He may play one on TV but Tucker Carlson is no fool.
When the Fox News commentator stares into the camera on his talk show and rants for 10 minutes that President Biden’s immigration policies are aimed at replacing “legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries,” he knows exactly what he is saying, word for word. Carlson is laying fresh logs on the embers of a racist theory that has stoked many white Americans’ worst fears.
This once-obscure “great replacement theory” espoused by Carlson and other right-wing media talking heads — the notion that American elites want to replace white citizens through immigration policy and by exploiting simple demographic shifts — has gained traction with frightening speed. A recent AP poll revealed that roughly one-third of American adults agree with Carlson’s conspiratorial ramblings.