Droogan worked on several studies of online far-right for the Australian government, following a 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white supremacist who was allegedly radicalized online. He calls Carlson’s reinforcement of the Great Replacement theory “the most dangerous of his actions.” This theory has been cited as a motivation by several white supremacist terrorists, including the perpetrator of the Christchurch shootings.
According to Droogan, there is an implicit violence in this theory, particularly when filtered through an American perspective. US mainstream media, and Fox in particular, give a platform to those who use conspiracy terminology – including references to “elites” and “globalists” and nods to the “great reset”, such as those made by Vlaardingerbroek – in a way that rarely happens on social media. broadcast TV in Europe or Australia.
“Terms like ‘race war,’ concepts like accelerationism – going out there and creating societal crises or exaggerating them to intensify them and create a kind of culminating, cleansing violence against all of these threats to white identity – really come from the American psyche and popular culture,” says Droogan.
It is impossible to draw a direct line between the content on Tucker Carlson tonight and political events inside or outside the United States. But his place within the information ecosystem means that he has been, at the very least, a passive participant in some surprising coincidences.
In June 2022, Carlson interviewed Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s then-right-wing president, who spent the months leading up to the country’s October election trying to sow doubt about the validity of the vote.
“During the interview, [Carlson] spoke the same language as the far right in Brazil,” explains Bruna Santos, researcher and activist with Coalizão Direitos na Rede in Brazil. Santos says Carlson’s emphasis on anti-communism, skepticism about the Covid pandemic and concerns about “anti-white racism” deeply resonated with Brazil’s far right. “The external approval coming from the United States,” Santos says, reinforces and validates the views of the far right in the country.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, often featured clips of Carlson’s show on his popular YouTube channel, where he has more than a million subscribers, with Portuguese translations and subtitles. These clips, along with others from Carlson’s show, would then circulate among far-right groups in the country, appearing on Telegram channels and WhatsApp groups.
