Throughout the world, authoritarian movements are radically reshaping our politics and our lives. At the heart of them all lies ‘great replacement theory’, which insists that peoples of colour, migrants and minorities are being deliberately empowered to displace white majorities.

In Chain of Ideas, Ibram X. Kendi shows how this conspiracy theory has mutated from the extremist fringe into a global ideology, embraced by leaders as varied as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. He traces its historic roots in slavery, segregation, colonialism and Nazism, and shows how these age-old prejudices have been dressed in new language for a digital age.