Pet-eaters, Rusty Dog Whistles, and the Long History of Replacement Fear in the U.S.

A Rusty Dog Whistle, Replacement Fear, and a Dark Side of US History

 

If immigration is a 2024 election issue that concerns voters on the left and, especially, the right, politicians and influencers chose how to speak about it. Some use the issue as a coded “dog whistle,” or indirect message meant to appeal to given groups, often by playing upon identity-based grievances and worries. 

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 At the moment, one of the most salient concerns of voters, especially the predominantly white voters who are a key part of Trump’s base, is the fear of replacement. Indeed, white replacement fear has become a dangerous fault line of U.S. politics. It fuels resentment and sparks anger – even violence as the Capitol insurrection underscores. Replacement fears, however, are also as old as the USA. 

 

 What is white replacement fear?

 

It’s apprehension about group diminishment. Most recently, this fear centers on the worry that demographic change threatens the wealth, traditions, and power of whites, who will become a minority in two decades.

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Many see conspiracy. In a 2022 poll, over half of Republicans believe that this trend, driven by unchecked immigration, is a plot. Right wing media pundits like Tucker Carlson blame Democrats. So do GOP politicians. 

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Some see an existential threat. For them, replacement is leading to a white genocide orchestrated by nefarious and often Jewish actors, a point I detail in It Can Happen Here. 

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This line of reasoning -- which, as illustrated by NSC-131 and Blood Tribe, circulates widely in white power extremist circles and the dark web -- informed the 2017 chants of “You will not replace us!” in Charlottesville. It was also a motivation for the 2021 Capitol insurrectionists and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue, 2019 El Paso Walmart, 2022 Buffalo Tops supermarket, and 2023 Jacksonville Dollar General store mass shooters. 

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But the threat is broad. Tens of millions of Americans believe violence may be necessary to save “the traditional American way of life” and civil war is in the offing. Given this volatile situation, understanding the roots of replacement fear is critical. 

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Where did the idea come from? 

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Many commentators point to Europe, where authors like Jean Raspail and Renaud Camus warn that immigration is resulting in a “great replacement.” Others suggest it emerged on the dark web and far-right extremist fringes.

 

There is truth to both claims. Ideas about replacement circulate globally, including among white power extremists. And this global circulation of racialized fear has been amplified by digital technologies like social media, AI, imageboards, and web forums. These two origins stories, while compelling, locate the roots of replacement theory outside of mainstream U.S.A.

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But replacement fear is not an un-American fringe aberration.

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It’s the latest name for a worry that, in varying forms, dates to the 1607 founding of Jamestown and involves several historical strands. To understand why replacement conspiracy theory has become so widespread and divisive in the U.S., then, it is necessary to examine how these U.S. roots of replacement discourse inform the present as well as what is distinct about the current moment. 

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The original replacement fear centered on “savages.” In response to settler colonial encroachments, Native Powhatans launched a surprise attack that nearly destroyed the Jamestown colony. The Jamestown settlers counterattacked, part of a slow but steady process in which the Powhatans -- like so many indigenous groups that followed -- were destroyed through displacement, assimilation, disease, and violence.

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Such encounters with “merciless Indian savages,” as the Declaration of Independence put it, were thus intertwined with replacement fears in two ways. On the one hand, the Anglo-Protestant settlers feared being annihilated by Indigenous Americans. On the other, the settlers observed their own annihilation and replacement of the Native Americans. 

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A second replacement fear soon emerged: Black menace.

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As the settlers appropriated Indigenous territory, they gradually established a system of chattel slavery to cultivate the lands. The Anglo-Protestant population began to worry about being attacked and massacred during rebellions, particularly in states that had large numbers of enslaved. 

 

These concerns date back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. It was a catalyst for the creation of slave codes and racial demarcations between Blacks and whites. The 1791 Haitian revolution and Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion heightened the fears.

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Turner’s rebellion coincided with the emergence of a third strand of replacement fear –anti-immigrant nativism.

 

In the mid-nineteenth century, immigration – much of it Catholic and driven by political upheaval in Germany and Ireland – dramatically increased. Some suspected a Vatican plot. 

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By the 1850s, the xenophobic American, or Know-Nothing, Party gained popularity as it promoted the principle that “Americans shall rule America” – code for maintaining White Protestant Anglo power. “Nativists” warned about the dangers of pestilent “foreign swarms” of Catholic immigrants while seeking to limit access to political power and wealth. 

 

When immigration later spiked, xenophobia and fears of diminishment often ensued. Targets included Chinese and other “Asian Peril” groups (late 19th century), South and Eastern European immigrants (early 20thcentury), and Mexicans and other Latin Americans (mid-20th century). 

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By the early twentieth century, replacement discourse was being framed in terms of scientific racism, eugenics, and social Darwinism, which suggested a “struggle for existence” and the possibility of “race suicide.” Meanwhile, the nativist Ku Klux Klan gained millions of members following World War I. 

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Replacement discourse spiked again after the 1960s, when extremists began speaking of “white genocide.” This idea dovetailed with growing anti-immigrant sentiment, especially that directed against Mexican “illegal aliens.”

 

These developments laid the groundwork for Trump’s “America First” campaign, as he warned about Mexican criminals and “rapists” and immigrant “invasions.”

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Replacement fears remain center stage according to recent polling. A 2022 poll, for example, found that sixty-one percent of Trump voters agreed that “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color.” 

 

Four Drivers of Contemporary Replacement Narratives

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Examining the deep roots of replacement fear, then, enables us to see the antecedents that shape it. Such understanding also reveals how replacement fears connect to the present and provide a potent issue that politicians, populists, and influencers continue to invoke in their messaging, including rusty anti-immigrant dog whistles. From this perspective, the “dog eater” dog whistle is an iteration of an idea that has a long history and global scope. There are four drivers that inform contemporary manifestations of replacement discourse. 

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First, the idea of replacement is self-implicating and affectively resonant. At its core, replacement fear plays on the existential anxiety, suggesting a threat – ranging from diminishment to annihilation -- to self, family, community, and group. This threat is cast in Manichean binary terms that juxtapose a pure, innocent, “us” against a contaminating and predatory “them” that is scapegoated.

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On a more granular level, the idea of replacement offers a simplified explanation for complicated issues people and communities face, such as anomie, unemployment, the opioid epidemic, suicide, a sense of diminished freedoms, hopelessness, and uncertainty in a tumultuous and changing world. Belief in ideas like replacement can therefore provide meaning and purpose.

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This is especially true when replacement fear is being pushed by populist pundits and leaders -- a point related to the second key driver  behind the surge in replacement fear, right-wing populist polarization. Influential populists, ranging from Trump to Tucker Carlson, whip up support by stoking replacement fear. Their efforts have helped mainstream replacement discourse and increase factionalism. Indeed, replacement was a concern of over half the Capitol insurrectionists and remains so for over a third of American adults, especially Republicans. 

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Third, populist polarizers are able to do so in part because the idea of replacement is also polysemous, which gives give it rhetorical flexibility and ease of use. Capacious and elastic, replacement fear be intertwined with the aforementioned themes of apocalypse, conspiracy, xenophobia, anti-white revolt, nativism, extinction, and savagery – as the Haitian immigrant dog eater trope underscores. 

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Similarly, it can be reworked and adapted to the flashpoint topics of the day. In our current moment, these issues include not just immigration but Jewish or deep state conspiracy, race, gender roles, gun rights, Covid-19, and culture wars controversies over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, book bans, critical race theory, transgender identity, education. If replacement discourse was, just years ago, an idea considered fringe, it is now mainstream. As such, it provides resonant fodder for populist demagogues to stoke fear and anger. 

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These first three dimensions of the power of replacement narratives have been amplified by a fourth driver, new digital technologies ranging from social media to internet forums. These technologies have greatly increased the speed, scale, and scope of replacement fear messaging – and disinformation and hate speech more broadly. New digital technologies have enabled people to connect and interact in new ways, including with those living in other parts of the country and globe. 

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This situation has created new paths for messaging about replacement fear and for radicalization – as illustrated by the 2022 Buffalo Tops shooter, whose manifesto detailed his radicalization on the dark web. The Haitian dog eater trope was promoted by a wide range of far-right figures, including Elon Musk, who has a recent history of tweeting about replacement to his more than 200 million followers on X.