Conspiracy theories are an old phenomenon. People need to know how come things happen, and if they don’t know, they make stuff up. Right now, maybe for a long time now, conspiracy theories in the US seem to find their best home with those to the right of the political spectrum. Do radical conservative views and conspiracy theories have a similar basic source? I just report. You decide. There is one conspiracy theory, though, that seems to have developed great legs over the years. That is that the left is deliberately importing people of races other than white in order to replace the current, legitimate, old-time, American government with one of socialist, communist, totalitarian bent.
As a person whose views have always been leftish, I can categorically state, before I go on, that none of that theory is true. Except that minority people are becoming more politically powerful. That is because of basic demographics, not any conspiracy. I promise you, the left has nothing to do with it, other than that it seems to be more attractive to immigrant populations than does the right, but even then, not always.
So, what the heck? Well, the Replacement Theory is racist on its face. I mean, if someone were conspiring to allow, I dunno, English people to become more powerful, would there be a backlash? How about Irish? Italian? German? You know, the English are the only one of those four national origins that has not been the subject of irrational prejudice in the US. Chef Boyardi (Boy-ar-dee, get it?) was advised against opening an Italian restaurant in New York because of this anti-Italian prejudice. Now, of course, Italian food isn’t even considered ethnic. It’s just American food, like hot dogs and hamburgers (both of which came from Germany.) And there has always been a vein of mistrust of strangers in history, but until relatively modern times, no mention of “races” of humans. The Romans disliked those “dark skinned foreigners” and sometimes gave them grief even in the Legions, for example, but the Romans never said those people weren’t, well, people, normal people, but with odd customs. Okay, that’s natural. But race? Where does that come from?
Simple enough to see, historically. When Columbus first encountered “Indians” he wrote that it would be a good thing to make Christian slaves out of them. Slavery was common until a couple of centuries ago, after all, so that’s not surprising. And the religion common in Europe at that time preached that a Christian slave was freer than a pagan free man (sound familiar?) So there’s that: religious justification for enslavement of other peoples. But wait, there’s more!
De Gama and other Portuguese explorers not only found what were to them now territories and foreign people, they also discovered the lucrative trade to be engaged in of buying slaves in Ghana to sell to wealthy people in Europe and, increasingly, the colonies. Unfortunately for the slave trade, the Enlightenment was stirring, positing notions of ideas such as “all men are created equal.” (That was a later refinement, but the roots of the idea are to be found considerably earlier.) This meant that, to be considered an educated and sophisticated person, one had to endorse the notion that men were inherently free. What then, of the slaves? They looked like men, but they certainly weren’t free. What about them? Well, now here comes the idea of classes of men based on their region of origin or appearance. Those slaves were all of the darkest complexions, so what the heck, let’s call them “black.” We enlightened Europeans, of course, are light-skinned, so let’s be the opposite of black, that is, “white.” And, once we’ve established that, we can classify the entire population of the world based on what amounts to the color of their skin. Et voila! Race is born!
The idea of races of people was made up by Europeans now calling themselves “white.” It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now, but there is a substantial group of people in the United States who cling to that lie as if their lives depend on it. Conspiracy theories about race all stem from the one root theory, that there is such a thing as a white race in the first place, which there isn’t. No wonder the current right-wing contingent is so biased in favor of “replacement theory” and other euphemisms for White Supremacy. Their entire underlying assumption is a lie to begin with! All they’d have to do to feel better about the world is give up the idea of White Supremacy. A few will. Some have. I imagine it’s difficult. And I don’t believe that denigrating them on social media will do a thing to help ease the situation.
They are Americans, after all, and they deserve some respect simply for being human beings. If it’s true that love beats hate, then the way to defeat the right wing is to love them, not hate them. And I do believe that the best way to show that love is to lovingly vote their people out of public office. Please. This is a crucial year for the experiment that is the United States. What do you say we move it a notch or two closer to what our founders said it was going to be? Let’s give it a try, okay?
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By the way, I am descended from a genuine, Philadelphia, W.A.S.P. named William Powell. 12 of his sons (!) fought with the Continental Army. My great-grandfather Andrew fought with the 123rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. His side won.
