Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is demanding that ownership and executives at Fox News stop what he says is the "reckless amplification of the so-called 'Great Replacement' theory" on the network.
"Proponents of this white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theory believe that a complicit or cooperative class of elites are advancing a plot designed to undermine the political power and culture of white Americans," Schumer wrote in a letter Tuesday to top news executives at Fox and the Murdoch family, which owns the cable news giant. "For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life. 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's letter comes just days after a white teenager shot and killed shoppers in a largely Black neighborhood in Buffalo in an attack authorities are calling a racist hate crime. The shooter had espoused white supremacist ideology and belief in replacement theory in a manifesto posted online before the attack.
Schumer cited a recent Associated Press poll that found nearly one-third of U.S. adults believe that a group of people is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains, and that viewers of Fox are nearly three times more likely to believe in the conspiracy theory than other networks.
"This should come as no surprise given the central role these themes have played in your network’s programming in recent years," he wrote.
The Senate leader specifically called out Tucker Carlson, Fox's top prime-time host, mentioning a recent analysis conducted by The New York Times that said Carlson has mentioned variations on the replacement theory idea...