Tucker Carlson's Open Embrace of Racism

Rush Limbaugh - a man who enriched himself by spreading hate and untruths - is dead and now there is a scramble among right wing media personalities over who will become the new Limbaugh.  Signs are that many will result to any and every ugly lie and ideology to assume the mantle.  One such is Tucker Carlson who grew up in beach front home in tony La Jolla, California, attended private boarding schools including one in Switzerland, and is the step son of one of the Swanson heiresses. To promote himself, Carlson has decided to embrace white nationalism and open racism as a means to frighten working class whites with whom he has absolutely nothing in common. Carlson's bogey man: non-whites and refugees who Carlson disingenuously claims Democrats are using to "replace" white voters.   Carlson's whole approach is shameless and dangerous given the hate and animosity it fans which all too easily could lead to violence.  Some have called for Carlson to be fired, but given that he works for Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, I doubt this will happen. A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Carlson's disgusting embrace of racism.  Here are highlights:

The racist mantra “You will not replace us,” chanted by white supremacists at the deadly Charlottesville rally in 2017, has essentially made its way onto America’s most popular cable-news program. On Thursday, Fox News star Tucker Carlson hosted Mark Steyn, a right-wing commentator who has previously promoted white nationalist viewpoints on Carlson’s show. The two discussed their misgivings about immigrants from the “third world,” as Carlson described them.

“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 host said. “But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.” At another point he claimed the U.S. government is showing “preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself—and they’re being treated better than American citizens.”

Later on in the segment, Carlson asserted that immigration is part of an effort to “dilute the political power of the people” by changing the country’s makeup.

To this he added what bordered on a call to action. “I have less political power because they’re importing a brand-new electorate,” he said. “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’re diluting it. No, they’re not allowed to do that. Why are we putting up with this?”

As noted by historian Kevin Kruse, the great-replacement theory is a foundational part of the modern white supremacy movement, including in the creation of the Second Ku Klux Klan and, more recently, in popular extremist literature such as The Camp of the Saints and The Turner Diaries. Citing several examples of racist fearmongering from the early 20th century, Kruse wrote, “We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about ‘demographic changes’ in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that Carlson was spouting a “white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites,” adding, “It is antisemitic, racist and toxic. It has informed the ideology of mass shooters in El Paso, Christchurch and Pittsburgh. Tucker must go.”

The morning after Carlson’s great-replacement tirade, his colleague, Fox Business host Stuart Varney, voiced a similar conspiracy theory on America’s changing racial demographics. . . . After concluding that “Democrats have given us an open border because they believe the people who flow into America are future Democrat voters,” Varney, a U.K. immigrant who moved as an adult to work in California, insisted, “America is being changed without our consent.”

The only consolation to be found is that Carlson is getting fatter and fatter as if he is being punished by a divine force.