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Fox News star Tucker Carlson's 'great replacement' segment used a new frame for an old fear

"White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots
"Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism""

There are still plenty of Americans seeking confirmation that their rank nativism is right.


Tear gas is released into a crowd of protesters during clashes with Capitol police at a rally at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

April 13, 2021, 8:45 AM AEST / Updated April 13, 2021, 8:46 AM AEST

By Casey Michel, author of "American Kleptocracy"

For the past few years, white nationalists around the world have been workshopping a new framing for a much older fear. According to these extremists, immigrants — primarily from developing, and predominately nonwhite, countries — are flooding into the West, seeking to “replace” the current body politic. The rhetoric, couched as the “great replacement .. https://www.counterextremism.com/content/great-replacement-theory ” theory, has propelled fascistic massacres from New Zealand .. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-terrorist-may-have-targeted-country-because-it-n983601 .. to San Diego .. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anti-semitic-open-letter-posted-online-under-name-chabad-synagogue-n999211 .. to El Paso, Texas .. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/el-paso-shooter-wasn-t-lone-wolf-his-so-called-ncna1039201 .

And earlier this month, these white supremacists found a familiar mouthpiece .. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/fox-host-tucker-carlson-s-comments-joe-biden-s-marriage-n1258172 .. acting as a megaphone for their latest line of bigotry .. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-s-army-sexism-proves-again-he-s-troll-n1260756 .
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For the past few years, white nationalists around the world have
been workshopping a new framing for a much older fear.
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On Thursday .. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-face-fox-news-just-gave-his-full-endorsement-white-nationalist , Fox News host Tucker Carlson seemingly answered whatever questions may remain about his willingness to carry water for these white supremacists. Carlson wailed that the Democratic Party was “trying to replace the current electorate” in the U.S. with “new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.” That, according to Carlson, is “what’s happening actually. Let’s just say it. That’s true.”

One problem? Carlson ignored the fact that the 2020 electorate turned out far more immigrant .. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/10/30/21540263/vietnamese-american-support-trump-2020 .. and nonwhite populations .. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/10/nation/trumps-improved-performance-with-latino-voters-2020-was-powered-by-surprising-source-women/ .. for Donald Trump than the U.S. had seen in years, or that the biggest gains in the Democratic camp in recent years have been among white, college-educated suburbanites .. https://www.brookings.edu/research/bidens-victory-came-from-the-suburbs/ . For Carlson, things such as facts and figures are mostly irrelevant. “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter,” he continued. “I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”

The Fox News host tried during the segment to dodge the obvious racial overtones, arguing that “everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it.” Everyone is making this about race, because it is about race. And that’s easily proved by looking at the primary proponents of this rhetoric.

Chris Hayes: Tucker Carlson’s not stupid, he just thinks his audience is
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-tucker-carlson-s-not-stupid-he-just-thinks-his-audience-is-108281413602
March 17, 202107:09

Take the perpetrator of the devastating 2019 massacre in New Zealand .. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-shootings , who specifically cited this notion of a “great replacement” in his manifesto, claiming .. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/3/15/18267163/new-zealand-shooting-christchurch-white-nationalism-racism-language .. that he was targeting local Muslim populations for one reason: “This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement.” One month later, a white supremacist opened fire at a synagogue in San Diego, spinning similar lines. The perpetrator, as Salon reported .. https://www.salon.com/2019/04/29/fox-news-and-the-synagogue-shooter-right-wing-network-airs-similar-views-every-day/ , “was a devotee of the fascistic ‘replacement’ theory.”

And a few months thereafter, in one of the deadliest days in recent American history, a shooter slaughtered nearly two dozen bystanders in El Paso. In a manifesto, the shooter specifically cited the shifting demographics of Texas as his fascistic casus belli, writing that his actions .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/patrick-crusius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto.html .. were “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” — and to the political shifts currently under way in an increasingly purple Texas. Unsurprisingly, it’s that same misunderstanding — the notion that it is immigration, rather than native-born political shifts .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/09/texans-preferred-orourke-cruz-least-texans-born-texas-did/ , that is changing Texas’ political map — that is now driving the upsurge in efforts to secede from the U.S.

Related
Opinion
The pro-Trump secession movement isn't a joke — it's a lot more dangerous
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/pro-trump-republican-secession-rhetoric-texas-elsewhere-more-punchline-ncna1259016?icid=related

The specific framing of this “great replacement” tracks back .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/el-paso-shooting-racism.html .. nearly a decade to a French author named Renaud Camus, centered on concerns about nonwhite immigration into Europe. But in the U.S., the bones of the idea — the notion that an entrenched white population now stands battered by an influx of outsiders, bent on upending traditional values and shifting America’s political dynamics – is nearly as old as the nation itself.

Such ideas have fired nativist movements since at least the mid-19th century, when a surge of migration from places like Ireland, coupled with an influx of new Mexican populations in territory the U.S. stole from Mexico .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-wicked-war-polk-clay-lincoln-andthe-1846-us-invasion-of-mexico-by-amy-s-greenberg/2012/11/23/db678388-2dc7-11e2-9ac2-1c61452669c3_story.html sparked xenophobic movements in the U.S. like the Know Nothings .. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/ . A few decades later, American bigots met migration from places like southern Europe and east Asia with new immigration restrictions — including things like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first piece of legislation barring specific nationalities from entry. By the early 20th century, such racist restrictions were the norm. Indeed, the U.S.’ 1924 Immigration Act, which effectively closed off the world outside of western Europe to the U.S., was partly based on nativist advice .. https://www.cato.org/blog/reflections-immigration-act-1924 .. provided by the author of “The Passing of the Great Race” — a book Adolf Hitler referred to as his “bible .. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-07/great-race-passing-trump .”

The Daily Show
@TheDailyShow
We need to talk about plagiarism at Fox News
video
9:59 AM · Apr 10, 2021
36.3K 1K ...link to Tweet

Tucker Carlson, of course, would never acknowledge that his rhetoric .. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/white-nationalists-praise-tucker-carlsons-full-embrace-their-replacement-conspiracy .. is in any way identical .. https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1380671618876207106 ,, to these generations of white supremacists, nor the deadliest strains recently manifest. (Nor would he ever acknowledge that white supremacists believe .. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/white-nationalists-praise-tucker-carlsons-full-embrace-their-replacement-conspiracy .. .. he’s “absolutely right,” or that they themselves admit .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMGxxRRtmHc .. to being avid fans.) But his predictable dance — claiming that he was simply raising questions and ideas — is becoming less and less credible in broader U.S. society. On Friday, the head of the Anti-Defamation League promptly called for Fox News to finally divest itself of Carlson’s rhetoric. “Given his long record of race-baiting, we believe it is time for Carlson to go,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt .. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/media/adl-letter-fox-news-tucker-carlson/index.html .. said. (Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch dismissed the demand .. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12/media/murdoch-response-adl-tucker-carlson/index.html .)

[INSERT: He may a little, but James will probably not change his political involvement much as he's been at odds with Rupert's positions
for years. It's Lachlan that is in a bit of a fix, as he's top honcho at Fox now and is not as conservative-minded as Rupert either.
“Executives Are Very Worried Fox & Friends Will Be Next”: After Taking Over Fox, Lachlan Murdoch Is in a Trump Trap
[...]
Though Lachlan hired West Wing stalwart Hope Hicks, staffers believe he is likely to nudge the network away from its close marriage to Trump. Sources close to Lachlan pointed out that Lachlan is a libertarian conservative, not a MAGA diehard, who in private has expressed annoyance at Trump. “He doesn't like Trump,” one person who has spoken with Lachlan told me.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=157304382]

Nor is such rhetoric finding a widening audience in the U.S. In one of the great ironies of the past few years, the rise of Trump — the author of a movement that, boiled down, is little more than nativism wrapped in a personality cult — may have jump-started American support for immigration writ large. As Gallup found last year .. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/media/adl-letter-fox-news-tucker-carlson/index.html , 34 percent of Americans now say they would like to see immigration to the U.S. increased, the first time Gallup found that a plurality of Americans favored such expansion.
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These racial revanchists believe they must do whatever it takes to hold on
to their preferential place in the racial hierarchy.
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Still, there are plenty of Americans seeking confirmation that their rank nativism is right: those (mostly) white Americans, terrified of change, who find succor in the anti-democratic racism of the American far-right. These racial revanchists believe they must do whatever it takes to hold on to their preferential place in the racial hierarchy.

This ideology — voiced by Carlson, embodied by Trump, but part of the American body politic for centuries — is clearly dangerous. Putting aside mass shootings, the Jan. 6 riot made that incredibly hard to ignore.

As one study in The Washington Post revealed .. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/pro-trump-whites-afraid-being-replaced-attacked-capitol-s-race-n1263216 , the clearest through-line among the insurrectionists wasn’t economic instability, or broader economic concerns. It was, rather, that “the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest.”

And it’s these communities that generations of nativists have targeted, have inflamed and have used to buttress the dominance of white America. It is, in a sense, nothing new .. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/30/what-ulysses-grant-can-teach-joe-biden-about-putting-down-violent-insurrections-463976 . But as long as that rhetoric — that entire ideology, now stretching beyond America’s borders — continues, it will claim more bodies, and target more communities.

And until it is replaced, it will continue to threaten the rest of us, as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/tucker-carlson-s-great-replacement-fox-news-segment-uses-newer-ncna1263880

See also:

Should the America First Caucus sound an alarm about white nationalism?
This contemptible consortium is only the latest signal of creeping fascism.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163254921

Among the Insurrectionists
[...]
There was an eerie sense of inexorability, the throngs of Trump supporters advancing up the long lawn as if pulled by a current. Everyone seemed to understand what was about to happen. The past nine weeks had been steadily building toward this moment. On November 7th, mere hours after Biden’s win was projected, I attended a protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol, in Harrisburg. Hundreds of Trump supporters, including heavily armed militia members, vowed to revolt. When I asked a man with an assault rifle—a “combat-skills instructor” for a militia called the Pennsylvania Three Percent—how likely he considered the prospect of civil conflict, he told me, “It’s coming.” Since then, Trump and his allies had done everything they could to spread and intensify this bitter aggrievement. On December 5th, Trump acknowledged, “I’ve probably worked harder in the last three weeks than I ever have in my life.” (He was not talking about managing the pandemic, which since the election has claimed a hundred and fifty thousand American lives.) Militant pro-Trump outfits like the Proud Boys—a national organization dedicated to “reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism” in America—had been openly gearing up for major violence. In early January, on Parler, an unfiltered social-media site favored by conservatives, Joe Biggs, a top Proud Boys leader, had written, “Every law makers who breaks their own stupid Fucking laws should be dragged out of office and hung.”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=160979441

Read Sacha Baron Cohen's scathing attack on Facebook in full: 'greatest propaganda machine in history'
[...]
The truth is, I’ve been passionate about challenging bigotry and intolerance throughout my life. As a teenager in the UK, I marched against the fascist National Front and to abolish apartheid. As an undergraduate, I traveled around America and wrote my thesis about the civil rights movement, with the help of the archives of the ADL. And as a comedian, I’ve tried to use my characters to get people to let down their guard and reveal what they actually believe, including their own prejudice.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152547988