The Fox News host who has spread the Great Replacement Theory, a motivating factor in the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, last weekend by a white supremacist, is claiming that the conspiracy theory is actually “coming from the left.”
Tucker Carlson didn’t mention the Great Replacement Theory by name on his first broadcast since the tragic event. (He instead declared that “all lives matter” and complained about political leaders using the shooting to try to silence people like himself.) But Carlson addressed it on Tuesday by first claiming, “It is everywhere in the last two days and we are still not sure exactly what it is.”
Well, it’s unclear who is the “we” the Fox host is referring to, because Carlson himself has espoused it several times. “In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries,” Carlson said last September.
ADVERTISEMENT
That theory played a role in mass killings in recent years by racists in El Paso, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Poway, California; and Christchurch, New Zealand. The idea that liberals and powerful elites are deliberately “replacing” white people through mass immigration was also pushed by torch-bearing white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
But to Carlson, this theory “is coming from the left” because “there is a strong political component to the Democratic Party’s immigration policy.”
“We are not guessing this. We know this. And we know it because they have said so. They have said it again and again and again. They have written books on it and monographs and magazine articles, they have bragged about it endlessly. They talk about it on cable news constantly, and they say out loud: ‘We are doing this because it helps us to win elections,’” Carlson said.
He then played a series of clips in which Democrats like Stacey Abrams and Julian Castro say that the effects of changing demographics in the U.S. will work to the party’s advantage.
“So you can play clips of them saying it and you are the deranged conspiracy nut!” Carlson exclaimed. “But the funniest part is they may be wrong, actually, judging by recent polling. Turns out your average Salvadoran landscaper’s politics are a lot closer to Donald Trump’s than they are to Joe Biden’s and Nancy Pelosi’s.” Carlson didn’t specify what polls indicate such a thing.
The Fox host cited other examples of what he claimed was “the left” pushing the theory, including a 2013 statement from the Center for American Progress.
That group “announced that ‘supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future,’” Carlson said, quoting the statement.
“Oh, great replacement theory, anyone? These people are lunatics. They are telling you what their strategy is. When you note it, they scream at you and call you a criminal.”
