The Core Principle Animating Trump’s Second Term |
When you think of Ibram X. Kendi, what goes through your mind? Maybe you think of his books, like the 2016 National Book Award–winning Stamped From the Beginning. Or maybe you think about the brutal reaction his work provoked from conservatives.
Kendi is an avatar for the battered and bruised fight for racial equality in this country. He’s a historian who offered very earnest advice about how we all might rethink our relationship with America’s racialized caste system. His new book, Chain of Ideas, is a global look at racial authoritarianism and how the “great replacement theory” is used to justify it.
As a historian of racism, Kendi has always known that racism is global. “But I think we’re living in a very specific moment where some of the same terms are being utilized by racist theorists in different countries,” he says. “I don’t think that Americans are familiar with just how global the playbook that’s being used on us truly is.”
On a recent episode of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Kendi about his latest book and what he would say to people living under racist authoritarianism. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mary Harris: Chain of Ideas starts off by telling the story of a French novelist named Renaud Camus, who is the father of modern-day great replacement theory. The book then tells the story of how Camus’ ideas spread politically. It tells the story of one politician after another and how they’ve embraced the thinking here. Some of these folks are not surprising; for instance, Vladimir Putin. But one thing that was interesting to me is you’ve got 10 chapters with 10 leaders, and none of them are President Donald Trump. Why did you decide not to feature him?
Ibram Kendi: First, I knew that I was going to tell the U.S. story throughout. But I felt that in many ways, for an American audience, the story of Donald Trump has been told time and time again. But what hasn’t been told is Trump’s rise and resurgence in the context of what was happening with all these other leaders. I also think that it is critically important for American readers to truly understand this political movement as a transnational one, from its origins to the present. And I thought it was important for people in Europe or even in parts of Latin America or South Asia to not view racism or great replacement theory as principally an American issue.
I see my readers as global, but I also hope that through this book, American readers have a more global conception of the rise of authoritarianism, or even policies and practices that the Trump administration is engaged in.
I want to focus on that because I could see it as being intentionally comforting to the reader. So many of your ideas have focused on blame and who’s to blame for whatever actions. Putting it in the global context allows Americans to say, “We’re part of something bigger.” Was that your intention?
That has been the focus of all of my work. I’ve long tried to historicize ideas that people hold. I’ve long tried to show how the term racist is not a fixed category, that it’s a descriptive term that describes what a person may be in any given moment, so that people can recognize that in one moment, they could be racist, and in the very next moment, they can be anti-racist. This is important so that people can have a larger conception of what’s happening to them and what’s happening in our society, so that we can get away from the blame game and start having a more nuanced conversation about history, context, manipulation, politics, and power.
Has the first year of this Trump administration changed how you view the great replacement theory?
In Chain of Ideas, I didn’t make a definitive statement that great replacement theory is the principle animating the political theory of the Trump administration. Now, I feel like I’m at a much better place empirically to make that claim, particularly based on what’s happened in the last year with mass deportations. What I’ll also state is that you have people who, despite the criticality and the centrality of great replacement theory as being used by this administration, are still denying the role that racist propaganda plays. You have people doing that because, frankly, for them to acknowledge that and admit that, they’re also going to have to acknowledge and admit that they have been shouting scholars of racism down for decades. And so people, unfortunately, whether it’s academics or even political pundits, want to continue their agenda as opposed to publicly admitting that they were wrong.
One thing I struggled with, reading your book, was when you talk about how to stamp out great replacement theory, like banning great replacement politicians when they break the law, expelling conspiracy theories online, and building in structures that will support anti-racist education, for instance. I agree, but I don’t know how we achieve those goals, especially in the United States in 2026, given what we just saw happen over the last five years when ideas like yours came to the fore and were twisted so quickly. How do you make the case again for that kind of work? How do you make a better idea that will replace this one that has taken hold?
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We need to understand that the playing field is not level, which is to say that those who are spreading great replacement theory are increasingly taking over media outlets. They are routinely and religiously suppressing those who are trying to make a better and more compelling case. And so when that case doesn’t break through, we blame that person for their case not breaking through, as opposed to the larger tidal wave.
But with that being said, I think this is one of the reasons why I decided to organize Chain of Ideas into 10 sections, to not only show the 10 ideas that serve as the building blocks for great replacement theory, but to give people a different way of envisioning that very idea.
There’s an idea called the zero-sum theory, which is that as Black people have gained, apparently white people have lost. But there’s another way of thinking about the world in that sense. And that’s what’s called positive-sum theory, which is that as other groups gain, my group gains, right?
There’s also another “link” in the Chain of Ideas, which is getting people to fight for privileges provided by dictators, as opposed to power provided by democracy. It’s getting people to recognize that it’s more important to have power than it is to have privilege.
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