Deconstructing Great Replacement Theory: Breaking Down the Links that Bolster Authoritarian Regimes

Ibram X. Kendi explores how different authoritarian regimes exploit the Great Replacement Theory (GRT) fallacy to oppress minority groups.

Posted on April 30, 2026 in Featured Reviews

As part of our efforts to support scholarly work in pursuit of racial justice, Choice regularly reviews important current titles that consider issues of race or racism, devoting additional space to these works through long-form reviews. Doing so, we hope to underscore the urgency of these issues and to highlight promising resources. Given the relevance of this endeavor to TIE‘s mission, we have decided to begin publishing these reviews exclusively under Toward Inclusive Excellence, moving them from the Choice Picks section of Choice360.org. We hope our readers find these reviews useful for developing their personal or institutional collections. The following review considers the book Chain of Ideas (2026) by Ibram X. Kendi and appears in the July 2026 issue of Choice.

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Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, by Ibram X. Kendi. One World, 2026. 592p, ISBN 9780593978023 $35.00, ISBN 9798217169917 $37.00, ISBN 9780593978030

At a time when many people are deeply concerned about the future of democracy, a book that contributes to a better understanding of the current growth of worldwide authoritarianism is welcome. Kendi (Howard Univ.) is a recognized scholar whose many academic and popular titles have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller List (some immediately after publication), and whose activism includes the founding of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University in 2020 and serving as the inaugural director of Howard University’s Institute for Advanced Study, which is dedicated to exploring the significance of the African diaspora. Taken together, his many accomplishments illustrate an abiding interest in understanding racism, explaining its deleterious impact on democratic states, and combating it.

From the premise that the current authoritarian age threatens to supplant the post–World War II emphasis on democratic ideals and universal rights, the author’s main goal is to document and explain the reemergence of Great Replacement Theory (hereafter, GRT) in the early-twenty-first century. This theory posits that people of color, encouraged and enabled by elites, are depriving white people of their “lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedom” (p. xxiv). A few paragraphs later, this definition is qualified (moving it beyond an exclusively racial view) to include, inter alios, feminists, trans and queer people, ethnic and religious groups (especially Muslims), and supporters of multiculturalism and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) as “replacers.” Those peddling the notion of an elite conspiracy to replace a dominant, superior group with uncivilized and deviant substitutes do so to opportunistically reap the authoritarian benefits of a frightened and therefore uncritical, distracted, and malleable populace fearful of replacement.

About one-third of the way through the book, Kendi summarizes his organizational methodology: GRT is conceived as a product composed of ingredients requiring separation and explication. He then explores these separate “ingredients” in ten sections, each referred to as a link, offering a history that shapes its interaction with the other component parts of the larger idea (i.e., the chain) of authoritarianism. For example, the first section discusses the zero-sum fallacy regarding immigration: the notion that as immigrants gain (e.g., safety by emigrating to a safer environment), white people living in that same environment lose. The analysis of the idea under discussion is always both localized by place (here, France) and exemplified by a political figure whose speeches and/or policies reflect its use (in this case, Marine Le Pen). The fifth section highlights Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, whose Islamophobic career highlights another link: the notion of white Christian victimhood, a purposeful inversion of perpetrator and victim vis-á-vis immigrants (especially Muslims and those of color). The penultimate section focuses on El Salvador’s dictator Nayib Bukele and his threatened insurrection against the country’s legislative body, based on his conviction that democratic procedures are not consonant with a nation’s progress. Kendi’s analysis in this section, as in every section, is always accompanied by discussions of similar authoritarian features of other countries. For example, Bukele’s media-dispensed disinformation campaigns are compared to those of Vladimir Putin. Additionally, the Salvadoran dictator’s disregard for the rule of law is mirrored in digressions spotlighting Jair Bolsonaro’s and Donald Trump’s disavowal of lost elections. This broad optic allows readers to critically assess the similarities and differences arising from the appearance of GRT throughout Eurasia, the Global North, and the Global South.

Whereas earlier totalitarian systems openly propounded a racial basis for spreading fears regarding replacement (e.g., the pollution of Aryan blood), many modern replacement theorists disingenuously ground their exclusionary policies on a cultural rather than a racial basis, viz, the impossibility of another people’s customs/language/religion assimilating into the dominant culture

In explaining the historical roots of GRT, Kendi moves his analysis into the previous century. A close examination of earlier racial policies establishes that modern replacement theory marks the reemergence of ideas popular in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with one important difference. Whereas earlier totalitarian systems openly propounded a racial basis for spreading fears regarding replacement (e.g., the pollution of Aryan blood), many modern replacement theorists disingenuously ground their exclusionary policies on a cultural rather than a racial basis, viz, the impossibility of another people’s customs/language/religion assimilating into the dominant culture (predicated, of course, on the notion that pluralism attenuates a nation’s greatness). Such theorists, such as Giorgia Meloni, even aver that the real racists are those opposing her right-wing populist Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) party.

There have been several recent books and articles on GRT, but most have approached it from the perspectives of psychology (political and social), populism, and terrorism. Chain of Ideas represents the first study of the theory from the viewpoint of intellectual history, tracing the modern origins of the idea, its characteristics, and its subtle differences across many countries.

One problem with the book, however, is a lack of clarity regarding the connection between authoritarianism and GRT. In the prologue, Kendi lists the countries whose political leaders (in power or in opposition) subscribe to GRT (p. xxviii). However, the list of countries whose leaders espouse this idea differs from the number of countries with authoritarian governments (such as regimes on the African continent and in Southwest Asia). This necessitates addressing the question of how integral GRT is to authoritarianism, as well as knowing the author’s working definition of that latter term. Both are important because if modern GRT marks a reemergence of an idea first developed during earlier totalitarian Nazi and Fascist regimes, how is it that some modern authoritarian systems have ignored replacement theory? In a sense, the Nazi notions of “pure blood” put a racial “spin” on longstanding notions of religious contamination, evidenced early by Europe’s wars between Catholics and Protestants (and both against perceived heretics). Admittedly, a history of socioreligious “contamination” would move the book well beyond its stated goals and size. This last observation is offered more as an attestation of the thought-provoking nature of this book.

Moreover, if those who espouse GRT generally believe that a minority group cannot assimilate into the dominant group’s culture, why has China’s government established concentration/reeducation camps for groups such as the Uyghurs?

Another question an attentive reader might ask concerns China. Since Xi Jinping is listed as an adherent of GRT, a much fuller discussion of his justification for the sterilization and forced contraception/abortions of Kazakh and Uyghur women is required. Specifically, does President Xi believe in a possible Han replacement by these ethnic groups, or is the repression aimed at squashing separatism (making GRT just a cover)? If the former, are other ethnic minorities in China also viewed as a threat? Moreover, if those who espouse GRT generally believe that a minority group cannot assimilate into the dominant group’s culture, why has China’s government established concentration/reeducation camps for groups such as the Uyghurs?

The arrangement of the contents is also somewhat unusual. Each of the ten sections (links) is subdivided, on average, into thirteen chapters. Some of the chapters are only a few pages in length. Since these chapters topically fit together rather nicely, these discussions would have been better separated by a solid horizontal rule/line and not placed in separate chapters. This compels instructors wanting their students to read about a specific topic, e.g., those extremists who argue that there is no racism against people of color (the fourth link), to assign the entire section, not any of its individual chapters. An appendix listing (and expanding) the acronyms for the far-right parties mentioned would also have been nice. The endnotes for this title are provided in a link on the publisher’s website (as provided at the beginning of the book). This was done because the notes run to nearly 550 pages.

Expectedly, for a scholar passionate about the preservation of democracy, Chain of Ideas is both well researched and written to reach the widest possible audience. Readers who want to understand GRT (as expressed in the speeches, writings, and online postings of its proponents), the modern seminal texts from which this idea developed, and how it has been used to undermine democracy, will find this book both enlightening and indispensable.

Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Political Science – Comparative Politics

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Dr. Robert Ingoglia is currently an adjunct instructor of history at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, New York. He has been a summer seminar student at the American Numismatic Society, studied at the Franciscan Institute (Saint Bonaventure University) and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and has published articles on medieval church history in The Catholic Historical Review, the Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, and Byzantion: Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines.

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Be sure to also check out Choice’s archive of featured reviews. We publish a new one every month. A few related ones are:

	Biko Agozino’s review of Four Hundred Souls (2021): “Four Hundred Years of African America: An Ambitious Community History of the Black Experience“
	Leslie Grover’s review of The 1619 Project (2021): “Decentering Whiteness and Uplifting Black Voices: The 1619 Project Reclaims American History“
	Meredith L. Roman’s review of Border and Rule (2021): “Conceptualizing Humane Immigration: Recognizing Borders as Violent Tools of Racial Ordering“

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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.

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