Podcast Summary:

Radio ReOrient 13.6: “Islamophobia and the ‘Great Replacement’ Conspiracy,” with Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar
Hosts: Marchella Ward and Hizer Mir
Guests: Sarah Bracke, Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar
Date: November 26, 2025
Podcast: New Books Network

Overview

This episode of Radio ReOrient explores the development and impact of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, particularly as it relates to Islamophobia and far-right movements in Europe. Hosts Marchella Ward and Hizer Mir interview sociologists Sarah Bracke (University of Amsterdam) and Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar (European University of Adrina, Frankfurt), co-editors of The Politics of Replacement: Demographic Fears, Conspiracy Theories and Race Wars (2024). The conversation dissects how the theory operates as a mechanism of racial and gendered anxieties, its historical genealogies, its mainstreaming in European politics, and the urgent need for counter-imaginaries.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Intellectual Genealogy of the Project

([04:46]–[10:28])

• Engendering Europe's Muslim Question:
  • Bracke’s project began with examining the “Muslim question” in Europe, looking for frameworks beyond the label “Islamophobia.” They identified systematic, genealogical forms of problematizing Muslims.
  • Recognized the “Great Replacement” as a central concept connecting gender, sexuality, and conspiracy theories of population replacement.
  • The resonance with Europe's historic “Jewish question” was highlighted—both frame a marginalized group as existential threat via fantasies of “takeover.”

Quote:
“We needed more than the term Islamophobia…there’s something systematic, part of long European genealogies.”
— Sarah Bracke, [05:12]

• Conspiratorial Racial Supremacy:
  • Hernandez Aguilar points to how conspiracy thinking about population replacement is spread via new and old means—political parties, internet fora, cultural tropes.
  • Biopolitical and eugenic logics are core to these conspiracies: “fostering one type of life (whiteness)” and “letting die other forms of life.”

Quote:
“Entitlement to women is one of those… you should have access to women not only because you are a male, but also because it’s part of a duty in reproducing the national body.”
— Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, [13:12]

2. Main Elements of Great Replacement Discourse

([10:28]–[18:59])

• Intersections with Gender and Incel Ideologies:
  • Obsession with birth rates links misogyny, patriarchy, and racism—seen explicitly in manifestos like that of the Christchurch shooter.
  • Online spaces (e.g., 4chan) facilitate radicalization, where entitlement to women and anxieties about emasculation are foregrounded.
  • “Racist sexism and sexist racism” (Gisela Bock): not only are Muslims racialized, but patriarchal anxieties are mobilized to defend “the nation.”

Quote:
“At the heart of it is this idea that white men should have access to women…as part of a duty in reproducing the national body.”
— Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, [13:12]

• From Internet to Political Mainstream:
  • The trope of “replacement” circulates from online forums into the rhetoric and manifestos of mainstream and far-right political parties.
  • Moments like the pandemic lockdown allowed scrutiny of politicians’ personal libraries, revealing widespread reading of figures like Renaud Camus.

3. Historical Genealogy and Longevity of Replacement Anxiety

([18:59]–[28:21])

• Beyond Renaud Camus:
  • The “Great Replacement” concept has a much longer genealogy than Camus’s book. It draws from Nazi “Umvolkung” terminology, US “race suicide”/“white genocide” ideas, and older anti-Semitic conspiracy structures (e.g., Protocols of the Elders of Zion).
  • The “floating signifier” (Stuart Hall): while the group framed as the threat changes (Jews, blacks, Muslims), the underlying structure persists—fear of losing white/Christian hegemony.

Quote:
“The paranoid fear of losing privilege is decried as replacement, being rendered irrelevant, or equating it with being extinguished: a death by equality.”
— Sarah Bracke (quoting Sahar Gumkhur), [23:52]

4. Race, Religion, and the Imagining of Europe

([28:21]–[36:03])

• Christianity, Secularism, and Whiteness:
  • Contemporary French and European Islamophobia is expressed through both secular and Christian anxiety: secularism as a mask for anti-Muslim sentiment; Christianity as an implicit “heritage” marker.
  • The notion that “Europe is Christian” vs. “Europe is white”—with divisions even among far-right theorists over the precise basis for exclusion. Pagan, Christian, and racial identities sometimes overlap, sometimes conflict—united in their whiteness.

Quote:
“What sorts of things does this tell us about how Europe is imagined in these conspiracy theories? Is there this panic about what Europe will be?”
— Marchella Ward, [32:01]

• Lack of Counter-Imaginaries:
  • A key point is the failure of the left and inclusive political movements to advance their own imaginative visions of “post-white” Europe.
  • Most political and academic work fails to “imagine Europe after the end of the white world.” Instead, the far right leads in depicting future worlds—however dystopian.

Quote:
“The imagination of Europe after the end of the white world is really lacking, I think...these thinkers, they are imagining going back to a white world, but where are the other imaginations?”
— Sarah Bracke, [34:31]

5. On Knowledge Production and Academic Responsibility

([44:08]–[46:23])

• The “great replacement” theorists themselves understand the importance of narrative and academic production—often positioning professors or “intellectuals” at the center of their fiction or polemics.
• The challenge: radical/reparative knowledge production is often hindered by institutional vulnerability or direct attack.

Quote:
“We also don’t have appropriately political or appropriately radical modes of knowledge production...the great replacement theorists also seem to have got that memo.”
— Marchella Ward, [44:54]

6. Mainstreaming and Hegemony

([46:23]–[55:37])

• From Edge to Center:
  • The “Overton window” has shifted—ideas once seen as extremist are now publicly acceptable, spread through memes, media narratives, and policy proposals.
  • Everyday encounters (e.g., on public transport) show how perceived demographic change and fear become lived “realities.”

Quote:
“Camus makes the great replacement constructed as a social reality, as an experience, something that you live, that you walk by…”
— Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, [48:10]

• Struggle Over Hegemony:
  • Bracke frames the battle as a contest for social and narrative hegemony—the far right successfully mobilizes affective (emotional) responses around food, space, and nation.

Quote:
“This is a struggle over hegemony…they have been winning good parts of the struggle.”
— Sarah Bracke, [53:09]

7. Afterthoughts and Panel Reflection

([56:34]–[68:42])

• Panelists highlight how the Great Replacement theory functions as a “victimhood” narrative, recasting whites as persecuted minorities-to-be.
• The myth glosses over Europe’s colonial and multi-ethnic histories, centering itself as a “defensive” project to resist an imagined dystopian future.
• There’s an urgent call for more vibrant, inclusive, justice-focused visions of the future to challenge the dystopias projected by far-right ideologues.

Quote:
“Those who believe in this, this ridiculous conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement are in a sense ahistorical… it’s all about positioning the immigration of non-white people and especially Muslims into Europe as a very recent thing.”
— Marchella Ward, [64:50]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Entitlement to women is one of those…as part of a duty in reproducing the national body.”
  (Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, [13:12])

• “The paranoid fear of losing privilege is decried as replacement…a death by equality.”
  (Sarah Bracke quoting Sahar Gumkhur, [23:52])

• “The imagination of Europe after the end of the white world is really lacking...these thinkers, they are imagining going back to a white world, but where are the other imaginations?”
  (Sarah Bracke, [34:31])

• “As a social reality, [the Great Replacement] has its own effects and it sort of moves through political parties, through the couple on the train…”
  (Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, [51:15])

• “This is a struggle over hegemony… they have been winning good parts of the struggle.”
  (Sarah Bracke, [53:09])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Project Genesis & Objectives: [04:46]–[10:28]
• Incel Communities, Biopolitics, and Replacement Logics: [10:28]–[16:49]
• From Online Forums to Political Parties: [16:49]–[18:59]
• Long Genealogy of Replacement Theory: [18:59]–[28:21]
• Christianity, Whiteness, and the ‘Imagination’ of Europe: [28:21]–[36:03]
• Imagination & Knowledge Production: [44:08]–[46:23]
• Mainstreaming Replacement Theory & Struggle for Hegemony: [46:23]–[55:37]
• Panel Synthesis & Challenge to Imagine Alternatives: [56:34]–[68:42]

Tone & Language

• Participatory, academic but accessible—scholars sharing conceptual frameworks in a clear but urgent fashion.
• Occasional interweaving of personal reflection and anecdote (e.g., Aguilar’s Berlin metro story), always connected to theoretical themes.
• Calls to action for more imaginative, inclusive counter-narratives are earnest and self-critical rather than celebratory or simply oppositional.

Conclusion

This episode is not just an outline of the history and dangers of “Great Replacement” conspiracies, but a challenge to academics, activists, and broader publics to reimagine Europe’s future beyond whiteness. Bracke and Hernandez Aguilar emphasize that the intellectual (and affective) work of the far right is successful in part because they offer a vision—however destructive. The task now, the hosts and guests urge, is to out-imagine such dystopias with robust alternatives grounded in justice, history, and plurality.