Manny: Ever since Fox News started in 1996,
they have been on one.
- And by the way,
for all you kids watching at home,
Santa just is white.
- Poor families in America have,
99% of them have a refrigerator.
- A fist bump, a pound, a terrorist fist jab?
Manny: Recently though, Fox News opinion programs
have been accused of something far more sinister.
Tucker Carlson: How, precisely, is diversity our strength?
Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as,
I don't know, marriage or military units
in which the less people have in common,
the more cohesive they are?
Jared Taylor: Diversity of the kind
we're all supposed to be celebrating,
whether it's religious or racial
or linguistic or cultural, all of that,
they are sources of tension and conflict.
Manny: That's Jared Taylor, a popular white supremacist.
If you're asking, "Why in the world does Tucker Carlson
sound like that guy?" You are not alone.
Don't get me wrong,
I'm not saying that Fox News opinion programs
have been echoing white supremacist talking points
to their millions of viewers,
oh no, wait, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Here's how they do it.
By now, we all know what racism is.
It's racist to assume that I'm good at basketball.
It's true, but it's racist.
White supremacists have a specific purpose, though.
They believe in policies that will lead
them to the ultimate goal: a whites-only society.
That's because they believe that white people
are inherently superior to other races,
and, therefore, shouldn't coexist with them.
However, that goal is threatened by what they call
The Great Replacement.
The Great Replacement is a white supremacist theory
that says white populations around the world
are being maliciously marginalized
and replaced by people of color.
In reality, we just want you
to season your food a bit, but.
The Great Replacement is the framework
through which Fox News opinion programs
parrot white supremacy.
- It's an ideology that is deployed with a lot of fear.
Manny: Cristina Lopez is the Deputy Director
of Extremism at Media Matters.
- There's a lot of fear and victimization behind it.
They convince audiences that every
nonwhite population is a risk.
But you see it a lot in Fox News and primetime,
specifically, with anti-immigrant segments.
Laura Ingraham: The America that we know and love
doesn't exist anymore.
Massive demographic changes have been foisted
upon the American people,
and they're changes that none of us ever voted for
and most of us don't like.
Carlson: Latin American countries are changing
election outcomes here by forcing demographic change
on this country at a rate that American voters
consistently say they don't want.
Lou Dobbs: Put out welcome wagons!
Pile 'em high because we're just going to consign
tens of thousands, perhaps millions,
of Americans to their deaths.
Manny: This Great Replacement rhetoric is effective
at fueling anxieties that Americans already have.
If you're concerned about the economy, the job market,
or healthcare coverage, The Great Replacement theory
provides you with someone to blame.
Lopez: This has been incredibly successful with fearmongers.
You'll see Tucker Carlson talking about how
"this town doesn't look the same as it used to look."
Carlson: In the year 2000,
Hazelton was less than 2% Hispanic.
Today, thanks to mass immigration,
Hazelton is majority Hispanic.
Manny: When it comes to Great Replacement rhetoric,
Tucker Carlson has faced scrutiny before.
In August 2018, Tucker said
that the South African government was seizing lands
from white farmers because they were white.
Carlson: That is literally the definition of racism.
Manny: It's a talking point that until then
lived only on extremely partisan platforms on the internet.
Users on white supremacist platforms like Stormfront
said South Africa was committing, quote, white genocide.
In an investigation, the BBC found no proof
that farmers were being killed at a higher rate
than average citizens, and homicides where farmers
were the victims were at a 19-year low.
However, soon after Tucker's segment,
the president of the United States tweeted
that he was ordering Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
to investigate these claims.
He even tags Tucker Carlson in the tweet.
Erroneous white supremacist rhetoric echoed by Fox News
made it to the ear of the president of the United States,
influencing him to make it part of our government's day job.
Can you hear me?
To truly understand what's at stake here,
there's one more place that
The Great Replacement rhetoric is common.
In October 2018, a mass shooting occurred
at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Just before the attack, the shooter condemned
a Jewish-run refugee charity, claiming that they
bring in invaders that kill our people,
which echoes a common Great Replacement narrative.
In March 2019, another mass shooting occurred
at two mosques in New Zealand, killing 49 people.
Before that attack, the shooter wrote a manifesto.
Its title: "The Great Replacement."
Fox News did not influence these attacks,
but it's concerning that rhetoric associated
with extremist concepts like The Great Replacement
can be heard on air.
I reached out to Fox News with my argument,
and they provided me with two statements.
"We will not allow voices like Laura Ingraham,
Lou Dobbs or Tucker Carlson to be censored by
agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the intolerant
partisan activists like Media Matters whose only goal
is to silence conservative thought they don't agree with."
And, through a spokesperson, Laura Ingraham said,
"My comments were based on research published
in The Washington Post on immigration
and America's changing demographics.
Attempts by left-wing media outlets to attribute
nefarious motives to my remarks
speaks to their intolerance and bias, not mine."
Again, the only thing I'm intolerant of
is unseasoned food, but.
At the end of the day, the language we use
can have a lasting impact on those
on the receiving end of it.
It cannot be the case that this kind of rhetoric
has this much influence.