Fox News star Tucker Carlson hosted former Bush administration official Catherine Austin Fitts on Wednesday to share her theory that the financial system is creating “digital concentration camps.” Fitts is a prominent 9/11 truther and anti-vax activist who has written that “Ziocons” control top U.S. officials as “puppets.”

Carlson began the segment by alleging the shuttering of some bank branches and ATMs indicates that a shadowy global cabal is planning to eliminate cash in order to control the world population and leave people with “no power whatsoever.” 

He then brought on Fitts, whom he identified as the founder of The Solari Report and a former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, saying that she had been “monitoring this.” Fitts explained to Carlson’s primetime audience that thanks to this purported plot by “the central banks” and other unidentified entities, “we're going into a system where literally our homes, our cars, our communities become digital concentration camps.”

Fitts became a prominent figure in the 9/11 Truth movement following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She was “a board member of 911Truth.org -- a Web site organized by citizens who believe the government is covering up the true cause of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” according to a 2004 report from the South Bend Tribune that was republished on that website. That group’s mission statement alleges that “elements within the US government and covert policy apparatus must have orchestrated or participated in the execution of the attacks for these to have happened in the way that they did.” Fitts is also identified as a prominent 9/11 truther in a 2006 Washington Post report, which states that she believes “that the ‘most unbelievable conspiracy’ theory is the one retailed by the government.”

FItts signed a 2004 petition “facilitated by” 911Truth.org “which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.” That document earned notoriety in 2009 after Fox reported that then-Obama White House adviser Van Jones’ name appeared as a signatory (Jones stated that he was misled about the petition, which was “something that I never saw and never signed onto,” but resigned amid the firestorm). Fitts told Salon.com following that controversy, “I signed the 9/11 truth statement and stand by my signature.”

More recently, Fitts has made a name for herself by promoting COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories. (She also alleges more broadly that childhood vaccination has caused “disabilities and death inflicted on our children by what I now call ‘the great poisoning.’”) 

Fitts gained viral fame for her appearance in the 2020 documentary Planet Lockdown, which was eventually banned by Facebook and YouTube. Media Matters previously reported of her role in the film:

The Post further reported that Fitts “has worked with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to promote unfounded claims about the pandemic and to oppose lockdown measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus.”

The Solari Report, the Fitts-founded website Carlson plugged in his introduction, largely features financial commentary – but it also regularly publishes anti-vax commentary. Fitts, for example, authored for the site a glowing review of a recent book by Kennedy’s anti-vax group Children’s Health Defense, which she describes as providing “a critically important and sobering contribution to our understanding of the dangers resulting from injecting or ingesting poison masquerading as medicine and doing so without full and fair disclosure of the potential consequences.”

In 2022, Fitts posted to her website what appears to be a threatening letter addressed to numerous top U.S. health officials, including then-acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. In the document, titled “Notice of Liability,” Fitts warned the recipients that if they approved the COVID-19 for children, the government could not “protect you and your families from the laws of God or from the social and economic ramifications of your family and neighbors understanding what you have done and the resulting death, disease and bankruptcies they have experienced at an intimate level.”

She added, “Please act in the highest and best interests for all concerned and, if you are not free to do so, resign before more genocide is approved and the personal consequences to you and those you love are irreversible.” 

Fitts’ appearance on Carlson’s show drew attention that night when CNN reporter Oliver Darcy noted that the chyron during the interview read, “It’s looking more likely that we will see the day when our lizard overlords ban cash.” Responding to the chyron, conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild commented, “‘Lizard Overlords’ just means Jews. Tucker is saying Jewish bankers will use their incalculable power and influence to ban paper money to help usher in the New World Order and global government.” 

Fitts has similarly warned in her own writing of the pernicious influence of “Ziocons,” as The Bulwark writer Christian Vanderbrouk noted. In 2017, she wrote, “Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Nancy Pelosi – these people stopped caring long ago about the conditions that create civilization. They are puppets on Ziocon strings.”