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

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate