April 10, 2021

Tucker Carlson Defends the Racist “White Replacement Theory”

It’s the same theory that has inspired white supremacist mass shooters.

On March 13, 2019, dozens of protesters converged at Fox News' Headquarters to denounce Tucker Carlson making, racist, misogynistic and bigoted statements. Michael Nigro/Sipa via AP Images

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During an appearance on Fox News on Thursday night, Tucker Carlson defended the racist “white replacement theory” that helped inspire the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 and numerous mass shootings around the world.

“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,” Carlson said on Fox News Primetime. “If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.” 

Carlson assured viewers there was nothing racist about a racist theory positing “voters from the Third World” as “obedient.” “I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” he said. “Oh, you know, the white replacement theory? No, no, no. This is a voting right question.” This has the makings of a major GOP talking point going forward—white replacement hysteria being recast by conservatives as a defense of “voting rights.”

A montage from The Daily Show demonstrates the chilling similarity between Tucker’s words and those of the white supremacist shooters who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019, and 23 people in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019.

“This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement,” said the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto.

“I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought by an invasion [of immigrants]…a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters,” echoed the El Paso shooter’s manifesto.

The Daily Show calls Carlson “the new copycat.”

On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League called on Fox News to fire Carlson. “Carlson’s rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists—it was a bullhorn,” ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt wrote to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.

Yet Carlson was defended by Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, the self-proclaimed prophet of the white working class, who called Carlson “the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma—on both cultural and economic questions. That is why they try to destroy him.”

Vance was heavily ratioed on Twitter for defending white supremacy.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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