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With Murdoch’s Encouragement, Carlson Promotes White Nationalist ‘Replacement’ Theory

With Murdoch’s Encouragement, Carlson Promotes White Nationalist ‘Replacement’ Theory

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

When Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch replied in April to the firestorm caused by his star Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, passionately invoking the "great replacement" conspiracy theory favored by white nationalists, Murdoch chose to lie.

"A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory," Murdoch wrote. This was obviously and insultingly false. Carlson had explicitly endorsed its core tenets during the April 8 segment, saying 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." White nationalists themselves knew better: They praised the Fox host for bringing their talking points to his massive audience.

His boss' dishonest comment was a green light for Carlson to continue to promote that conspiracy theory -- and the host took it as such. Over the past two months, as Carlson became the face of Fox, "replacement" has proven a dominant theme of his program. It also spread to other Fox personalities and, increasingly, to Republican political operatives and politicians as well. Given Carlson's sway over both his network and the GOP, that trend is likely to continue.

Here are eight examples of Carlson pushing the white nationalist "great replacement" theory in the two months since Murdoch claimed that he had actually repudiated it, most recently on Monday night. While Carlson is generally careful not to directly say that Democrats want white people replaced by nonwhite ones, his remarks -- referencing migrants from Congo, Haiti, and across the U.S.-Mexico border -- leave no one confused that that is what he is talking about.

June 7: "How did migrants get from Congo to Lewiston, Maine, and why?" Carlson asked about President Joe Biden's immigration policy. "Well, because [Biden White House adviser] Susan Rice and ideologues like her very much want to change Maine's demographics as well as the population mix in every other state in the union." He went on to accuse Democratic leaders of "importing huge numbers of new voters into the United States" because they "no longer believe in democracy as constituted, and they definitely don't plan to lose another election," calling this "the most radical possible attack on the core premise of democracy."

May 24: After the Biden administration extended temporary protected status preventing the removals of Haitian nationals residing in the U.S. who fled following a 2010 earthquake in that country, Carlson accused the Democrats of "trying to change the population of the United States, and they hate it when you say that because it's true, but that's exactly what they are doing." During the segment, a chyron read, "Dems want to import millions of new voters."

May 21: Responding to a guest who claimed that COVID-19 case counts were spiking in border states due to migrants spreading the virus, Carlson commented, "Public health doesn't apply when we're changing the demographic mix to favor the Democratic Party."

April 30: Carlson accused Democrats of "an attack on our democracy" because "they only care about stacking the electorate." He added: "They want to change who votes, so they win. They're diluting the votes of Americans, of all backgrounds, and that is an attack on democracy, period."

April 29: Carlson described the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as "an assault on democracy, a permanent one." The law repealed the national origins quota system that "was designed to favor Western and Northern European countries and drastically limit admission of immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Southern and Eastern Europe," according to the Migration Policy Institute. Carlson explained: "That law completely changed the composition of America's voter rolls, purely to benefit the Democratic Party." (In fact, the bill passed by huge bipartisan margins, and Republican presidential nominees won five of the next six elections.)

April 21: After Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) responded to Rep. Scott Perry's (R-PA) invocation of the "great replacement" theory by tweeting, "with every passing year, there will be more people who look like me in the US," Carlson glossed Lieu's remarks as follows: "In other words, you're being replaced, and there's nothing you can do about it. So, shut up."

April 15: Carlson claimed that Democrats "are changing everything, whether we like it or not," including "a brand-new national population." He called that a "revolution" reminiscent of how "Germany got Hitler."

April 12: The day after Murdoch sent his letter claiming that Carlson had actually repudiated "replacement" theory, Carlson said on his program that "the secret to the entire immigration debate" is that "demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions. In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country." He added, "All across the country, we have seen huge changes in election outcomes caused by demographic change."

Over the same period, Carlson has also claimed that immigration "makes the country more volatile," that migration across the U.S.-Mexico border should trigger "a real insurrection," and that Democrats who supposedly support open borders "hate" America" and are "trying to destroy it."

Incendiary, xenophobic rhetoric like Carlson's can have dire consequences. Murdoch's statement came in response to a letter from the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt, who noted that the theory Carlson espoused on April 8 is linked to "explosive hate crimes, most notably the hate-motivated mass shooting attacks in Pittsburgh, Poway and El Paso, as well as in Christchurch, New Zealand."

Indeed, those terrorist attacks came after Carlson and others at Fox embraced the same theory in 2018 and 2019.

Mary Ann Mendoza

Republicans Bounce Anti-Immigrant Speaker After Anti-Semitic Outburst

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Mary Ann Mendoza, a so-called "Angel mom," was scheduled to speak Tuesday for the second night of the Republican National Convention. Hours before she was set to appear before the country, Mendoza sent out a tweet sharing a vile and pernicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. CNN reported that she will no longer appear at the event.

The Daily Beastwas among the first outlets to report on the tweet. It was deleted after she posted it, but a screenshot was preserved below:


The thread it linked to remained, detailing a darkly conspiratorial history claiming that Jewish bankers formed a cabal and plotted against the rest of the world. It said, in part, that this plan sought to: "Use Economic Warfare. Rob The 'Goyim' Of Their Landed Properties And Industries With A Combination Of High Taxes And Unfair Competition. … Make The Goyim Destroy Each Other So There Will Only Be The Proletariat Left In The World, With A Few Millionaires Devoted To Our Cause, And Sufficient Police And Soldiers To Protect Our Interest."

This is as clear and indisputable as anti-Semitism gets. The theory also included references to the modern QAnon conspiracy theory.

After the Daily Beast report, CNN reported that she had been pulled as a speaker:


The Daily Beast reported that Mendoza tweeted an apology after the outlet published its story:

I retweeted a very long thread earlier without reading every post within the thread. My apologies for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message. That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever.
— Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza💥TEXT EMPOWER TO 88022 (@mamendoza480) August 25, 2020

Parker Malloy noted, however, that Mendoza has previously posted tweets that played into the same anti-Semitic conspiracy theories:

Mendoza, whose son was reportedly killed by a drunk driver who was not permitted to be in the United States, has appeared on stage with Trump before. Some anti-Semites have linked conspiracy theories about Jewish people to unauthorized immigration.

Mendoza is not the only person scheduled to speak at the RNC with disturbing beliefs far outside the mainstream. Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist who spoke on Tuesday night, has previously said that it would be "smart" for police to racially profile her biracial son. She has also voiced support for limiting women's rights to vote.

Republicans have frequently attacked Democrats in recent years for supposed cases anti-Semitism. However, many in the GOP, including Trump, have made use of anti-Semitic tropes repeatedly, and the party frequently ignores or downplays anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in its own ranks.

Why Tucker Carlson’s ‘Anti-War’ Outburst Is So Dangerous

Why Tucker Carlson’s ‘Anti-War’ Outburst Is So Dangerous

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s criticism of the U.S. operation to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani has drawn praise from anti-war voices on the left and mainstream journalists for “bursting the propaganda bubble” on his network, which has otherwise offered near-lockstep support for President Donald Trump’s decision. But while there are benefits to the Fox audience receiving a skeptical take on last week’s events, Carlson has actually urged his audience to instead focus their attention on the “invasion” across the southern border and undocumented immigrants living in this country, an argument that risks potentially dire consequences for those vulnerable populations.

Carlson’s anti-war stance is not a break from his past support for Trump or his channeling of white nationalist tropes, but a direct result of both. Carlson has effectively steered clear of directly criticizing Trump in his commentary on the burgeoning crisis in the Middle East. Instead, he has presented the president as having been misled and ill-served by warmongering advisers who also want to deter public attention from undocumented immigration.

The Fox host first addressed Soleimani’s killing on Thursday night, calling the breaking news evidence that “America appears to be lumbering toward a new Middle East war” before pivoting to criticize hawkish former national security adviser John Bolton and unnamed Trump advisers. 

“The people demanding action against Iran tonight, the ones telling you the Persian menace is the greatest threat we face, are the very same ones demanding that you ignore the invasion of America now in progress from the south, the millions, the tens of millions of foreign nationals living among us illegally,” he said. “They are liars and they don’t care about you, they don’t care about your kids, they are reckless and incompetent.”

Carlson later added that Trump himself “doesn’t seek war” and is “wary” of it, but had been “outmaneuvered” by “people around him.” 

He warned of the risks of a war with Iran over several segments on Friday, arguing that recent U.S. conflicts in the Middle East have cost a lot more in lives and money than originally anticipated and with few benefits in return. But he again largely avoided directly criticizing Trump, instead castigating Bolton and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) for their statements supporting the killing of Soleimani.  

Under normal circumstances, Carlson’s commentary would be of interest primarily because of the information and over-arching message he’s providing to his cable news audience. But in the Trump era, the president himself is one of those viewers and has repeatedly responded to Fox programming by shifting U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Carlson, like several of his colleagues, is effectively not just a cable news host but a political operative. These members of the Fox News cabinet try to influence Trump’s actions, both through their public commentary and by counseling the president on the side. Carlson has been particularly effective in this role. Last year, he was reportedly able to attract Trump’s attention and, through both his television show and private lobbying, convince the president to call off planned military strikes against Iranian targets. The Fox host later used that relationship to get Trump to push Bolton out of the administration. 

That experience shows in Carlson’s current argument about Iran, which seems carefully engineered to appeal to a paranoid, racist president who typically responds to criticism with vindictive hyper-aggression. So Carlson’s Thursday talking point that Trump is being misled by disloyal advisers who want to keep him from lashing out at undocumented immigrants and refugees checks all the right boxes while avoiding setting him off by suggesting that he is personally at fault.

Carlson’s appeal, thus far, appears to have failed. Trump “closely monitored reactions to his military action, taking note of who praised him publicly among Republicans and who did not, like Tucker Carlson,” The New York Times reported Sunday. “He was encouraged by others on the Trump-friendly network.” Over the weekend, Trump repeatedly threatened that if Iran retaliates for Soleimani’s killing, the U.S. would respond by striking its cultural sites, a public announcement of planned war crimes that tracks closer to Fox host Sean Hannity’s suggestion that Trump respond to Iranian attacks by discarding the rules of engagement and “bomb[ing] the living hell out of them.” 

But even if Carlson had convinced the president to avoid further escalation, that tangible benefit to the anti-war movement — and the country — would be paired with huge risks. Remember, Carlson’s argument is that a Middle East conflict would distract from the need to take action against the “invasion” of migrants and refugees seeking to cross the southern border and the millions of undocumented immigrants living peacefully in this country. What happens if Trump trains his attention where Carlson is trying to point him? What havoc would he wreak on those vulnerable populations beyond what his administration has already done?

Let’s turn from Trump and consider the impact the Fox host’s commentary might have on the rest of his more than 3 million nightly viewers.

Carlson is pushing his audience to consider questions about further conflict with Iran that his colleagues are not, providing a rare respite from the all-systems-go war cheerleading elsewhere on the network. But you can’t separate Carlson’s conclusion from his argument tying it to an “invasion” of Hispanic would-be immigrants. 

This argument is, in part, wrong on the facts in a way that shields the president from culpability — Trump reportedly pushed for the strike on Soleimani, alarming top Pentagon officials, after “fuming” over “television reports [that] showed Iranian-backed attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad.” It draws a connection between the advisers’ Iran warmongering and their immigration stance for which Carlson has provided no evidence. And it relies on an incredibly toxic premise — that southern migration constitutes an “invasion” — that has already triggered serious consequences against both the purported “invaders” and those who apparently support them.

Last August, a gunman allegedly targeting “Mexicans” murdered 22 people and injured 26 more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, after leaving behind a manifesto describing his desire “to exact revenge against ‘the Hispanic invasion of Texas,’ to forestall what he called ‘cultural and ethnic replacement,’ and to ‘reclaim my country from destruction.’” The year before, a shooter who blamed Jewish people in the U.S. “for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants” killed 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

There’s value in having an anti-war message pierce Fox’s bubble to reach its viewers, the president included. But this particular message could have ominous results for others.

How Ross Perot Paved The Way For Trump

How Ross Perot Paved The Way For Trump

A nationally known tycoon with a boastful personality, a penchant for tough talk, an aversion to illegal immigration and free trade, and a contempt for Washington norms: Before there was Donald Trump, there was Ross Perot. His two presidential campaigns planted seeds that would bear poisonous fruit 20 years later.

Perot, who died Tuesday, was the improbable candidate in 1992. Entering as a third-party challenger against President George H.W. Bush and Gov. Bill Clinton, he captured the spotlight and soon led in the polls. Despite pulling out in July, only to reenter in October, he got nearly 19 percent of the vote, the strongest showing by a non-major party candidate since 1912. Running in 1996 as the nominee of the Reform Party, which he founded, he got 8.4 percent of the vote.

In his races, Perot provided a road map for a populist charlatan to reach the White House. He was an unconventional candidate peddling crude and shallow solutions, many of which bear a strong resemblance to what Trump would later propose. Consciously or not, Trump borrowed liberally from Perot’s formula in his own campaign, and he made it work.

The parallels are many. NAFTA was a terrible deal? Perot fulminated against it in 1992. Stop spending money protecting our allies? Perot had the same idea. Slap tariffs on our biggest Asian trading partner for its unfair practices? Trump has gone after China the way Perot threatened to go after Japan.

Trump threatened to “send in the feds” to stop crime in Chicago, which apparently meant deploying the National Guard. Perot’s idea was to “declare civil war and the drug dealer is the enemy.”

Perot didn’t make the blatant appeals to white racism that Trump does. But in 2000, his Reform Party nominated someone who did. Pat Buchanan extolled the Confederacy, warned that immigration would make America “a Third World nation” and earned the praise of neo-Nazi David Duke. Trump is what you would get if you blended Perot and Buchanan over high heat.

Serious policy ideas are not the essence of Trumpism or Perotism. What distinguished the Texas computer magnate — who was the self-made billionaire Trump pretends to be — was his glib, cocksure manner, suggesting that all problems would yield to the blunt hammer of his common sense. After years of watching career politicians fall short, Americans were taken with his claim that a savvy business mogul would do better.

Like Trump, Perot was thin-skinned and given to bizarre fantasies. At one point, he whined bitterly, “The Republicans have had a nonstop saturation bombing to recast my personality.” He withdrew in 1992, he said, out of fear the GOP would smear his daughter and ruin her wedding.

Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, much as Perot vowed to “take out the trash and clean out the barn.” Trump’s demand to “remove bureaucrats who only know how to kill jobs (and) replace them with experts who know how to create jobs” sounds like it was plagiarized from Perot.

Like Trump, Perot had no appetite for complexity or details. His idea for education? “Let’s stop having two-day summits for governors that don’t amount to anything, and let’s get down to blocking and tackling and fixing it now.” The tax code? “No. 1, it’s got to be fair. No. 2, it’s got to raise revenue.”

Politicians, in his mind, were guilty of overthinking. “I’ve got a lot of experience in not taking 10 years to solve a 10-minute problem,” he bragged. Trump talks in exactly the same way, offering simplicity spawned by ignorance.

Perot did have a positive impact on the federal budget deficit. He laid out a bold plan to eliminate it, including tax increases and spending cuts that included both entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and the military budget.

When Clinton became president, he was forced to take steps, in concert with Republicans in Congress, that yielded a surplus. Without Perot, it might not have happened.

Trump said he would not only balance the budget but pay off the entire national debt in eight years. But unlike Perot’s budget promises, Trump’s were utterly fraudulent. He signed a tax cut that was guaranteed to boost a federal debt that was already on a soaring trajectory.

For the most part, though, Perot was a false prophet, relying on glib bromides, a pugnacious attitude and a disdain for the compromises and trade-offs that democratic government requires. In 1992 and 1996, we managed to resist the coarse nativist demagoguery being offered. In 2016, we succumbed.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Texas billionaire and Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot.