Online rhetoric posted by Donald Trump in reaction to President Joe Biden’s “State of the Union” address on Thursday night mirrors what is known as the great replacement theory, a far-right conspiracy theory alleging the intentional resettlement of non-white populations with the hopes of displacing — or replacing — those living there earlier, which generally means white people.
“This was an angry, polarizing, and hate-filled Speech. He barely mentioned Immigration, or the Worst Border in the History of the World. He will never fix Immigration, nor does he want to. He wants our Country to be flooded with Migrants. Crime will raise to levels never seen before, and it is happening very quickly!” Trump posted to Truth Social, his alternative social media site, just before 11 p.m. Thursday.
To be crystal clear, the Biden team was involved in negotiating and putting forward a Senate proposal on the border and immigration that would have given the federal government new powers to close the southern border in periods of extensive strain. Other moves, like an expansion to the roster of judges on hand to deal with immigration cases, would have also helped eliminate potential incentives for undocumented immigration via making the turnaround time before possible removal from the U.S. much shorter. And in the Senate, amid opposition from Trump himself and Republicans more generally, GOP members voted it down.
The claim that Biden “wants” the U.S. “flooded with Migrants” gets the closest to the great replacement theory, since Trump is alleging specific intentions on the current president’s part behind migrants allegedly entering the United States. (The allegedly dramatic correlation between migrants and crime is not supported by the actual evidence in locales seeing large influxes of people, like New York City.)
“The great replacement theory is a conspiracy theory that says that white people are purposely being replaced with immigrants, migrants, Muslims, refugees across the world, primarily affecting the Western European countries and the United States,” Wendy Via of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism previously told Voice of America. Voice of America is a U.S. government media operation.
