Anti-Defamation League CEO Tries to Get Ads Pulled From Tucker Carlson’s Show but It Backfires Beautifully
By Brandon Morse | Apr 21, 2021
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is constantly right over the target when it comes to his commentary and as a result, he’s one of the most-watched people in the United States with millions tuning in daily to hear what he has to say. This makes him one of the most hated figures to the left but instead of trying to argue his points, they consistently try to have him de-platformed.
Many have tried and failed, but now Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wants to try his hand. Suffice to say, it didn’t work, and it may have even backfired on him.
According to The Hill, Greenblatt attempted to claim Carlson was nodding to White Supremacists on his show two weeks ago when he said that the immigration policies being implemented by Democrats could be used to lessen the voting power of Americans. As a result, Greenblatt asked advertisers on Tuesday to withdraw their ads from Fox because, as he claimed, Carlson was peddling racist conspiracy theories.
“Choose to pause or even pull your ads, not just from problematic programs, but altogether from networks that don’t respect all people or that repeat baseless conspiracies that endanger all of us,” Greenblatt said.
Greenblatt claimed that Carlson’s rhetoric mirrored the White Supremacist “Great Replacement” theory which states that other races are attempting to breed white people out of existence.
This prompted Fox News CEO Lachlan Murdoch to come to Carlson’s defense and make it clear that Carlson himself made it clear what he was referring to at the time with his commentary, which was a voting rights issue, not a racial issue about America’s societal makeup.
Greenblatt pressed forward regardless, claiming that Carlson was signaling white supremacists and that it “was not lost on those white supremacists and bigots who are now applauding him for embracing their talking points.”
“Now, I don’t need to tell you how ugly this rhetoric is — especially when it is repeated by someone with millions of viewers across the country,” Greenblatt said. “But it’s also dangerous, literally a prompt to violence.”
Greenblatt did not elaborate on which white supremacist groups or individuals were applauding Carlson, and something tells me you ought not to hold your breath on ever getting an answer.
The ADL CEO then called for censorship of certain ideas he calls “fringe,” urging companies to use their dollars to enforce censorship on a corporate level.
“As an industry, you are uniquely positioned to push these networks — whether mass media or social media — to do their utmost to ensure that hatred and conspiracy theories are not amplified,” Greenblatt. “Yes, the First Amendment allows for people to espouse fringe theories — but we need to keep them on the fringe.”
But the vitriol Greenblatt had fired off came right back at him. As The Hill reported, other prominent Jewish leaders mounted a defense of Carlson and Fox News and pushed back against the ADL, including one of ADL’s former presidents.
“Fox is not an anti-Semitic network,” said former ADL President Abraham Foxman. “It’s a lot of things, but it’s not an anti-Semitic network, and it’s certainly not an anti-Israel network.”
The Jerusalem Post reported that 1,500 rabbis under the Coalition for Jewish Values wrote a letter, blasting the ADL for its “grossly misplaced charges of antisemitism,” adding that the organization had “grossly misplaced charges of antisemitism.” (See Article in JNews.us)
As the Post reported, the rabbis laid into the ADL even more, pointing out its naked partisanship:However, the CJV’s letter mentioned that the ADL’s focus on these right wing neo-Nazis as the core source of antisemitism neglects radical Islam and the democratic and college progressive movements, which are just as dangerous.The letter additionally attacked ADL for ‘lending credibility’ to American civil right activist and host of MSNBC, Al Sharpton, who expressed his regrets privately to Jewish leaders for the incendiary rhetoric that helped fuel the deadly Crown Heights riots in 1991.
The CJV then urged the ADL to get back to what it was supposed to be doing since 1913 and continue to fight real antisemitism without any “partisan preoccupations.”
Indeed, the ADL has become incredibly partisan to the point where they’ve even undermined their stated mission. For instance, Greenblatt teaming up with Al Sharpton to push a Facebook boycott to ban “hate speech” when Sharpton himself is guilty of antisemitic hate speech and inciting violence against Jewish people.
As the Jewish News Syndicate reported, former Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism lashed out at Greenblatt’s appearance with Sharpton as “the worst hypocrisy in the world.”
“How in G-d’s name isn’t the ADL ashamed of themselves?” said Hikind. “They need to explain to the public and their supporters why it is OK to align yourself with Al Sharpton, a race-baiter and inciter of violence in the Crown Heights riots.”
The Crown Heights riots occurred in 1991, where black people targeted Jewish people for violence, with Sharpton having inflamed tensions and encouraged violence against what he called the “blood-sucking” Jews.
“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” he famously said.
Sharpton was seen among the rioting crowd who were chanting things such as “no justice, no peace” and “death to the Jews.”
Even after the NYPD managed to stop the riot, violence continued long afterward.
Despite all this, Greenblatt still chose to team up with Sharpton, an actual antisemite. Meanwhile, he and the ADL continue to attack Carlson and Fox News who are far from being an antisemitic network.