Rev Left Radio - The Great Replacement Theory: Reactionary Politics & Racist Conspiracy Thinking

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

In this crossover episode of Guerrilla History and Rev Left, Adnan (GH) and Breht (RLR) discuss the essays of an important new book studying many aspects of the history and contemporary expression of right wing demographic obsessions, anti-immigrant and fascistic patriarchies, and the politics of Islamophobia in Europe, North America and beyond with co-editors Luiz Manuel Hernandez Aguilar and Sarah Bracke.  The book is The Politics of Replacement: Demographic Fears, Conspiracy Theories, and Race Wars, and is definitely worth picking up! Sarah Bracke is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is the principal investigator of the research project EnGendering Europe’s “Muslim Question”, funded by the Dutch Research Council.  Follow her on twitter @SarahABracke Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar is an associate researcher at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder, Germany. He holds a PhD in sociology by the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. His research interests focus on racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and the far right.

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global history of the activist left

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Adnan Hussein. Today, I'm not joined by my usual co-host, Henry Hakamaki. He couldn't be with us today. We look forward, of course, to having him back on again soon in the next episode. but I'm really delighted that we have a returning co-host, a guest co-host today. Listeners, you know Brett O'Shea. Brett, it's great to have you back on.

It's absolutely wonderful to be back. It's wonderful to work with you again, Adnan. And it's particularly good to be back on an episode such as this. I know Adnan and I have done, you know, episodes on conspiracy theories and reactionary ideologies in the past. And it felt like a natural topic for you and I to collaborate on again. so I'm happy to be here. Absolutely. Yeah, we had a few, a couple years ago, a general discussion among us about right-wing conspiracy theories and broad brushstrokes, brush strokes. But today we're actually really lucky because we have some genuine experts who have done some serious scholarship on the issue.

Before, however, I introduced them and a little bit about the broad topic. I just want to remind listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by joining us on patreon.com slash gorilla history, two R's, two L's. And you can also keep up to date with the show by following us on Twitter, sometimes known as X,

at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, two R's and two L's. But yes, Brett, I mean, we're really lucky. today that we have, as I said, some people who have dedicated some serious scholarship to some of these most popular of right-wing conspiracy theories. And you mentioned that it was a very timely episode. We're recording this during a period where there have been a lot of elections recently in Europe. You know, the elections in the UK took place the day before

recording, the European elections took place recently. And we see the politics of the far right really manifesting across Europe. And so we're going to be talking about one of the key conspiracy theories that seems to motivate and galvanize far right organizing. There's a new book called The Politics of Replacement, Demographic Fears, Conspiracy Theory, and Race. Wars. And we have the two co-editors of this magnificent and important volume here with us today. We have Sarah Braka. Sarah, why don't you actually introduce yourself, and I'll get your co-editor to introduce himself in just a moment. Yes. So my name is Sarah Brake, and I'm a professor of sociology of gender and sexuality at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

I'm also the principal investigator of a research project called Engendering Europe's Muslim Question, which is funded by the Dutch Research Council. And I'm very happy to be here with you. Well, welcome. We're delighted to have you with us. And you're also joined by your co-editor of this collection of essays. Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar. Welcome, Luis. welcome and thanks for the invitation I think I'm also very happy to be here I'm an associate research at the European University of Adriene in Frankfurt Germany I work before with Sarah in the project and gender in Europe's Muslim question if I remember correctly for three years and yes I'm although I'm

sociologists I'm working in the Faculty of Cultural Sciences in in France Frankfurt. And yeah, working on racial conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism, the far right, and anti-Semitism as well. Fantastic. Again, it's wonderful to have you on as well. I'm really looking forward to this conversation, as I know Brett is. Why don't I just start with the first question, which is just I alluded to the contemporary relevance of the book, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what motivated your interest in the subject, why you wanted to put together this collection of essays,

maybe broadly what the aims of the work really were as you conceived of it. And maybe Sarah, you can start us off with, you know, how you came to this project. Yes, so Louise and I were working together within that project of engendering Europe's Muslim question. And it's basically while we were doing that research, and we use the term Muslim question deliberately in all of its resonances with Europe's Jewish question, trying to connect the dots, trying to think some of these things. Yeah, think them together in the same analytical space, which doesn't mean to say it's the same thing, it's a repetition of history, but within a same analytical space. And as we were doing that, very soon we came.

across, yeah, these replacement conspiracy thinking or theories in relation to this idea that Muslims are taking over Europe and mainly through demographics, right? Well, migration as well, migration is one part of demographics, but also really the birth rates. And so we went down, and I have to say, Lewis did a lot of that work. Like I wasn't always able to stomach it. We went down the rabbit wall of the Internet of all of these very right-wing spaces in the Internet and came across these conspiracy theories

and really wanted to create a community to think together about these conspiracy theories. And that's why we organize a conference. The conference is a nice way. I called for papers and who else is interested to think about this? in contemporary times, but also in history, right? Like we have, there's long genealogities of this way of problematizing a part of the population

and seeing them as the culprit for everything that happens and this kind of racial supremacy thinking. And so there's archives to be looked at. there's different disciplines that can show us, yeah, produce different knowledge on this. So we really wanted to create a broader community. We put out this call for papers. And many people responded. Also, many people came to the conference. I mean, we had to, the first conference was planned in June 2020.

So that didn't happen, lockdown. And then we did it the year afterwards, but kept in touch. so actually really build up a community of people who kept in touch for over a year and then organized the hybrid conference and out of the conference came this edited volume. So that's like very briefly in the broad strokes, but I'm sure that Lewis would like to add to this as well.

Yes, because I think that's the central, right, the part the need to build a community given what we also identify very early on which is the compartmentalization of the study of conspiracy theories, right, or at least of this discourse. So on the one hand, you have the growing field of conspiracy theories that does not incorporate or has not incorporated yet the knowledge from studies on anti-Semitism,

Islamophobia studies, racism in general, right? So you have that lack. And then from the field also of conspiracy Jewish, there is a lack of engagement with an analytics of gender and sexuality. And very early on, we start to think and write about these issues as being part of or in need of an analytic taking into consideration history, those historical articulations of the probabilization of minories, minority, sorry, the politicization of demographics, but also gender and sexuality, right, as categories of analysis. And then from the field of Islamophobic studies, you have also not a broad scholarship engaging with the insights from conspiracy theories. So you have at least three bodies of literature that we're not talking among each other, right? And so in terms of building an analytic, we also wanted to do that, right?

To try to sort of bridge the gaps and sort of create bridges between these conspiracy theories, like what can we learn from the field of conspiracy theories, from Islamophobia, from gender studies, in order to tackle this monster, right? Because I think one of the problem with this conspiracy theories is how they keep morphing all the different historical archives that they are mobilized, the different national versions, right? Like you have one from the European Union, you have one from London, you have one from the nation state. And at the end, there are sort of structural elements within them, but they are messy. I think that will be the appropriate.

They're very messy. And so besides building a community to think about, to talk about, we also wanted to, with this book and with previous work and with future work, we want to build this analytic, right? An analytic that takes into consideration all the knowledge that we have from studies on anti-Semitism, Islamphobia studies, theories of race and racism, gender and sexuality studies, conspiracies theories studies as well. Yeah, I think that's incredibly important.

It makes this work so worthwhile, this synthesizing of so many different fields of study, different trajectories of study and bringing them together to focus on one level, this overarching conspiracy theory that we hear a lot about. But on a deeper level, I think it would be fair to say that what we're talking about on some level is the core animating energy of far-right movements across, in particular, the West, but also the world more broadly, this anti-immigrant sentiment. You know, Trump here in the United States was obviously rose to power in 2016 on very, you know, cruel and sadistic and exclusionary anti-immigration politics, building the wall, you know, the terrible things he said about Mexicans,

et cetera, Marie Le Pen in France, alternative for Deutscheland and Germany, Orban and Hungary. In almost every single modern contemporary Western far-right movement, you see that its core animating sort of energy is really centered around this anti-immigrant sentiment, which easily and very quickly bleeds over into these various forms of conspiracy thinking and just intense racism. So even though it's a very contemporary thing, it also has its roots in history, as you make very clear in your opening statements as well as in the book more broadly. So can you discuss some of the major genealogical origins of modern day replacement theories and kind of help us understand the history of this type of thinking as it's manifested throughout

the West? Yeah, if I can first jump in, and maybe I, before jumping into the genealogy, maybe I want to engage with something that you said about the anti-immigrant sentiment. And I think that is very prominent in all of these movements that we're talking about. But to me, it also already is the results, I think, of what at the core is really a very racialized, racializing thinking, I mean, which is racist, right? But even before the racism, not before the racism, but entangled with the racism, it's a very racialized thinking, looking at the world in terms of a hierarchy of racism. races and considering oneself the the the ones who are supposedly threatened to be wiped out so that that self that national self considering oneself at the top of that hierarchy right and so

anti-immigrant is one clear consequence of that but also the way for instance sometimes anti-Semitism And Islamophobia is articulated, is not necessarily always in terms of immigration. Very often, yes, but it's really about the definition of who is thus folk, right? The people who is and therefore who is alien, who does not belong to the national body. And so yes, anti-immigrant sentiment is all over the place, but also the concern with birthry. is all over the place and has been in the genealogy to which we will get in a moment to answer your question, right? So it's that national body and that national body is threatened by immigration, but is also supposedly threatened by low birth rates and can be threatened by other

religious traditions, even if they're not tied one to one to migration. So it's a certain notion of the national body, which, you know, and I, we often, use the word, you know, like it's racial, like there's a racial supremacy. Actually, it's very easy to use white supremacy, right? Because very often it's white supremacist, but not always. Like one of the chapters in the book, for instance, by Sayyandahs, is about saffron demography, right? So that's in Modi's India and, you know, some of the very similar replacement anxieties and racial politics that are happening there. And so there, the notion of white supremacy is more complicated.

I wouldn't say it's not linked, right? But it's more complicated. So it's, yeah, that racial thinking. And in this part of the world, very often, most often, white supremacist thinking, that feels threatened by a number of things with immigration. Yeah, one of the more foremost one. But birth rates, another very important one. So that's kind of before jumping into the genealogy.

Okay, so what we've tried to trace in the book in terms of genealogy is different moments, right? And I'm trying to think them together. And I'm sure there's even more branches of this genealogy. But there's a first very contemporary moment where, yeah, a book that we all know that everybody who studies the far right knows, like Eurabia. plays an important role in that moment, right? I mean, Eurabia is a full-on replacement conspiracy thinking. The name that really, a little bit later than when the book came out, the name that at this moment is kind of, yeah,

the umbrella term for all of this thinking then became replacement because of the French Renaud Camus and Le Grand Replacement. But I would consider this. this more or less one branch or one moment. I mean, there's more differentiations to make, but that's like a contemporary moment that is very focused on Muslims as that alien body. So it's very tight with Islamophobia.

If we go back in history, there is, of course, another very defining moment, strong moment is that of Nazi ideology and the notion of UNFO. And in the Netherlands, where I'm based in Dutch, the word for replacement is umvoking. So it's like, it's a straight line from that Nazi terminology. And again, that is a complicated branch as well because the term umvulc has meant different things. There was an important reversal that happened in the term.

So there was a moment where Nazi ideology actually propagated umvulcum. by which they understood the Germanization of some of the border regions and like the expansion of Germany. So at that moment, the term was embraced as a policy strategy. And then a reversal did happen. But again, messy really is the word, Lois mentioned the word messy before, because as we know with genealogies, meanings don't disappear, right? Like they're morphed, they changed, but they're still there, like in layers.

And so, but the reversal did happen where all of a sudden, yeah, the Nazi ideology held a threat or included a threat of being replaced by notably Jews in this case. So the invulcun Nazi moment is an important one in the genealogy. And then to just mention a third moment going back even a couple of decades earlier and to the other side, of the Atlantic to the US is really the moment where thinking in terms of race suicide, that concept

was elaborated. It was elaborated the term race suicide as far as I know seems to be coined by somebody who is that I share a discipline with Ross, the sociologist

Edward Ross. Is it Edward? I forgot now. I think it Edward Ross. who coined that term and, yeah, put it out there as a real concern at the turn of the 19th, well, the 19th into the 20th century, that the white population in the U.S. was under threat of extinction. And that notion of racericide, and it was a mainstream notion at the time. For instance, we know of an essay by Roosevelt, who they, And later on, this was before he became president, who wrote an essay, you know, picking up Ross's

notion of race suicide and affirming that this was one of the challenges of the U.S. in the decades to come to make sure that this race suicide wouldn't proceed, wouldn't happen. And that notion of race suicide slowly over and over the decades turned into white suicide, which is, of course, a notion that it is still very much prominent in all the right wing kind of circles. Not only in this part of the world, also think of South Africa, where the notion of white genocide was put forward by basically pro-apartheid white supremacist in the corners. So those are three big moments, but again, it's messy. There's many more branches, but at least this gives an idea. and I don't know, Lewis, if you want to make it refine this genealogy.

Well, I think I would like to just make it a bit messier, right? Okay. Because I think one, as I said, for instance, when one think about the protocols of the others of science, one thinks about one text, right, the forgery. But I would say one has to think and approach the protocols as a conglomerate of text, right? sort of a bricolash of text or what we tried to think as a palimpses, right?

So in the protocols, there are the letters of Tobledo and Sevilla, right? There is Villariz by Herman Gotcher. There are the dialogues of Hell and Machiavelli by Jolie. There is Drumont, Eduard Rumont, La France Juiv. There are many different texts, right? So the protocols is just sort of the end result, the moment of it, right? And I think that analogy or that way of thinking, it's also important for thinking about population replacement conspiracy theories, right?

Like when one think, Francis, the country, I'm based on Germany, when one think about Saracin, Tilda Saracin, who was fundamental in, you know, popularizing the notion of Islamization as a conspiracy theory, when one read that book, one read as well Galton, right, Francis Galton. And one read as well, Malthus, right? And one reads a bit of unfurke, right? And that text, it's a conglomerate of texts. And Camus, very similar, right? And we have the text in the chapter in a book by Lumousset,

who also traces that French archive, right? Particularly in the period after the Second World War and the Shoah, that's a new French far-right. that it's fundamental for Camus, right? I think we attempt to organize this genealogy in terms of also power and context, right? But as I said, it's, and I think we emphasize that point that genealogists and Foucault and Ant Stoller

are very aware of that are arbitrary as well, right? And so when we were trying to think about this conglomerate of text, creating our context, contemporary versions like Arabia or Camus Great Replacement or Sarah's seen German and he destroys itself or abolish itself, trying to think about all those texts behind those other texts and organize that genealogy in terms of also the context, right? Like sort of the Phariseists, that very first way that Sarah was mentioning is the moment of modern nationalism and European colonialism and imperialism, right? And then you also have the second moment, which is fascism, right, the rise of power by fascism, that third moment that I think also it's very significant that it was located in fiction with Jan Raspell, for instance, or that it's after the Second World War, right? That you have also the Turner Diaries, right, that it's fiction, that it's no longer in power, it's no longer, for instance, when you think about Unfalken in Germany, it was from the state, right? the state was producing these documents. And then after that period, it's more in the fiction arena, right?

And I think we are in a current juncture in which, again, there is a recolash, right? Like you have people like Badgeo who claims to be a scientist, but it's, you know, something different, more like, you know, propagandists, I would say. You have Saracen, which is, you know, a politician, a politician, but also. also expert in demographics, you have Camus, which comes from literature, and it's sort of a new juncture, which is also branded by the internet, by the rights of social media, right? And the traveling of these conspiracies and the re-articulation and the names, right? like you do we use the population replacement but there are many more right like this

demography jihad love jihad calergy plan shorosh plan and you know but basically the same right and i think that's why it's important to organize our genealogies which are selective but also approach them as these palimpses right as sort of all these texts that are written and rewritten and sort of try also to seek the traces of those earlier inscriptions. And if I can just briefly add something to that, given that you put these terms on it, at Lewis, like that first moment we could call it nationalism, imperialism moment, the second we could call it fascism moment.

And then that third, the one that indeed began, in a sense, the first articulations came in literature, and then we had Arabia, Saracen, Camus, we could call it the post-colonial moment. Again, much more to add there, but if we want to use these terms and give each of these moments like, yeah, a recognizable era, that it is a post-colonial era and that does mean something in relation to global raciality and supremacy and racial supremacies and loss of power and so forth. So that was one thing. And the second thing that I just wanted to add is given what you said now, Lewis, is that the way you've put it now also makes really clear how much this is part of these societies and these cultures that we live in, right? So sometimes, so I'm based in the Netherlands.

We just had the installment of farm. right cabinet where the political party of here to builders is the largest one and is really pulling the ropes and so forth. So we just had that with ministers who are propagandists for replacement theories and do not want to take distance of it. And then we see some people responding with surprise. There should not be surprised. This is so part of, yeah, Western society. and cultures and ways of thinking for so many decades, there's no surprise. Yes, I mean, one can be alarmed, but I think you're right that there's really shouldn't be so much space for surprise. I mean, and you in your answers and discussion right now,

and of course in the book did a lot to show these continuities and these different moments in the genealogies that gave rise and birth to this kind of set. of logics of so many interesting points to pick up on and I loved this idea of the palimpsest and I have to say that it helps give a metaphor for something that I think is part of a very long duet of manifestations and clearly structural relevance of these structure of these forms of bigotry and the kind of fantastical imagination of fears and anxieties that operates within those structural kind of hierarchies.

I, of course, as a medievalist, look back, you know, even further to then, like, say, the 19th century and the emergence of nationalism to, you know, earlier periods. And so it actually motivates me to ask one question that seems important here, which is in these different periods and episodes, you have different kinds of political contexts and structures that interact with or help shape the form in which these conspiracy theories and thinking, you know, conspiracy theories and thinking, you know, take shape. and of course that one that you identified as the nation. But one thing I'm interested in is the interaction between, you know, extreme nationalist concepts of political community and the way in which, you know, this replacement theory operates within a national context. But also the fact that there does seem to be some overall architecture of a broader Europe or the West. That is, you know, another level of the palimpsest, you know, that maybe sometimes more foregrounded is this national set of concerns depending on the audience. But in other contexts, there's clearly a wider sense of affiliation that is not national itself exclusively but relates to, you know, either Europe on a larger scale or some idea of Western civilization and drawing on hunting.

Huntington's kind of naming of that as an integral, you know, framework for, which I think his work is actually such a perfect, you know, nexus between these, the geopolitics and the conceptions around the geopolitics and the conceptions around the demographics, you know, that he writes the clash of civilizations, but then the book he writes afterwards is about, you know, how the browning of America threatens its. democracy and its culture, you know, who we are, right? This kind of thing. So I'm wondering if you have something, maybe you could talk about the interaction where you locate the relevance of the replacement theory outside of a national context in certain aspects of far right, far right thinking. I mean, even the notion of Arabia is one that isn't about the national demographic replacement, but is like we Europeans are going to be, you know, replaced. So, you know, what is, what do you think is at stake in this in this and underpinning this kind of broader international or non, you know, non-national or transnational kind of sets of thinking

that structures some of these conspiracy theories? I think you already said it at none. I think it's the notion of Western civilization, right? And of course, that is a complicated notion that, you know, we could have a full session on unpacking that notion, but I think you see it kind of circulating as a concept in

many of these replacing conspiracy theories. And also the idea that there's actually a chapter in the book that also deals with that. Also the idea with the Christchurch killings and a Christchurch killer, the idea of

outposts of Western civilization where, you know, so then Australia, well, in that chapter, an argument is made how the Christchurch killer saw, you know, coming from Australia, but the killings in New Zealand, how that was framed in terms of outpost of Western civilization. I think, you know, and this enters into another terrain

where we could have a whole session on. I think if you look at a Western media on the genocide in Gaza at this moment, right, that the idea of Israel as an outpost of Western civilization that needs to be defended cost by costs. I think I recently saw this cartoon, you might have seen it as well, or this meeting of a dam that is that you see that is almost ready to break. And it's like Israel is holding the dam. And if it would break, it's like Islam just, you know, washing away Western civilization. So, and Western civilization comes up again and again. But of course, when we do the careful scholarly work, if you would look at, you know,

how is the concept of Western civilization mobilized in the Netherlands, for instance, where I am now? Or how is it mobilized in Italy or how is it mobilized in Hungary, you know, or in the U.S., you see important differences as well. But on the level of, you know, I could almost say the floating signifiers, Western civilization is the central one here. And so this is kind of, I think, appropriated by these national contexts

that consider themselves crucial for Western civilization, whether it's crucial as being the outposts where Western civilization, you know, it's the gates, the gates of Vienna all over, again or whether it's, you know, imagining themselves at the center of Western civilization. So I think it's those national engagements with the notion of Western civilization and who can claim itself as being part of that. And then there's also a very logistical level that we know very well is that there are very international, transnational, European ways of organizing these right-wing

and extreme rights discourses and movements, right? Like there is a European, you know, and beyond Europe, like there are these transnational meetings and strategies, developing strategies together. So it is organized in a transnational European manner, in a transnational manner.

And so above the nation state. But then more symbolically, it is about connecting. that nation state to, yeah, to either at the heart or at the outpost of Western civilization, that needs to be defended. And if I may add, for instance, when one read Madison grant, right, which is sort of, let's say, one of the pioneers. And when he thinks about his nation, it's not the U.S.

His nation is the Aryan nation, the Nordic nation, right? And I think that moment, right, I think sort of, let's say that for, which is not an origin, right, but sort of kind of that momentum of elaborating this discourse, it's branded by, I think, something that we know nationalism was racial from its beginnings, right? It was racial, like nationalism has been about delimiting who belongs. What is a German? What is British, right? Like, what is a Dutch, right? Delimiting that question.

And from the moment, this conspiracy or well, this discourse begins, they begin with some of them, right, the most influential ones, making an imagined community of whiteness, right? It's an imagined community of whiteness because Madison Gran is in the U.S., right? But he's imagined brotherhood with the Germanarians and the Norwegians and so on, and imagining a brotherhood that it's under threat, under siege, right? that will be sort of, and also Granite is extremely interesting because he's, for him, he doesn't seem or he does not make an argument that there is a plot or a conspiracy, but it's rather this attitude of the white subject which is just too good, right? Good dementia would say it would be the word in German, right?

He's just too good, right, to tolerant, which is the argument of Saracin, right? like one is the, for instance, Saracin also does not make an argument that a secret plot like Bajor, but rather that there is, you know, sort of we are just so good, we are just so tolerant, we just let them come that, you know, that's our parish, right? Like that, but I think there is an argument to be made about sort of thinking about nationalism in terms of race, right? Like, that's a moment, that very early moment is when all these scholars were thinking how many races like Linneos

four, right, Kant, Ford or no, maybe five. Like they were just trying to organize the world of nations in terms of races. And I think there is an imprint of that in this, in this, right? Bajor, of course, is extremely interesting

in that regard, right? Like Europe is that there isn't, in the book, there are no mentions of that, but sort of by means of denotative reading, intertextual reading, Europe, it's a conglomerate of people sharing something in common which one can adduce his race. So I think the motility, right, and the polyvalent mobility of this discourse then allows it to, and you know pretty well that Sarah as well, that Arabia becomes Neh Arabia, right?

the netherabia right or that it's sort of more sort of you can have certain modules right or certain building blocks and then it becomes the nation or Brussels near ravia brussels right or so i think there is an argument of to be made about this the sort of this imprints in this discourse of an imagined community of racial of whiteness right build a brown whiteness Yeah, absolutely. I think that's always lurking under the surface and it's really central to all of this. I do want to touch on one of the interesting contradictions on the far-right movements that we're discussing. We were discussing a second ago the notion of Western civilization and how that's really tied up into a lot of this, you know, this idea of defending Western civilization against, you know, people from the global South, etc. And, you know, I think Sarah rightfully pointed out that Israel is sort of seen by many of these types of people as a bulwark against, in particular, you know, the Muslim world. It's like standing in between, you know, Europe and the Muslim world. But that support for Israel is often in tension with the anti-Semitism at the core of replacement theories. So, for example, support for Israel, you see it with the Argentinian anarcho-capitalist, Aviere Malay, and Bolsonaro.

would often wrap himself in the Israeli flag, Indian nationalists and supporters of Modi, interestingly, have a really, you know, deep support for Israel. And obviously there's a lot of it in the reactionary movements here in the U.S., including, you know, Christian Zionists who, for their own apocalyptic religious reasons, support Israel. But on the other hand, anti-Semitism is often central to the replacement theory in that, you know, replacement implies sort of conscious intent. by ostensible replacers. And the people often put in the slot of the replacers are, you know, Jewish globalists pulling the strings and letting in migrant hordes to displace, you know, whatever, do conduct white genocide or however the full argument goes, depending on who you're talking to.

Now, that is like a more overt form of anti-Semitism that is very popular in these milieus. But I think it gets softened in the U.S. in particular by people like Tucker Carl who will take the form of the conspiracy theory, but will kind of soften it by stripping away the overt anti-Semitism and sort of mystify who the replacers are. So instead of Jews or, you know, a cabal of Jewish people or whatever it may be, it's often liberal elites. I think Alex Jones does this as well with his term globalists, where it's just vague enough where the anti-Semites can read in the anti-Semitism very easily, but also vague enough so that people,

that are a little turned off by overt bigotry of that form can still buy into the conspiracy theory. So I'm just wondering your thoughts on the relationship with these replacement theories with anti-Semitism, as we're discussing, but also Islamophobia, and kind of pull out some of some of those strains of bigotry that really undergird a lot of these replacement theories. Yeah, no, that's, wow, that opens a lot to think about. I do think so I think it's important to understand if you want the structural anti-Semitism of replacement conspiracy theories right so I think that it's there's something structural there about that anti-Semitism and I think it is connected to the idea that the way Jews were seen and framed is not connected enough to a national body in general right so it wasn't

only um oh well not the ideology of like oh the jews are not part of the german national body but it was also this idea cannot be trusted because they're not connect you know it's not a nation state as we know it so i think that is and that ties in with the idea of the globalists right even if it's not entirely always imagined as jewish it very often is but it's the idea of like these are people that are not rooted there's uprooted people like unrooted people right so So that is part and parcel of replacement conspiracy theories. However, Zionism is a different story, of course, because Zionism is precisely the story of taking a nation-state model

and in a very violent way enforcing that, right? I mean, Zionism as a political project, there's cultural forms of cultural Zionism, But if we think of Zionism as the project of the creation of the state of Israel, that is precisely using that template of the modern nation state. And so to me, I see, you know, obviously there are all kinds of tensions, but there's not so much of a contradiction between that Israel's state formation Zionist project. And again, I realize there's other forms of Zionism,

but between that project and the anti-Semitism that distrusts people who are not rooted in a nation state. Great point. It actually flows to get there quite well, as we see in many examples, especially in these last nine months where the genocide in Gaza has been really, how to say, bringing up the intensity of some of these discourses and reactions and, you know, things that were also the case in the past decades, but were not talked about or were not so clear. Like I think in these nine months of this horrific genocide and the West, the responses to the genocide in the West, things have become incredibly clear and the responses have been very intense.

So with all of that in front of us, these responses, it seems to me that what might have seen as a contradiction earlier on is very clear now that it is not such a contradiction. That said, of course, it is complex. There's much more to say about this. But, yeah, the Zionist. And let me just end on this point and then influence wants to add to this. Replacement conspiracy theories, there's a reason why we use. use the plural, right? Like we've already said, like, it's messy. There's many versions of it. But there's also versions, for instance, Camus, in Reno Camus version of Le Grand

Replacement, the way he imagines the world is that everybody would just, you know, like, and this is how sometimes people like that would say, I am not a racist. I mean, obviously, you know, we don't buy that story. But just to go along with the way of thinking for a moment, the way he looks at the world is that everybody has their place on earth, right? In a nation state where people are the same vogue, like the same national body should be together, right? There should not be mixing. And in that sense, you know, the Zionist project of the state of Israel, you know,

fits as well, like, you know, which is another way of saying, and this is part and parcel of the very begin. of Zionism as a political project like look at Herzl's writings it's another way of saying this is a solution to Europe's Jewish question right like get the Jews out of Europe

let them have a nation state outside of Europe and Western civilization works perfectly again right this is in a sense part of the history of Europe's

anti-Semitism and political Zionism as engaged as a response to or at least a very intense engagement with European anti-Semitism. So the so-called contradiction has been there from the start and we see it playing out in front of our eyes.

And if I may add something sort of in terms of the rationalization of this conspiracy theories in terms of that contradiction, previously we, and that's all. also where how we started to work on this, we wrote a piece on the biopolitics of replacement and we analyzed a couple of images on replacement, right? And one of the arguments we were doing

there is that there seems to be a division of labor, right? In terms of who those who, not the intentional, of course, right? But sort of that you have people like Camille, Badgeor, Saracin, sort of the main intellectuals, because these are intellectuals. Also, I think it's important to to make that argument. The main intellectual is refrained from anti-Semitism, right? Or even engaged in philosophism, right? Like, Sarah's quite famous for saying that here in Germany that Jews are smartened and everyone else, right? And that's the problem because Jews are the smartest people in Germany and the Muslims are the dumbest.

That's the problem, right? because he wants, you know, an intellectual Germany to reproduce, right? So he's engaging in philosophism, which is still anti-Semitism, right? But all these figures refrain from anti-Semitism because in Europe there is, you know, sort of, of course this does not mean that there is not anti-Semitism at all, but at least this, you know, public expressions of it are, you know, reputable, right, by the common sense, so to say.

Then the division of labor comes in terms of the Internet, for instance, feeling ill, feeling in the details, where Camus says globalism, then you have posts on the internet telling you is sorrows or telling you exactly everything how it is, right? These intellectuals also often reframe for engaging in issues of gender and sexuality when it comes to reproduction, right? at the Dostak, right? Or, you know, or the other parties or the other far right parties or some other places on the internet. So what we identify is that sort of the intellectuals, you know, and that's why they are quite aware of Gramsci, sort of they lay out the structure of the argument, right? And then others feel in the details, right?

And so that's why, you know, you will not replace us. turned very easily and Jews will not replace us, right? Because the structure was there and then it's open, right, to others to fill in. And why then we identify that, right? Like sort of more complex, crazy conspiracy theories are filling in the details already lay out by these authors, right? And there is another sort of quite important contradiction that I will just quickly point out. So, for instance, our colleague Resacea Ibrahimi, right, he has this beautiful article on thinking about the protocols of the elders of Zion and Arabia, right?

And if you are familiar with the protocols and you read Arabia, it's very easily, right? So for instance, when one thing about, in the context of the production of the protocols is the Alliance-Israelite universe sale, right? it's this institution that is just doing the plotting and making the destruction and so on and so forth and with Arabia is the Euro-Arab dialogue right it's like a copy paste but the contradiction is that Bajor is using again a template the most famous template of anti-Semitism to you know call about Muslims to be, you know, that they are the next threat and that they will destroy Europe and so on, so forth, but to defend Israel as well, right? Badgeor uses this, Baddeur uses the template of anti-Semitism in terms of the protocols

in order to make an argument that Israel is under siege, right, by Muslims, right? So I think that's, again, another contradiction that we are Fulcote and we would say it's productive. It produces, right? It produces more text, more ideas, more knowledge. And so I think in terms of those are very important contradictions that are productive. Yes, wow, fascinating. So many strands to pull on here. I did just want to come back in on the kind of question of civilization and the non-national.

And it was a wonderful explanation. I thought you gave about that interaction, Sarah, of it also really helps elucidate, you know, where the Zionist status project fits in as a recuperative amelioration for the historic problem of the Jewish question and anti-Semitism. And what it made me think of is, of course, some of the things that Brett alluded to,

which is, you know, this idea of the globalists, the Jews will not replace. us, you know, I mean, they don't mean. And what's interesting is because it, in many times in the media, they never unpacked what was at stake or what was involved in some of these strange slogans, which was that it wasn't that the Jews themselves physically, biologically, are necessarily going to replace, is that they're going to facilitate the immigration, you know, of the Syrian refugees and others. And so there's always this linking, it seems, in some of the kind of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that's so

often in our discourses about, say, you know, Israel-Palestine, present as if, you know, Jews and Muslims are the ones who have the problem with one another, that they each have this kind of hostility, you know, with one another and that it's the, you know, uniquely, you know, kind of Islamic thing is to have this, you know, anti-Semitism and to absolve Europe, you know, it's also a way of kind of processing, you know, that, you know, Europe doesn't have this problem of anti-Semitism anymore. Maybe it did once, but now it doesn't, you know. And this kind of interconnection, however, historically has been, you know, a deep paradigm of association going back to my era. However, it is interesting that, um,

You know, in the 19th century, probably you wouldn't find very much in this way of these kinds of associations, you know, at these different moments when national identity was more important. But now, it seems that this more Western civilization kind of approach is what allows or gives the place for Islamophobia to do its political work in a particular way. Like, it wouldn't be there if it was a national, unless you're talking about Serb nationalism. where they have a border, they have mixed populations. But, you know, it's not going to be a Dutch or a Swedish kind of question to, you know, articulate, you know, these demographic fears, you know, in such terms, right? That just, it wasn't as relevant. But it has become relevant in this time. And so, you know, it seemed like it's a response, of course, to post-colonial immigration and, of course, to,

you know, those conditions. And it reminds me of something that you also pointed out in the book, which was about conspiracy theory. The work that conspiracy theories do is occlude these larger structural kinds of conditions and give it this alternate kind of framework where there's an intentional, you know, subversion that's taking place as opposed to just, you know, there have been lots of wars taking place. There's been, you know, all kinds of disruption in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, you know, impoverishment in the global south and places in Africa and that there's, you know,

also Latin American, you know, kind of interventions and so on, that are global historical processes of neoliberalism, war that have just made, and now increasingly climate change and climate disaster. And instead of kind of thinking of those as systemic or structural or historical conditions, there's this turn to the conspiracy. And so maybe it'll be worth thinking about or having you tell us a little bit more about what you thought the insights from conspiracy theory studies was that really needed to be integrated into the understanding of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, racism. I'm more on that. that side, you know, I'm somebody who pays attention to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. But this was

fascinating to see the insights of conspiracy theory analysis and the politics of it applied. And I'm wondering, maybe you could elaborate a little bit beyond just my point, you know, just the gross point that like, you know, conspiracy thinking, you know, foregrounds, like agents for processes and structures that it can't be analyzed or thought through the right way. But what else did you think that conspiracy theory analysis really opened up in terms of understanding the politics of these far-right fears of Arabia and so forth? I think, you know, the feel of conspiracy theories is fascinating. At the same time, I think limited by certain, I would say, epistemological.

stance, right? To begin with, there is a huge debate from those who think that we should sort of analyze conspiracy theories from a neutral point of view. And there is quite a lot of contemporary researchers. And I agree with them in terms of the sociology of understanding what's going on in their minds and so on. And then are all their, you know, scholars who think that, you know, conspiracy theories are forms of political propaganda that you need to take a political stance, right? So it's a divided feel but what that field offers it's a lot in terms of

analysis of the functionality of conspiracy theories, right? And sort of typologies, right? So for instance, you have this whole thing whether it's an event conspiracy theory a mesoconspiracy or a super conspiracy theory, how those related whether there are top down, bottom up,

whether they are about constructing internal or external enemies, whether they stabilize communities or destabilize. So there is a lot of very interesting, you know, models and typologies and so on. I like the basic insight that we get from them is that they offer explanations, right? I think, and this is something Sarah and I have been discussing, what they produce explanations and very powerful ones very influential ones

in terms of knowledge production explanations that then follow certain structures in terms of narrative right so also from the field of conspiracy theories there is this they have studied the structure right from all conspiracy theories and there is always like

at least three moments right the velocity like everything is fast pace right like, for instance, with the protocols, there is one rabbi and after the other, the other, the other, right? Then the pivot, when someone realizes that this is a conspiracy theory, so this is when Oriana Falachi and Badger encountered the journal Arabia, right?

When Camille, I think he's in a castle, right? And he's walking in the castle and he says, oh my God, all these Muslims! So there is this moment. And importantly, there is the restoration of agency. if you uncover the conspiracy theory and then this is also another venue to be research because they say it right

like there is this restoration of agents in terms of you know I know now I know what I have to do I have to tell people for instance in the camp of stains but it was pale there are always these white men that you know the ones who conduct violence like they decided to

okay I will die but let me take one Muslim, right? So that's the moment of agency, right? Like, or not Muslim, Indian, sorry, but then afterwards he would also dislike Muslims, right? But that there is this restoration of agency. I think that is an important point in terms of violence, right? In terms of what this conspiracy theories do in terms of calling for violence, either that in terms of dog whistling or performance, but that there is in the structure something that calls for something. some for action, for awareness, for awakening, and that's an insight from the conspiracy theory, right?

Studist. I think the lack of engagement with theories of race and racism and with gender and sexuality limits their scope to trying to be very analytical in terms of what's happening structurally in terms of the sex, which is very helpful when you are, you know, when you have Arabia and you say, okay, oh, here is the pilot, right?

Here is the sort of the construction. For instance, what you were saying about Europe and the national level. So from the field of conspiracy theories, they will tell you that something begins like an event conspiracy theory, then linked to a meso, and then it becomes a super conspiracy theory in terms of, then will be a whole Europe, right? That a meeting, and that's Arabia, right? A meeting in white by certain, then it's all about.

deciding the destiny of whole Europe. So I think there are a lot of tools to think about conspiracy theories, but I think that's why it's also important to engage with this other more critical bodies of literature. Yeah. And if I can just add to this, there was a very concrete reason why we began exploring conspiracy theories. Because like in the project, as we began it, it's like Europe's Muslim question, the word conspiracy theory wasn't even written in the application. But we came to this quote by Bumidien, so the Algerian political liberation leader,

Bumidien that supposedly in 1973 at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York said that, you know, we will be taking over your, so speaking to the global north, we will be taking over to the wombs of our women, right? And so, you know, that that was totally fitted in what we were studying and that was a very strong expression bringing together these questions of, you know, and sexuality and gender and race and Islam Muslims, Islamophobia and so forth. And so we just started researching this quote. And it's everywhere and we found variations of it. we looked at the actual speech that Wumidyan gave, which is about economic independence.

The quote is not from that speech. We thought, okay, maybe... Oh, so they've expunged it. Somehow they've gotten to the records of the U of N, right? Yes, no, it's not exactly. And we looked into maybe other speeches. Anyway, we did a whole research to try to find what, even if it's, you know, only half of the quote,

but what could be the basis of this quote? and we found nothing. And earlier this academic year, I was at a conference in UC Berkeley where a colleague from Princeton had done the same with her research team and she also found nothing. So, you know, we feel very confident by now to say this is a fabrication. And then the idea of a fabrication that predicts Europe, the West, whatever, being overtaken in this case by Muslims, immediately we had to think of the protocols of the

Elders of Zine, which is another fabrication that predicts the West being overtaken by Jews, right? And so in both cases, it's a fabrication. In both cases, it's the imaginary of taking over, right? So either the Jews or the Muslims will be taking over. But what then is very different is that the takeover in a case of Jews is imagined through the accumulation of power, right? like power behind the screens, power through money. But so, you know, like there's a select group that has a huge power over society.

And the taking over of Muslims is imagined in terms of demographics. Through the womb of our women is what the code says, right? So it's, yeah, it's a production of children and demographics. And so because these are fabrications, because they have an incredible life of their own on the Internet, this is what led us to say, like, okay, we have to be looking into conspiracy theories because this is what conspiracy theories are made of, fabrications of a power that will overtake you. And then, you know, everything what Lewis said, and maybe to just add one concept about this idea of agency or awakening, it's what in different contexts, because I haven't seen it used so much in relation to the conspiracy theory that we are looking at,

but what in different contexts is being called the red pilling, right? It's taking the red pill. And that all of a sudden, you know, there's an awakening and it makes you see reality as it really is and you've been, you know, duped until then and so forth. And that thing, that feeling that kind of effective state, I think, separate from the question of Islamophobia and all those things that we've been talking about, until now, I think under a neoliberal regime, that is something attractive in terms of agency because under neoliberalism, we have collectively become illiterate in relation to how power works, right?

Like structural ways in which power works, we have collectively become illiterate. But then imagining power in this kind of like, oh, there's a person there who pulls the string. So in a non-structural way, in a very individualized way, that goes together very well with, yeah, with how neoliberalism has made us look at the world. So the idea of like, you know, this is a fertile climate for conspiracy theories, even, you know, separate from the question of this is a fertile climate for Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, is something we also have to be looking at. But I also want to end with what Louise Ler

said. So we needed some of these insights and that was productive for us. But you know what? Some of these replacement conspiracy or replacement thinking isn't even so embedded in conspiracies. Some yes, right? But some others, I think Lewis already gave the example of Tilo Sagan, right? Like it's not even focused on the conspirational part of it. These are just ways of racial supremacy thinking. often conspirational, but sometimes not. So actually, I don't think that we can put replacement thinking as such under an umbrella of conspiracy thing. We need some of the insights of, some of it is conspirational.

We need some of the insights of that scholarship. But our agenda, I think, needs to be much bigger because also the question of race is so at the center of it, but actually general sexuality as well with the birth rate. right? And that is lacking in the scholarship on conspiracy themes. Yeah, crucial analysis. And that's actually exactly where I want to pick up, Sarah, is talking about the relationship to reproductive rights. You mentioned the red pill. And there's an element of the red pill, which is, of course, defend Western civilization,

hyperracialized, white supremacist. And another crucial element of the red pill, quote unquote, is deep misogyny, as well as bigotry against the LGBT. Q community more broadly, which I think are deeply intertwined in various ways. But they're almost always framed, especially as of late, through the anxieties around demographics, as you were mentioning. And in particular, this theory of underpopulation in the West. And interestingly, a figure like Elon Musk has really gone out of his way in the last year, as far as I can tell, of really pushing this idea that he personally, you know, sort of abides by, hence his many children, but also constantly using his huge platform on X to push these ideas. And, you know,

it's a little on the nose that we have this billionaire in a moment of crisis for global capitalism and imperialism, constantly pointing his fingers to the most powerless people on earth, migrants and asylum seekers as the core thing that people need to be focusing their hate on, you know, because that's what, you know, billionaires have a vested interest in sort of, you know, taking people's eye off the real people who have the power and the wealth in this in this world and pointing it to the people who have none of it um so it's a little on the nose but i'm i'm really fascinated and you wrote an article in this um in this book itself sarah about the relationship with these demographic concerns reproductive rights roe v wade and you tied it all in

with the buffalo mass shooting which is of course racially inspired so and and that's in the third section which really focuses on the gendered violence of replacement of these politics which is a crucial element, as we've said. So can you talk about your chapter and more broadly the relationship between, you know, the loss of reproductive rights and how they tie into these other elements of the politics of replacement? Yeah, and I think if we start by talking more broadly, another word that we haven't, maybe we've mentioned today, I forgot now, but that we should put forward here is eugenics, right? So before going into reproductive rights, like there's, there's, yeah, eugenics is a dimension of replacement conspiracy theories. And in that sense, it's also in the book in different places, right?

Like the Malthusian archive, right? So it's, yeah, eugenics is something that we have to be thinking with. And eugenics, again, is something that is structurally present in Western civilization and has never gone far away, right? It might have been a taboo to be talking about it. But, you know, even in very different contexts, let's say, for instance, the COVID pandemic, which is another context with conspiracy theories, right? But eugenics was part of the debate as well. So eugenics.

What I did in my chapter in the book is really explore a little bit. And again, through fiction, we already mentioned fiction. previously. I think fiction is a place where we have to be looking at where some of these articulations sometimes first happen. And maybe, maybe that's a hopeful side. Maybe it's also a place where we can look at war, how to say, how to, how to derail some of this racial supremacist thinking, right? Like use science fiction. I mean, there's a lot of like black feminist science fiction to try to rethink some of that. But before we get to the rethinking, what I do in the chapter is a use a piece of fiction that is so much part of popular culture that so many

people know, and that's the Handmaid's Tale. And the Handmaid's Tale, of course, is very much known, you know, like it's been used in the feminist movement and it's, you know, the iconic dresses and so forth is part of, yeah, of how feminist protests happen. It's known as an example of misogyny and patriarchy, right? But what I wanted to show, and Margaret Atwood actually does this in the book. It was just not taken up in the Hulu series, which is how more people know about the handmade steel than the book, I guess, is that this very patriarchal society has a crucial racial politics.

And in the handmade tale, in the book, in the original version, what is it, 18, 1985, a year after actually in 1984 when it came out, so that's the dystopian moment. It's in the epilogue where all of a sudden you're not in the story of the hand of the Republic of Gilead and of the Handmaid's Tale anymore, but you're at an academic conference in the epilogue where scholars of the Gileadian Republic so many years after it came to an end. so you know how it's going to an end and therefore, you know, there's conferences and scholars who are thinking

and discussing about this. And so they're discussing the origins of this patriarchal dystopian society and the origins are climate change and dropping birth rates of

what in the book is called Caucasian birth rates. very explicitly. And so this is written in 1985, right? And the fact that that I mentioned was not taken up in the Woolo series for me is such a mischance to create some literacy about thinking these things together. Like, yes, it's an awful patriarchal society, but how did it come about? It came about through replacement anxieties. And so, yeah, so it came about through racial anxiety. So I think we have to think

racial anxieties and all kinds of anxieties about sexuality, which you are right, Bradst to point out, you know, it's not only about women, it's LGBT. If we think of all the anxieties at the moment and the moral panics about trans, right? So to think these anxieties together with race, which is what actually the Handmaid's Tale as a book allows us to do. But there's so little popular culture examples to, and even scholarship, even in scholarship,

you know, we have our academic divisions of labor, right? We have general sexuality studies where I'm part of that. And we have, you know, critical race theory. But, you know, the need to think this together because, and I'll end on this note. And then if Lewis wants to add, because in. In a sense, what this is about is biopolitics, right? And biopolitics, of course, is about race, but it's also about gender and sexuality. So it's, you know, if we think about, you know, these biopolitical anxieties, which are huge at the moment.

And indeed, climate change is part of that as well, right? And we need to think all of these categories, analytical categories together. Yes. Yes, because I think, you know, talking about this. of not discomfort, but having the sense that conspiracy theories, studies has its limit, has its limits, right? One of the productive ways in which we are trying to approach this discourse is through biopolitics, right? But sort of a biopolitics, that it's not restricted to Foucault. I think Foucault is very helpful in telling us about biopolitics creating this line between the human race, right?

The ones who have to live, the ones who have to die, and then establishing a positive relation between that, right? The more you die, the more I live. But what Foucault misses, and then this is the argument that comes from Kila Schuller, is that once this division is done, right, like the whites and the rest, it also necessitates to divide that, you know, the white social body through gender and sexuality, right? Male and female, white female, white male,

and one controlling the other. So when one thinks about contemporary far-right politics inspire or articulated through political population replacement, for instance here in the country I am, so the IFD is famous for being opposed to Islam, opposed to migration, opposed to the EU, but what people tend to forget is that they are all, about, you know, in Germany, abortion is illegal, right, still. It's tolerated, but they are, for

instance, making the argument that if they are in power, they want to, it's illegal, but they really want to punish women who go through abortion, right? That's, and that was actually one of the ways in which we started, is this, this, this, this analysis, thinking about certain political propaganda of the IFD, in which they were inviting the German, the white, German border to produce more white babies, right? Again, eugenics, because eugenics was always positive and negative, right? Like, encouraging the lives, words of living and, you know, stopping the reproduction of lives on world of living. That's what this discourse articulate, right? It's about it articulates border regimes, you know, regimes of citizenship, who belongs to the nation,

who can, who can come and who cannot, and who can reproduce and who should not reproduce, right? And I think that's where we are trying to make a contribution in trying to think about replacing conspiracies issues as not only against Muslims or migrants, but as a way to articulate control upon, let's say, local, white women, European women as well, right? Which is howigenics and biopower have historically operated. Yeah, okay. Well, I want to be respectful of your time, but also to highlight maybe some of the other kinds of contributions here. I first encountered the book at the International Islamophobia Studies and Research Association conference. We all attended in Sarajevo, a little over a month ago at time of recording. And because it was in Sarajevo and there was the opportunity

to hear a presentation, there was a whole panel dedicated to contributions from the book. We had the chance to hear Dino Suhonit discuss his contribution, birth rates and cleansing of impure blood, shaping the Muslim question in the Balkans. And of course, that resonated so powerfully because we were there in Sarajevo and thinking about questions of genocide and what had happened in the 1990s and so on. So I just wanted to ask you

what you thought were some of the essays that people should know about, that maybe they wouldn't expect or would have something very new compared to what we've been discussing about the broad outlines or even an essay that really shaped your own thinking or changed how you thought about things. You know, just to highlight that this is a diverse group of, you know, contributions and essays coming from different angles, different methodologies, different disciplines to analyze different components of how the great, you know, the replacement, what the politics of replacement, you know, does and is. So, you know, just any, any things you want to highlight from the rest of the volume.

I can start I mean it's really true that the chapters are really quite different also disciplinary right and so I do think this idea that we need to be looking at this from different angles is a very important one so this for me there was a purpose that this was not a monograph but it was actually an edited volume to have those different takes and just to yeah to briefly go and mention some Some of them, like we have also a chapter by Emily Kulinan and Mark Tutors, looking at the what happens in the Internet, right? So what happens in these non-moderated media, the ones of the arguments that they make is that what in the U.S. is very much a white genocide discourse. And in Europe is increasingly the replacement discourse, that these two discourses in the online milieus are being merged, right? so something is happening there. You know, it's a, so I, that is an important insight, I think. I also really like Matthias Gerdel's chapter, which really is about, yeah,

fascism and the attachment to the people and also gendered there, right? Like, how the people is imagined and gendered and racialized. And, you know, the figure, there's a, surprise moment in that chapter when when he speaks about also these mass murderers that kill in the name of replacement conspiracy theories seen as the lone wolves right like the long figure you know unrecognizable in daily life the the neighbors who say oh but he's seen that such a nightmare you know and all of a sudden and that figure of the unrecognizable in daily life the lone figure, but then all of a sudden

becomes this, you know, votant in this case, mass murder, he uses the image Matthias Gardell uses the image of Superman, right? They were turning into the, you know, the figure of Superman. And so there are all of these

insights where I, you know, that were new for me. I also read in like Somaya Marjidoub's chapter where she reads Maltes again and coins the term of Malthusianization, right? So, yes, there's the historical figure of Maltus,

but then there's all of these arguments that kind of multisize current conditions, and I think that is a very useful one to work with. Many others, you mentioned Zuhonich, but I want to end with, and I think I already mentioned Sayan Daz's chapter on sovereign demography,

I think is very important as well, but I want to end with the chapter by Sahar Gunkur that touched me very deeply it's a very poetically if I can say so written chapter

and that kind of digs in some of the psychonanacid of this if you want and to me because we ended our introduction with a quote from that chapter because if you think where do some of these anxieties come from right? I think it's a loss of power. It's crucial there. So there's a loss of power of a group

who imagined itself more powerful or at the top of a racial hierarchy. And all of a sudden there's, you know, societal developments that make this group feel that they lose power. And so replacement anxieties are in a sense of response to that. And the societal developments that We've had in the past couple of decades that account for this current moment. We already mentioned it's in a post-colonial moment. So there's the loss of colonial power that people are still white supremacists are still reckoning with the loss of that power. And there's all kind of like equality and diversity policies, which also, you know, not that they're very effective very often, but they do. you know, they're aimed at equalizing power.

And so one of the things that Sahar argues there is, or invokes in a very poetic way, is that what is imagined here from this white supremacist standpoint is a death, right? Like it's lost in death. Death by equality, it's equality that produces this anxiety, which to me also immediately, I know you didn't ask this now at none, but I also want to give some hope. It points us in the directional, what is needed is that we need to have imagineries of equality that capture the hearts and the minds of more people, especially the supremacist

or the ones who are still attached to supremacist thinking, maybe sometimes in the absence of something else, right? Because let's be really honest, if we talk about. about left-wing and right-wing with the political spectrum, it's not as if many of the left-wing political parties have come up with imaginaries that are really about equality, if we think, for instance, about migration, right? So what if we can come up with imaginaries of equality that can take some of those anxieties away, not of the ideologues, but of the people who are looking for some framework to hold on to and, yeah, end up holding.

holding on to the supremacist framework, and I think we, you know, we can offer other frameworks and at least pull some of those people. Yeah, I think that's, I think you're right that, you know, maybe we'll have an opportunity to have you both

mention a little bit more, some hopeful, why, you know, why this work might be, might be valuable in ameliorating the situation. But I think you're absolutely right to point out that these imaginaries, of the threat of equality.

I mean, look, this is what, you know, when you say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Somehow that gets translated, you know, the very prospect of equality is somehow the death of the target who has power, that to lose power is to die is to, you know, no longer exist. You know, so it's very much based in this kind of paranoid sort of way of perceiving the world. And I agree with you. That was a very evocative work by Sahara Kumkore. The body never falls out of Islamophobia was the title of that. But I'm wondering, Louise, you know, what things might you want to highlight. I also thought this gastropolitics of replacement was also a very interesting materializing of how this works in the culture, you know.

Cuisine multiculturalism has its other dark side, you know, for people. But anything else you wanted to kind of highlight about what the book achieves some of these studies that you've collected here? Yeah, I think that that is a, that was one of the articles I, chapters I wanted to highlight because it seems to me that bespeaks of a development of this discourse, which is its expansion and the interpolation to reality and experience, right? that all of the sudden everything can be a sign of replacement, right? Having too many kebabs in your street is a sign of replacement

a link to the next chapter by Iskandar Abdallah having a mosque can be a sign of replacement, right? But this recruits and calls for your experiences, right? That you, that you

again to return to the red pill, that you wake up and you see it for yourself, right? Especially on, you know, in particular channels of the internet, the call for trust your experience or your feelings is quite strong, right? Because there is always someone who says, yeah, this is a lot, conspiracy, but now go and, you know, see German cuisine, you know, we eat from all the world except from Germany, right?

So that's a replacement. And, for instance, that's a very powerful chapter by Margarita Van Ness. I think also the chapter by Jonathan Adona, it's amazing in bringing the U.S. evangelical and imaginaries into the archives, right? And what I was mentioning as well, sort of how messy and all these archives that are mobilized, also, for instance, the chapter by Sindre Vanstad and Maria Darvish about the eco-fascism, right? and sort of this, that it's also part, right, like in terms of Malthus and how it's articulated, and for instance, in this country I'm living in the whole quest for the Levens around, right? Like, we need space to live and space to breed that is linked to a motherland or a fatherland depending on of the language.

I think that's a brilliant chapter as well. All of the right are amazing. I mentioned before the chapter by Lumousset, which is also traces, I think, one of the one crucial feature of this discourse, which is the reversal of reality, right? That traces this whole idea of reverse colonization. I think it's a key discursive mechanism in this discourse to turn things upside down, to blame the one who's being discriminated and, and, you know, blame him or her for, you know, being the cause. So, yeah, that is amazing, right? How Lewis had traces that discourse in this, in this post-war era in France.

And I think it's something that everyone in the far right is quite aware of it, how to make, how to work with these concepts, how to turn reality upside down. And, yeah, I think also there are two chapters from Dutch colleagues, Nick Linders, and Mertrian, with them, same, about the clash of civilization, right? And sort of how also that particular frame was influential in the great replacement, becoming mainstream, and sort of going into center politics with, I think, something that Sarah knows more, than I, with Rutter, with Marrude and sort of one last ad, that might be interesting, that has become even more interesting

in the lights of the last elections. But yeah, I think it's an amazing collective effort, multidisciplinary, taking different national contexts from different disciplines, engaging with different bodies of literature as well. So I would recommend to go through all the book. And I echo that sentiment wholeheartedly. I just want to make sort of a final point as we're contemplating ways to combat not only these narratives, but the political forces that they animate. I think it's really important that we continue to draw the connections between imperial and colonial violence, purposeful underdevelopment in the global South, destabilization, you know, sanction regimes as we talk about.

often on guerrilla history and overall exploitation that actually fuel a lot of these migration crises that then in response fuel the fascist response. So the imperialism and the colonialism that often causes so much displacement in the world then goes on to directly emboldened and foster the explicitly fascist response to the effects that those are the causes of. And with looming climate change and that sort of, you know, sort of, of gripping the world around the throat and tightening its grip over time. The eco-fascist response, I think, is something we're going to see much more of.

And so I think we have to directly wrestle with all of these connections. And not only does that involve, as Sarah was saying, the imaginaries of equality and using cultural work to advance different ways of envisioning a future where we can live together as equals, but it also involves, you know, opposing in an organized fashion, imperialism and neocolonialism while advancing an international class politic that that really tries to strike at the root of capitalist exploitation and inequality which fuels so much of the crises that we're currently living through. So as a way to wrap up and with those thoughts in mind, do you have any final thoughts on how best to combat these narratives and the political

forces that I was mentioning and any other last words you want to say as we wrap this wonderful and really insightful conversation up. Well, I really appreciate what you just said, Brad. So I want to second that and maybe also add because, yes, there's the capitalist context, but there's also for me something very specific about the neoliberal moment of capitalism, right? Because to me it seems that, and I see that in the student populations that I have been teaching over many years now, to me, what I said earlier on, I really see this.

kind of learned illiteracy about power structures. And that is for me part of, you know, that is not necessarily part of a capitalist regime, right? But it is part of a neoliberal moment of capitalism. And so teaching power and teaching power structures, teaching power analysis for me is part of it. That's not still the imaginary part. I think imaginary part needs to be more speculative and more wild then. But, you know, the nitty gritty of teaching of power, like making this young generation And not only the generation, by the way, but making people see power structures again

because we're living in a context that is like, you know, mystifying them all of the time. So, yeah, I think that is, and of course, the organizing, but I'm kind of thinking of the work that I can do in a university, like teaching power, teaching power, stimulating the imaginary. and then also I think I lost me thought there so power and imaginary I'm going to keep it with that

yes and I will answer sort of also from the what can I do right I think I completely agree Brett with also with what you just said but again and I'm talking from the country I'm speaking

we need to teach this kind about its own colonialism. It's a country that barely recognizes that colonialism happened here, that they were colonial power. It's a country that thinks that after 1945, anti-Semitism disappear, that there was no longer racism, right? And I think part of, you know, teaching about power and power structures is also having a critical understanding of history. And I think that's where I also see my contribution to, to, to, trying to challenge those structures, right? Because there is a lot of silence about certain issues, about until 10 years ago it was almost impossible to talk about Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism here. You will be called crazy or anything. I think those are kind of, I know that there are small steps,

but in my view, necessary steps. you know, to have a critical understanding of history, right? Not only that remains among us, but that it's widely publicized, that it's available, that we learn, that, you know, the population learn to recognize racism, learned to recognize easily, sexism, all these forms of discrimination, that they are, you know, that we are able to do. And Salman has this argument, right, that identifying Islamophobia is, a learn experience, right?

Like, it's a learn process. And I think we need more tools for that, right? Like, we need to tread in our students, everyone around us to identify these oppressions and call them out and oppose them because it's not enough what we have. It's not enough. Indeed. Well, you know, this work that you've given us, is really rich. I encourage listeners to go find a copy and to read and digest these contributions.

And those last words that you were making, Luis, about the importance of history is, of course, something that is the center of the mission of this podcast. So we're very happy to acknowledge that as a key and important thing that we can be doing is to try and change some of these narratives. And when we talk about these imaginations of equality, in one piece I wrote once I concluded by, you know, kind of asking, you know, why is it that we haven't been able to integrate historical narratives, you know, of Europe and the wider Mediterranean as part of one story rather than stories that are fragmented or oppositional, you know, based on the nation or retrojected in the past on, you know, you know, the basis of ethnic difference, you know. So that's something we have to work towards doing and conversations like this and the work that you've been doing in this wonderful book on the politics of replacement really makes a big contribution to that.

So I thank you for this, you know, rich conversation and the great work that you've published. Perhaps you can just tell the listeners how they can follow you, and your work and keep up to date with what you're doing and if they want to get a copy of this text, where should they go? Sarah, why don't you tell us, you know, how listeners can follow you and where they can find the book? Well, they can get in touch and if you Google my name, you find my university address, they can get in touch. If they want to get a copy of the book, go to the library. We've been asking libraries to buy them. I always find the price of these books too much for individuals to buy. So drop an email and we can find a way or ask your library

to buy it because then it's available for more people. Those are the two ways I think that and actually we are now, but there's a cost on our side, but we are now making the introduction available through open access but so I have to pay the open access fees now but yeah we won't be able to make the full book available on the website

of Routledge but if people they can always drop an email and we'll find another way and I am on Twitter I think that might be or on X I still am there for reasons of not wanting to give up space

and take up space in a very right-wing environment. So, yes, people can find me on Twitter. What does your Twitter handle? Oh, it's just my name. Okay, great. So Sarah, Brake, and, yeah, you can find me there. Excellent. Luis, how can they find you?

Probably just through my mail. I'm not in any platform. I'm a bit shy, I would say. And that's okay. They can read the book. They can read the book. Also, you Google my name. The whole thing, right?

Like, not just an abbreviation, I will appear because there are different persons with variations of my name. And yes, or on the web page of the University of Vyadrina in Frankfurt, Oda. Excellent. Well, our co-host, Henry, wasn't able to join us today. but you can follow him on Twitter at Huck, 1995. Brett, how can people follow you? And of course, it's been such a pleasure to have you back to be conversing with you.

I look forward to another opportunity soon in the future. But in the meantime, how can people follow your work? Yeah, definitely. It's great to be back, even if it's just for a one-off. But hopefully we can continue to do collaborations. Always nice to do an episode with you, Anon. Thank you both so much for coming. on and sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, and your work with us. It's, it's, you know, deeply

appreciated. As for me, you can find everything I do politically at Revolutionary Left Radio.com, and then I also have a non-political podcast I run with my childhood friend who is in active recovery for alcoholism called Shoeless in South Dakota. And on that show, it's mostly focused on mental health issues, addiction, recovery, et cetera. So if that is anything that you might be interested in check that out as well. Great. You can also follow me

at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N on Twitter slash X. And you can also find my other podcast, the M-A-J-L-I-S, about Muslim-diasporic culture,

the Middle East, Islamic world topics related to that, and that's on all the usual platforms. You can also help support guerrilla history, of course, by joining Patreon.com slash Gorilla History, R, double R, double L, and follow the show on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, two R's, two L's. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.

Thank you.