White nationalist website calls Tucker Carlson’s ‘replacement’ rant ‘one of the best things Fox News has ever aired’

The Fox News host has won the praise of an officially designated hate group after appearing to endorse the racist ‘replacement’ theory

After Tucker Carlson went on a lengthy diatribe last week about immigrants “replacing” American citizens, many called on him to resign. But one group was happy: the white nationalist website VDARE.

“This segment is one of the best things Fox News has ever aired and was filled with ideas and talking points VDARE.com pioneered many years ago,” the site tweeted on Monday. “You should watch the whole thing.”

VDARE is designated a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist activity. Its core message is against immigrants entering the United States, and its founder, Peter Brimelow, has said “Hispanics do specialise in rape, particularly of children”.

The segment that so appealed to this group aired last Thursday, when Carlson appeared to endorse the racist “replacement” conspiracy theory on Fox News Primetime.

“I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest 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,” Carlson toldPrimetime host Mark Steyn.

“But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually!” he exclaimed. “Let’s just say it, that’s true!”

The term “replacement” has a dark history. The idea that people of colour are gradually “replacing” white people’s share of the global population is popular with hate groups around the world, and has repeatedly turned up in mass shooters’ manifestos.

The gunman who massacred 50 people at a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, penned an essay before the attack entitled “The Great Replacement”. Shortly before the shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people, police say the suspected shooter posted an online rant about “ethnic replacement”.

The phrase was also used by the white nationalists who rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 – the ones whom Donald Trump infamously called “very fine people” – who chanted “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us”.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, was quick to point this out on Twitter after Carlson’s broadcast.

“‘Replacement theory’ is a white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites,” Mr Greenblatt wrote. “It is antisemitic, racist and toxic. It has informed the ideology of mass shooters in El Paso, Christchurch and Pittsburgh. Tucker must go.”

This week, VDARE made it clear that it disagrees.

“The best news: Fox stands by Carlson,” the site wrote in a post on Monday. “The longer Tucker stays on air, the more the truth can remain unsuppressed.”

Carlson’s show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, has not yet responded to The Independent’s request for comment.