The Great Hypocrisy rather than The Great Replacement. Part 1

Throughout the diverse commentaries within The Progressive Optimist project the centrality of the science of history is evident. It is only through the study of the past that it is possible to explain how we have reached our current stage of social development. And it is also history that allows us to make projections regarding this social evolution into the future. The previous three posts have centered upon the ideological obstacles that prevent the conservative individuals from having honest historical conversations. Among the results of this inability to deal critically with our past is the following phenomenon. Given that at every historical turn there have been certain segments of the populations that could not accept the inevitable social changes, within every generation the same peculiar mistake has been repeated. Namely, the end of civilization would be proclaimed whenever the outgoing generations were unwilling to accept the new social norms proposed by the incoming generations. And yet, this end of the world would never arrive.

Among all the irrational fears which have been occupying the minds of the conservatives in the so-called Western world, we can also find the belief that the white race is purposefully being decimated. The pinnacle of this idea today, arguably, is the theory of “The Great Replacement”. All of this, of course, is a contemporary byproduct of a very natural feature of human history: migration. Now, there is no point here in critically inquiring over the supposed motives behind the alleged organizers of this conspiracy. Our task, in relation to the panic surrounding the modern-day migration, will be to highlight historical ironies and paradoxes. Once again, it is the inability to engage honestly with history that creates such inconsistencies. As the professed warriors of the white race have their own particular political agenda, their critical thinking is compromised.

Let’s begin with Europe. The so-called Old Continent itself was a major source of emigration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the United States being one of the principal destinations for European migrants. One wonders to what extent contemporary anti-immigration crusaders in Europe take this basic historical fact into their consideration. For if they did, consistency would require them to condemn these historical movements of people just as vehemently as they oppose immigration into Europe today. For if Europe is supposed to be a white continent, then, by the same logic, both American continents should be considered as non-white masses of land. Unfortunately, such consistency does not serve the political agenda of the conservative movement. And as far as historical irony is concerned, particularly suitable examples are provided by those former immigrants who themselves turn out to advocate increasingly restrictive immigration policies. To cite an Eastern European example from the current American anti-immigration context, it has been reported that “members of the Polish community are reporting fellow Poles who are in the country illegally to the authorities”. Such double standards, of course, are as alien to a progressive today as consistency and logic to a conservative.

But on the other side we have the US: a country largely made up of the descendants of immigrants, and which is supposedly once again threatened by the arrival of newcomers, particularly non-white ones. And if this double standard is not grave enough, consider the fact that, before the sixteenth century, there were no people of European descent in the territory that would eventually become the modern-day United States. Talk about a “great replacement.” Yet, more than a century ago, the United States was already experiencing waves of panic over what was then known as “race suicide.”

“In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the increase in immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and the simultaneous rise to prominence of pseudoscientific racism led many prominent nativists to claim that the white race was committing ‘race suicide,’ killing off its own race by allowing immigrants into the country and by having interracial children.”

Now, throughout this blog we have demonstrated on numerous occasions the distinct social consciousness that would characterise different generations. What is particularly interesting about the turn of the twentieth century, therefore, is that the prevailing conception of the racial group referred to as “whites” differed considerably from that of today. Here is what a certain Madison Grant had to say:

“Grant argued that Europeans, while allegedly superior to Africans and Asians, could be further classified into distinct races. He subdivided Europeans into three races corresponding to geographic and environmental regions that he called Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. He argued that the Nordic race, also called the Aryan race in Germany, was not only superior to the other races but responsible for all notable human achievements and progress. Grant traced the history of European civilizations and argued that all cultural achievements were due to an influx of Nordics into a particular society, while an increase of people of inferior races caused all instances of collapse or so-called degeneration.”

Here we encounter another historical paradox. In Europe, some of the strongest opposition to EU efforts to share responsibility for asylum seekers has come from the so-called Visegrad Four: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Their governments have been among the most vocal opponents of refugee relocation, frequently invoking national sovereignty, cultural identity, and the preservation of national homogeneity. More broadly, these countries have become associated with some of the strongest opposition to immigration within the EU. Yet again, there is a historical irony here: when their own ancestors emigrated to the United States in large numbers around the turn of the twentieth century, their cultural identities and national characteristics were not necessarily regarded by their host society as valuable attributes. Here is a quote by the same Madison Grant, who had placed these nations largely under the Alpine race:

“The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants, an agricultural and never a maritime race. In fact they only extend to salt water at the head of the Adriatic and, like all purely agricultural communities throughout Europe, tend toward democracy, although they are submissive to authority both political and religious being usually Roman Catholics in western Europe. This race is essentially of the soil and in towns the type is mediocre and bourgeois.”

So what Grant is essentially arguing here is that the Polish nation, for instance, or the Hungarians for that matter, were inferior peoples when compared to the supreme race that was supposedly the main component of the American nation. Namely, the Nordic stock. And as a wider argument, according to this gentleman from a bygone century, the immigrants from the lands that today correspond to Czechia and Slovakia, as an example, were killing off this preeminent ethnicity. Now let’s look at how he had described those phenomenal Nordics:

“The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant and democratic character of the Alpines. The Nordic race is domineering, individualistic, self-reliant and jealous of their personal freedom both in political and religious systems and as a result they are usually Protestants. Chivalry and knighthood and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.”

Quite a contrast indeed. Essentially, to make a comparison with the Trump presidency years, it could be argued that these lands were among the “shithole countries” of the times. But there are a couple of ways of looking at these historical statements. One could argue, for instance, that these words merely express the racist attitudes of those former generations of Americans. Therefore, they did not correspond to reality. In this case, the inevitable question is whether the same explanation should not be provided in relation to the anti-immigration attitudes of our days. Another way of dealing with this is to argue that, indeed, those generations of Poles, Hungarians, and so on, were backward and uncivilized in comparison to the more advanced US society. And to add that as of now, people from the modern and more developed Eastern European states have fully catched up socially. Again, however, this invites the remark that the same logic must be applied to the migrants of today. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africans or Indians, to give an example, come from less economically developed countries with all the corresponding social nuances. However, economic development will also bridge any potential differences in the near future. As it has done with the people from the Visegrad alliance members. The refusal to apply equally any chosen logic in both of these instances of mass migration corresponds to double standards - something that is intolerable for the progressives.

We shall continue this historical journey through the anti-immigration polemics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States in the next part. However, to further demonstrate the continuity of the former irrational anxiety with our modern conservative panic, this part will be concluded by yet another quote from Madison Grant:

“The result of unlimited immigration is showing plainly in the rapid decline in the birth rate of native Americans because the poorer classes of Colonial stock, where they still exist, will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian and the Jew. The native American is too proud to mix socially with them and is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which he conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.”

Sources:
1. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/madison-grant-1865-1937
2. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68185/68185-h/68185-h.htm?utm_source
3. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/12/26/us-deportations-of-polish-citizens-almost-double-this-year-amid-trump-clampdown/
4. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0v38s4hm
5. https://www.investing.com/news/politics-news/trump-questions-taking-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-sources-1094991?utm_source

Image by magnific.com

The Progressive Optimist

Educational project dedicated to the understanding of historical progressive social change

© 2025. All rights reserved.