**⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Insightful but Lacking Depth**

Michael Feola’s *The Rage of Replacement: Far Right Politics and Demographic Fear* tackles a crucial and timely topic, exploring how demographic anxieties fuel far-right ideologies. Feola offers valuable insights into the roots of these fears and their political implications, making the book a relevant read for those interested in contemporary political dynamics. However, the analysis sometimes feels surface-level, with certain arguments lacking the depth and nuance needed to fully unpack such a complex issue. While the book provides a solid overview, it may leave readers wanting a more thorough exploration of the subject matter.

A timely piece of history that would be better suited to a less academic style. Feola does an excellent job of tracing how this fear of "white replacement" that has become a far right (and generally conservative) talking point over the past decade has a long and detailed history in American discourse and has influenced policy decisions on both the right and left over the past one hundred years. My only qualms, as I said before, is that this is such an important topic that it would perhaps make a bigger "splash" and impact on present-day policy if it was written in a more accessible style.

I actually know some of the people who follow proponents of the great replacement theory. This book does a good job talking about the origins and explaining it. This belief is obviously incredibly dangerous and there are examples of how people who believe it committed mass murder.
It's frustrating because there's no solution. Feola talked about how some of the theory's supporters think the country should split.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

This book feels eerily timely, which is both a blessing and a curse, in my opinion.

On the one hand, as elections loom in many countries (France just had snap congressional elections in early July, while the US is gearing up for the next round of presidential madness this November), this information about far right movements and how they are bleeding through to the "traditional" right needs to be widely publicized.

On the other hand, because the situation is so volatile, it seems difficult to capture it in any kind of definitive way, especially in writing that is not meant for a periodical. The book makes many (very logical) references to the Charlottesville incidents of 2017, but seven years later, that almost seems like a blip on the radar in light of all that has developed since.

The book is dense with research and connections between American and European far right movements. The writing can be a little opaque at times, but the gist remains quite clear. I would love to read more off-the-cuff, shorter pieces from Feola in magazines or online.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

As I've witnessed the mainstream spread of far right politics in the US and beyond, I've found myself drawn to books that help illuminate different aspects of this political trend towards extremism. I find that the notion of knowledge as power helps me shore up against this very frightening unknown. The Rage of Replacement analyzes common political ideologies of various far right groups to trace the broader philosophies that unite their disparate factions. The book identifies the white supremacist "Great Replacement" theory as a common through-line. The so-called Great Replacement theory undergirded the chants of "you (or Jews) will not replace us" in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, recast non-white immigrants and asylum seekers to the US as "migrant caravans" and "hordes", and motivated multiple white supremacist mass shootings in recent years.

By focusing on the Great Replacement conspiracy as a political theory throughout the far right, Feola identifies an undercurrent which fuels the emotional intensity of reactionary far-right politics. The book's argument develops a typography of replacement fears by dedicating each chapter to a major element, including melancholia, crisis, rhetoric, ethnostate, and reproduction. I found the final chapter on the biopolitics of the conservative imperative to control reproduction particularly compelling in the context of the removal of abortion protections in the US and the rise of tradwife influencers.

Because this book focuses on an overarching politics of the far right, it is more theoretically oriented instead of offering detailed readings of a specific conspiracy or group. This focus is not a shortcoming; it is simply a type of academic writing that I struggle with a little bit more as a reader. I simply work best with close readings. Even though this book operates at a higher level, the text is still accessible to people outside academia and compelling to this current political and historical moment.

I didn't really click with the writing style in this one, I found it to be unnecessarily dense, and just a bit like reading a textbook. It's an important topic and one that I'd be interested in reading about in some other book, just unfortunately not in this one.

This is out of my normal reading. I’m glad I got the ARC copy of this book. I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t. Well written

The Rage of Replacement is about the idea of the Great Replacement, and its place in the far right thought. "The Great Replacement" is the idea that white, as a race, is ending due to systemic or organized efforts. The specifics vary, as do the responses, but the idea is one that the author views as core to explicating the actions of the far right.

While the topic is disturbing, the book is a good treatment. The back half the book is the stronger section, as the author shows the specific sorts of expressions of the theory and what different segments of the far right, and not as far right, interact with it, specifically as respect to political action, succession movements, and anti-feminism.

The front half is weaker. The idea of a sort of hurtful nostalgia of melancholy does help to better understand the thinking at work and understanding the flavor of hate, which matters for laying the groundwork for the applications of the theory later in the book, but overall this and the other initial chapters wind up more survey, and while that is useful to have there is not much in the way of new ground here.

One thing is that the author does engage directly with the various terrorist manifestos from those who have acted out and commit violence on behalf of this bad idea. This is justifiable, and the book includes copious quotes from other far right writers, so it is in context, but it is often particularly stark to encounter, even as a reader who thinks himself pretty jaded on such things.

The ending of the book acknowledges the difficulty in trying to fix this. I was put off a bit by this at first - why make a conclusion to say that there is no conclusion - but the more I think on it, the more I like it. It is hard to say what it is, but some new sort of civic ideal that feels grief rather than grievance seems a sound point, or well, other than...gestures vaguely at shelf of Neil Postman books. But fundamentally it seems like a further topic of research, building on what is here, as does the core matter of the psychology of melancholy at work here and further expressions of it in particular. And ultimately I look favorably on any book that sets up clear avenues of investigation for other books.

My thanks to the author, Michael Feola, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Minnesota Press, for making the ARC availble to me.

I was disappointed by this book. The writing is dense, excessively verbose and often hard to follow. You know that feeling where you read a page but no information actually goes in? That was the feeling I had, I would reach the end of a chapter and not really know what I had just read. I have a degree in politics, so if I can't slog through the book, what hope does the average reader have?

For example, here is a sentence from the first chapter:

"What is presented as a story of decline doubles as a narrative framework through which the far right subject is formed around the pathos of loss, now rendered in distinctly politicized terms— as the conscious endeavor of other groups within a zero- sum calculus of social benefit."

I'm sorry, but what?

Unfortunately, most of the book is written in this style, so jammed full of jargon that it is practically indecipherable for anyone who doesn't have an academic degree.

I also struggled to figure out what the point of the book was. Who is it for? What is it trying to say? The author obviously thinks the great replacement beliefs are bad but the book doesn't offer any insight on the subject. I didn't learn anything or gain a new perspective, nor did it feel like the author was trying to convince me of anything. A lot of the time I reading, I was wondering, where is this going?

As requested, I will not publish my review until July 1st.