Lachlan Murdoch’s Mettle

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Congratulations are in order to the chairman of Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch, for his refusal to bow to a demand that he fire Tucker Carlson. The demand was made by the Anti-Defamation League after a broadcast by Mr. Carlson on immigration. The ADL reckoned Mr. Carlson’s “rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists — it was a bullhorn.” Mr. Murdoch rejected the claim with a polite note.

It’s nice to see a press baron standing up for a controversial newsroom star for a change. ADL’s complaint is that Mr. Carlson had given, in a broadcast with Mark Steyn,* “an impassioned defense of the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’ the hateful notion that the white race is in danger of being ‘replaced’ by a rising tide of non-whites.” In fact, Mr. Carlson had distanced himself from that view.

Lachlan Murdoch, in his response to the ADL, declared that Fox “shares your values and abhors anti-semitism, white supremacy and racism of any kind.” He also recalled — “fondly” — the ADL honoring his father, Rupert Murdoch, in 2010 at a banquet at which Mr. Murdoch père delivered one of the great speeches against anti-Semitism ever delivered in New York. He ended by quoting the Zionist prophet Vladimir Jabotinsky.

That dinner came when the ADL was led by Abraham Foxman. In 2015, he stepped down, after 50 years at the League. It then hired as national director an ex-aide to President Obama, Jonathan Greenblatt. Since then, the ADL has moved leftward and become, in our estimate, more partisan. Mr. Greenblatt acknowledged that the ADL had honored Rupert Murdoch, but told Lachlan Murdoch that it would not do so today.

“ADL honored your father over a decade ago,” Mr. Greenblatt condescended, “but let me be clear that we would not do so today, and it does not absolve you, him, the network, or its board from the moral failure of not taking action against Mr. Carlson.” Mr. Foxman told us, as he did the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that he was proud of having honored Rupert Murdoch and would be proud to do so again. What a mensch.

Our own views on immigration favor, we sometimes like to say, a merger with the pro-life movement, meaning a shared appreciation for the value of what economists call human capital. We believe that given liberty and market incentives (as opposed to being made dependent on welfare) most persons will produce more than they consume, contributing to America’s wealth. We see our diverse population as our greatest asset.

We don’t mind saying that, for our taste, Mr. Carlson sometimes skates close to the edge. He may yet get into trouble. We don’t worry about him as much, though, as we do about his competitors on the left. Our sense of this has grown during nearly 50 years of reporting in America, the developing world, the Mideast, and Europe, where a bitter anti-Semitism lurks on the anti-Zionist left.

In any event, it would not be too much to say that, in America today, the leading Jewish defense agency — meaning the leading voice in defense of the Jews and Israel — is the Murdoch press. That is, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News. The Journal, in particular, had already seized the van by the time Rupert Murdoch bought it, but, on the evidence this week, the Murdochs are determined to carry on.

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* Whose columns had appeared regularly in our print edition.


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