Enrichment

What do Anders Breivik and The Great Gatsby have in common?

Mike McCartney

9th June 2022

As do Tucker Carlson of Fox News, Hitler, and US immigration policy...

It's the Great Replacement Theory. Covered in an excellent article in the G2 section of the Guardian.

According to Steve Rose:

"It is not a new concept or a fringe concern. Rather, it is a fringe concern and a mainstream one – espoused by “lone wolf” mass shooters and prominent politicians. According to a recent YouGov poll, 61% of Trump voters and 53% of Fox News viewers believe it is true.

The name could be one factor. Neither overtly offensive nor racist, it has the ring of a respected academic proposition and slips easily into mainstream discourse. It is also vague enough to accommodate a spectrum of views from extreme to moderate, yet tucked within its three words are centuries’ worth of racist and white‑supremacist ideology.

Viktor Orbán claims to fight against ‘a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with migrants’

Prof Matthew Feldman, a writer and specialist on rightwing extremism, explains that there are two versions of the theory. “One, we might call it ‘great replacement lite’, is saying: ‘There’s a huge demographic shift and these people tend to vote Democrat in the US or Labour in the UK.’” Then there is what Feldman calls the “full-fat” version, which says: “‘This is a conspiracy organised by elites – they’re deliberately undermining white majorities.’"

Read the full article here.

Mike McCartney

Mike is an experienced A-Level Politics teacher, author and examiner.

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