The Left's Great Replacement Theory Gaslighting
Of course, the “Great Replacement Theory” is real.
Have you heard about the “Great Replacement Theory?” According to numerous media outlets on the Left, it’s a white supremacist conspiracy theory and thus, totally non-credible. Here’s how outlets on the Left describe it:
A racist conspiracy theory goes mainstream
The White Supremacist ‘Great Replacement Theory’ Has Deep Roots
Tucker Carlson Pushes Racist 'Great Replacement' Theory
What Is White Replacement Theory? Explaining The White Supremacist Rhetoric
As you can tell by the headlines, according to the Left, buying into the idea of the “Great Replacement Theory” is racist, conspiratorial, and completely ridiculous. No good and sane person could possibly believe in it.
So, what is this noxious theory exactly? Well, here’s a brief snippet from Wikipedia explaining the general concept:
“(The Great Replacement Theory) states that with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the white... population — as well as white European populations at large — is being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.”
One of the things liberals love to do when they’re trying to discredit an idea is to associate it with unsavory people. The idea is supposed to be, “It can’t be true because only conspiracy theorists or racists believe that.” Of course, it doesn’t matter how sketchy the person is, “the sky is blue” or “the grass is green” don’t become false because they believe it’s true.
Moreover, the “Great Replacement Theory” does appear to be a testable assertion, doesn’t it? Is the white population in the United States being demographically replaced or is it not? If it’s not, we’d expect racial demographics in the United States to have remained relatively stable over time, wouldn’t we? Of course, the “replacement” part of the equation also suggests that it’s an intentional thing. So, we wouldn’t merely be talking about minorities having more children than white Americans, we’d be talking explicitly about demographic changes caused by the racial breakdown of immigrants coming into the United States.
First of all, here’s a little spoiler. There is clearly, undeniably, unambiguously a “great replacement” happening in the United States. Let’s again go to Wikipedia, which has a nice breakdown of the racial demographics in America over time. In 1900, 87.9% of the US population was white and 11.6% was black. This was essentially unchanged even 70 years later when 87.7% of the population was white and 11.1% of the population was black. However, things changed a great deal between 1970 and 2020. The black population stayed steady at 12.4% while the white population of the United States plummeted to 61.6%. Some of that was a result of interracial marriage, but the biggest driver by far was the Immigration Act of 1965.
At the time, the liberal politicians responsible for it explicitly claimed it wouldn’t change America’s racial balance:
"The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
That sentiment was echoed by Johnson, who, upon signing the act on October 3, 1965, said the bill would not be revolutionary: “It does not affect the lives of millions … It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.
Naturally, they lied:
In 1960, Pew notes, 84 percent of U.S. immigrants were born in Europe or Canada; 6 percent were from Mexico, 3.8 percent were from South and East Asia, 3.5 percent were from Latin America and 2.7 percent were from other parts of the world. In 2017, European and Canadian immigrants totaled 13.2 percent, while Mexicans totaled 25.3 percent, other Latin Americans totaled 25.1 percent, Asians totaled 27.4 percent and other populations totaled 9 percent.
… It changed immigration demographics and increased immigrant numbers. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, in 1965, 84 percent of the U.S. population consisted of non-Hispanic whites; in 2015, that number was 62 percent. “Without any post-1965 immigration, the nation’s racial and ethnic composition would be very different today: 75 percent white, 14 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, and less than 1 percent Asian,” the report finds.
Comparing 1965 to 2015, the Hispanic population rose from 4 percent to 18 percent; and Asians grew from 1 percent to 6 percent. “This fast-growing immigrant population also has driven the share of the U.S. population that is foreign-born from 5 percent in 1965 to 14 percent today and will push it to a projected record 18 percent in 2065,” the report continues, noting that no racial or ethnic group will claim a majority of the U.S. population.
In other words, liberal politicians intentionally set out to change the racial composition of the United States by replacing the white population with minorities that were more likely to vote for them. Whether you think that is a good thing probably has a lot to do with two factors. The first is which political party you support (Democrats? Absolutely. Republicans? Not so much). The second is whether you believe that immigrants, no matter what their background, education, or culture are essentially interchangeable. In other words, if you believe that let’s say a highly educated German, Christian immigrant and a radical Islamist from Afghanistan who signs his name with an “X” are just as likely to be successful in America, then you probably don’t see a problem with this policy. On the other hand, if you think that’s deeply naïve and your first concern is getting immigrants that are going to fit into our culture and succeed, you probably look at it quite differently.
By the way, you may be wondering what “racist” publication published that last excerpt explaining how a deliberate change in our laws, in the words of Ted Kennedy, “upset the ethnic mix of our society.” That excerpt is from History.com which is about as vanilla and mainstream as it gets. Of course, liberals and liberal publications have been pointing out the coming “great replacement” and cheerfully anticipating the white population losing its majority status, which they assume, perhaps correctly, will mean that they will be forever ensconced in power. Here are a few excerpts to give you an idea of what I mean:
"The country has changed. White people will be the minority in the 2040s, so get used to it. Why not get used to it now? It's going to be good.” -- Michael Moore
“In August 2008, the Census Bureau released a report that predicted a seismic shift in American demographics: By 2050, minorities would make up more than 50 percent of the population and become the majority.
When Yale psychologist Jennifer Richeson heard about the report on NPR, she remembers thinking, “This is probably freaking somebody out.”
By “somebody,” she means white people.” -- Vox
“If nativists overlook the fact that this nation is a nation of immigrants, the future will help remove all doubt.
The United States is experiencing something unprecedented in its 237-year history. Census data and polling conducted by The Associated Press highlight a future where non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in the next generation.
Research by the AP and others forecast this change coming to our doorstep somewhere around 2043.” – The Huffington Post
We could go on and on with this, but you get the idea. When liberals talk about the “great replacement,” they’re thrilled that it will presumably lock them into power and stick it to white people, but when conservatives talk about the same policy, they’re supposedly hyping up some kind of racist conspiracy theory. However, the reality is the same no matter who’s saying it. The percentage of white Americans in the population is being dropped intentionally via our immigration system. Liberals are for this because it benefits them politically and if Republicans had half a brain (there is a good reason they call the GOP “the Stupid Party”), they’d be against it for exactly the same reason.
Of course, ALL Americans should be very nervous about these demographic changes for another important reason. Different ethnic groups in America have widely varying levels of education, economic success, and commit different levels of crime. There are certainly minority groups that do as well as and, in some cases, BETTER than white Americans. For example, if we look at this in the broadest of strokes, Asians are outperforming white Americans economically.
This all ties into a crucial point that almost no one is talking about. If the white population in the United States drops significantly and it’s replaced with people who are poorer, less educated, and more likely to end up in jail, the country will go backwards by default.
Of course, that doesn’t have to happen. There’s absolutely no reason that we couldn’t use our immigration system to add more educated workers, increase the tax base, and make America a better place to live for the Americans that are already here. Unfortunately, for that to happen, we’d need to give up the illusion that an illiterate immigrant from South America, who does manual labor and will probably end up on disability for the rest of his life at 50 because he can’t pick strawberries anymore, would be just as good of an acquisition for America as a Swedish robotics engineer, an Indian programmer, or a doctor from Taiwan.
If we focused on merit and bringing in the most successful immigrant groups, we’d end up with more Europeans by default (which would lessen worries about “replacement”), we’d have far fewer immigrants on welfare (there shouldn’t be any), wages for lower and lower-middle-class Americans would likely go up (there would be less competition for low-skill jobs), and a lot of the fighting over immigration in America would disappear.
Whether they will admit it or not, everyone knows that’s true, but liberals like the idea of bringing immigrants here that will remain mired in poverty because that’s a core part of their voter base. The more poor, uneducated, failing people there are, the more it helps the Left. On the other hand, Republicans are so terrified to touch any issue that segues with race that they often steer clear of the immigration debate entirely. That’s extremely foolish because, at a minimum, we should AT LEAST be insisting on moving to a merit-based immigration system for the good of the country.
Your article is a good summary of what’s going on. Now we need the solution.
John Hawkins lacks a lot of knowledge about human history. 12,000 years ago, the people living in Europe did not even look like the Northern Europeans of today. Human populations change over thousands of years. When the Sumerians were developing the first complete writing system in human history, dividing the circle into 360 degrees, developing a math system based on the number 60, building the first cities in human history, the Europeans were far behind them in such developments. Average IQs of human populations change over thousands of years. No one race or ethnic group has an innate superior average IQ.
No one should discriminate against those of European descent; however, the group of people in human history that has killed more of their own and more of other races and ethnic groups of people are the people of Europe. Even though they have killed more people in human history than any other racial group, no one should stereotype those of European descent or discriminate against them since racism is one of the most hideous of human traits. The human family needs to learn how to live together in peace, but we currently do not have the science technology or the social technology to achieve such a task.
On the topic of immigration, every immigrant should come to the USA as part of a legal process. India has about one-third the land area of the USA, but it has a population of about 1.4 billion individuals. Yes, the USA does have a lot of land area that could accommodate hundreds of millions of additional human individuals, but immigration needs to be done in an orderly manner.