The Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups on Friday morning blasted Fox News host Tucker Carlson after the TV talker offered up a passionate defense of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory the night prior.
The theory is a “white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-white,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted on Friday morning, noting that the concept has also served as motivation for several high-profile mass murders.
“It is antisemitic, racist and toxic. It has informed the ideology of mass shooters in El Paso, Christchurch and Pittsburgh,” the ADL leader wrote, adding a call for the TV star’s ouster: “Tucker must go.”
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Later on Friday, the ADL released a letter addressed to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, listing off other examples of anti-semitic Carlson commentary. “We believe in dialogue and giving people a chance to redeem themselves, but Carlson’s full-on embrace of the white supremacist replacement theory on yesterday’s show and his repeated allusions to racist themes in past segments are a bridge too far,” the organization wrote.
During a Thursday evening guest appearance on Fox News Primetime, ostensibly to promote his new daytime show on streaming service Fox Nation, Carlson inevitably began to talk about one of his favorite topics: immigration.
Speaking with guest-host Mark Steyn, who has previously touted the white supremacist novel The Camp of the Saints, Carlson rallied to the defense of those who believe the white race is under threat of being replaced and eradicated by immigrants and minorities.
“Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” the Fox News star declared. “But they become hysterical because that’s what's happening actually. Let’s just say it. That’s true.”
Adding that you “dilute the political power of the people” in one country if “you change the population,” Carlson went on to say he would become “disenfranchised as a current voter” every time “they import a new voter.” After complaining that “everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” the Fox host proceeded to once again defend “white replacement theory.”
“No, no, this is a voting-right question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate,” he exclaimed. “Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote, and they are diluting it. No, they are not allowed to do it. Why are we putting up with this?”
“It is horrifying that Fox News continues to empower Tucker Carlson and other white nationalist ideologues to broadcast this kind of hateful poison into the homes of tens of millions of Americans,” said Logan Bayroff, VP of communications for J Street, in a statement to The Daily Beast. “The ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory isn't just rhetoric—its racist, antisemitic propaganda that has helped incite deadly violence against American Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and other vulnerable minorities. Every time that this white supremacist hatred is amplified like this, the threat of future attacks on our communities grows.”
“The ‘great replacement’ theory is a xenophobic and antisemitic conspiracy. Racist extremists like Tucker will only amplify it more as climate change increasingly drives dislocation and migration,” Jewish progressive group If Not Now added in a tweeted statement. “The fight for Jewish safety is the fight for migrant and climate justice.”
A Fox News spokesperson insisted to The Daily Beast that Carlson was somehow actually dismissing the theory, pointing to the host’s comments where he called it a “voting-rights question.”
As Greenblatt noted, this exact theory—that a shadowy elite is deliberately eradicating the white vote—was the inspiration behind some of the most gruesome and deadly mass shootings of the past few years.
The racist killers behind the El Paso and Christchurch massacres, for instance, both left behind manifestos in which they wrote at length about the theory. The shooter responsible for murdering 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh openly believed that George Soros and Jewish humanitarian aid groups were bringing Central American migrants (“invaders,” as he referred to them) to the United States in order to “kill our people,” the white race.
The ADL’s call for Carlson’s ouster is nothing new for the Fox News host, who has long drawn condemnation and courted controversy for racist and xenophobic commentary. His program lost the bulk of its prominent advertisers after he declared in late 2018 that immigrants make the United States “poorer and dirtier.”
Carlson also sparked widespread backlash and additional ad boycotts for claiming white supremacy is a “hoax” just three days after the El Paso shooter killed 22 people over fears of a “Hispanic invasion”; and for warning Fox News viewers that the Black Lives Matter “mob” will “come for you.”
