Ibram ex-Kindy, how are you, my friend?

I guess as well as you can be, despite all we're having to negotiate these days.

How are you?

Yeah, I'm doing okay.

As they say, in the Great Good Times theme show, scratching and surviving.

And now just leave it at that.

So I want to talk to you about your new book because I think it's fascinating.

It's called Chain of Ideas, the Orig of our authoritarian age. This book is primarily about the so-called Great

Replacement Theory. And I want you to explain to us how this great replacement theory,

how it's become a huge part of our American politics, but also global politics as well.

So Great Replacement Theory is this political theory, this conspiracy theory that suggests there are these powerful elites, typically framed as liberal, who are displacing,

who are enabling peoples of color to displace

the lives and livelihoods of white people

who apparently need authoritarian protection.

And so this theory has mutated in which really almost every

disadvantaged group in the United States and other country has been positioned as coming to take over society.

Authoritarian leaders have used this theory to present themselves to everyday people as their saviors and their protectors so that they can justify taking away their civil liberties and rights,

and so they can encourage people to submit to their own combination.

You said that people think that they need authoritarian protection.

Explain that to me. Talk about that more, please.

So when you can make up people, a group of people believe that their lives are being lost at the hands of those Muslims, that their jobs are being stolen by black people, that their nation is being taken by those immigrants, it causes people to feel that they need someone, something to protect, to stop

all of this loss, to stop the loss of their status, to stop the loss of their jobs.

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