Informationsüberflutung? Weltschmerz? I’ve been searching and I don’t think even the Germans have a word that fully captures just how overwhelming the news cycle is right now. The zone has been well and truly flooded; just as you start trying to process one shocking event, something new hits the headlines. Chain of Ideas, a new book by professor Ibram X Kendi, doesn’t provide a one-world encapsulation of our modern woes. But, in a meticulously researched 500 pages, it lays out an essential framework for parsing current events. The central thesis is that the ideological origins of what Kendi terms “our authoritarian age” lie in the so-called “great replacement theory”. This is defined as “a political theory that powerful elites are enabling peoples of colour to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedoms of White people, who now need authoritarian protection”. Is this not just white nationalism by another name? Not exactly. “Since Trump’s election in 2016 great replacement politicians and theorists had been increasingly organising international meetings, networks, charters, and associations,” Kendi argues. “For a long time, these extremists had concentrated domestically … before shifting to the transnational battle to defend the White race … which is why terming great replacement theorists ‘white nationalists’ doesn’t fully capture their new identity and ideology.” Crucially, great replacement theory is not a single concept but a chain of interlocking ideas. The idea that racism against peoples of colour is over is connected to the idea that anti-white racism is on the rise, which is connected to the idea that insurrections against democracy protect the nation and so on. These ideas are easily challenged when looked at in isolation; it is their interconnectedness that gives the great replacement theory its emotional resonance. If the chain concept sounds familiar, by the way, that’s because it is borrowed from a quote by the 18th-century French lawyer Joseph Michel Antoine Servan, cited by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: “A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas.” One interesting aspect of modern politics is how many prominent people from marginalised or minority identities are at the helm of rightwing parties. Reform’s spokesperson for home affairs, who recently laid out a plan for mass deportations, is Zia Yusuf. His parents were Sri Lankan Muslims who emigrated to the UK in the 1980s. Kemi Badenoch, the staunchly anti-immigration leader of the UK Conservative party, grew up in Nigeria and the US. Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland is raising two adopted children with a woman born in Sri Lanka. There are plenty more examples. Some commentators have seen these politicians as aberrations. You will get headlines such as this, for example, from NBC News: “Alice Weidel doesn’t fit the profile of a far-right politician.” Oh, but she does, Kendi argues. “The more the sexism, homophobia, and racism of their parties turns off voters, the more great replacement parties will turn to women, gay people, and people of colour to lead their parties – for proximity denial.” Great replacement theory, you see, presents itself as reasonable and respectable. It goes to great pains to cast off accusations of extremism. Indeed, the AfD, now Germany’s second largest party in nationwide polling, has just successfully petitioned against an intelligence agency designation describing it as a “rightwing extremist” group. Elevating marginalised or minority identities is one strategy with which they launder their bigotry. The “great replacement of history” is another, with far-right leaders seeking to erase or attack the historical record and replace it with their own version of events. They are the victims, they tell us. The people fighting against racism, meanwhile, are cast as divisive oppressors. And Kendi, it should be noted, is not just an observer of all of this. After shooting to international prominence with his 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, the historian was made a bogeyman by the right. Chain of Ideas is an ambitious book that covers a lot of ground, intellectual and geographical. It begins in southern France with Renaud Camus, the gay French novelist who coined the phrase “Great Replacement” in 2011. It ends in the US in March 2025, with Trump telling the media that he is considering running for an unconstitutional third term. In the intervening pages, Kendi takes in what he describes as “the politics of nearly one hundred countries”. Because of its vast remit, it is inevitable that aspects of the book feel shallow. British readers, for example, may find the sections on Brexit and Nigel Farage overly simplistic. And while Kendi does discuss the troll farms and social networks that have helped the chain of ideas encircle the globe, there could have been a deeper interrogation of technology’s role in all this. Ultimately, though, Kendi has produced a worthwhile and accessible book that not only helps us to interpret current events but also offers a modicum of hope. “Humanity sits at a crossroad in the authoritarian age,” Kendi writes in the epilogue, and there is still reason to believe we will “create conditions for humanity to be linked, not confined”. I think there is a German word for defiantly clinging on to the idea that things can be better: Zweckoptimismus.