The Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups condemned Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson on Friday morning after the TV speaker offered a passionate defense of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory the night before.
The theory is a “white supremacist principle that the white race is in danger from a rising tide of non-white people,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted Friday morning, noting that the concept has also served as motivation for several high-profile mass murders. .
“It’s anti-Semitic, racist and toxic. It has informed the ideology of mass shooters in El Paso, Christchurch and Pittsburgh, ” wrote the ADL leader, adding a call for the TV star’s ouster: ‘Tucker must go.’
Later on Friday, the ADL released a letter addressed to Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, listing other examples of anti-Semitic Carlson commentary. “We believe in dialogue and giving people a chance to save themselves, but Carlson’s full embrace of white supremacist replacement theory on yesterday’s show and his repeated allusions to racist themes in earlier segments are a bridge too far,” the newspaper wrote. organization.
During a Thursday night guest appearance on Fox News Primetime, Ostensibly to promote his new show on the Fox Nation streaming service during the day, Carlson inevitably started talking about one of his favorite topics: immigration.
In conversation with guest host Mark Steyn, who previously touted the white supremacist novel The camp of the saints Carlson supported the defense of those who believe that the white race is being replaced and exterminated by immigrants and minorities.
“Now I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter are literally getting hysterical when you use the term ‘replacement’, when you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now voting, with new people, more obedient Third-world voters, “the Fox News star declared.” But they’re getting hysterical because that’s what actually happens. Let’s just say it. That’s true. “
He added that if you “change the population” you “dilute the political power of the people” in one country, and Carlson went on to say that every time “they import a new voter” he would become “disenfranchised as a current voter” . After complaining that “everyone wants to make it a racial issue,” Fox’s host went on to defend “white replacement theory.”
‘No, no, this is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they import a brand new electorate, ”he exclaimed. ‘Why should I sit back and take that? The power I have as an American at birth is guaranteed to be one man, one voice, and they water it down. No, they shouldn’t do it. Why are we taking this? “
“It is horrifying that Fox News continues to empower Tucker Carlson and other white nationalist ideologues to send this kind of hateful poison into the homes of tens of millions of Americans,” Logan Bayroff, VP of communications for J Street, said in a statement to The Everyday Beast. . The ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory is not just rhetoric – the racist, anti-Semitic propaganda that has helped incite deadly violence against American Jews, Muslims, immigrants and other vulnerable minorities. Every time this white racist hatred is reinforced in this way, the threat of future attacks on our communities grows. “
“The ‘great replacement theory’ is a xenophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy. Racist extremists like Tucker will only amplify it as climate change increasingly leads to disruption and migration, ”Jewish progressive group If Not Now added in a tweeted statement“The fight for Jewish security is the fight for migrant and climate justice.”
A Fox News spokesperson urged The Daily Beast that Carlson somehow rejected the theory, noting the host’s comments calling it a “voting rights issue.”
As Greenblatt noted, this exact theory – that a shadowy elite deliberately exterminates the white voice – was the inspiration behind some of the most gruesome and deadly mass shootings of recent years.
For example, the racist killers behind the massacres in El Paso and Christchurch both left manifestos in which they wrote extensively about the theory. The shooter responsible for the murder of 11 Jewish believers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh openly believed that George Soros and Jewish humanitarian aid organizations were bringing Central American migrants (‘intruders,’ as he called them) to the United States to ‘ kill our people ”, the white race.
The ADL’s call for Carlson’s impeachment is nothing new to the Fox News presenter, who has long condemned and sparked controversy over racist and xenophobic commentary. His program lost most of its prominent advertisers after declaring in late 2018 that immigrants are making the United States “poorer and dirtier”.
Carlson also sparked widespread backlash and additional ad boycotts for claiming that white supremacy is a “hoax” just three days after the El Paso shooter killed 22 people for fear of a “Spanish invasion”; and for warning Fox News viewers that the Black Lives Matter “mob” is “coming for you”.