By Ben Sales
Rep. Matt Gaetz called the Anti-Defamation League “racist” after it again called on Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be fired for promoting the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, also endorsed the conspiracy theory.
On his popular show Wednesday, Carlson trumpeted the idea that Democrats are working to bring foreigners into the United States in order to weaken the voting power of white people. He said,”this policy is called the ‘Great Replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.”
The “Great Replacement” is a term used by white supremacists who (falsely) claim that Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white people in western countries with nonwhite immigrants. It has inspired multiple antisemitic and extremist attacks, including the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. A year earlier, white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia infamously chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
This is not the first time Carlson has promoted this conspiracy theory. In April, the ADL called on him to be fired after he said 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.”
At the time, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that “Tucker must go” because he invoked a “white supremacist tenet.” At the time, Fox News leadership defended Carlson, writing that “Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory,”.
On Friday, after Carlson explicitly endorsed the “Great Replacement” theory, Greenblatt again called on him to be fired.
“For @TuckerCarlson, host of one of the most watched news programs in the country, to use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic and xenophobic “Great Replacement” theory, is repugnant and a dangerous abuse of power,” Greenblatt tweeted.
But Carlson has attracted defenders, including Gaetz, who gained a reputation for his outspoken defense of former President Donald Trump. On Saturday, Gaetz tweeted that Carlson was right to promote the “Great Replacement.”
“@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America,” Gaetz wrote. “The ADL is a racist organization.”
In the tweet, Gaetz did not elaborate on why he considers the ADL racist.
Gaetz’s tweet about the ADL comes about two weeks after Josh Mandel, a Jewish Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, called Greenblatt a “kapo,” a term denoting Jews who were coerced into working with the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Today’s authoritarians frequently come to power by democratic elections and then erode democracy through seemingly legitimate means. (e.g. More than 400 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions.)
Trumpism has adopted a new playbook that borrows the trappings of democracy but without its functionality.
In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history.
If you’re not familiar with this short 7 minute documentary, please take the time to do so as it evokes a creeping sense of familiarity by provoking people to think about our current times through the perspective of history. The parallels to Trumpism and the “Big Lie” are concerning to those defending our democracy from fascists and those that support them.
A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN
https://anightatthegarden.com/
Nazism did not start out in genocide. It began with militias and violent troops disrupting democracy like the January 6th insurection.
What caused officers Howard Liebengood, Jeffrey Smith, Kyle DeFreytag, and Gunther Hashida who defended the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection to commit suicide? Lies and the lying liars who tell them did this.
What we have learned from Hitler’s rise to power was that the dividing line is not between Left and Right but between decent people and political gangsters, between tolerant people and totalitarians.