Ibram X. Kendi offers a global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.
Wide-ranging ... An ambitious book ... As a series of capsule histories of 21st-century right-wing movements, the book is serviceable ... He generally writes in a lucid, ambling style that is engaging enough page by page ... Kendi has long had a tendency to distill big ideas into simple categories ... Sometimes sacrifices clarity for the sake of metaphor and clunky wordplay ... A book that is simultaneously too pessimistic, about the inexorable appeal of right-wing rhetoric, and too naïve, about the effort required to beat them back.
Harrowing ... It’s hard to come away from Chain of Ideas without a firm conviction that the most violently disturbed people in the world are being sicced on us by elected leaders ... Other elements of his scholarship are more disputable.
While much of what Kendi observes has been said before, his gift for connecting the dots and pointing out common tactics and talking points in disparate places is eye-opening and sobering.
