Morning Joe: Tucker Carlson Is ‘Directly Trying to Preach’ Great Replacement Theory to People Like Buffalo Shooter
Morning Joe opened Monday’s show with a sad and sober discussion about the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo this weekend that left 10 dead. Ben Collins covers disinformation, extremism, and the internet for NBC News and mentioned Fox News prime time host Tucker Carlson as someone who is “directly trying to preach” to the sort of racist extremists like the Buffalo mass shooter.
The shooter left a 180-page manifesto that reportedly featured the very same “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric featured on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Carlson has come under heavy criticism for repeatedly promoting White replacement theory.
“This policy is called the great replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far away countries,” Carlson said on his show in the Fall of 2021. “They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it’s happening, they will scream at you with maximum hysteria.”
Joe Scarborough and Eugene Robinson had just spoken about how this rhetoric has been adopted as a political talking point by many high-ranking Republicans. Robinson named the third-ranking Republican member of Congress, Elise Stefanik, pointing his finger of blame at her for promoting the same conspiracy theory.
Collins joined the conversation and described the beliefs of the Buffalo shooter and like-minded extremists, saying “he was an eco-fascist. He thinks climate change is real. He thinks the degradation of our ecosystem is real. All that stuff is happening. Pollution is real. His belief is you have to hoard stuff. You have to separate stuff by race. The race that should remain is white people. So this is a new kind of fascism.”
He then explained these extremists and their mainstream media diet.
“There are people — and I don’t think we should be dancing around his name — there are people like Tucker Charlson who are directly trying to preach to these people,” Collins said. “There are people on 4chan who call him our guy, the only guy in the mainstream media who speaks up for them. That man is actively trying to appeal to these people. It is extremely dangerous. He is the highest-rated show on cable news.”
Carlson has promoted the “Great Replacement Theory” numerous times on his show but also offered some measure of restraint by openly opposing political violence. It is something of a mixed message, as New York Times’s Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish write “Mr. Carlson’s replacement rhetoric comes without the explicitly antisemitic elements common on racist web platforms. There is no indication that the Buffalo gunman watched Mr. Carlson’s show, or any other on Fox, and Mr. Carlson has denounced political violence even as he fans his viewers’ fears.”
Watch above via MSNBC
