Tucker Carlsons firing might not make Fox News less racist

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Until his abrupt firing on Monday morning, Tucker Carlson was America’s most racist newscaster. He was also the most popular presenter on all of cable television. For this and other reasons, Carlson’s departure may not mark the end of Fox News’ foray into unabashed white nationalism.

Virtually every Fox News commentator talks about America’s red amygdala, cultivating fear and resentment of low-income black communities, non-white immigrants, and rootless, godless liberal elites. But most try to maintain a certain distance between their demagoguery and that of the neo-Nazi message boards, if only to retain the sponsorship of image-conscious advertisers.

Carlson did not. In his six years at the helm of Fox News at 8 p.m., the host practically used Stormfront as his editor. While other Fox News hosts demonized non-white criminals, Carlson portrayed tens of millions of American citizens as enemies of the people.

In April 2021, Carlson mocked Joe Biden for calling the January 6 insurrection the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War, countering that the 1965 Immigration Act was a greater affront to freedom. politics in the United States: this law has completely changed the composition of the Americas. electoral lists, solely for the benefit of the Democratic Party. It looks like a sort of assault on democracy, a permanent assault. Thus, by Carlsons’ logic, every American who gained access to this country following Congress’ repeal of racial immigration quotas in 1965 is a de facto foot soldier in the Democratic parties’ plot to permanently disenfranchise long-time residents of our nations.

Variations on this theme were a staple of Carlson’s commentaries. In another rant against the 1965 Immigration Act last year, the host endorsed the replacement conspiracy theory by name. This white nationalist narrative holds that rootless cosmopolitan elites deliberately replace the white majority in the Americas with multi-ethnic immigrants whom they will find it easier to control. You can’t just replace the electorate because you didn’t like the results of the last election, Carlson said. That would be the definition of undermining democracy, of changing voters. But when it happens in this country, there is an obligatory silence imposed by the media and in fact, if you notice it happening, it is your fault. (In reality, the framers of the 1965 Immigration Act did not expect the act to alter the demographic makeup of the nation as much as it did and, as Ron DeSantiss recently so reelected overwhelming in a state that is only about 50% non-Hispanic (white has shown, non-white immigrants aren’t actually automatons programmed by George Soros.)

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Carlson’s demagoguery was his amplification of fringe stories that had previously caught the attention of virtually no one in the United States except white supremacists. South African land reform is not a topic that resonates with the typical Fox News viewer. In 2018, however, American racists eager to see confirmation of their prophecies of impending white genocide took a keen interest in reforms allowing the South African government to expropriate landowners’ properties without compensation. Specifically, white nationalists relied on a narrative propagated by far-right Afrikaners that black mobs were murdering white farmers in South Africa in large numbers while their government worked to seize land from their relatives. survivors.

It’s not hard to see the appeal of this story to white nationalists. Unlike the United States, where the fodder for white grievances is so limited that racially inclusive Cheerios ads are seen as an affront, South Africa’s white population is a minority group genuinely devoid of political power (even if it continues to wield disproportionate economic power in the country). Set pogroms against white farmers against this background, and you made Richard Spencer’s nightmares real.

Or rather, you would have that, if such pogroms had actually existed on a substantial scale. In reality, murders on South African farms had been declining for decades, and murder rates in white rural areas of South Africa remained far below those in predominantly black townships. Low-key anti-white hate crimes have surely happened. But the white farmers remained exceptionally safe compared to the South African population as a whole. And the government’s land reforms would have involved black and white South Africans alike.

But that didn’t stop Tucker Carlson from broadcasting the white nationalists’ favorite version of events. At other times in his tenure, Carlson saw fit to portray gypsy refugees as filthy, unassimilable public defecators, or castigate Macys for selling hijabs.

Carlson could disavow the idea that his program promoted white nationalism. But white nationalists begged to disagree.

All of this led to many Fox News employees raising internal complaints about the Carlsons program, and many big-name advertisers to pull their spots from the channels at 8 p.m.

Given the exceptional severity of Carlson’s racism and its seemingly harmful implications for Fox’s advertising business, it’s natural to assume that the hosts’ departure will make America’s most-watched cable news channel a little less. a cancer on the body politic. We don’t yet know why Fox fired Carlson. During the broadcast last Friday, the host did not seem to suspect that the show would be his last. It’s conceivable that his firing represents an editorial decision to move away from his content brand. Either way, it’s certainly possible (maybe even likely) that Carlson’s replacement will result in a more subtle form of white grievance. But it is far from a certainty.

After all, Carlson’s on-air personality was not born out of a deep and long-standing ideological attachment to white nationalist ideology. Before Carlson became a right-wing populist critic of cosmopolitan corporations, reawakening capitalism and free markets, he was a laissez-faire libertarian. Moreover, as the messages uncovered by the Dominion Voting Systems libel suit make clear, Carlson’s televised statements do not necessarily reflect his current beliefs. Even as Carlson behaved like one of Donald Trump’s most fervent cheerleaders, he told others in private that he passionately hated the president.

In truth, Carlson’s incendiary content did not so much reflect his own idiosyncratic beliefs as his audience revealed their preferences. As The New York Times reported last year, the driving force behind Carslon’s far-right turn was minute-by-minute ratings, data that tracks the size of a show’s audience at intervals of 60 seconds. Determined to avoid a repeat of its previous failures to retain a large following on CNN and MSNBC, Carlson became one of its biggest minute-by-minute consumer networks. And when the host carefully researched the topics that really held his audience’s attention, it became clear that stories activating a perception of racial threat did the trick. As a former Fox employee told The Times in 2022, he’s going to double down on white nationalism because the minutes show the public eating it.

To the extent that any personal quality informed the exceptional racism of the Carlsons program, it seems to have been a ruthless nihilistic. No sense of decency stopped Carlson from declaring white supremacy nonexistent days after a white nationalist terrorist mass murdered Hispanics in El Paso, or stoking fears of a just migrant invasion. after similar ideas inspired a neo-Nazi to shoot a synagogue in Pittsburgh. If amorality allowed Carlson to fish in such waters, however, it was economic rationality that drew him there. When the host used the murder of George Floyd as an opportunity to attack the Black Lives Matter movement in terms that made his black colleagues uncomfortable, he posted the highest quarterly ratings of any show history cable news.

Admittedly, Carlson’s approach cost him advertisers. But it didn’t cost his employer advertising revenue. As the major brands leaked, Fox filled the resulting gaps with spots for other Fox programs (thus funneling Tuckers’ massive viewership to other shows those brands would frequent) and charged premium rates to the remaining advertisers. Trading respectability for maximum eyeballs has proven lucrative. From 2018 to 2022, Tucker Carlson Tonight brought in more annual ad dollars than any other Fox show.

Moreover, as The Times reported last year, Carlsons’ strategy reflected an emerging editorial consensus at Fox News, dominating the highs. Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch is said to have even more sympathy for far-right politics than his father, Rupert. Meanwhile, Fox News Vice President Tom Lowell has championed a Moneyball approach to programming: allowing the wisdom of the crowds (as discerned by minute-by-minute ratings) to determine editorial decisions. Combine an ideological openness to white revanchism with data demonstrating its effectiveness in maximizing engagement, and you get Fox’s recent rightward shift, in which its prime-time propaganda has increasingly permeated its daytime content. ostensibly neutral.

Of course, just because there are economic incentives to emulate Carlson doesn’t mean his successor will. Many existing Fox News hosts chose to refrain from directly promulgating white nationalist conspiracy theories, even as Carlson led them to ratings supremacy. Still, the fact that Carlson’s editorial line reflects a data-driven assessment of topics that will keep American viewers (disproportionately old and white) from switching channels should temper optimism for Fox’s future. Tucker Carlson has left America’s most-watched news network. But his audience’s appetite for White Nationalism Lite remains.

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