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Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Research/Study Research/Study

Fox has a long history of tolerating antisemitism on its network

Despite their recent focus on condemning antisemitism, Fox’s on-air commentary has been filled with antisemitic tropes for over a decade

Fox News personalities and guests have a history of tolerating and trafficking antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories, excusing the use of Nazi symbols, and trivializing the Holocaust and Nazism to attack Democrats, immigrants, and progressive groups. 

  • In the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza, Fox News has pivoted to focusing on antisemitism

    • Amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Fox News launched a newsletter and online vertical titled “Antisemitism Exposed.” A description from the network states that the newsletter “brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.” [The Hill, 11/8/23; Fox News, accessed 11/14/23]
    • Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch lauded the network's commitment to “standing up to hate of all kinds” and praised its work on exposing antisemitism. Murdoch stated that “it is important that we all stand up — that we expose and address all forms of antisemitism.” [Fox Corp. Annual Meeting of Stockholders, 11/17/23]
  • Fox has repeatedly pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory

  • The “great replacement” theory alleges that “elites” plan to replace white populations with non-white populations, and many adherents attribute the supposed plot to Jewish people. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, some adherents “blame powerful Jewish individuals such as financier and philanthropist George Soros or use coded antisemitic language to identify shadowy ‘elites’ or ‘globalists’” in discussing the conspiracy theory. [SPLC, 5/17/22]

     

    • Fox personalities and guests on both the “news” and “opinion” sides pushed the “great replacement” theory while discussing the end of Title 42, a Trump-era immigration policy limiting migration during the pandemic. [Media Matters, 5/15/23]
    • Fox Business correspondent Jackie DeAngelis pushed the “great replacement” theory on Fox’s Outnumbered, claiming, “They're trying to change the demographics in this country. They want more people in this country that will turn red states purpler, and then eventually blue.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 12/13/22]
    • On Fox & Friends, host Brian Kilmeade insinuated that the Biden administration was pushing the “great replacement,” asking, “Do they want more illegals here in this country, somehow to dilute the population from American citizens?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/10/22]
    • Former Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson claimed that the “great replacement” theory was the Democrats’ “electoral strategy.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 7/19/22]
    • In a 2022 study, Media Matters found that at least 17 Fox News hosts, 7 contributors, and 22 guests had utilized “great replacement” rhetoric in their commentary. [Media Matters, 6/30/22
    • In another segment, Carlson again claimed that “mass immigration” was “transform[ing] the country,” adding “In other words, you're being replaced, and there's nothing you can do about it. So, shut up.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 4/21/21]
    • Lachlan Murdoch publicly defended Carlson's use of “great replacement” theory rhetoric and endorsed Carlson’s claim that he was raising “a voting rights question.” [Media Matters, 4/12/21]
    • Fox pushed the antisemitic conspiracy theory that motivated the Tree of Life shooter. Fox News hosts continued to blame Soros and “left-wing money” for bringing caravans to the border, even after the shooter blamed Jewish people “for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants.” [Media Matters, 4/11/19]
    • Fox News again pushed the same conspiracy theory that seemed to inspire the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which killed 20 and injured dozens more. [Media Matters, 8/5/19]
  • Fox lobbed attacks at prominent Jewish financier George Soros

    • On The Story with Martha MacCallum, disgraced Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed that Soros is “intent on destroying our government” because of his “sick background.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 8/17/23]
    • Fox News and other Murdoch-owned outlets praised an international right-wing political campaign targeting George Soros and his supposed “globalist society.” [Media Matters, 5/15/23]
    • The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro insisted that Soros is “absolutely behind the destruction of law and order in America.” [Fox News, The Five, 1/13/23]
    • Carlson claimed that Soros is funding “the collapse of civilization” during a segment on Chicago gang violence. A chyron during the segment read, “George Soros paid for this to happen.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/13/22]
    • After The Faulkner Focus anchor Harris Faulkner speculated that liberal district attorneys were receiving money from George Soros, guest and fellow Fox host, Brian Kilmeade claimed that Soros was using his money in “an organized, orchestrated plan to take America out from within.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 7/21/22]
    • After Fox & Friends Weekend lobbed multiple accusations at Soros of sowing societal destruction, co-host Pete Hegseth claimed that any accusation of antisemitism was “inappropriate.” [Media Matters, 6/12/22]
    • With a chyron reading, “George Soros seeking to take down America from within,” Laura Ingraham claimed that “George Soros was pouring money into local DA races.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 6/8/22]
    • Carlson’s Hungary vs. Soros, produced as an installment of his “documentary” series Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation, accuses Soros of using immigrants to destroy the national sovereignty of Hungary. [Media Matters, 1/26/22]
    • On his radio show, Fox host Mark Levin falsely claimed that Soros was a Nazi collaborator during WWII, ignoring the fact that he was 14 and hiding his identity to escape the Holocaust. [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 1/24/22; Media Matters, 9/20/10]
    • Fox News posted, and then later deleted, an antisemitic cartoon to their Instagram page that depicted George Soros as a “puppet master” manipulating crime rates. [Media Matters, 12/16/21]
    • Carlson fearmongered about Soros’ refugee resettlement organization supposedly housing refugees in “your” neighborhood, chiding, “Shut up. George Soros is richer than you, he decides what you get.” [Media Matters, 9/27/21]
    • Former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs accused Soros of “work[ing] against sovereignty” as his “tentacles reach out into various non-government organizations and nonprofits.” [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 9/11/19]
    • After Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) claimed, “It’s not antisemitic to criticize Soros,” prior to an ad break, Lou Dobbs responded, laughing, “I’m certainly glad that I didn’t just break away there.” [Media Matters, 11/1/18]
    • Fox spent years attacking “puppet master” George Soros by suggesting his “tentacles” are trying to bring about a “new world order.” [YouTube, 10/30/18]
    • After then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) attacked George Soros as being responsible for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Fox’s Ari Fleischer defended the comments as “normal political discourse.” [Media Matters, 10/29/18]
    • Disgraced former Fox host Bill O'Reilly described Soros as a “shadow puppet master” who “has his tentacles into political organizations.” [Media Matters, 3/19/15]
    • While hosting his Fox News show, Glenn Beck repeatedly maligned Soros as a “puppet master” seeking to create a “new world order” through his supposed control over social media, the Democratic party, and global financial markets. [Media Matters, 11/9/10]
  • Fox downplayed or dismissed the use of swastikas and other Nazi imagery by right-wing protesters

    • Fox News welcomed a swastika-wielding teacher as an anti-trans culture warrior. In the interview with the teacher, host Jesse Watters failed to mention that the teacher had brought a swastika to a school board meeting. [Media Matters, 6/13/23]
    • Watters claimed that people waving swastika flags at a Turning Point USA event “were probably plants.” He said The View was defaming TPUSA by highlighting neo-Nazis at the event, saying, “There was no neo-Nazis at the Turning Point event. Okay? It was mostly liberal freaks outside, and a few — like maybe three — people with Nazi flags showed up.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/27/22
    • After swastikas and Confederate flags were seen at Canada's “Freedom Convoy” trucker protest, Fox host Greg Gutfeld suggested that the extremist flags could have been planted to make conservatives look bad. He said, “They find a flag, or they plant a flag” in order to claim “this entire convoy, they’re terrorists, they’re white supremecists.” [Fox News, The Five, 2/10/22]
    • During a Fox News segment, guest and Toronto Sun reporter Joe Warmington suggested that fascist symbols present at a Canadian trucker convoy were false flags. The Fox News guest said, “As far as these horrible hate flags — I mean, those were most likely props that were put in to try to quell this thing,” adding, “I smell a rat on that.” [Fox News, America Reports, 2/10/22]
    • Gutfeld attacked the Michigan governor for criticizing the use of swastikas at a social distancing protest. He claimed they were being displayed ironically, saying, “It wasn't that there were Nazis there. It was that they were unfairly — they were unfairly comparing her to Hitler.” [Fox News, The Five, 4/17/20]
  • Fox made inappropriate comparisons to or offensive statements about the Holocaust

    • Mark Levin falsely claimed CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s parents “weren’t victims, in one way or another, of the Holocaust,” despite Blitzer's parents having survived concentration camps and his grandparents having been murdered at Auschwitz. [Media Matters, 11/2/23]
    • Matteo Cina, a Fox News staffer, posted a number of antisemitic comments on his personal TikTok page, with one reading, “It is hard to talk about the Holocaust and rising anti semitism without discussing Jewish presence in banking.” [Media Matters, 7/26/23]
    • During an attempt to defend Florida’s controversial Black history curriculum, Greg Gutfeld claimed that Jewish people “had to be useful” to survive Nazi concentration camps because “utility kept you alive.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/24/23]
    • On Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News’ Tulsi Gabbard described diversity policies as having “the very same geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 2/24/23]
    • Watters, in defending Kari Lake’s election denial, falsely equated the social stigma of denying the Holocaust and denying the 2020 election, stating, “They say she's an election denier. That's code for calling someone a Holocaust denier. It stigmatizes them as crazy.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 10/18/22]
    • Fox News contributor Jonathan Morris compared the Uvalde mass shooter, who killed 19 children and two educators, to Holocaust victims who lacked the “meaning and purpose” to survive. [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 5/25/22]
    • On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity called Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who is a Palestinian Muslim, “a Holocaust lover” and stated that the Biden administration consulting her on policy was “virulent antisemitism.” [Premiere Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 5/19/21]
    • Appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight, former Fox host Glenn Beck compared social media companies allegedly banning conservatives to Japanese internment camps and the Holocaust. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 1/12/21]
    • After the right-wing social media platform Parler came under scrutiny for its role in fomenting the January 6 insurrection, Fox host Jeanine Pirro likened the actions taken against Parler “to a Kristallnacht.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/11/21]
    • While ranting about the supposed lack of media coverage of Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption, Fox's Mark Levin insinuated it was equivalent to the lack of coverage of the Holocaust. [Fox News, Life, Liberty, Levin, 12/10/20]
    • During the COVID-19 pandemic, a Fox News guest compared reporting violations of social distancing guidelines to Jews who “would turn in their younger people” in the Warsaw Ghetto. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 5/26/20]
    • Qanta Ahmed, appearing as a guest on The Ingraham Angle, claimed that “Islamists” have “Holocaust envy.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/19/19]
    • On his radio show, Hannity claimed that the Iran nuclear deal would “result in a modern-day Holocaust” and was “unlike any crisis now we've seen since World War II.” [Premiere Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 9/29/15]
    • On Fox Business, Andrew Napolitano compared Roe v. Wade to “the philosophical argument underlying the Holocaust.” [Fox Business, Freedom Watch, 1/23/12]
  • Fox compared various progressive figures, groups, and causes to Nazis and Nazism

    • On Fox Nation’s Tucker Carlson Today, right-wing actor and comedian Roseanne Barr claimed that so-called critical race theory is “nothing but Nazism” and “antisemitism.” [Fox Nation, Tucker Carlson Today, 2/14/23]
    • Mark Levin called critical race theory “anti-white racism,” adding, “Hitler himself would agree with that kind of thinking process.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 1/20/23]
    • Carlson predicted that Democrats would use “Nazi race science” to “certify the racial purity” of Black Americans after a guaranteed income program was proposed by a reparations task-force in California. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 12/14/22]
    • Carlson seemingly compared the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Children's Hospital Association to Nazis after the groups requested that the Department of Justice investigate threats made by anti-trans activists. Carlson invoked “the German government of 80 years ago,” an apparent reference to the Nazi Party. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 10/14/22]
    • On Fox News, Carlson appeared to affirm Live Action founder Lila Rose’s comments likening “pro-abortion advocates” to Nazis and claiming that abortion is akin to “eugenics.” Carlson claimed that a pro-choice commentator was “making the Nazi argument.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 6/24/22]
    • Carlson compared vaccine requirements to Nazi and Imperial Japanese Army medical experimentation. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 1/21/22]
    • Former Fox radio host Todd Starnes likened undocumented immigrants to Nazis. He compared “the Nazis invading France and Western Europe” to the supposed “invasion” of “a rampaging horde of illegal aliens.” Later, he added, “People used to fight wars over stuff like that.” [Fox Nation, Starnes Country8/14/19]
    • Laura Ingraham and co-host Raymond Arroyo called Planned Parenthood “butchers” responsible for a “Black Holocaust.” [PodcastOne, The Laura Ingraham Show Podcast, 4/4/19]
    • Former Fox contributor Bernie Goldberg equated “liberals on college campuses” to the Nazi “brownshirts.” He claimed, “If there are any brownshirts in this country, it's liberals on college campuses who break up demonstrations and speeches because they disagree with what's being said.” [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 3/9/16]
    • On his former Fox News show, Bill O'Reilly seemingly compared pro-choice Democrats to Nazis. O’Reilly asked his guest if “the Democratic Party and liberals” having “talked themselves into the belief that … [a fetus] is not a human being” was “the same thing” as “the German people talking themselves into the National Socialist Party swell?” [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 8/3/15]
    • Interviewing then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, O'Reilly once again appeared to compare pro-choice individuals and institutions to Nazis. Claiming that Planned Parenthood was “harvesting” fetuses, O’Reilly said, “Many people feel this is Nazi stuff. This is what they did in the Third Reich with these experiments.” [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/30/15]
    • Then-Fox News contributor Erick Erickson compared Planned Parenthood’s president to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz. He wrote, “Cecile Richards is the closest we have come in America to Josef Mengele.” [Twitter, 7/21/15] 
    • On his radio show, Hannity said that statements from Planned Parenthood officials sounded like something “you’d expect to hear from a high-ranking official in the Nazi regime.” [Premier Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/16/15
    • Former Fox News host Eric Bolling claimed Occupy Wall Street protesters were “communist, Nazi, antisemite ... pot-smoking, sex-addicted morons.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/19/11]
  • Fox compared Democrats, government officials, and Black Lives Matter protesters to the Gestapo

    • Laura Ingraham complained that top universities removed SAT requirements “after the George Floyd riots and the demands made by the BLM Gestapo.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/20/23]
    • Ingraham claimed Joe Biden is using the IRS as his “new Gestapo” after Biden’s administration hired new IRS agents to focus on the wealthy. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/9/22]
    • Former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon said on Fox News that the FBI is “the Gestapo.” Bannon made the comment in response to the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence over the former president’s handling of classified documents. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/8/22]
    • Ingraham praised anti-mask restaurant owner Tony Roman and aired a clip in which he called public health officials “dictators” and “enemies of freedom” with “legions of mini-Gestapo.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/28/21]
    • Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo compared Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) to the Gestapo for her Trump Accountability Project. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 11/22/20]
    • Fox host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery compared then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s COVID-19 restrictions to the practices of the Gestapo. She fearmongered about the “next wave” of the “real Gestapo that comes in and spies on people and lets the police know.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/13/20]
    • Jeanine Pirro accused special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of resorting to “Gestapo tactics” after the FBI arrested Roger Stone at his home. [Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, 1/26/19]
  • Fox hosts and guests demonstrated other ties to antisemitic groups and individuals

    • Fox News contributor Tom Homan appeared on a Hitler-praising antisemite’s show and pushed the “great replacement” theory. The host told Homan, “I’d say my audience would agree with this: If anybody that served in government has ever sounded like a Patriot Streetfighter, it’s you.” [Media Matters, 10/11/23]
    • After appearing on Fox Nation’s Tucker Carlson Today to promote his own show, right-wing troll Alex Stein hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Stein praised Fuentes as “very funny” and “really talented.” [Media Matters, 7/21/23]
    • Fox’s Outkick hired Curt Schilling, a QAnon and Parkland shooting conspiracy theorist who once called George Soros “the puppeteer of the Democratic party.” [Media Matters, 2/23/23]
    • Tucker Carlson interviewed Ye, formerly Kanye West, and helped make him into a right-wing hero rather than exposing his antisemitic remarks. Carlson praised Ye for being willing to “speak so honestly and so movingly about what he believes.” [Media Matters, 12/1/22]
    • Carlson repeatedly courted Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Orban has whitewashed Hungary’s antisemitic history and blamed Jews for standing in the way of his anti-immigrant policies. [Media Matters, 5/23/22; Politico, 5/13/19]
    • Carlson repeatedly hosted retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, who pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories and used the term “rootless cosmopolitans,” a Stalin-era antisemitic dog whistle. [Media Matters, 3/16/22]
    • After a white nationalist troll Douglass Mackey was charged with election interference, Carlson seemed to pretend that his white nationalist and antisemitic background didn't exist. Mackey shared several memes insinuating that Jews controlled the media. [Media Matters, 1/28/21]
    • Former Fox Nation host Lara Logan cited a white supremacist and antisemitic outlet to claim that the election was “stolen.” [Media Matters, 11/16/20]
    • Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell was banned from both Fox News and Fox Business network after claiming on Lou Dobbs Tonight that a George “Soros-funded State Department” was funding a migrant “caravan” at the southern border. [Deadline, 10/28/18]
    • Carlson interviewed the co-founder of social media site Minds.com, which was filled with Holocaust denial and white supremacists. Carlson framed the interview around claims that Google is “trying to censor” the website, but did not push back about the site’s content. [Media Matters, 2/22/18]
    • Fox News was forced to fire reporter Emily Austen after she went on an antisemitic and racist rant. In an interview with Barstool Sports, Austen made reference to a “stingy” Jewish person she had once served at a bar and employed other racist stereotypes directed at other groups. [Jewish News, 6/14/16]
  • Fox tolerated a culture of antisemitism by inviting antisemitic guests and allowing on-air and in-office comments to go unchecked

    • Fringe antisemitic guest, Bryan “Hotep Jesus” Sharpe, appeared on Fox’s Gutfeld! to promote his misogynistic blog shortly after Greg Gutfeld himself came under fire for antisemitic comments. [Media Matters, 10/3/23]
    • Virulent antisemite Michael Scheuer told Jeanine Pirro that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is needed “to take care of these vermin” who “rigged” elections. [Media Matters, 7/7/23]
    • In a lawsuit against Fox News over the network’s alleged hostile work environment, the plaintiff Abby Grossberg cited antisemitic remarks about herself and other Jewish colleagues. [Media Matters, 3/23/23]
    • After Donald Trump met with Ye and Nick Fuentes, Fox News barely covered it, spending only 7 minutes on the subject in the six days that followed. [Media Matters, 11/28/22]
    • Lara Logan shared conspiracy theories about “Putin’s purge of the Rothschild money changers” and Jewish people supposedly masterminding the U.S. Civil War. [Media Matters, 3/28/22]
    • After Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pushed the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” and “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” Fox News barely covered the subject. Fox made no mention of the story in the weekend that followed. [Media Matters, 7/17/23]
  • Fox repeated the “great reset” conspiracy theory

  • Many believers of the “great reset” theory believe that World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab, a Jewish economist who founded the WEF, is subversively pursuing means of social controls through government overreach and the supposed rollback of personal liberty. Some accuse Schwab of working in cahoots with other prominent Jewish financial and political figures, such as George Soros or the Rothschild family, in order to usher in the “new world order.” [Anti-Defamation League, 12/29/20; Institute for Strategic Dialogue Global, accessed 11/7/23]

    • Fox News repeatedly hosted Marc Morano, who pushed the “great reset” conspiracy theory. Morano told Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy, “This is all about increasing their power, imposing their vision, and their vision is population control, economic control, and basically civil liberties control of every human on the earth.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 11/14/22]
    • Fox Nation’s “documentary” series Tucker Carlson Originals prominently featured a right-wing fitness guru who describes a supposed globalist conspiracy aimed at “isolating communities” and “sickening [them] through food and also through so-called medicine” in order to suppress the power of individuals. “That's the Great Reset in a nutshell,” said the anonymous fitness guru, “Own nothing. Live in the pod. Eat the soy.” [Media Matters, 10/06/22]