Do You Believe in the 'Great Replacement Theory'?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

Honestly, this is the take I want to go with sometimes.

[Santander]

White people are being replaced, duh. The problem is there are no palatable solutions that don't involve bad forms of racism/xenophobia.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Pretty sure it's not "The Great Replacement" unless you think it is orchestrated and calculated to specifically displace and dilute the influence and power of Europeans and Anglos. It gets even more conspiratorial depending on who you think is doing the orchestration. People on the right who hand wring over how it's "gaslighting" or whatever to note demographic trends are either misunderstanding or playing dumb.

It's a fact that white people will lose demographic majority status in the US next ~30 years - there's nothing conspiratorial in asserting this. The conspiracy (and opprobrium) come from believing it to be a (((scheme))) and a goal unto itself instead of seeing it as a byproduct of several cultural and demographic trends or policy decisions that were intended to be race-blind.

[parochial boy]

It's a fact that white people will lose demographic majority status in the US next ~30 years - there's nothing conspiratorial in asserting this. The conspiracy (and opprobrium) come from believing it to be a (((scheme))) and a goal unto itself instead of seeing it as a byproduct of several cultural and demographic trends or policy decisions that were intended to be race-blind.

Even that though - is a lot to do with the very specific New World way that America tries to pigeon-hole and force racial categories. As in, there are a lot of American people who would be considered as being "white" elsewhere but who aren't in the American understanding of racial classifications; and the country is a very, very long way from having a majority of the population with no or little European ancestry.

In that case, the hand wringing over the dissapearance of a white majority is something that is mostly a question of definitions - or in other words, a reflection of the degree to which "race" is not actually a biological reality but a cultural one. Nor is one specific ethnic identity losing its status as the majority exactly a new phenomenon in the US. White Anglo-Saxons have long since ceased to be either a majority or even an especially identifiable population, in all likelihood the "Non-hispanic white" category will at some point go the same way.

In Europe it's even more so, I was reading something fairly recently on the demography of France, which is possibly the European country with the largest non-white population. In essence, if current rates of immigration and intermarriage continue, it will never have a majority with no "European" ancestry, or even with mostly non-European ancestry. And in any case, I don't really see why worrying about a country where most people have some North African or something background is on the whole any more worrying than the current situation where most people can probably identify some Italian/Portuguese/Polish ancestry. Demographic "replacement" as it is, is pretty much a constant phenomena across all of human history.

Which is all not to say that worrying about immigration makes someone a hopeless racist, more that pushing a "great replacement" narrative - even with the conspiratorial element removed - does play on some fairly racist tropes along the lines of "in order to be a genuine European you must have zero non-European ancestry and preferably not anything too close to the Meditteranean either"

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's a fact that white people will lose demographic majority status in the US next ~30 years - there's nothing conspiratorial in asserting this. The conspiracy (and opprobrium) come from believing it to be a (((scheme))) and a goal unto itself instead of seeing it as a byproduct of several cultural and demographic trends or policy decisions that were intended to be race-blind.

Even that though - is a lot to do with the very specific New World way that America tries to pigeon-hole and force racial categories. As in, there are a lot of American people who would be considered as being "white" elsewhere but who aren't in the American understanding of racial classifications; and the country is a very, very long way from having a majority of the population with no or little European ancestry.

In that case, the hand wringing over the dissapearance of a white majority is something that is mostly a question of definitions - or in other words, a reflection of the degree to which "race" is not actually a biological reality but a cultural one. Nor is one specific ethnic identity losing its status as the majority exactly a new phenomenon in the US. White Anglo-Saxons have long since ceased to be either a majority or even an especially identifiable population, in all likelihood the "Non-hispanic white" category will at some point go the same way.

In Europe it's even more so, I was reading something fairly recently on the demography of France, which is possibly the European country with the largest non-white population. In essence, if current rates of immigration and intermarriage continue, it will never have a majority with no "European" ancestry, or even with mostly non-European ancestry. And in any case, I don't really see why worrying about a country where most people have some North African or something background is on the whole any more worrying than the current situation where most people can probably identify some Italian/Portuguese/Polish ancestry. Demographic "replacement" as it is, is pretty much a constant phenomena across all of human history.

Which is all not to say that worrying about immigration makes someone a hopeless racist, more that pushing a "great replacement" narrative - even with the conspiratorial element removed - does play on some fairly racist tropes along the lines of "in order to be a genuine European you must have zero non-European ancestry and preferably not anything too close to the Meditteranean either"

Nah, I really don't think that's true (the part in bold primarily. The part after that is definitely true.) The notion that people aren't "truly" white if they have some sort of somewhat "ethnic" background or a tiny bit of non-European ancestry isn't really a widely held view in the US by anyone younger than Social Security eligibility age and for some reason Atlas posters. The people pushing the "Great Replacement" stuff certainly don't think that, it's not like they're also trying to exclude Italians and Eastern Europeans, a lot are actually of that ancestry themselves.

Also it's a bit of a myth that "ethnics" were ever considered non-white even in the 19th century. Like for one just look at the Census results then, the country was far more white than it is now which isn't surprising at all, but this showed that all people of European ancestry were being counted as white still. Also they were able to vote even under Jim Crow, could marry WASPs even in states that banned interracial marriage before Loving v. Virgina, they were allowed to use white facilities in the segregated south, etc. Trying to exclude them today is just weird and not something I ever see outside of things like stereotypical Twitter liberals trying to pull some sort of "gotcha!" on someone like Nick Fuentes even though it's obvious the alt-right doesn't care. I kind of wonder if a lot of this is because their blatant racism and bigotry is so archaic-sounding in some ways that a lot just assume they hold the exact same views on racial categories as the original Klan. But there's a reason you won't ever see someone like the Buffalo shooter targeting Italians.

Even for people outside of Europe, the white status isn't really that disputed. Like the most obvious example of people included as white in the Census but who some would argue otherwise is Middle Easterners. But who seriously argues that the Governor of New Hampshire isn't a white guy or tries to count him as an example of a non-white GOP politician? Also to reuse an example I cited in that thread about that "families of color playground night", there's a couple at my church where the husband is Egyptian, and so their kids are half-Egyptian, yet they really don't look much different from the fully European kids and no one would ever count them as non-white. And in fact even the mother is partially "ethnic" because she said that she's actually half-Jewish (her father is a completely non-practicing and non-observant Jew and thus her and her siblings were all raised Christian by their mother), so if Jews also count as "non-European" that would make their kids only about a quarter European in ancestry, but again no one would ever seriously consider them "students of color" or something like that. And while one drop rules were used in the past to exclude some people as white, today you don't really see that amongst anyone of majority European ancestry aside from people trying to get benefits of tribal membership on the basis of being like 1/16 Native American.

It's true that online discourse can obscure a lot of this stuff and of course people who love to debate and categorize this often end up engaging in a sort of woke neo-phrenology and it often involves some very weird takes like that Muslims are never ever white, but I think that's just another example of how Twitter is not real life.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In England (by which I mean 'England', not 'Great Britain', not 'The United Kingdom'), the percentage of children classified as 'White' in the pre-school bracket on current official Department for Education stations is only a few percentage points lower than the percentage of 0-4 year olds classified as 'White' at the 2011 census. The percentage of children in that bracket who are classified as 'White British' is still around about two-thirds or so as well. And then we note something else: that the tendency in British society (both presently and in the past)* has been for people of mixed heritage to be absorbed into the mainstream rather than the other way around, and it's the 'mixed' category that has grown the most in DofE stats.

_{*The discovery that there was a fair-sized Black minority in Britain during the 18th century always raises an obvious question: 'what happened to them?' And while half the answer is that 'many left for Sierra Leone', the other half is that 'the rest were ultimately absorbed into the rest of the population without much trace'.}

[Mopsus]

The theory's biggest problem is that it assumes all non-European cultures are the same. Among the culture groups that I've been exposed to, Latin Americans and southeast Asians seem to value hard work and independence as much as Anglo-Americans, so the idea that their presence here would fundamentally change the culture of the United States doesn't ring true to me. On the other hand, Congolese people seem to have been immediately captured by the American debt system, so I could believe that they were brought here specifically to become serfs.

[PSOL]

In England (by which I mean 'England', not 'Great Britain', not 'The United Kingdom'), the percentage of children classified as 'White' in the pre-school bracket on current official Department for Education stations is only a few percentage points lower than the percentage of 0-4 year olds classified as 'White' at the 2011 census. The percentage of children in that bracket who are classified as 'White British' is still around about two-thirds or so as well. And then we note something else: that the tendency in British society (both presently and in the past)* has been for people of mixed heritage to be absorbed into the mainstream rather than the other way around, and it's the 'mixed' category that has grown the most in DofE stats.

_{*The discovery that there was a fair-sized Black minority in Britain during the 18th century always raises an obvious question: 'what happened to them?' And while half the answer is that 'many left for Sierra Leone', the other half is that 'the rest were ultimately absorbed into the rest of the population without much trace'.}

The thing is a good amount of these children of European-descent don’t have roots in the British Isles at all, but from all over Europe and Eastern Europe especially. A significant amount of backlash to the EU has been from the trope of “polish plumbers stealing” “indigenous British peoples” jobs.

[fhtagn]

It's not an issue I particularly care about all that much tbh

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

Honestly, this is the take I want to go with sometimes.

I know we'll be of vastly different minds on this, but I hope you can appreciate the humor in the prospect of pro-immigration rightists hoping people from the developing world can swamp out secular, liberal white voters. AFAIK it's only a phenomenon so far on the Internet or maybe in Canada(?).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

Honestly, this is the take I want to go with sometimes.

I know we'll be of vastly different minds on this, but I hope you can appreciate the humor in the prospect of pro-immigration rightists hoping people from the developing world can swamp out secular, liberal white voters. AFAIK it's only a phenomenon so far on the Internet or maybe in Canada(?).

Arguably the most successful (well, "successful") example of that is Israel. Although that's often an aspect of Israeli society that's overlooked because it doesn't fit into either Side's narrative.

But frankly, I'll take the values of your average Mexican Catholic any day over your average White American heretic who thinks God is all for cutting welfare, destroying the environment and mass incarceration.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

Honestly, this is the take I want to go with sometimes.

I know we'll be of vastly different minds on this, but I hope you can appreciate the humor in the prospect of pro-immigration rightists hoping people from the developing world can swamp out secular, liberal white voters. AFAIK it's only a phenomenon so far on the Internet or maybe in Canada(?).

Arguably the most successful (well, "successful") example of that is Israel. Although that's often an aspect of Israeli society that's overlooked because it doesn't fit into either Side's narrative.

But frankly, I'll take the values of your average Mexican Catholic any day over your average White American heretic who thinks God is all for cutting welfare, destroying the environment and mass incarceration.

Слава Богу!

[Person Man]

Approximately 29% believes this bullsh**t, even on a 2:1 Democrat website? 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When a Democrat narrowly wins a race in some sunbelt locale on the backs of immigrant voters, it's given a celebratory article on MSNBC. When a book is written on the so called Emerging Democratic Majority, its given the status of a legitimate theory for over a decade. But when Republicans highlight the same story but with a negative spin, it's called a fringe conspiracy theory, "vile" and "racist". The hypocrisy is so shameless it almost defies belief. Either there is a real disconnect and gaping but genuine lack of self awareness on the center left there, or it is some kind of dishonesty.

The real reason Republicans don't have to worry about this is that Hispanic birth rates have collapsed. The right has turned its attention to a trend ironically at the very moment when it has exhausted itself.

I mean yea, the ultimate source of the "Great Replacement Theory" is a response to the the crowing of the left.

I recall in 2010 era, there was a situation highlighted on conservative talk radio, where a bunch of activists took the "ascendant majority line" and shouted down a tea party protest with basically "Once the demographics catch up to you, its over".

You used to see this gleefully championed on this site and it probably still happens.

So yea, I can totally see that angle.

[Aurelius]

When a Democrat narrowly wins a race in some sunbelt locale on the backs of immigrant voters, it's given a celebratory article on MSNBC. When a book is written on the so called Emerging Democratic Majority, its given the status of a legitimate theory for over a decade. But when Republicans highlight the same story but with a negative spin, it's called a fringe conspiracy theory, "vile" and "racist". The hypocrisy is so shameless it almost defies belief. Either there is a real disconnect and gaping but genuine lack of self awareness on the center left there, or it is some kind of dishonesty.

The real reason Republicans don't have to worry about this is that Hispanic birth rates have collapsed. The right has turned its attention to a trend ironically at the very moment when it has exhausted itself.

I mean yea, the ultimate source of the "Great Replacement Theory" is a response to the the crowing of the left.

I recall in 2010 era, there was a situation highlighted on conservative talk radio, where a bunch of activists took the "ascendant majority line" and shouted down a tea party protest with basically "Once the demographics catch up to you, its over".

You used to see this gleefully championed on this site and it probably still happens.

So yea, I can totally see that angle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/opinion/stacey-abrams-georgia-governor-election-brian-kemp.html

This kind of thing has been everywhere, for a long time.

I think the ongoing "replacement" is overwhelmingly the result of economic and geopolitical causes, but I'm not going to pretend there are no politicians out there who would like to change the composition of the electorate in their favor by bringing in people who are certain to vote for them in overwhelming numbers.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's a fact that white people will lose demographic majority status in the US next ~30 years - there's nothing conspiratorial in asserting this. The conspiracy (and opprobrium) come from believing it to be a (((scheme))) and a goal unto itself instead of seeing it as a byproduct of several cultural and demographic trends or policy decisions that were intended to be race-blind.

Even that though - is a lot to do with the very specific New World way that America tries to pigeon-hole and force racial categories. As in, there are a lot of American people who would be considered as being "white" elsewhere but who aren't in the American understanding of racial classifications; and the country is a very, very long way from having a majority of the population with no or little European ancestry.

Nah, I really don't think that's true (the part in bold primarily. The part after that is definitely true.) The notion that people aren't "truly" white if they have some sort of somewhat "ethnic" background or a tiny bit of non-European ancestry isn't really a widely held view in the US by anyone younger than Social Security eligibility age and for some reason Atlas posters. The people pushing the "Great Replacement" stuff certainly don't think that, it's not like they're also trying to exclude Italians and Eastern Europeans, a lot are actually of that ancestry themselves.

I know this is one of your favorite targets, but "white ethics" are not really what people are usually talking about in this conversation. The largest groups of American people who would be classified as "white" elsewhere but who are seen as non-white in America are (1) multiracial people (many of whom move into and out of racial categories between censuses — a 1/2 white–1/2 Asian or 3/4–1/4 mixed person identifying as white and Asian in 2010 and just white or just Asian in 2020, for example) and (2) Hispanics.

But in the US, most Hispanics are white. You see, Hispanic is not a separate race on the Census.

[Person Man]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

You mean you believe that it is happening, but that it is a good thing? That still doesn't mean it should be something to celebrate or be afraid of.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

You mean you believe that it is happening, but that it is a good thing? That still doesn't mean it should be something to celebrate or be afraid of.

I call it the "Reversalist Great Replacement", which is social conservatives want more highly religious minorities to immigrate and displace the voting power of secular white liberals.

So you would condemn the lefties who have embraced it in a "your day is done" kind of way in the past?

[PSOL]

Ending capitalism would make many of these points mute, as there would be no incentive to immigrate anywhere with market instability and exploitation lessened.

Still, this thread reminds me of the ill-fated attempts of the First international from preventing Slavs and Italians from immigrating to the more industrialized parts of Europe, in that there can be no solution to migration without political change and that any utilization of current frameworks to prevent migration are doomed for failure.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ending capitalism would make many of these points mute, as there would be no incentive to immigrate anywhere with market instability and exploitation lessened.

Right because that is obviously the only motivator for people to escape their current locations.

[PSOL]

Ending capitalism would make many of these points mute, as there would be no incentive to immigrate anywhere with market instability and exploitation lessened.

Right because that is obviously the only motivator for people to escape their current locations.

Yes, and anything else is just a byproduct.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ending capitalism would make many of these points mute, as there would be no incentive to immigrate anywhere with market instability and exploitation lessened.

Right because that is obviously the only motivator for people to escape their current locations.

Yes, and anything else is just a byproduct.

So all government tyranny the history of the world over is the result of capitalism?

[PSOL]

Ending capitalism would make many of these points mute, as there would be no incentive to immigrate anywhere with market instability and exploitation lessened.

Right because that is obviously the only motivator for people to escape their current locations.

Yes, and anything else is just a byproduct.

So all government tyranny the history of the world over is the result of capitalism?

Capitalism is the dominant mode of production that dictates our interactions with other beings, every fault in the system is a byproduct of the wider situation.

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

You mean you believe that it is happening, but that it is a good thing? That still doesn't mean it should be something to celebrate or be afraid of.

I call it the "Reversalist Great Replacement", which is social conservatives want more highly religious minorities to immigrate and displace the voting power of secular white liberals.

So you would condemn the lefties who have embraced it in a "your day is done" kind of way in the past?

In my experience, the similarities boil down to where the immigrants came from and how they are doing in the US, but most conservatives really do not have much in common with poorer conservative recent immigrant and second generation populations even with agreeing over some social issues. The family structure and interaction with the rest of society is different and the income and occupational differences they face is also different.

Also, it’s sad seeing people just want immigration to make it easier for themselves, you and the flipside of this like Antonio just want to rule like kings and don’t think of the wider picture, in effect ruining your own desires and making yourselves miserable in having to micromanage your own failure. A significant source of conservative bugbears comes from urban minorities interacting with society—the last sources of traditional African culture under pressure led to the sexual revolution and modern activism because they had no option unlike white people of similar standings, modern lgbt culture is descended and upheld entirely from diaspora populations with less to lose, and modern American labor history owes a lot to declassed Russian Jews who settled up north in the late 1800s to early 1920s. Similarly, strategically placed diaspora populations— like the Cuban diaspora led by the former elite and Dutch calvinists—has definitely ruined the electoral map many times for your side.

I have always supported a world where we do away with borders and let people live where they want without pressure completely outside of human control, but you cannot live in that ideal society without fixing the rest of the worlds problems as best as you can.

[Person Man]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

You mean you believe that it is happening, but that it is a good thing? That still doesn't mean it should be something to celebrate or be afraid of.

I call it the "Reversalist Great Replacement", which is social conservatives want more highly religious minorities to immigrate and displace the voting power of secular white liberals.

So you would condemn the lefties who have embraced it in a "your day is done" kind of way in the past?

Then again, wouldn't these new voters assimilate? Maybe assimilation is politically a two way street as well. If your kids assimilate into the broader population, the same process that happened to others will eventually happen to them. If they stay insular, then binds of tradition will be met with the binds of being on the outside of society.

[PSOL]

Yes, but I'm in favor of it.

Honestly, this is the take I want to go with sometimes.

Arguably the most successful (well, "successful") example of that is Israel. Although that's often an aspect of Israeli society that's overlooked because it doesn't fit into either Side's narrative.

Given that our most prominent Israeli poster is absolutely miserable about the state of his country’s politics, it cannot be true.

Outside of the Israeli Arab issue, Israel is a deeply divided and socially toxic country with almost everyone angsty and opposed to any in-group not their own. Israeli immigration policy has created an insane housing market with an economy where even white collar professionals who took years and years of study have to compete with the possibility of being denied a position over another Jew anywhere else in the world. marginalized and low income Jews structurally unable to get those jobs, and who have to deal with competition elsewhere for manufacturing and most blue collar work from Palestinian migrant workers, are in a constant state of stress and anger. Maghrebi and Russian Jews in this whose parents aren’t loaded basically are stuck in a race to the bottom under Israel’s current economic system.

All of this also makes some groups, most notably the poorer members of the Hasidic community in Israel, unable to both get employment from businesses outside of connections to a small pool of businessmen apart of their community. Instead they get on welfare and use under the table work to supplement the rest to get by.

This system is not successful, in fact it is probably the Achilles heel of the country as fascist groups basically gain massive steam in their desire to murder both the precariat and the liberal western Jews they blame for upholding this system. Israel is an utter failure of a country in terms of its stability on both analyzing its society and even on a basic level of just observing Israelis interact with one another. It is a parody of the United States.