Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, sent a letter to both the executives and the public. Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation on Tuesday, demanding that they stop promoting white supremacy on air, and citing the network’s amplification of the so-called “Great Replacement” theory that inspired a white supremacist massacre in Buffalo, New York, last weekend.
Schumer supported this theory. rightly points out in his letter “has no basis in fact,” is rooted in far right ideology but is rapidly becoming more prevalent in mainstream conservative circles. Its proponents Lie about itThere is a conspiracy against white people in countries where they make up the majority of the population (e.g. the U.S.).
The mass shooter, who killed 10 people and injures three others in a neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday, cites this theory.
Schumer’s letter to Fox executives — including owner Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan Murdoch, Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, Jay Wallace, president, and executive editor at Fox News Media — was written in response to Fox News’s consistent promotion of the theory, particularly by its news personalities. One analysis of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” It was found that the primetime host had made racist references in more than 400 episodes during the past six years.
Carlson responded to criticisms of his commentary after the terrible Buffalo attack by suggesting his critics were using mass shootings to censor him.
“So because a mentally ill teenager murdered strangers, you cannot be allowed to express your political views out loud,” Carlson said on his program Monday night. “That’s what they’re telling you. That’s what they’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but Saturday’s massacre gives them a pretext and a justification.”
Carlson’s rhetoric from this week alone only confirms Schumer’s point: The network, he said in his letter, is engaged in the “reckless amplification” of a “white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theory.”
“For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life,” the New York senator said. “However, this pernicious theory, which has no basis in fact, has been injected into the mainstream thanks in large part to a dangerous level of amplification by your network and its anchors.”
Schumer then cited a poll from the Associated PressThe poll found that nearly a third of Americans believe in the theory. The same poll also found that nearly one-third of Americans believe in the theory. Fox News Viewers were close to three times as likely to believe in the ideaUnlike viewers of other cable news channels.
The problem is not limited to one incident. Schumer went on, referencing a 2019 massacre in El Paso,Texas, in which a white man killed 23 people out of anger over a supposed “Hispanic invasion.”
Schumer also recalled a massacre in 2018 11 worshippers were killed by a white man at the Tree of Life synagogue. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That shooter had blamed Jews “for allowing immigrant ‘invaders’ into the United States,” Schumer wrote.
“I urge you to take into consideration the very real impacts of the dangerous rhetoric being broadcast on your network on a nightly basis,” he concluded.
