The 2019 movie Bombshell is a satirical roasting of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.
There’s a telling moment when an editor explains the Fox ethic to a new recruit. “Basically,” she says, “if it scares your grandparents, it’s a Fox story.”
However, scaring people’s grandparents – with lies about immigrants, welfare scroungers, minorities, “socialism” and all the rest of it – sometimes means scaring (or enraging) other people too.
Like 18-year-old Payton S Gendron. Last Saturday, Gendron acted on all his fear and rage, walking into a supermarket in Buffalo, New York State, and shooting 10 people dead.
All of his victims were black.
In his “manifesto” (a hateful stew of idiocy, memes and racism), Gendron mentions the Great Replacement Theory.
This is another piece of nonsense, originated by the French writer and far-right “philosopher” (those quotation marks are well earned and hopefully you can see the sarcasm pouring off them) Renaud Camus.
His theory claims that whites are gradually being subjected to genocide through immigration and decreasing white birth rates and that it is, of course, the “global elites” (ie: the Jews) who are responsible for all of this.
He also suggests that black people disproportionately kill white people and that, in time, unless something is done, non-whites will eventually overwhelm and wipe out the white race.
“Unless something is done.”
Well, some people are very much minded to get something done. Gendron said his shooting was intended “to terrorise all non-white, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country”.
The Great Replacement Theory has also been referenced in the “manifestos” (those quotation marks again) of the Christchurch mosque shooter (51 dead), the El Paso Walmart shooter (22 dead) and the Oslo mass murderer Anders Brevik, killer of 77 people.
Here’s the problem for Fox News: the host of its biggest prime-time show, Tucker Carlson, has spent the last few years openly promoting very similar theories to the ones that inspired the men in the last paragraph.
Men who, between them, have murdered 150 people in the last three years.
Now Carlson denies all this, of course. In the wake of the shooting in Buffalo, he even tried to play dumb, claiming he was “still not sure exactly what it (GRT) is”.
But if you have a moment, you can just Google “Tucker Carlson, replacement theory” and find multiple clips of him espousing all the core points of Camus’ “philosophy”. (Boy, the sarcastic quotation marks are really getting a workout today.)
If you’re short of time, just know that a recent New York Times investigation identified more than 400 episodes of Carlson’s show in which he pushed core tenets of the conspiracy theory.
Indeed, just minutes after claiming he was “still not sure exactly what it is”, Carlson was at it again, claiming that the Democrats were conspiring to transform the electorate by allowing mass immigration into the USA.
Of course, insane, lonely, violent young men can find all sorts of places to get their minds bent out of shape.
There are many corners of the internet dedicated to doing just that.
But surely when the host of the biggest show on cable news, someone with a regular audience of over five million people, is dedicating much of his time to promoting these deranged – and literally murderous – conspiracy theories, it’s time to say, “Hang on a minute.”
A recent poll showed that American adults who watched mostly Fox News were much more likely to believe the core ideas behind GRT than those who primarily watched other news sources like CNN or MSNBC.
Why is Murdoch able to get away with allowing a so-called news channel to promote this murderous filth?
Well, for one thing, they would argue that Carlson’s show is not a news programme at all…
It’s just “entertainment”. And the people who watch it know they are listening to Carlson’s own opinions, not factual news. (Fox News’ notion of “entertainment” has always struck me as chiming with the Roman Empire’s: blood and death and Maximus throwing his sword down after hacking a man to pieces and asking: “Are you not entertained?”)
The news/opinion distinction doesn’t fly outside of America.
You can no longer get Fox News in the UK, in part because their relentlessly right-wing point of view on all stories would violate Ofcom broadcast codes, which requires news programming to show impartiality.
But, back in the good old USA, it’s not a problem. Hey, say whatever you like on our news channel, it’s all just opinion. Just good entertainment.
The problem is, when you’re sitting there facing the camera very seriously in your suit and tie, when you’re throwing out all these alleged facts and figures and sounding all intelligent and articulate, it’s very easy for someone of low IQ – someone
sitting in their bedroom cleaning their semi-automatic rifle, watching TV in the dark – to lose their way.
To forget that it’s all just “entertainment”. To start hearing voices like Carlson’s joining the other voices already in their head, the ones telling them to load the guns, strap on the body armour and drive to the school – or the mosque or the supermarket – and strike a blow for your people as you leave the bloody bodies dead and dying on the tarmac.
Tell me – are you not entertained?
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