Around the world, racist influencers have instigated a panic over shadowy global elites who have supposedly conspired to flood white-majority countries with immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia in order to destroy Western civilization. This idea, called the Great Replacement Theory, has inspired mass shootings from New Zealand to Buffalo, NY.
This episode outlines the history of the Great Replacement Theory and explores the toxic political and social atmosphere that led to the murder of 23 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and the wounding of 22 others at a Walmart in El Paso, TX on August 3, 2019.
Sources:
Richard Wolin, "'The Leprosy of the Soul in Our Time': On The European Origins of the 'Great Replacement Theory," Los Angeles Review of Books, August 4, 2022, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-leprosy-of-the-soul-in-our-time-on-the-european-origins-of-the-great-replacement-theory/
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), https://www.amazon.com/Gunfighter-Nation-Frontier-Twentieth-Century-America/dp/0806130318