AP
- Matt Gaetz defended Tucker Carlson for peddling a white nationalist conspiracy theory last week.
- Carlson said the theory is “the replacement of legacy Americans, with more obedient people from faraway countries.”
- Gaetz said Carlson was correct and that the ADL, which had called for Carlson’s firing, was racist.
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Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared to endorse a white nationalist conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson promoted on his Fox News show last week.
“.@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America,” Gaetz, a Republican, wrote in a tweet Saturday.
Carlson embraced the “Great Replacement Theory” on his show Wednesday during a segment attacking President Joe Biden for the Haitian migrant crisis that played out on the southern border last week.
He accused Biden of intentionally bringing immigrants into the country for political purposes and falsely said Biden supports open borders.
-Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) September 25, 2021
Carlson said Biden wants “to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the third world.”
“In political terms, this policy is sometimes called the great replacement – the replacement of legacy Americans, with more obedient people from faraway countries,” Carlson said.
The Great Replacement Theory has been used by white nationalists and white supremacists who argue that people of color are replacing white populations or people with European roots.
The theory has inspired violent extremists, including the shooter who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, and the gunman in the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand that killed 51 people, also in 2019.
-nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) September 23, 2021
Carlson has peddled the theory on his show in the past, prompting his boss, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, to assert Carlson actually rejected the theory. But the Fox News host’s latest comments cleared up any confusion over where he stands on the matter.
Representatives for Gaetz and Carlson did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
In his tweet defending Carlson, Gaetz also said: “The ADL is a racist organization.”
The Anti-Defamation League is an international NGO whose mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”
The ADL called for Fox News to fire Carlson for endorsing the Great Replacement Theory. When Carlson peddled the theory in April, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, also called for Carlson’s firing.
The Great Replacement Theory has also been used to target Jewish people specifically.
-Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) May 22, 2020
At the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, attendees marched while chanting: “Jews will not replace us.”
The ADL did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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