We have to talk about Tucker Carlson, Replacement Theory, and the Right's usage of white supremacist paranoia and apocalyptic fearmongering to legitimize violence.

This is fascism. Period. We've seen it before in Germany and here in America.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/replacement-…
I want to be very frank here.

What Carlson has done in recent weeks is advocate for a full and open embrace of fascism, launder the violence of January 6th into a legitimized action, and now is pushing white supremacist/white terrorist concepts of Replacement.

2/
Carlson's behavior isn't accidental. It's an intentional story he's telling, complete with calculated escalations.

He is airing white supremacist propaganda to bring his audience into full support of violence suppression of the Left and people of color.

3/
Before we get into the history, and it is disturbing and important, we need to point out that Carlson previously employed a lead writer who was caught posting on white supremacist sites and trafficking the material from those sources into the show.

This trend is continuing.

4/
Replacement Theory is a 20th century holdover found in the work of men like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.

Their white supremacist tomes argued that the "white race" that had "civilized" the world was in danger of losing its control.

5/
These books were incredibly popular and earned Grant and Stoddard fame, fortune, and influence, including being turned into advisers for American immigration policy, which aggressively addressed the danger of "replacement" in its quotas and restrictions.

6/
This will sound familiar because it's an animating influence on the Right, but Grant and Stoddard warned of "cultural suicide" should white-controlled powers allow people of color to outnumber or "replace" them.

White supremacy was a project they advocated protecting.

7/
A lot of people are reading this and thinking, "This sounds like Hitler."

Because it does. Because Grant and Stoddard influenced Hitler. Because racist American ideas cross-pollinated with Nazi ideology. They were consulted, lionized.

We helped inspire Nazism.

8/
The history we lose sight of is that, before battle lines were drawn, Hitler admired America.

He loved its slavery, its genocide, its Confederacy, the racial stratification of Jim Crow, its white supremacist foundations.

He was inspired by its eugenics and white supremacy.

9/
If that isn't enough, it must be mentioned that Nazism and blatant white supremacy crossed the ocean again and found purchase here during the Depression.

20,000+ American Nazis rallied in Madison Square Garden.

They built camps. Supported Hitler explicitly.

10/
With the American First Committee (yes, that's where it came from) national hero Charles Lindbergh found a platform to openly endorse Hitler and call on Americans to join him in defending white supremacy against the rising tide of people of color.

11/
Lindbergh's message was explicitly Nazism.

The need for white people to control the world.

A conspiracy theory that Jews secretly controlled media and culture and that traitorous liberals, in league with people of color, were destroying the white race.

12/
This needs said: Fox News and the American Right are telling the same white supremacist story and selling the same conspiracy.

They say "we're losing OUR America," but what they're doing, not so subtly, is saying, "White America is being taken away."

13/
These stories about immigrants and caravans are just different chapters in a long white supremacist book.

It's about "replacement."

It's about loss of white supremacist power.

It's just told with a wink and a nod and flashy graphics, but it is a fascist story still.

14/
When we see the GOP at the border, dressed as guards and troops, it's just a symbolic nod toward this idea.

When they say they're "protecting" America, they're saying they're protecting white America from "invasion."

It's replacement. Over and over.

15/
This obsession with guns, with starting a new civil war, with "protecting America" is just an iteration of the same tired and played out and dangerous stories of "replacement."

They're threatening wars and violence if their political power is ever threatened.

16/
Make no mistake, this is what the moment is about. Changes in populations and democratic balance are leading to another moment of crisis in which white supremacists are going to advocate violence as "protection" against an "apocalypse."

It's about control.

17/
As the Right and white people lose their democratic advantage, they're going to push more and more for a complete destruction of democratic institutions, open society, and anything that might trouble their power.

This is the truth of "replacement."

18/
"Replacement Theory," which is the animating ideology of white terrorism, is a legitimizing of pre-emptive violence, a narrative that allows these people to pick up a gun, oppress others, and do whatever it takes to maintain power.

We're in the middle of this process.

19/
None of this is accidental, and it certainly isn't harmless.

The Right is embracing violence and open, admitted fascism. This will continue and escalate, especially if we continue to ignore it or deny that it's happening.

Trump wasn't the end, but a beginning.

20/
If you want to read more about this history and issue, there are plenty of books out there, including mine, AMERICAN RULE, which traces these white supremacist notions and American Fascism.

We need to learn this stuff before it repeats itself.

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

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More from @JYSexton

7 Apr
As a result of Republicans radically altering our economy, redistributing wealth from the bottom up, and destroying regulation, corporations have become nations unto themselves, removed from democracy and restraint

We’re witnessing a terrifying evolution

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-nation-unt…
We’re still viewing reality through an increasingly obsolete lens. The era of nation states and democracy is giving way to a new dominant form: corporations that are their own states and control the nations that birthed them while silently destroying democratic institutions.
So much of our politics is spectacle, theater that provides entertainment and the illusion of control while masking that our government and society has become a subsidiary of corporations.

So much of our nonsense and self-inflicted damage is linked back to this.
Read 5 tweets
5 Apr
These are the minutes from an anti-reform society in 1792.

It is...astounding how little the fearmongering used by the Right to maintain their power and wealth changes over the centuries.
Worth noting, also, that the Association group here was inextricably tied to government and law enforcement, all of which planned attacks and undermining of the Left.

It’s the same story, from 18th century England to modern America.
History shows us our current situation is a replay of observable, predictable trends.

In Europe, in Red Scare and Civil Rights America, in this current struggle, the wealthy and powerful and law enforcement work alongside radical Right Wing organizations to fight reform.
Read 4 tweets
3 Apr
Here’s the state of the GOP.

Fallout from a brazen attempt to disenfranchise people of color is a “gift.”

Because all of it is a game. People’s lives. Democracy. The disintegration of shared society. Just one giant zero-sum game.
I wrote more about it here, but the Right has completely devolved into an organ seeking nothing but power, profit, and the protection of the white, wealthy, and powerful.

To accomplish that, they’ll destroy democracy and traffic in nothing but illusions.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/tossing-pape…
The Right wants, simultaneously, to wield absolute power and frame itself as a victim of conspiracies, culture, and dangerous, emerging trends.

This faux victimhood legitimized all the violence and oppression and underhanded actions. This is who they are.
Read 4 tweets
1 Apr
The Right has turned our politics into a meaningless spectacle infected by corporate philosophies and public relations strategies intended to maximize profit and minimize responsibility.

It’s led to tragedy and rising neo-fascism.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/tossing-pape…
As we watch efforts to disenfranchise people of color by the Right, we have to recognize corporations are completely fine with oppression, but that their brands depend on the appearance of caring.

Branding is at the heart of all this, and provides clues as to where we can go.
What we’re dealing with is an illusory politics operating on spectacle and completely removed from the principles espoused by political brands.

To get better, to stave off so many crises, we must move past these illusions and return to dealing with very, very real problems.
Read 4 tweets
29 Mar
It needs said that the wholesale dismantling of liberal democracy the Right is after, that it now requires for its political survival, takes more than racist legislation, targeted disenfranchisement, and stacked courts.

It requires violence.
Some people keep treating this current moment as simply a political contest, but it’s honestly way more than that. The Right is doggedly pursuing, as a project, a return to past moments of oppression and suppression.

That doesn’t just happen with ballots.
I talked more in-depth about this last night on this livestream, but Trumpism was only the beginning of openly violent, bad faith rhetoric.

What the Right is preparing for, in no uncertain terms, is an embrace of violence as a means of securing control.

Read 5 tweets
25 Mar
Something we have to come to terms with is that media has an unbelievable and often poisonous effect on us, especially when it’s used by powerful, racist forces determined to alter reality to their favor.

Let’s talk about Birth of a Nation and what it did. 1/
Birth of a Nation was based in part on the work of Woodrow Wilson who, before he became president, was determined to alter history in order to reform perceptions of the Confederacy and white supremacy.

His “histories” helped create the Lost Cause mythology we’re still fighting.
Wilson completely propagandized the Civil War, giving the South a new story and mythology, painting slave owners as paternal and moral guardians and slaves as grateful workers. He portrayed paramilitary proto-fascists the KKK as a whimsical but heroic, necessary group.
Read 7 tweets

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