The Great Replacement and Other Conspiracy Narratives: Intersectional Antidemocratic Features of Authoritarian Populism and the Far Right

Antidemocratic features of authoritarian populism from a democratic theory perspective

While the antidemocratic potential of conspiracy narratives – at least specific ones, such as Great Replacement conspiracism – is widely acknowledged (Davis 2024; Davey and Ebner 2019; Ebner 2023; Farinelli 2021; Lamberty and Knäble 2020; Littvay 2022; Rottweiler and Gill 2020; Vegetti and Littvay 2022), the antidemocratic character of populism is contested. It largely depends on the theoretical conception and definition of populism – whether it is seen as genuinely antidemocratic or potentially democracy-enhancing. Two approaches stand behind these two adversarial assessments of populism, both viewing constructions of the people/we, and particularly the drawing of their boundaries, as pivotal. On the one hand, the radical democratic approach of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe detects a democratic and politicizing potential of populism, i.e. that it potentially challenges hegemonic discourse by articulating ‘equivalential chains of unfulfilled demands’ (Laclau 2005, 177) and that it may take on an agonistic character, which is relevant for democracy (Mouffe 2014, 28–29). Mouffe also argues that the ‘logic of democracy’ necessarily implies a ‘moment of closure which is required by the very process of constituting the “people”’ (Mouffe 2000, 43). However, Mouffe gives no indication of how this closure can be democratically legitimised. On the other hand, democracy theorists such as Urbinati (2019) and Müller (2017) define the excluding, anti-pluralist moment of populism as salient for its antidemocratic thrust and thus do not see a democratising potential in populism. Altogether, however, there is broad agreement that the respective construction of ‘the (true) people’ is key in populism (Canovan 2004, 247, 544; Laclau 2005, 48; Mudde 2004; Rancière 2017, 8, 247; Urbinati 1998, 111). Hence, regardless of whether populism is conceived of as primarily a ‘thin ideology’ (Mudde 2004), a political strategy (Urbinati 2019), a political style or a mix of those (Wodak 2015), constructions of ‘the people’ are always at the centre. It is characterised by an exclusionary understanding of an alleged ‘true people’ who are, in fact, usually a minority (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2023) but class themselves as a majority. It is a majoritarian claim of a (homogenous, autochthone, pure and often victimised) people that tends to culminate in a delegitimization of others (Müller 2017, 27–31; 2022, 611). Thus, building on the approach of Urbinati (2019) and Müller (2017; 2022), majoritarianism and antipluralism serve as a measure and an expression of the antidemocratic potential.²

I argue that populism is authoritarian and antidemocratic when it is based on an essentialist notion of the demos, which at the same time results in abandoning the notion of democratic equality. This is the case when the boundaries of the demos are prefigured and explicitly not up for democratic negotiation (Müller 2017, 94), resulting in an a priori exclusion of specific groups from the demos. Such an exclusion contradicts the democratic principle of equality. This definition of authoritarian populism and its antidemocratic thrust does not deny that there is a necessary moment of closure and boundary-drawing in constituting the demos, as Mouffe states. In contrast to Mouffe’s approach, however, the pluralist approach defines openness for the negotiation of this closure as a democratic precondition and at the same time confines the legitimate closure of the people. The boundaries must be a possible matter of democratic negotiation, and legitimate boundaries must not be prefigured by essentialist and nativist ideas, which exactly impede democratic negotiation.

Conspiracism

For the basic definition of this term, I draw on Barkun (2013), who defines the basic assumptions of conspiracy beliefs as being: nothing is like it seems, everything is connected and nothing happens by accident (Barkun 2013, 3–4). Barkun also introduces a distinction between event-related conspiracy beliefs – which, in principle, could be proved and evident – on the one hand (e.g. the Watergate scandal) and the belief in systemic conspiracy or even super conspiracies on the other. The latter include all-encompassing conspiracy narratives about (supra)regional or even global, history-driving meta conspiracies (Barkun 2013), which, per definition, can never be proven. Given the criticism of the term conspiracy theory (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019), I mainly refer to conspiracy narratives, conspiracy claims and conspiracism. Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019) distinguish between a ‘conspiracy theory’ on the one hand and ‘conspiracy without the theory’ on the other. The latter they term as conspiracism.³ Building on this meaning, I refer to the imaginations of systemic conspiracies in the sense of Barkun – more precisely, those which are currently politically used and successfully disseminated (particularly in Europe), such as the Great Replacement, Eurabia, white genocide and anti-Soros conspiracism.

The relationship between authoritarian populism and conspiracism

With regards to debates about the relationship between authoritarian populism and conspiracy theory, the question of common denominators and similarities sits at the centre. Are both these phenomena ‘manifestations of the same underlying something’ (Littvay 2022, 130)? Is there a necessary relationship between populism and conspiracism (see overview in Bergmann and Butter 2020, 332–334), or just an ‘elective affinity’ (Müller 2022, 609)? Does the wish to destroy the pluralist party system in representative liberal democracy manifest in both (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019, 84)?

There are representative studies showing that populist attitudes positively associate with belief in conspiracy theories (Balta, Kaltwasser and Yagci 2022, 634; Decker and Brähler 2020, 270; Guinjoan and Galais 2023). Scholarly work on the relationship between conspiracy theory and authoritarian populism highlights strikingly common traits that overlap in conspiracism and populism: a Manichean world view and an imaginary of harmful elites doing damage to ‘the people’ (Hauwaert 2012, in Bergmann and Butter 2020, 333; Priester 2012), which has also been proven to be salient in quantitative analyses (e.g. Castanho Silva, Vegetti and Littvay 2017). An interconnectedness also becomes visible when conspiracy narratives are used in attacks on core institutions of liberal democracy like parliaments, e.g. on the German Reichstag or the US Capitol and many others (Ebner 2023; Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019). However, not all authoritarian populist actors make use of conspiracy narratives, and it is only segments of populist party support that resort to conspiracism. In short, authoritarian populism does not necessarily require conspiracism to function (Bergmann and Butter 2020, 334; Müller 2022, 609). At the same time, there is no doubt that they often converge. Even though populists in opposition and in power do use conspiracy narratives, how they use them changes depending on how embedded, or even entrenched, their power is. Accordingly, the parties and their supporters do resort to conspiracism in varying degrees. Hence, there is rather a non-necessary relationship between them, or rather, an ‘elective affinity’ (Müller 2022, 609). But what does this non-necessary relationship consist of?

I argue that, where political conspiracy narratives resonate with the antidemocratic features of authoritarian populism, they potentially function as drivers in the mainstreaming of far-right content, paving the way for extremist ideas to flow from the fringes out into the political and media debate. From this perspective, these shared antidemocratic features define the non-necessary relationship between authoritarian populism and conspiracism, and they manifest, again, in the respective constructions of we/‘the people’. Taking up the definition of the antidemocratic pattern of authoritarian populism given above, a closer look at we- and demos constructions in conspiracism leads to the following observations: 1) While majoritarianism and antipluralism in authoritarian populism often implicitly expose a logic of existential threat, in the sense of a Schmittian friend–enemy distinction (Bischof 2018; 2022) – such as, for example, in the Austrian case (Bischof 2018) or in various current expressions of culture war logic (e.g. Busbridge, Moffitt and Thorburn 2020; Slačálek 2023) – this is even sharper in conspiracy narratives. It is the very existence of the ‘we group’ that is at stake, in a physical and/or in a cultural sense, and, in order to secure this existence, the enemy has to either be defeated or annihilated. 2) The various “others” (national, ethnic, sexual or other minorities) are not only excluded from ‘we’/’the people’; they are seen as enemies, which means that they cannot be viewed, at all, as legitimate political opponents in democratic conflict or legitimate political subjects in democratic debate or negotiation. If ‘others’ of all kinds per se pose an existential threat to ‘we, the people’, then any kind of democratic negotiation, deliberation or compromise is impossible. In summary then, the essential antidemocratic features to be detected in political we- and demos constructions (with antidemocratic tendencies) are a Schmittian friend–enemy distinction based on the notion of existential threat, leading to the complete delegitimisation of ‘others’ as political subjects, be they political antagonists, elites or minorities. A third component characteristic of conspiracism, the notion of urgency (Hofstadter 1964), accelerates the antidemocratic thrust of existential threat and delegitimisation of others. In the following, I will give a few illustrative examples for how these notions of existential threat, delegitimisation and urgency manifest in the Great Replacement narrative and others closely connected to it. The examples also show that these notions are, at their core, characterised by an intersectional, gendered dimension, which will be analysed in greater detail in the fourth part.

The examples collected present phenomena particularly relevant to the research interest and should serve the formation of hypotheses. There is no representative claim. The exploratory search included blockchain and other video platforms such as Odysee (Forward Research, Mesquite, TX, USA) and YouTube (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA), which are important in disseminating conspiracism (Matlach, Hammer and Schwieter 2022; Schwarzer 2022), as well as other online sites and media that take up the respective conspiracy narratives. The exploratory search was based on the state-of-the-art literature on the Great Replacement, Eurabia and white genocide, using the key terms ‘replacement’, ‘genocide’, ‘defend Europe’ and ‘Soros’. In order to grasp tendencies in how conspiracy narratives are disseminated and ‘mainstreamed’, I reconstructed in an exemplary way the use of the term ‘replacement’, which is key in the Great Replacement conspiracy narrative, across fringe online platforms, online and offline political discourse and parliamentary debates.

The Great Replacement et al.

The narrative of the Great Replacement conspiracy was coined in 2011 by Renaud Camus, a French right wing extremist writer, in his book Le Grand Remplacement, which subsequently greatly influenced the Identitarian movement in France and then other movements in other countries (Ekman 2022, 4; Goetz 2021, 66). This idea spreads the notion that Jewish elites promote non-white immigration in order to dominate the white population (Ekman 2022, 5). The term successfully replaced older and more stigmatised ones such as Volkstod (‘death of people’) and Umvolkung (‘ethnicity inversion’) (Ekman 2022, 4), thus also placing reproduction and population policy at the centre of the far-right discourse (Goetz 2021, 64) and advocating for the idea of a ‘pure people’ (Taguieff 2024, 340). The leader of the Austrian Identitarians, Martin Sellner, soon recognised the strategic value of the term, calculating that, ‘as a first step, we need to popularise the “Great Replacement” throughout the patriotic camp and incorporate it into everyday language. From there, it will flow more and more into the media debate’ (Sellner 2015). Considering that it was coined only in 2011, the spread of both this narrative and term has indeed been remarkable. Ebner (2023) found that, particularly after 2015, there has been a striking spread and mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, including the Great Replacement (Ebner 2023, 282; 286), with the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic playing a pivotal role in this (Ebner 2023, 283). The ‘replacement’ narrative also builds on theories of white genocide, which have flourished in Neo-Nazi milieus since the 1980s (Askanius 2021; Ekman 2022, 5).

This narrative is also connected to that of the Eurabia conspiracy, which is 10 years older than the ‘replacement’ conspiracism and sees a silent takeover of Muslims in Europe, promoted by a liberal/left wing elite (Bergmann 2018, 2; Ekman 2022, 5). Moreover, replacement conspiracism often connects to the Soros conspiracism⁴ (Plenta 2020). I argue, along with Mattias Ekman, that the Great Replacement conspiracism is a flexible political strategy (Ekman 2022, 2), which both connects to and encompasses various other similar conspiracy narratives such as white genocide, Eurabia and Soros conspiracy. Great Replacement conspiracism serves as a good example when examining how a conspiracy narrative translates into different sectors of political discourse. The Great Replacement narrative has been particularly successful in terms of wide and rapid distribution, as well as regarding its use by authoritarian populists particularly in Europe but also in the USA (Davey and Ebner 2019; Ebner 2023; Ekman 2022). Thus, it can be seen as particularly influential, and it is a good object of study for identifying structural connections between far-right conspiracy theories and populist rhetoric. At the same time, it well exemplifies the intersectional character of the antidemocratic thrust of political conspiracy narratives.

As the examples of Great Replacement and related narratives such as Eurabia, white genocide or George Soros show, the people-elite antagonism is presented as an existential threat, signalling maximum urgency. It projects the idea that nefarious elites are plotting against the European people by intentionally replacing (allegedly) homogeneous nations with non-European peoples. In the foreground, anti-Muslim racism (due to the ‘Muslim threat’), but often also racism towards refugees in general, appears as the major problem. Images of (mass) migration are portrayed as undermining Europe, eroding its ‘ethnic character’. The main feature of this idea is the threat’s existential character and the urgent need to counteract it. This is exemplified, for instance, by a banner with the slogan ‘multiculturalism is genocide’, with the symbol of a skull and crossbones next to it.

Example 1: Existential threat – genocide

Viewing ‘multiculturalism as genocide’ as on this sticker (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/great-replacement-theory-historical-perspective/) is viewing it as an existential threat. This implies, on the one hand, that people of ‘non-European ethnicity’ pose a threat to Europe, be they immigrants with third country nationality or EU citizens who/whose parents were born in non-EU countries. This is why the Great Replacement conspiracy narrative appears, above all, as a profoundly racist one, particularly focussing on the perceived un-European nature of Islam (Davey and Ebner 2019, 13; Ekman 2022, 4), Muslim immigrants and Muslim EU-citizens alike. These narratives are not confined to scapegoating Islam and often also target immigration from African countries or various groups of refugees. Many scholars explore the position of Islam as the ‘absolute other’ in Europe in the often-intermingling Great Replacement, Eurabia and white genocide conspiracy narratives (Önnerfors and Krouwel 2021, 16; see Bergmann 2018; Gualda 2021). This is most strikingly the case in the Eurabia conspiracy narrative, which has, at its very core, the idea that Europe will end up under the rule of Islam (Bergmann 2018, 38–39). Great Replacement and white genocide narratives also vilify Islam in the same vein, suggesting the threat of replacement through Muslim immigration in the foreground (Bergmann 2018, VIII; Ekman 2022, 5).

Viewing ‘multiculturalism’ as an existential threat means that those who promote it are also an existential threat. Among its promoters are politicians, ‘power elites’ and the European Union (Bergmann 2021), who are either accused of facilitating the replacement and erosion of ‘European civilization’ from within (Önnerfors and Krouwel 2021) or of plotting with the Arab League to bring about Eurabia (Giséle Littmann alias Bat Ye’or in Bergmann 2021, 39). In many cases, minorities are behind the elite, above all Jews, or ‘the Jew’, respectively, as the following example of the vilification of George Soros shows. A great many of the variants of the Great Replacement, Eurabia and white genocide narratives identify a behind-the-scenes, Jewish world conspiracy, as the real threat. Sometimes these real but hidden perpetrators are introduced via cryptic allusions and other times are personalised – take, for instance, George Soros. Soros is depicted as a major destructive force: a ‘globalist’ behind the EU elites – this is also a common feature in anti-EU conspiracy narratives (Krouwel and Van Prooijen 2021, 25) – but also as the “angel of death” and destroyer of America (Escuela 2020), the enslaver of the European Union and its peoples (MarianoDigital 2020).

Example 2: Image of George Soros as an enslaver

This image, which can be found on many webpages (https://mirdig.wordpress.com/2020/04/28/george-soros-al-asalto-de-la-union-europea-para-esclavizar-a-los-ciudadanos/) exemplifies the intersectional dimension of this conspiracy narrative as well as its claim of an existential threat.⁵ The antisemitic dimension is intrinsically connected to its (anti-Muslim) racist dimension. Both are connected and function within a ‘larger pattern’ of these narratives (Great Replacement, Eurabia et al.). At the same time, its intersectional character is exemplified. A closer look at the insignia on Soros’ fist of oppression in Example 2 makes clear that Islam and Muslims (‘create Eurabia’), feminism (‘prevent birth’) and LGBTIQ* minorities (who ‘indoctrinate children’) are symbolised as the most important insignia on Soros’ threatening, iron fist, symbolising his ‘efforts’ to enslave and subjugate. The other insignia on Soros’ fist are ‘abortion’ and ‘paedophilia’, which are clearly connected to ‘feminism’ and ‘LGBT’ by attributing it to ‘LGBT’ ‘hypersexualisation’. This insight into conspiracisms’ imagination of the ‘behind the scenes’ also shows what is hidden behind the nefarious ‘elites’: a hierarchy of minorities – namely Muslims, LGBTIQ* and feminists – all instrumentalised and weaponised by Soros, the personification of the most dangerous minority, Jews. Thus, anti-Muslim racism, antisemitism, sexism and homophobia are intrinsically connected and surface (depending on various versions of conspiracy myths) as (integral) parts of an intersectional structure – as parts of the same fist of subjugation – even though single parts might come to the foreground in different contexts. Additionally, it is obvious that anti-Soros conspiracism is a strikingly global phenomenon; images like the one above can easily be found online in various (trans)national party-political contexts, blogs and posts by various actors and movements, which also expose their considerable contradictions. In some, he is depicted as a socialist, in some as a liberal who wants to destroy ‘democratic freedom’ (see Escuela 2020) and in others as a reckless capitalist and neoliberal (see Korolczuk and Graff 2018; Krouwel and Van Prooijen 2021). This mirrors, on the one hand, the structure of antisemitism; on the other, it is also typical for the global spread of conspiracy myths. Anyone who connects political opponents (who are pro-feminist, pro–human rights, pro-LGBTIQ*) with such stereotypical images of existential enemies is hardly willing to view them as legitimate political actors. Thus, conspiracy beliefs of this kind promote the delegitimization of ‘elites’ and minorities alike, with at least some of these minorities, such as Jews, hiding ‘behind’ and steering the elites. This is all the more the case if, in addition to a perceived existential threat, there is also a pronounced sense of urgency. In the case of Replacement–Eurabia conspiracism, this urgency appears in the form of violent chaos, flooding and invasion (Davey and Ebner 2019; Gualda 2021). A ‘fight for Europe’ video, extracted from the platform Odysee,⁶ exemplifies several appearances of this notion of urgency.

Example 3: Urgency – video ‘fight for Europe’ on the platform Odysee

In this scene (https://odysee.com/@AvaWolfe:d/AVE-EUROPA-FIGHT-FOR-EUROPE:4, 2:30), two male migrants/refugees, depicted as violent and chaotic (signified by a burning car in the background and their black hoodies) are approaching the spectator/camera. When they are almost there, the one closest to the camera appears to shout a battle cry, presenting a picture both frightening and stereotypically racist at the same time. This signifies that it is almost too late. The invasion, which also here takes on the form of an attack, has not only begun; it is about to succeed. This urgency also insinuates that, given the overwhelming and immediate threat, 1) any measure is legitimate to prevent the catastrophe, including violence, and 2) there is absolutely no time to think or question these insinuated (violent) counter-measures. In the same video (https://odysee.com/@AvaWolfe:d/AVE-EUROPA-FIGHT-FOR-EUROPE:4, 4:25), after a long sequence depicting threat and danger accompanied by dramatic music, images of armoured knights, standing on a hill next to a cross and a flag, appear; after that, other European national flags appear, pointing to possible ‘ways out’ (4:25).

The existential threat in this example is depicted as a (violent) attack or invasion by (male) migrants and/or violent chaos. Another way of depicting the existential threat is to view it as a dangerous feminisation of Europe, signifying decay. This is inherent in the European trajectory of cultural pessimism expressed, for example by Oswald Spengler and others, which reflect on an essence of Europe in decline (Önnerfors and Krouwel 2021, 9; Ifversen 1997) or also in a call to defend Europe, portrayed as a weak, feminine figure in need of protection, as it is often portrayed in the long iconographic tradition of Europe (see Bischof 2015). The latter is illustrated by an Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) post.

Example 4: Eurabia

This poster, used in an AfD campaign in Berlin 2019 ((AFD Berlin 2019), https://x.com/AfDBerlin/status/1115572899115675649), can be interpreted as a scary picture of a feminization of Europe or as an urgent call for (European nations’) male knights/fighters to defend the fragile and delicate essence of European civilization. Regardless of the way the different threat scenarios play out, in most cases, they imply a claim for re-masculinisation in the sense of a militant fortification. ‘Only if we rediscover our masculinity … we will be able to defend ourselves’,⁷ as AfD leader Björn Höcke says (Höcke 2015). The exclusive populist claim of ‘we are the people’ rooted in an existential friend–enemy logic is, in general, bound to a masculinist⁸ representative claim (Bischof and Löffler 2023) because it relies on a male-coded war imaginary. Being ‘able to defend ourselves’, in this context, implies a specific and masculinist affective trait of ‘re-sovereignisation’ in the form of ‘haunting national sovereignty’, which characterises right-wing authoritarian rhetoric (Bargetz 2023). Such is embedded in a more general contemporary call for re-sovereignisation, which is not confined to authoritarian populism but which it particularly capitalises on (Bargetz 2023).

In both cases, the threat is immediate and existential and creates a sense of absolute urgency. Süselbeck (2020), in his analysis of antisemitic conspiracism in rap videos and popular culture in social media, speaks of inverse invectivity. This means, in the end, it always comes down to a ‘point of a liberating collective explosion of violence, a pogrom out of self-defence or a desperate decisive struggle against a secret world power’ (Süselbeck 2020, 371). This is preceded by an ambivalent move to exaggerate the power and invincibility of the invisible enemy in an absurd way and, at the same time, the enemy’s blatant devaluation and degradation (Süselbeck 2020). The time dimension plays out as a notion of absolute urgency to act in self-defence, often allegedly in a state of emergency, justifying even the most brutal reactions.

The examples given illustrate the different dimensions of how fringe and far-right conspiracist claims resonate with structural features of authoritarian populism and how structural features of authoritarian populism are taken to the extreme here. Conspiracy theories fortify the friend–enemy logic as follows: 1) in the notion of existential threat, to the point of being an immediate physical threat (as in Examples 2 and 3); 2) all examples signify a delegitimisation and denigration of the alleged enemies: elites and minorities ‘behind’ the elites alike as well as political opponents in general; and 3) by creating a sense of urgency, the delegitimization of ‘elites’ and ‘others’ is even more emphasised and, at the same time, violence is potentially legitimised as a necessary act of existential self-defence. Any kind of doubt, questioning or critical discussion in the sense of democratic discourse is also categorised as dangerous.