Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been a leader in this campaign and recently defended the white nationalist “replacement theory” for its white audience: the Democratic Party was trying to “replace the current electorate” with “Third Party voters.” World “. In response, the Anti-Defamation League called for Carlson’s dismissal, noting that Carlson’s vile theory is the basis of the “modern white supremacist movement in America.” (Carlson, ridiculously, has said he was not making a request about the theory, but was raising a “question about voting rights”).
On Wednesday, congressional far-right Congressman Scott Perry reiterated Carlson’s toxic view during a congressional hearing, saying “many Americans” believe that “we are replacing Americans born with Americans.” natives to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation. ” On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a well-documented history of bigotry directed against Muslims, blacks and Jews, reportedly planned to launch the “America First” Congress to celebrate “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and repeat the essence. of the “replacement” theory that non-whites pose a threat to America’s “long-term existential future”.
On Saturday, however, Greene, who once claimed that, “The most abused group of people in the United States today are white men,” dismissed planning to launch the caucus after a media firestorm and even from the criticisms of some fellow Republicans. , with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeting that the Republican Party was not the party of the “nativist dog whistles” and Republican Party conference chair Liz Cheney wrote that “racism, nativism and anti-Semitism is bad. ”
This is a positive fact. But the right-wing denunciation of Greene, Perry, and Carlson should have been deafening. Members of the Republican Party Congress should have held a press conference denouncing with one voice white nationalism and all those who addressed it. Instead, we only saw a handful of Republican leaders announce it while a majority of the 262 members of the GOP House and Senate remained silent, similar to the muted response after Republican Party Representative Paul Gosar spoke in February at a white nationalist convention. .
This limited response from the Republican Party is normalizing the growing deadly threat that white nationalism poses to our nation, and I’m not saying that as some liberals “wake up”. Experts warn us of this threat.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said just last month that a group of those involved in the Jan. 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol included those motivated by “violent racial extremism, White too.” Wray added that the number of arrests of violent extremists which he would classify as “white supremacists” almost tripled between 2017 and 2020. This echoes the sentiment we heard last October from the Security Department National, according to which white supremacist extremists represent “the most persistent and lethal threat to the homeland.”
A new study by the University of Chicago’s “Chicago Project on Security and Threats” (CPOST) on those arrested in the Jan. 6 attack provides a clear call that the new expansion of white nationalism must be stopped. This study reviewed the details surrounding the 377 people arrested for their role in the riot and found an unexpected feature: People arrested “usually come from places where non-white populations are growing faster.”
CPOST then participated in a larger study to determine the “roots” of why some on the right supported the January 6 attack. The answer: “One driver stood out overwhelmingly: the fear of the ‘Great Spare Part.’ Yes, the same theory of white nationalist replacement that Carlson, Greene, and others on the right advocate.
Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, the lead author of the report, shared
a worrying wrinkle when I talked to him on my SiriusXM show a few days ago. He warned that support for right-wing political violence was no longer maintained only by “marginalized” people. Rather, there was a “transversalization” of these views demonstrated by the support of people such as CEOs and white-collar workers.
While we don’t know for sure how many white Americans are really afraid of being “replaced” by people of color, we need to address this issue. Republican Party leaders must not only publicly denounce supporters who defend this view, but must also promise not to appear in the media expelling white nationalism. We cannot allow this view to narrow the United States.
It may be Pollyannaish, but we should try to reach out to Americans who harbor these opinions in an effort to alleviate concerns, even if we only lose a small percentage. Remember that this same fanatical philosophy was defended in the 1850s by the nativist “Know-Nothing Party” (originally known as the American Party), who warned that American character would be destroyed by the wave of European immigrants. such as the Irish and Germans, especially Roman Catholics, whom the “Know Nothings” considered a threat to the Protestant character of the country.
How many would say today that Irish, German, Italian, and other Catholic immigrants were a threat to America? I’m betting that most would say they added to the greatness of this nation, including some who now see immigrants as a threat to American character.
Pape, who has been studying terrorism for some time, urged us not to “ignore” this movement, adding a terrible warning that “there are ingredients for future waves of political violence, from lone wolf attacks to assaults. to democracy “.
These are the bets. Silence in the face of white nationalism is not an option for all who want to make sure the January 6 attack was timely, not a preview of what might come.
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