(CNN)"Replacement theory" is the product of a strategy by wealthy White nationalists to enter the mainstream. It is based on ideas -- honed over decades in the racist publications and conferences they funded -- that stayed mostly on the margins until 2014, when through a strange twist of events it crashed into the internet's biggest meme factories.

Since then, it has been the stated motivation of mass murderers, and it is why White supremacists were chanting, "Jews will not replace us," at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. More recently, it has crept in modified form into American politics. And in the past week, it emerged as the clear inspiration for the 180-page online document attributed to the White 18-year-old accused in America's latest racist gun massacre.

Elements of replacement theory have been around a long time. The term was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus with his 2011 essay, "Le Grand Remplacement," which posited White Europeans were being replaced by Muslim immigration.

To White nationalists now, replacement theory -- according to hundreds of posts, interviews, and podcasts -- goes like this: Jews, whom Camus did not mention, evolved to be clever; people in the entire Southern Hemisphere evolved to be less smart and have more sex; women evolved to be compliant and conformist. And here's how this bizarre theory plays out: Jews trick White women into having babies with people of color, and they trick White men into becoming...

Read Full Story: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/20/us/replacement-theory-white-supremacist-buffal...