Join PEN America for a free virtual conversation with the National Book Award-winning historian of Stamped from the Beginning, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, and leaders from human rights organizations from across the globe. Dr. Kendi’s newest book, Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, charts how “great replacement theory” (GRT) has moved from the margins to become the most dominant political theory of our time—and what we can do to safeguard democracy from this insidious threat.
In our fast-shifting political landscape, most people are unfamiliar with this theory’s origins and its spread, which isn’t a coincidence. In Chain of Ideas, Ibram X. Kendi uses exacting and clear prose to uncover the roots of great replacement theory and its various mutations around the world. It is an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.
About Chain of Ideas:
Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.
The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.
In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is one of the world’s foremost historians and leading antiracist scholars. His books have been translated into multiple languages and republished throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Kendi is Professor of History and the founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research enterprise examining global racism. He is author of many highly acclaimed bestsellers including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is the author of the international bestseller How to Be an Antiracist. Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.