ADL cheers Tucker Carlson’s ouster at Fox News, where he had long embraced white nationalist rhetoric

BY ANDREW LAPIN APRIL 24, 2023 3:23 PM

Tucker Carlson speaking on Fox News on April 9, 2021. Carlson's comments about immigrants prompted the Anti-Defamation League to call for his firing. (Screen shot)

(JTA) — In a move that shocked many, Fox News announced on Monday that it had “parted ways” with Tucker Carlson, the network’s most-watched host, whose on-air embrace of white nationalist conspiracy theories had defined its editorial voice since 2017.

The channel didn’t give a reason for Carlson’s departure in its press release, which said that his last program aired Friday, and its own staff was reportedly blindsided by the move. But it came shortly after Fox News paid nearly $800 million in a high-profile defamation settlement to Dominion Voting Systems, in part because of lies Carlson told his viewers about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election.

[color="Red"]Carlson is separately facing a lawsuit from a Jewish former producer on his show, who alleges that senior staff fostered an office culture full of sexism and antisemitism, including berating an Israeli employee for taking the High Holidays off from work. The producer, Abby Grossberg, also said that she had been pushed by Fox to give false testimony in the Dominion case.

Citing anonymous sources, the Los Angeles Times reported that Carlson had been fired and that the decision to do so had come from Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch himself. [color="Red"]The reason, the source said, had less to do with the Dominion settlement than with Grossberg’s lawsuit, and with Carlson’s commentary on other issues including the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

To the Anti-Defamation League, the firing was long overdue. The group’s leader called for Fox to fire Carlson in 2021, after the host first promoted the white-supremacist Great Replacement theory on air.

“It’s about time,” tweeted the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, on Monday. “For far too long, Tucker Carlson has used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic & anti-LGBTQ hate to millions.”

At the time, Fox rebuffed the ADL’s petition weeks later. The network said that Carlson had actually been talking about voting rights when he outlined the Great Replacement theory, a far-right belief that attributes a diversifying electorate to a shadowy conspiracy, typically engineered by Jews, to replace white voters with immigrants and minority groups.

https://www.jta.org/2023/04/24/united-states/adl-cheers-tucker-carlsons-ouster-at-fox-news-where-he-had-long-embraced-white-nationalist-rhetoric