases offensive to the divine, along with a caption insulting Islam, the public prosecutor ordered an investigation,' its statement said.

'Due to its urgency, the subject has been placed under police custody in accordance with the law.' 

In the photo, the outspoken feminist activist can be seen smiling with her hands on her hips as she poses wearing the T-shirt.

She wrote on X: 'In Morocco, I walk around with T-shirts bearing messages against religions, Islam, etc.

'You tire us with your sanctimoniousness, your accusations. Yes, Islam, like any religious ideology, is FASCIST. PHALLOCRATIC AND MISOGYNISTIC.'

Ibtissame Lachgar is accused of posting a photo wearing a shirt that is offensive to Islam, and writing a caption that was also insulting to the religion.

The Public Prosecutor's Office at the Rabat Court of First Instance in Morocco announced she was taken into police custody on Sunday, as authorities investigate the photo. 

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"A Grande Substituição" nos EUA, em números

 

Com base nos dados do U.S. Census Bureau, a composição racial e étnica da população dos Estados Unidos tem evoluído de forma significativa desde 2000. É importante notar que "hispânico" é classificado como uma etnia e não como uma raça. A tabela abaixo mostra a percentagem de cada grupo em anos-chave, com base em dados dos censos e estimativas:

Evolução da População por Raça e Etnia nos EUA (2000-2025)

Grupo Demográfico                        2000    2010    2020    2025 (Estimativa)
Brancos (não hispânicos)                69,1%    63,8%    58,9%    57,8%
Hispânicos (de qualquer raça)         12,5%    16,3%    18,7%    19,5%
Negros ou Afro-americanos             12,3%    12,6%    12,4%    12,5%
Asiáticos                                       3,6%      4,8%      6,0%      6,5%
Outros/Multirraciais                        2,5%      2,5%     10,2%    13,7% 

 

 

The 'great replacement' conspiracy theory isn't fringe anymore — it's mainstream

 

A 180-page online screed attributed to the white man accused of killing 10 people at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo on Saturday has brought a once-fringe white extremist conspiracy theory into the spotlight. But the underpinnings of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which has been iterated on over time to appeal to wider audiences, has penetrated a much more mainstream portion of American society. A recent poll, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that one in three American adults now believes in a version of replacement theory.

The speed with which this false narrative has tipped into American discourse since a French ethnonationalist first coined the term roughly a decade ago has stunned even extremism experts who have tracked the spread of hate-filled ideologies. They cite the failure of major social media platforms to effectively moderate such content, the role of Fox News hosts in amplifying these ideas, and the uptake of the conspiracy's language by some elected Republican officials.

Demographic change

Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of Americans who identified as "white only" declined by more than 10 percent, from 72 to 62 percent. During that same decade, several Western European countries saw record influxes of migrants from Muslim nations. It is against the backdrop of this demographic change that replacement rhetoric has accelerated in recent years.

"In the U.S., [it's] often called 'white genocide.' In Europe, [it's] called 'Eurabia,' " said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, professor and director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University.

The baseless theories claim that these population shifts are orchestrated by elite power holders. In the U.S., Miller-Idriss said white nationalists ascribe the plot to Jews who they believe are bringing in immigrants and promoting interracial marriage to suppress whites. In Europe, the false narrative blames elite politicians for a growing Muslim population. Miller-Idriss said the coining of the term "great replacement" in France marked a key moment in the growth of these beliefs.

"It has unified and really spread [the conspiracies] online in memes and videos and in a lot of propaganda," she said. "It capitalized on a moment when you're not just reading written propaganda or sharing it in a newsletter or in a small group in a backwoods militia. But it's circulating in these dark online spaces where this [alleged] Buffalo shooter writes he was exposed and radicalized."

From there, the conspiracy theories migrated toward progressively less fringe conservative media platforms, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

"We have literally watched as ideas that originate on white supremacist message boards, or like the dark web – the places that are very difficult to get to – move," said Greenblatt. "They literally jump to [internet message boards like] 4chan and 8chan, which are much more accessible, [then] they jump to web sites like The Daily Caller or Breitbart, and then they jump to Tucker Carlson's talking points or Laura Ingraham's talking points, or other AM radio DJs' talking points. And then you have theoretically mainstream Republican politicians repeating some of this stuff."

"Sanitizing" the message

Although the roots of the "great replacement" are firmly planted in the organized white supremacist movement, a version of the baseless conspiracy has spread among a wider swath of Americans with some minor tweaking of language. Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, said that Carlson has framed the issue around voter replacement.

"What he says is that the Democrats are importing immigrants and that they are replacing Americans," said Gertz. "But no one should really be confused by what he is trying to do. The specific cases that he's talking about are Central American immigrants, they are immigrants from Africa, they are immigrants from the Middle East."

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PS: Entre 2000 e 2024, a percentagem da população branca nos EUA (não hispânica) diminuiu de 69% para 58%. É importante notar que os dados demográficos do Censo dos EUA podem distinguir entre a população "branca" (que inclui indivíduos hispânicos que se identificam como brancos) e a população "branca não hispânica". A tabela abaixo refere-se à percentagem da população branca não hispânica, que é o grupo que tem registado um declínio na sua quota populacional.

Percentagem da População Branca Não Hispânica nos EUA

Ano	Percentagem
2000	69,1%
2010	63,8%
2020	58,9%
2023	58%

 

 

 

Imbecilidade jornalística: Cidadão estrangeiro (sem documentos...) morto a tiro na Póvoa de Varzim

 

 

Ora aí está uma notícia que nem sequer pode ter sido escrita com os pés. No máximo, com dois dedos de um pé. Nessa notícia, do Diário de Notícias, o escriba (Redação do DN...) depois de explicar que um "cidadão estrangeiro" foi morto a tiro, na Póvoa do Varzim, esclarece que "o homem, de nacionalidade estrangeira, embora não tivesse documentos consigo, não resistiu aos ferimentos provocados por vários tiros, e acabou por morrer".

Como é que a Redacção do DN (informada pelas autoridades) descobriu que o homem era "de nacionalidade estrangeira", se não tinha documentos? Parece-me simples: tratava-se de um cidadão cujas características fisionómicas permitiam concluir que se tratava de alguém com estrangeiro, e não de um cidadão português, na generalidade caucasianos ou brancos, para ir direto ao assunto.

E escrevo em princípio porque nada garante que o indivíduo, tendo uma determinada aparência - indostânico, nepalês, chinês, etc - não possa também ter a nacionalidade portuguesa. Mas o exemplo desta imbecilidade jornalística mostra bem o tremor nas pernas que afecta cada jornalista, quando tem que lidar com crimes que envolvem pessoas não-caucasianas - não-brancos, chamando os bois pelo nome - e se vêem frente a frente com aquele horror que a esquerda tem em "criminalizar" os imigrantes, quando são eles que cometem crimes.

The Major Roadblock to Muslim Assimilation in Europe

 

I was having dinner the other day with some European friends who are reasonable center-left types. London riots were in full swing. Anders Breivik had killed more than 80 of his countrymen in an apparent bid to halt the “Islamization” of Europe. Greece’s economy had collapsed. The consensus among my friends was that the next five to 10 years could turn out “very scary” for Europe.

Muslims are only one part — and a small part — of these problems. But, unfortunately, economic collapse tends to fuel racism and intolerance, which is exactly what is happening now. The slow progress made on Muslim integration is likely to unravel as more Europeans find refuge in populism in general and far-right, radical parties in particular.

While dutifully disavowing such groups, my leftish friends, like so many Europeans, asked why European Muslims weren’t doing more to assimilate and respect the culture of their new countries. And this brings us to the issue at hand: there is a clash of values, one which will make it considerably harder to find a path of compromise between Muslims and the rest of Europe.

Secularism, as its understood and practiced in Europe, is not value-neutral. It asks conservative Muslims to be something that they’re likely not. “Secularism,” the thinking goes, allows all groups, including Muslims, to practice their religion as they see fit. This assumes that the practice of religion is fundamentally a personal, private act detached from public, political life. It is here that Islam (how it is understood, if not necessarily practiced by most Muslims) and Europe’s traditional identity and culture find themselves at odds.

It is this expectation or, rather, hope — that Islam will somehow cease to be what it is — that colors so many debates not just in Europe but also in a rapidly changing Middle East.

There is, in fact, something uniquely “uncompromising” about Islam, at least compared to other faiths. This is not a value judgment but rather a descriptive statement about what Islam is today (rather than what it could or should be). Many Muslims take pride in this very fact. It is this unwillingness to compromise in the face of secularizing pressures, they would say, that makes Islam both vibrant and distinctive. Indeed, Islam has proven remarkably resistant to the persistent attempts to relegate it to the private sphere.

The fact that someone like Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan and tens of thousands his fellow “Euro-Islam” followers are seen in Europe as too conservative is illustrative of the problem. Ramadan’s proposed moratorium on the hadd punishments (for example cutting off the hands of thieves and stoning adulterers) was seen as beyond the pale in secular France. In a memorable debate on French television, Nicholas Sarkozy, then the interior minister, attacked Ramadan for refusing to unequivocally condemn the stoning of women.

In a place like Egypt, however, such a moratorium would likely provoke controversy for the opposite reason — for being too “liberal.” Whether we like it or not, Ramadan’s version of Islam, by the standards of mainstream Islamic thought, is actually quite “progressive,” which is one reason it has, so far, failed to catch on in the Arab world. Consider the findings of a December 2010 Pew poll. In Egypt, 82 percent of respondents supported the stoning of adulterers while 77 percent said they favored cutting off the hands of thieves.

As I note in my recent Foreign Affairs article,”The Rise of the Islamists,” many Western observers made the mistake of thinking that this year’s Arab revolutions were “secular.” There was the naïve view — one almost entirely divorced from the Egyptian reality — that once the yoke of dictatorship was removed, Egyptians, and Arabs more generally, would turn out to be fluffy pro-American liberals. Well, they aren’t and won’t be anytime soon.

From an American perspective, the rapid rise of Egypt’s Salafis — conservative Islamists who advocate a strict, uncompromising view of Islamic law — is indeed troubling. That said, it is undemocratic, as well as illiberal, to ask millions of Salafis to stop being Salafis once they enter the public sphere, as some Egyptian liberals seem to be demanding. Similarly, it is undemocratic and illiberal to ask European Muslims to be as religious as they want at home but to keep their Islam out of public view. For many, if not most religious Muslims, such a distinction is as odd as it is inconceivable. Yet asking Muslims to respect such distinctions is also entirely understandable in the troubled, bloody context of European history. In the pre-Enlightenment period, mixing religion with politics brought Europe close to the brink of destruction, with the Thirty Years’ War being only the most obvious example. The French Revolution was, in part, about correcting this “imbalance.” For Europe to prosper, religion would have to be controlled and constrained by the state. And so French laïcité was born. Laïcité, in turn, became central to France’s social fabric and to French national identity. To be French is, in some sense, to believe in this constructed secular ideal.

The French national ideal, then, and the beliefs of a large number of French Muslims are in tension, if not contradiction. French Muslims much more strongly identify with their religion than the French population at large. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, 52 percent of French Muslims either “very strongly” or “extremely strongly” identify with their religion — compared to only 23 percent of the French public. The numbers for Britain are even starker — 75 percent versus 23 percent. Other poll results underline this clash in values. Remarkably, zero percent — yes, zero percent — of British Muslims believe homosexuality is morally acceptable. Inevitably, such views, informed by religion, are not simply a matter of private concern. They have an effect on public policy (just as the anti-gay attitudes of conservative Christians shape Republican policy in America).

It doesn’t have to be this way, but that’s the way it is now. In times of economic distress — and with the euro zone inching toward collapse — Europeans may increasingly take refuge in anti-Muslim scapegoating. This, in turn, will hurt the already dim job prospects of the European Muslim underclass. For their part, European Muslims who face heightened discrimination may very well find refuge in an increasingly rigid construction of their Muslim identity. Unemployment, immigration fears, the ascendance of the far right — along with a very real clash of religious and cultural values — make for a potent combination.

If there was a strong, confident left in Europe, then perhaps this dangerous mix could be effectively fought and opposed. For now, though, we may just have to hope – and pray – that cooler heads prevail.

Shadi Hamid 

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy

August 18, 2011