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Call to fire Fox host over race rhetoric

Tali ArbelAAP
Tucker Carlson's "rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists - it was a bullhorn", the ADL says.
Camera IconTucker Carlson's "rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists - it was a bullhorn", the ADL says. Credit: AP

The US Anti-Defamation League is calling for Fox News to fire prime-time opinion host Tucker Carlson because he defended a white-supremacist theory that says whites are being "replaced" by people of colour.

In a letter to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott on Friday, the head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, says Carlson's "rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists - it was a bullhorn".

The civil rights group listed numerous instances Carlson has used anti-immigrant language. Those include saying immigration makes the US "poorer and dirtier" and questioning whether white supremacy is real.

Greenblatt said "given his long record of race-baiting, we believe it is time for Carlson to go".

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The white-nationalist "great replacement theory", otherwise known as "white genocide", says people of colour are replacing white people through immigration in the Western world, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Some white supremacists also say that Jews and progressive politicians are furthering this change, the civil rights group says.

The "theory" is a "classic white supremacist trope", the letter says, noting it has been linked to mass shootings in the US and New Zealand and was referenced during a deadly far-right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

It was the first time the ADL had asked for Fox to fire Carlson, spokesman Todd Gutnick said.

Carlson is Fox News Channel's most popular personality.

He said on Thursday during a guest appearance on Fox News Primetime 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 of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World".

Carlson said he was concerned about his "voting rights", and that he had "less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate", but said it's not a racial issue.

Fox News did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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