In the wake of last week’s Buffalo shooting by a right wing, white nationalist extremist, many have pointed the finger at right wing media like Fox News for perpetuating the toxic ideas that fueled such violence. Specifically, many have argued that Fox’s Tucker Carlson has been a proponent of ideas like “replacement theory,” on his show. And, Replacement theory is one of the main ideologies behind the Buffalo violence.
“It’s an idea that’s deeply associated with Carlson for the obvious reason that he has presented this “great replacement theory,” both broadly and in detail, many times over the past several years. By the New York Times’s count, he has referred to the idea that left-wing elites are encouraging immigration to reshape American politics in more than 400 episodes of his show since 2016. After Carlson embraced the idea early last year, Republican legislators echoed it and helped it become a mainstream position with their voters.”
Carlson will obviously face no consequences for advocating such rancid claims. But the post explains that “people who are perceived as the beneficiaries of a conspiracy to harm White Americans do (suffer consequences). Last weekend, an 18-year-old man apparently convinced of the “great replacement theory” allegedly went to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo and shot 10 people to death.”
Because of the shooting, there is new attention focused on the “replacement” rhetoric, but on his show this week, Carlson did what he normally does when his words and ideas might get him in trouble, that is he pushed the right’s victim mentality by claiming that it was just a left-wing tool to punish the right.
Carlson claimed that the Buffalo killer was mentally ill, and not acting in response to any rhetoric, strangely adding that if he was “alienated,” it was clearly Democrats’ fault, because of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carlson also tried to pretend that he didn’t even know what “great replacement theory” is:
“You’ve heard a lot about the great replacement theory recently…everywhere in the last two days and we’re still not sure exactly what it is.”
And then he went ahead and explained exactly what the theory is anyway:
“Here’s what we do know for a fact: There is a strong political component to the Democratic Party’s immigration policy. We’re not guessing this. We know this and we know it because they have said so.”
