Tucker Carlson Blows Up Murdoch's White Supremacy Denial on Air
Last spring, Fox News host Tucker Carlson used one of his inflammatory monologues to accuse the Biden administration of trying to replace the current electorate with more obedient voters from the Third World. Carlson has spent years edging up to the border of explicit white-supremacist rhetoric, but here he crossed over by echoing the precise theories of neo-Nazis, using their preferred terms.
An alarmed Anti-Defamation League wrote to Carlsons employers demanding they sack him. Lachlan Murdoch wrote back, denying that Carlson had done the thing everybody saw him do on television. Murdochs denial consisted of a fine parsing of Carlsons rhetoric:
Concerning the segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight on April 8th, however, we respectfully disagree, Murdoch continued in the letter, which the ADL provided to CNN. A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory. As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview: White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.
Murdochs defense hinged on two very narrow points. First, Carlson had focused on voting, not on the racial composition of the electorate per se. And second, while he had used the word replace in conjunction with this alleged scheme, he had not uttered the words replacement theory.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/carlson-blows-up-murdochs-white-supremacy-denial-on-air.html