Chain of Ideas

The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

By: Ibram X. Kendi

Narrated by: Ibram X. Kendi

The National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning charts how “great replacement theory” has become a dominant political idea of our time and ushered in an antidemocratic age.

Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.

The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.

In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.

Critic reviews

Praise for Chain of Ideas

“An exploration of the arguably premier racist trope of our time . . . A well-formed argument against the fashionably fascist thought that houses old wine in new skins.”—Kirkus Reviews


Praise for Stamped from the Beginning

“[An] engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America.”—The Washington Post

“Blending deep research and analysis with a powerfully intimate and personal voice, [Ibram X.] Kendi . . . grounds his argument in the present moment. . . . Brilliant, complicated and fascinating—Kendi renders this work of intellectual history as compelling as the juiciest biography.”—Los Angeles Times


Praise for How to Be an Antiracist

“What do you do after you have written Stamped From the Beginning, an award-winning history of racist ideas? . . . If you’re Ibram X. Kendi, you craft another stunner of a book. . . . What emerges from these insights is the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind, a confessional of self-examination that may, in fact, be our best chance to free ourselves from our national nightmare.”—The New York Times

“Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author’s own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism.”—NPR