WAIT, WHAT?!

Republican promotes Nazi 'great replacement theory' in briefing on rising anti-Semitism

Sarah K. Burris
May 7, 2024


Congressman Scott Perry speaks during CPAC Texas 2022 conference at Hilton Anatole. (lev radin / Shutterstock.com)

The House Oversight and Reform Committee held a Tuesday briefing discussing the increase in antisemitic attacks on Americans on college campuses — and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) used it as the moment to promote the fringe conspiracy of the "Great Replacement Theory."

According to an excerpt of the transcript posted by The Forward's political reporter, Jacob N. Kornbluh, the meeting was held behind closed doors.

"When [Jamie] Raskin, when my colleague from Maryland talks about 'White Replacement Theory' — 'Replacement Theory' is real," complained Perry.

Read Also: How the racist 'Great Replacement' theory keeps fueling Trumpism

"They added 'white' to it to stop everybody from talking about it," Perry continued, without elaborating on who he was referring to.

"But bringing people into the country — I think most people on the right are happy to accept people that are here legally, including me, as my ancestors immigrated legally to become Americans," he said.

"But what's happening now is we're importing people into the country that want to be in America, be in America, but have no interest in being Americans, and that's very different. And to disparage the comments is to chill the conversation so that we can continue to bring in more people ... that are un-American," Perry also said.

So-called "Replacement Theory" is a conspiracy that claims the white race is under threat of extinction at the hands of Jews and other minority groups, the American Jewish Committee posts on its website.

"A similar conspiracy theory was prevalent in Nazi Germany and has been promoted by white nationalists for decades, this recent iteration was popularized through Renaud Camus’s 2011 book The Great Replacement, which claimed Muslims in France were destroying French civilization and culture," the site continued.

Perry is known for using Nazi analogies in speeches. According to comments he made at the Republican Leadership Conference in June 2021, Democrats are a lot like Nazis.

“We can acknowledge that maybe not every one of them is that way, but that doesn't matter,” Perry said.

“We've seen this throughout history, right? Not every citizen in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s was in the Nazi Party. They weren't. But what happened across Germany? That's what's important. What were the policies? What was the leadership? That's what we have to focus on.”

"It is alarming that elected officials continue to recklessly make such comparisons, minimizing the genocide of millions of people," the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg said in a joint statement with other groups at the time.