Chain of Ideas:
The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age
by Ibram X. Kendi (Random House
This book is about the “Great Replacement,” a dogwistle and racist trope that the character of a place is at threat by the character of people from another place coming in. This is usually the West and non-white people, though not always, and the Jews are behind it, though not always.
I was looking forward to this book because I find this topic particularly interesting. It is stunning how pervasive it is and how what feels like ought to be evicted to the shelves of conspiracy theory is a common talking point, incensing for how often it arises and how little it is commented on.
The book omits citations, which, you know. They are available online. They were omitted because their inclusion would double the size of the already 500 page book. This was a mistake, but maybe not for the reason you expect.
The opening is great. Like write quotes from the book on your wall great. The conclusion is tepid. The thesis that appears in the epilogue amounts to ‘read my other books,’ in that it suggests that the author’s paradigm about racism is vital to stopping racism. I agree with the author, with qualifications, in that I think he offers a useful way of thinking about racism (in part, to treat racism more in terms of actions than in terms of character or intent). But what does the rest of the book have to do with it?
It is a masterfully written survey of the global status of nationalist movements globally and how they all arise out of the same sort of Great Replacement ideals. But that is all it is. The book suggests a sort of formula or heuristic that all of these people are following, but there is no structure to the idea, coming up more as a series of maxims or twists of belief. Combined with the short chapters, some which would be a single paragraph in another book and the abeyance of geography or chronology, the whole thing has the tone of a Gish Gallop.
There is a lot of material here, and a lot of targets. So it ends up a mile wide and a foot deep. I do not think it offers anything to help understand the Great Replacement, or to follow its development or spread. I suppose there is material here, but it almost feels like it is written for future history, cataloging all the negative behaviors of the era for future review.
It feels like the author is the victim of his own success, because this is what happens when you become uneditable. The right response to, “the book is three times as long as it should be” is not “then we will print half of it online.” Other tells of this are the way that the book uses Renaud Camus and that you can make a drinking game out of the word “firehose.”
The blurb gives the sense that the book is to inspire the hands-across-the-aisle revelation that racism, and the Great Replacement in particular, is weaponized by upper classes to keep the lower ones divided, but, well, again, you know.
The best section of the book is that on Italy, as this one gets into the ways that history is abused, and the stories more interesting than some of the others because of the extant history of fascism. The weakest is the conclusion, that sets up Putin as a sort of end boss of Great Replacement. Again, you could write that book, but this is not that book because of how broad it entangles itself. I am willing to accept that I was poisoned by expectations, but my most damming with faint praise is to think how podcast-y it is.
Maybe if you are truly naive to the Great Replacement, this is vital, but who that needs to read that would read this?
My thanks to the author, Ibram X. Kendi, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Random House, for making the ARC available to me.
CITATION HEEDED 
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