How Tucker Carlson became the biggest promoter of white supremacy in US media

From Christchurch to Buffalo, white supremacy has been mentioned over and over again as one of the main causes of violence and mass shootings in the United States and elsewhere. However, one name has been singled out as the biggest promoter in the United States on mainstream media in recent memory.

Conservative journalist and media personality Tucker Carlson may no longer be part of Fox News, but his mixed legacy still lives on.

Image: ptrc / Unsplash

In fact, some speculate that Carlson running his mouth on sensible topics might have had a hand in his fall off grace from his former employer.

What is true is that the former Fox News host is no stranger to accusations of white supremacy. However, let's see how true are they.

Business Insider reports that in March 2019, Tucker Carlson decided to ignore the manifesto left by the Australian man responsible for the death of over 50 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Instead, Carlson decided to focus on how the left in the United States would “try to link Terrant to conservatives in the United States”. Never mind that in his manifesto, the shooter praised US President Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity”, as Business Insider quotes.

That wasn’t an isolated incident. In October 2018, a man opened fire in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing eleven people, some of them Holocaust survivors.

The perpetrator had written before the attack on social media that he couldn’t allow a Jewish immigrant aid society to “bring invaders in”, in reference to Central American migrants.

The New York Times highlights that on August 2019, the day after a shooter caused the death of 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso over fears of a “Hispanic invasion”, Carlson said on his show that white supremacy was “not a real problem”.

Carlson has also stated on several occasions that, while racism might be a problem, white supremacy is “a hoax” created by the Democrats to divide American society.

Image: Fox News

Meanwhile, as The Guardian and other mainstream news outlets point out, Tucker Carlson has allegedly promoted ‘The Great Replacement’ over 400 times on his former show with statements such as “immigrants make our country poorer, dirtier and more divided”.

Image: Fox News

The Great Replacement is a far-right conspiracy theory developed by French author Renaud Camus (pictured) that states that global elites are replacing the white population in Western countries with immigrants and people of color.

“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 stated on Fox News in April 2021, as quoted by Newsweek.

Keep in mind that ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ was no fringe voice outside the mainstream. Before being cancelled in 2023, it was the most-watched show on cable news media in the United States, with an audience of circa four million viewers per episode, according to the website The Hill.

The Guardian has also accused Fox News of downplaying the rhetoric behind the Buffalo shooter, who explicitly mentions The Great Replacement in his manifesto, before attacking a mostly black neighborhood.

The New York Times points out that not all mass shootings are linked to white supremacy, while other Fox News hosts such as Shepard Smith (pictured) have admitted that “white supremacy is a very serious problem in America”.

The rise of Donald Trump to the White House, however, has been claimed by many to have normalized dangerous rhetoric that used to be limited to the far end of the political spectrum and emboldened their believers.

This could be seen at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. Far-right demonstrators could be seen chanting 'You will not replace us'.

Tucker Carlson’s ideas seem to come from way back. In a 2006 discussion on the Iraq War on the 'Bubba The Love Sponge' radio show, the Fox News host described the Iraqi people as “semiliterate primitive monkeys” that “don’t behave like human beings”.

A New York Times piece by Nicholas Confessore makes the compelling argument that all the dog-whistling and white supremacist rhetoric might be a deliberate strategy.

For a long time, Carlson roamed liberal news channels such as CNN and MSNBC before finding his home on Fox News.

“Mr. Carlson told friends and co-workers that he needed to find a way to reach the Trump faithful”, Nicholas Confessore writes, about the Fox News host during the early days of the Trump era.

Eventually, Confessore argues, the Fox News host found his niche: White panic. The constant fear of an ever-changing world that was leaving behind white, conservative, Christian Americans.

Technically, ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ is not news. A slander suit against the Fox News host in September 2020 ruled out that he was not ‘stating facts’ but ‘engaging in exaggeration’ to frame a political debate.

Regardless if Tucker Carlson believes it or not, it doesn’t matter. His influence is undeniable. TIME magazine, after all, named him ‘America’s the most powerful conservative’ for a reason.

Now that Tucker Carlson is out of Fox News and has found a new space over Twitter, time will tell if his influence will wane. Though everything seems that, for better or for worse, his message continues on.