On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains how Lachlan Murdoch gave Tucker Carlson “a green light” to “intensify his reliance on the great replacement theory”
Published
Citation From the May 21, 2022 edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Talk to me about the mechanics of this, Angelo. How has Fox created an environment, an ecosystem where something like replacement theory is not just embraced but is peddled?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA): They really are the engine that drives the feedback loop, and that loop is speeding up faster and faster and faster. And the way it sort of works is that Tucker's producers mine parts of social media, in particular the chans and other message board communities, which has been well documented, the same communities that the Buffalo shooter was on for these anecdotes or examples. They then put it into the Fox News ecosystem on prime time. Fox News' so-called news programs cover it the next day, they cover Tucker Carlson's segment as if it was news.
So that gets it into the more legitimate side of Fox News and they do more reporting around it. And then a hammer away at those anecdotes. So those things become touchdowns, fuel for that engine. And then what they do at night, is explain it.
Why is this happening? Well, that's where great replacement theory comes in. And they do that cycle over and over and over again, and it's sped up. And there was a major inflection point that I want everyone to remember, and that was one year ago actually. Tucker Carlson gave his most explicit embrace of great replacement theory to date, which is about a year ago. Even thought he had been touching it up until then.
And Lachlan Murdoch took a very rare response, he runs the network. He did a thing that he normally doesn't do which is publicly respond to the criticism. And in fact, he gave Tucker Carlson, in that moment, not only did he defend the segment that Tucker Carlson did, but he gave him a green light to continue to perpetuate and intensify his reliance on the great replacement theory.
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We're going to have to turn off the engine of this, which is Fox News. Power is being organized on the fringes and the conduit for that is Fox News. And a big piece of that is they can't be part of polite society until this stops. Lachlan Murdoch should not be sitting down at like, committee meetings for the Olympics in 2028 as if he's not also a peddler of this conspiracy theory.