Fox News boss defended Tucker Carlson after calls for him to be fired for promoting a white supremacist conspiracy theory

• Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch has defended host Tucker Carlson after the ADL called for him to be fired.
• The ADL said Carlson has endorsed the white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
• Murdoch argued that Carlson was actually rejecting white supremacy, an argument the ADL dismissed.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended Tucker Carlson after the Anti-Defamation League called for him to be fired for promoting a white supremacist conspiracy theory.

In a letter Sunday to Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the ADL, Murdoch rejected the accusation that on his April 8 show Carlson had promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, a core belief of white supremacist and white nationalist groups.

Its adherents groundlessly believe that liberals are working to consolidate their hold on power by allowing non-white immigrants to displace white people.

In his letter, Murdoch denied that Carlson had promoted the theory, and wrote that "a full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory.

"As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview, 'White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.'"

Greenblatt in turn rejected the defense, writing that "Carlson's attempt to at first dismiss this theory, while in the very next breath endorsing it under cover of 'a voting rights question,' does not give him free license to invoke a white supremacist trope."

"While your response references a 'full review' of the interview, it seems the reviewers missed the essential point here," Greenblatt continued.

"Replacement theory is a concept that is discussed almost daily in online forums seething with antisemitism and racism."

He then listed mass killings the conspiracy theory had helped to inspire, including the 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which 22 people were killed.

Greenblatt notes that the ADL honored Lachlan's father, Rupert Murdoch, in 2010 for his opposition to anti-Semitism.

But he continued: "let me be clear that we would not do so today, and it does not absolve you, him, the network, or its board from the moral failure of not taking action against Mr. Carlson."

Insider on Monday reported on Carlson's long history of promoting white nationalist talking points, while also trying to dismiss the reality of white nationalist violence.

On his show on Monday, Carlson was unrepentant, again pushing the claim that Democrats were plotting to change the country's demographic using mass migration.

"In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country. … Their goal is to make you irrelevant," Carlson told viewers.