Tucker Carlson Is a Prophet…for White Supremacists
Don’t worry, folks. Nothing to see here. Everything is all good – just fine and dandy.
Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson says there is no white supremacy problem in the United States – like the whole Russia thing, the issue of people espousing white supremacist ideology and terrorizing communities is no problem at all – it’s just a “hoax.” It’s cool, right?
No, Tucker! It’s not cool. It’s really not.
The shooting in Gilroy was not a hoax. People died there, three real people who had done nothing to incite violence, who just came for the garlic and a family-fun sort of festival. More than a dozen others were injured, with real injuries sustained by a real gun that has no place in this state.
The shooting in El Paso, Texas was not a hoax. Real people died there and several others were injured. Twenty-two people perished because they went to a Walmart, people who did nothing but show up to shop at back-to-school bargain prices.
Both shootings occurred in areas guaranteed to have a heavy Latino/Hispanic presence. Hispanics account for nearly 60 percent of Gilroy’s population and El Paso, Texas sits within a stone’s throw from the southern border, where people commonly and legally cross back and forth to conduct day-to-day business.
“I think we now have a President with some of the same ideals,” a member of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said. Photograph by Chet Strange / Getty
Both shooters made their hateful feelings toward Latinos/Hispanics and immigrants known prior to their attacks. Language both suspects used in online postings is rooted in nationalism, a core tenet of white supremacy ideology. The Gilroy shooter lamented “mestizos” and cited the “Might is Right” book that has inspired countless white supremacists to take up race war fantasies. The El Paso shooter’s alleged screed said the impending attack was a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” echoing “great replacement” rhetoric where white people fear extinction at the hands of immigrants.
Both cases are now being investigated by the FBI as domestic terror attacks fueled by hate. But that was just one week in this new version of America, the one with a president that callously demonizes everyone below the border as criminal invaders, the one that laughs at the suggestion of shooting immigrants.
But the white supremacy, or white nationalist, problem — yes, Tucker, it is a problem — didn’t just arrive at our doorstep in that one tragic week. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports a growth in hate groups for the fourth straight year, with a 30 percent overall increase since Donald Trump’s campaign. According to the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacist propaganda tripled between 2017 and 2018 and in that same time, extremist-related murders jumped by 35 percent. Of those murders in 2018, every single one was carried out by right-wing extremists.
So, yes, it’s a problem. The statistics, like the Mueller findings, disprove the hoax theory. But why would we expect those who pointedly fuel right-wing extremists and white supremacists to rely on facts? As has been seen throughout history, propaganda is meant to incite emotion and has little use for educating the masses.
Tucker Carlson’s dismissive take on the very real fear this country faces proves, once again, that Fox is in the business of propaganda, purposefully. Because of that, they have blood on their hands. Nothing about that is a hoax.
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