Since the formation of our country, hate filled racists have looked for anything they could find to justify their racist hate for anyone who didn’t look like them and to keep those people in their place. Generations later, many far right extremists, including some GQP politicians, have used the far-right conspiracy theory, known as the “great replacement theory,” which warns that an increase in the non-White population will destroy White and Western civilization to limit and even prohibit immigration into the United States.
The alleged shooter who took the lives of ten people and injured several others at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY, left behind a manifesto with specific plans to attack Black people. He repeatedly cited the “great replacement” theory, the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with non white people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.
Other incidents that cited the ‘Great Replacement (Conspiracy) Theory to justify their evil acts:
- On March 15, 2019, a white Australian man who had long professed racist views attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, shooting dozens of Muslims who were gathered for Friday prayers. He carried firearms emblazoned with far-right messages, killing 51 people in a massacre that he partly streamed online.
- Prosecutors said a man who killed one person and injured three in an attack on a synagogue near San Diego during the Jewish holiday of Passover in April 2019 was inspired by the shootings in New Zealand. The gunman was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole last year.
- A gunman who killed 23 people in a crowded shopping center in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019 wrote a 2,300-word screed, posted online minutes before the attack, that warned of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”“In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto,” it said. “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
- A 22-year-old Norwegian man who was sentenced to 21 years in prison for killing his stepsister and opening fire on a mosque said during his trial that he was inspired by the New Zealand massacre.
- In 2017, some of the torch-bearing “Unite the Right” demonstrators, including Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis, who terrorized Charlottesville in 2017 were also motivated by the theory.
The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ is not anything new. In 1947, Dixiecrat, not to be confused with today’s Democratic Party, Senator Theodore G. Bilbo from the great state of Mississippi published a book titled, “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization” that warned of the same destruction of White civilization. He directed the majority of his hate towards black people, which he wanted to ship back to Africa, but also made slurs against Italians and Jews.
When Republicans controlled the Senate in 1947, a dispute over whether Bilbo would be allowed to take his Senate seat because of his racist views occured. Southern Democrats/Dixiecrats threatened to stop the Senate from organizing if he were barred. Fate intervened when Bilbo went back to Mississippi to undergo oral cancer surgery. He died on Aug. 21, 1947, without retaking his Senate seat.
In today’s Republican Party, the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ has gone mainstream with help from their favorite ‘news’ organization, Fox ‘News.’ A recent New York Times investigation showed that Tucker Carlson weaponizes his viewers’ fears and grievances’ to create what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news.
GQP politicians now use this racist conspiracy theory to prey on their ignorant, racist base’s fears and hate.
In 2021, Elise Stefanik posted on Facebook, “radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a permanent election insurrection.” She did not use racist or ethnic slurs but insinuated that ‘they, will replace you.’
Only a few members of her party called her out for her blatant racism and hate:
She hasn’t stopped because hate and fear garner votes from the GQP’s hate filled base:
And then there’s Ohio’s ‘Finest:’
Meanwhile (J.D.)Vance, who credits the former president’s endorsement for helping him to victory in last week’s Ohio primary, is another vocal exponent of the discredited theory.
“You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again,” he claimed at a campaign event in Portsmouth last month.
Josh Mandel, who was defeated by Vance, went even further in an interview on Breitbart in October.
“This is about changing the face of America, figuratively and literally. They are trying to change our culture, change our demographics and change our electorate. This is all about power,” he said, without acknowledging that only US citizens can vote, and the path to citizenship can take legal immigrants many years.
