Carnes: Happy to replace this theory
The proverbial “they” want to cancel anything they perceive as a threat to their way of life, whether real or imagined, but either way perpetuated recently in the media by professional fear mongers like an ex-president, Elise Stefanik, J.D. Vance and, of course, the perpetually confused Tucker Carlson.
Yes, the beloved far-right ideology of attempting to rid the world of whatever they happen to disagree with at the moment through “cancel culture” has a new whip to crack, and it’s known as the (cue up the overly dramatic and eerie intro music …) “Great Replacement Theory.”
Sounds scary, right?
That’s exactly what it’s supposed to sound like, otherwise twits like Carlson wouldn’t be unable to alter the mindset of the Trumplican sheep so eager to be told what to be angry about this week so Fox can sell Viagra and gold coins as a “hedge against the Biden inflation.”
Good grief, this nonsense is getting old. In fact it was old before it even started.
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“Great Replacement Theory” is better defined as “White Replacement Theory,” as the vast majority of those claiming the existence of such a theory are insecure white Christian males in fear of losing their vaulted stature atop the hierarchical pyramid of self-perceived white privilege.
A theory is basically a rational idea used to justify an action or conclusion, and WRT is an insult to the word itself as it claims liberals, meaning anyone who votes for a Democrat (and the Jews, we must never leave out the Jews) are secretly collaborating to purposely marginalize and replace white voters in order to achieve political goals.
An African American Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina, synagogues in Pennsylvania and California, mosques in New Zealand, a Walmart in Texas and now a supermarket in a black neighborhood of Buffalo — all targets of homicidal gunmen advocating the xenophobic, racist and antisemitic poison of WRT as motivation for their respective cold-blooded and cowardly murders.
So why am I once again highlighting Tucker Carlson?
Simple: In April a New York Times investigation found that in more than 400 hundred of his shows Carlson had advanced the idea that a “cabal of elites want to force demographic change through immigration.”
That’s why.
The man has been a constant promoter of this particularly vile, right-wing extremists’ school of thought, and innocent people are being murdered as a roundabout result.
Yes. Yes, we all know and agree the guns do the actual killing, but make no mistake about it, words can and do indeed kill as well, and as President Joe Biden said last week, “White supremacy is a poison,” and nobody is selling the snake oil more successfully than Carlson, along with those of similarly warped agendas.
And their pretend theories should all be replaced.
Richard Carnes, of Avon, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.