The Racist Republican Replacement Lie
To be a Republican in 2022 is to be committed to the belief in and propagation of three great lies: (1) The Big Election Lie that holds elections that R’s lose are rigged and those that they win are not; (2) The White Supremacy Lie that social change (e.g., women’s rights and choice, Black lives matter, LGBTQ+ rights, etc.) threatens the (White) American family; and The Racist Republican Replacement Theory Lie that maintains there is a conspiracy by the elite (read Jews) to bring a flood of immigrants who will somehow ‘replace’ and disenfranchise the White working class. All three have been embraced by the TFG and his despicable crew, and amplified by the Republican Pravda, Fox “News,” in general and Tucker Carlson in particular. Worse, with the exception of Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and a handful of anti-Trumpers, “Establishment Republicans” refuse to stand up to those who embrace these lies. That may be the biggest shame of all.
I first wrote about replacement theory in this newsletter almost exactly one year ago. Since then, the popularity of these racist, antisemitic lies has only grown and become more mainstream. A recent AP/NORC poll found that 1-in-3 Americans believe that “an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.” One-third of Americans! That’s the same one-third that believes TFG’s Big Election Lie, and no doubt the same one-third who believe that social change somehow threatens them. One-third is a huge number made even more threatening when they turn out to vote.
White Supremacists march in Virginia in 2017
(Photo Credit: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty)
This is not new. The ugly specter of racist lies was fundamental to the Confederacy and the subsequent segregationist movement that was outspoken and unabashed until the ‘revolution’ of the 1960s finally made it socially inappropriate to be outwardly racist. Antisemitic lies fueled the McCarthy era and live on in folks like Senator Ron Johnson who now holds his Senate seat, along with many of his GOP colleagues. In fact, any time there has been a surge in immigration, there has been a faction in American politics and discourse that has flocked to the Replacement Theory lie.
Senator Durbin speaks out against Carlson/Fox and the replacement theory on the Senate floor
There is a creepy and insidious misogynistic element to this as well. Aviya Kushner writes in The Forward that “White supremacists believe that male power is in decline because women are reluctant to reproduce.” You can hear echoes of this when Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks of “the domestic supply of infants.” Kushner notes that thanks to Tucker and Fox, “we are witnessing the platforming of a melding of racist and sexist ideology, powered by anti-immigrant sentiment and virulent antisemitism — and it is a combination that is increasingly comfortable in the public eye.”
What do we do? How are we to respond to this dark, putrid swamp that TFG stirred up and uses to his advantage to this day? We vote. We get out the vote. We pick our races and we pour our hearts, our souls, and our treasures into them. We take the advice of Donny Deutsch on Morning Joe who says we should never talk about replacement theory without calling it the Racist Republican Replacement Theory. We emphasize the fact that 70% of Americans still agree that the American Dream is attainable, that 80% of millionaires are first-generation Americans, and that 44% of the founders of Fortune 500 companies are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
I, for one, am sick to death of fighting the Civil War over and over and over again. But if we don’t fight it every time it surfaces, our democracy is doomed. “States’ rights” is the polar opposite of women’s rights, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. We need to fight it in the press, fight it in the courts, fight it in the streets, and most importantly, fight it in the election booth. 70% of America is with us. We can’t let the malicious minority destroy it.