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Sen. Chuck Schumer Calls Out Rupert Murdoch And Fox News Execs

Schumer urges Fox News and to stop touting white supremacist ‘Great Replacement Theory’ echoed by Buffalo mass murderer.

Following this weekend’s murder of 10 people in East Buffalo, NY, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling on Fox News to stop pedaling racist rhetoric, specifically “great replacement theory”  that has inspired a number of terrorist attacks around the country.

This white supremacist conspiracy holds that there is a plot to diminish the influence white people in countries that traditionally have been controlled by white people. To bring about the effect, the myth holds that non-white immigrants are brought into Western countries to hasten the effects of lower white birth rates. This permits the “replacement” of whites by other people.

Schumer, in an open letter, urges the Rupert Murdoch-owned network to consider the real and dangerous impact that repeating such rhetoric has made. Schumer writes:

In 2018, a white man who killed 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue blamed Jews for allowing immigrant “invaders” into the United States. In 2019, a white man who expressed anger over “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart and later told the police he had sought to kill Mexicans. And just days ago in Buffalo, a white man killed 10 people in a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side. In a manifesto posted online, the individual responsible for this heinous murder wrote that the shoppers there came from a culture that sought to “ethnically replace my own people.”

Schumer writes that he hopes Fox executives and hosts will “acknowledge their role in the insidious spread of false far-right, white nationalist conspiracy theories,” and references a New York Times investigation that found Fox News host Tucker Carlson amplified the false theory in more than 400 episodes of his show. Schumer’s letter copied Fox News host Carlson as well.

The Senator’s demand is one that is being amplified outside of Capitol Hill.  Civil Rights attorney, Ben Crump, who is representing one of the murder victims’ families in Buffalo, told CBS Mornings, "It's important that we not only hold accountable this individual who committed this hateful act, but we hold accountable those who curate this hate, who radicalize these young white supremacists."

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