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.