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. “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter,” he said.
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?”
A Fox News spokesperson suggested Carlson was not describing the white-replacement theory, but a voting rights issue.
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. “We’ve reached the breaking point. The border has been flooded—overwhelmed. And the administration is overwhelmed with this crisis, which is of its own making,” he said, adding, “I believe this is deliberate. This administration does not really want to stop the flow. On this issue, with this administration, I’m a cynic.” 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.”
— Inside the Messy Breakup of an OnlyFans Model and Her Über-Wealthy Boyfriend
— Wyoming Tells Donald Trump Jr. to Sit Down and STFU
— A Wave of Displaced New Yorkers Is Upending the Hamptons Social Order
— How a Group of Rich Memphians Acted on Trump’s Big Lie During Capitol Attack
— Prosecutors Are Lining Up Witnesses in Trump Investigations
— Republicans Brave Plan to Stop Mass Shootings: Do Nothing
— Next-Level Harassment of Female Journalists Puts News Outlets to the Test
— Six Photographers Share Images From Their COVID Year
— From the Archive: American Nightmare, the Ballad of Richard Jewell
— Serena Williams, Michael B. Jordan, Gal Gadot, and more are coming to your favorite screen April 13–15. Get your tickets to Vanity Fair’s Cocktail Hour, Live! here.