Tucker Carlson put the finishing touches on Fox News’ descent into right-wing extremism Wednesday night with an undisguised embrace of white-nationalist conspiracism in his latest rant attacking President Biden’s immigration policies. It’s now perfectly accurate to describe Fox News as a white-nationalist propaganda organ.
Claiming that Biden was deliberately creating the ugly situation with Haitian immigrants at the border in Texas, Carlson—widely considered the leading pundit at Fox with its top-rated talk show—then explicitly invoked white-nationalist conspiracy theories, telling his audience that Biden’s motives involved “the great replacement—the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.”
YouTube Video
Previously, Carlson had skirted the direct use of white-nationalist rhetoric Wednesday’s segment, but on Wednesday night, it was an open embrace of the kind of argument one might hear from VDare’s Peter Brimelow or American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, describing immigration as a form of “eugenics”:
Never mind that Carlson dishonestly stripped Biden’s remarks of their context and meaning. The “unrelenting stream of immigration” he described referred to the nation’s history back to the 1700s—and recognizing the factual reality that the source of that immigration has shifted over time, particularly in the past century. Also, never mind that immigration isn’t a demographic threat, but an economic necessity—mainly since the American economy leans so heavily on immigration to provide the “unskilled labor” necessary for it to function.
Carlson has done this previously—spouting “replacement theory,” a strain of right-wing thought predicated on the “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory claiming that white people are selectively “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants, a gradual “invasion” intended to wipe out white civilization orchestrated by a cabal of nefarious “globalists” and Jews. It’s a subset of a larger white nationalist belief in “white genocide,” a supposed conspiracy by nonwhites, leftists, and Jews to destroy “white Western civilization.”
It also has been credited with inspiring multiple acts of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers’ attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; Brenton Tarrant’s attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019; and Patrick Crusius’ attack on Hispanics at a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, among others.
The last time Carlson spewed this hateful garbage, the Anti-Defamation League called on Fox to fire him. But the network's executives reviewed the episode and declared that they weren’t racist or bigoted. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended Carlson, disingenuously claiming he had “decried and rejected replacement theory" when he said during the Thursday evening segment, “White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.”
However, as Jonathan Chait observes, Wednesday’s screed seemed to obliterate Murdoch’s denialism deliberately:
Fox News, rather than recoiling at the pass to which Carlson has dragged them, in fact, promoted his specious argument on the front page of their website Thursday morning.
There have been multiple occasions on which Carlson has made precisely these kinds of claims regarding immigration: He has touted the same theory claiming immigrants are “replacing” current voters in various segments in the past couple of years. (It is, naturally, an utterly specious claim: Voting requires citizenship, meaning those new immigrants are not eligible even to apply for five years; the naturalization application process then typically takes 15 months. Moreover, the 700,000 new citizens who take the oath every year—after which they may finally vote—represent only 0.2% of the total U.S. population.)
Carlson already has a remarkable record of dabbling increasingly in white supremacist rhetoric dating back to 2006, including recently unearthed recordings of his ramblings on radio. His greatest hits include regurgitation of neo-Nazi propaganda about “white genocide” in Africa, not to mention his mutual promotion of the white nationalist website VDare.
Over the past two years, Carlson’s reliance on white-nationalist rhetoric and ideas to fuel his Trumpian authoritarianism—including his defense of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists—has become a constant feature of his popular nightly talk program. There is a reason white supremacists love Carlson’s show, and why they assiduously watch it in hopes of picking up pointers.
Claiming that Biden was deliberately creating the ugly situation with Haitian immigrants at the border in Texas, Carlson—widely considered the leading pundit at Fox with its top-rated talk show—then explicitly invoked white-nationalist conspiracy theories, telling his audience that Biden’s motives involved “the great replacement—the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.”
YouTube Video
Previously, Carlson had skirted the direct use of white-nationalist rhetoric Wednesday’s segment, but on Wednesday night, it was an open embrace of the kind of argument one might hear from VDare’s Peter Brimelow or American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, describing immigration as a form of “eugenics”:
Never mind that Carlson dishonestly stripped Biden’s remarks of their context and meaning. The “unrelenting stream of immigration” he described referred to the nation’s history back to the 1700s—and recognizing the factual reality that the source of that immigration has shifted over time, particularly in the past century. Also, never mind that immigration isn’t a demographic threat, but an economic necessity—mainly since the American economy leans so heavily on immigration to provide the “unskilled labor” necessary for it to function.
Carlson has done this previously—spouting “replacement theory,” a strain of right-wing thought predicated on the “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory claiming that white people are selectively “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants, a gradual “invasion” intended to wipe out white civilization orchestrated by a cabal of nefarious “globalists” and Jews. It’s a subset of a larger white nationalist belief in “white genocide,” a supposed conspiracy by nonwhites, leftists, and Jews to destroy “white Western civilization.”
It also has been credited with inspiring multiple acts of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers’ attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; Brenton Tarrant’s attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019; and Patrick Crusius’ attack on Hispanics at a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, among others.
The last time Carlson spewed this hateful garbage, the Anti-Defamation League called on Fox to fire him. But the network's executives reviewed the episode and declared that they weren’t racist or bigoted. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended Carlson, disingenuously claiming he had “decried and rejected replacement theory" when he said during the Thursday evening segment, “White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.”
However, as Jonathan Chait observes, Wednesday’s screed seemed to obliterate Murdoch’s denialism deliberately:
Fox News, rather than recoiling at the pass to which Carlson has dragged them, in fact, promoted his specious argument on the front page of their website Thursday morning.
There have been multiple occasions on which Carlson has made precisely these kinds of claims regarding immigration: He has touted the same theory claiming immigrants are “replacing” current voters in various segments in the past couple of years. (It is, naturally, an utterly specious claim: Voting requires citizenship, meaning those new immigrants are not eligible even to apply for five years; the naturalization application process then typically takes 15 months. Moreover, the 700,000 new citizens who take the oath every year—after which they may finally vote—represent only 0.2% of the total U.S. population.)
Carlson already has a remarkable record of dabbling increasingly in white supremacist rhetoric dating back to 2006, including recently unearthed recordings of his ramblings on radio. His greatest hits include regurgitation of neo-Nazi propaganda about “white genocide” in Africa, not to mention his mutual promotion of the white nationalist website VDare.
Over the past two years, Carlson’s reliance on white-nationalist rhetoric and ideas to fuel his Trumpian authoritarianism—including his defense of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists—has become a constant feature of his popular nightly talk program. There is a reason white supremacists love Carlson’s show, and why they assiduously watch it in hopes of picking up pointers.