SarahBracke and Luis ManuelHernández Aguilar, Editors, The Politics of Replacement: Demographic Fears, Conspiracy Theories and Race WarsRoutledge, Abingdon, UK & New York, US, 2024. 292 pp.

The blurb on this book's back cover states “this title is essential reading for scholars, journalists and activists interested in the contemporary far right, conspiracy theories, and racisms.” I'd suggest this book should also be essential reading for demographers. “The Politics of Replacement” is an edited volume covering “population replacement” ideologies—fears that a particular population will be replaced by a different kind of people, because of the higher fertility of the latter group, and/or their immigration into the former group's “territories.” Demography is fundamental to such conspiracy theories, yet demographers are notably (almost) absent among the contributors to the book. Most of the book is devoted to analyzing ideologies surrounding the feared replacement of “white” populations by other races (who are explicitly or implicitly framed as “inferior” in these narratives). The editors describe in their opening chapter a genealogy of these beliefs, divided into four stages. Replacement ideologies became prominent in the nineteenth century, when they were linked to the desire to maintain white dominance in territories colonized by Europeans (often in territories in which indigenous populations had been literally replaced by white settlers). In the early twentieth century, US President Theodore Roosevelt, among others, promoted fears that the northern European race might commit “race suicide” by allowing the immigration and reproduction of “inferior races.” The second stage saw the rise of Nazi fascism and the resulting genocide of groups of people considered to be a racial or biological threat to the continued flourishing of the “Aryan” (northern European) race. This included the Holocaust, the systematic killing of Jewish people, as well as the attempted elimination of Roma people, and others. The editors suggest replacement ideologies became less politically influential in the decades after the Second World War, as decolonization, civil rights, and feminist movements gave greater prominence to human rights for all. The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of replacement ideologies, focused both on ethnicity (the language of “white genocide” is now used) and religion, particularly the “threat” of Islam replacing Christianity. In 2006, Bat Ye'or proposed a conspiracy theory in which Muslim immigrants would replace white Christian Europeans in Eurabia, a book which captured attention among Europe's far-right. Renaud Camus then provided a name for population replacement conspiracy theories with his 2011 book Le Grande Remplacement (The Great Replacement), which makes a similar argument for France. Despite this four-stage overview describing the relatively recent evolution of fears of white population replacement, the book highlights that similar ideologies may extend much further back in time historically and are by no means unique to white populations. One chapter proposes replacement ideologies may have been present in mediaeval Europe. Another chapter discusses “saffron demography”—the misuse of demographic trends to raise fears about the replacement of Hindus by Muslims in India. The book, in fact, does well at highlighting the shifting nature of these ideologies, and how they are clearly tied to political motivations, rather than reflect any demographic or biological reality. The targets of population replacement fears are typically those who have different cultural identities to the politically dominant population, not inherent biological differences. Although race (in terms of skin color) is a significant component of many population replacement ideologies today, there are many examples which show that replacement ideologies have also been used to target groups which are not racially different from the dominant population. In the early and mid-twentieth century, Southern and Eastern European populations, and Jewish people living in Europe—all populations which would, in the majority of cases, likely be racialized as white today—were considered a threat to the northern European “race.” In the Balkans—the focus of another chapter—fears of Muslims replacing Christians have been present since the nineteenth century and were used during the 1990s genocide of Bosnian Muslims. The current consensus in genetics, in any case, is that race is not a genetically meaningful concept—human genetic variation is far too complex to be neatly divided into racial groups (Rutherford 2020). This survey of population replacement beliefs clearly shows that these are ideologies, based on cultural differences between groups of people, not immutable population characteristics. One section of the book tackles “technologies of replacement”: how replacement narratives are used by political actors. In some extreme and antisemitic versions of replacement conspiracy theories, the narrative is that “population replacement” is being deliberately engineered by a group of “elites,” often identified as Jewish people, but sometimes including “multiculturalists” or feminists. As several chapters on the mainstreaming of these beliefs in contemporary Western populations demonstrate, the more accurate scenario is that certain political interest groups (on the far-right) are manipulating public debates and media coverage to stoke fears of population replacement, regardless of evidence. Immigrants (typically non-white, and often, though not always, Muslim) are the demonized group in such narratives, characterized as aggressive, hypersexualized, and hyperfertile, and posing a threat to “native” populations. Analysis of Dutch political campaigns from a centrist-right party by Nik Linders in this volume shows how explicit anti-immigrant and population replacement rhetoric from the far-right is being mainstreamed and made acceptable by the centre. Similar “population panics” have proved useful vote-winners for other politicians and policies on the right, for example, by distracting the voting public from the underlying causes of worsening economic conditions. The book also highlights how gender hierarchies are a cornerstone of replacement ideologies. One “solution” proposed to the “problem” of population replacement is to convince (the “right” kind of) women to have more children. Population replacement ideologies are therefore linked to rigid gender ideologies which claim women's “natural” place is in the home, raising children, and that only men should have roles in the public sphere. They are also linked to policies which restrict women's reproductive rights, such as access to contraception and abortion, and to cultural norms and policies which problematize LGBTQ+ lifestyles. One of the book's editors, Sarah Bracke, contributes a chapter about Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale in which fears of “white genocide” and environmental degradation negatively affecting fertility lead to a dystopia in which women's rights are entirely removed, and women become no more than brood mares in an authoritarian society. The recent toppling of women's right to abortion in the United States and tightening of restrictions on abortion by right-wing governments in parts of Europe, such as Poland, suggest this book may have been remarkably prescient. Ironically, such restrictive cultural norms and policies may have the effect of reducing, rather than increasing, fertility. Rigid gender ideologies which force women into only “home-making” roles are unlikely to suit women's evolved preferences, since women have combined work with childrearing throughout human history (Sear 2021). In at least some cases, increased abortion restrictions may lead to a decline in fertility, perhaps because of risk aversion on the part of women who are denied the option of comprehensive reproductive healthcare (Matysiak and van der Velde 2023). The book is an interdisciplinary endeavor, including chapters from a range of social science disciplines including sociology, gender studies, and political and religious studies. Only one author appears to have any affiliation with demography. This is not a criticism of the volume. As an edited volume, it does not claim to include a comprehensive discussion of population ideologies, and it might also not have been straightforward to find demographic contributors, given that the politics of demography is something of a minority interest in the discipline (though not absent: Goerres and Vanhuysse 2021). But certainly, future volumes on population replacement ideologies could benefit from greater integration with demography. For example, the editors argue that population replacement ideologies waned after the Second World War, yet include chapters on the history of replacement ideologies which involve discussion of the population control movement. Links between population control ideologies, which argue “the boat is full” (i.e., the planet's resources cannot support more people) and which were extremely influential in the mid-twentieth century, and replacement ideologies, which reject immigration on the basis of national resources being too greatly stretched, could perhaps be drawn more fully in conversation with demographers. I also would have valued greater discussion of links between replacement and eugenic ideologies, scientific racism and how all these ideologies feed into contemporary debates about population growth (especially given the recent investigation which exposed a network of well-funded political activists who are successfully manipulating academic journals into publishing scientific racism: Pegg et al. 2024). In the twentieth century, there was a widespread “overpopulation” panic, which forecast disaster for humanity if population growth were not curbed. In the twenty-first century, an “underpopulation” panic is growing in impetus, which argues that fertility decline will have disastrous consequences for humanity if not addressed. Fertility rates are currently declining worldwide, even in populations with already low fertility and where fertility rates were not predicted to decline further. Exactly what is driving these fertility declines is unclear, but these demographic trends are (predictably) being seized upon by political actors to promote narratives of “demographic collapse” and fears of replacement of white populations by other populations in which fertility remains higher. I recommend this volume for demographers because it is vital that demographers are aware of how demographic trends are used and misused for political purposes. Demographic change is inevitable, and the demographers’ job of documenting, explaining, and forecasting demographic changes is important for policy. But demography is not a “value-free” exercise in crunching numbers, separate from political influences (Sigle 2021). Here, the chapter by Sayan Das offers an instructive example of how demography is misused in replacement ideologies in the Indian context, noting that “The discipline of demography, while purportedly a neutral numerical exercise, is embedded within social and power relations as any other human enterprise. Arguably, a census does not just count peoples and communities but also alters and shapes them in the process … .From creating categories and defining them to including questions that limit possible answers to pre-decided questions, every step in a census is steeped in perception, perspective and politics” (p. 113). Demographers could work harder at ensuring that population debates are anchored in evidence, so that the difficult and complex policy decisions which need to be made to address the challenges, and opportunities, of demographic change have the best chance of success (Gietel-Basten 2023). Demographers could also engage more to ensure their work is not misappropriated by political actors, given the severe consequences of such misappropriation: this volume repeatedly mentions the multiple murders and massacres associated with population replacement ideology (see Carlson et al. 2022 for an example of how geneticists are grappling with similar issues). As demographer Leslie Root advised after one of these massacres: “Racist terrorists are obsessed with demographics. Let's not give them talking points” (Root 2019).