(LifeSiteNews) — Conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon on Monday decried immigration policies that have upended cultures, eroded national sovereignty, and worsened economic woes. Carlson also pointed out that advocacy for abortion, euthanasia, and sterilizing transgender ideology by globalist elites and world leaders has coincided with policies permitting widespread immigration, which is rapidly altering the cultural landscape.
In an interview on Monday posted directly to X (formerly Twitter), Carlson and Bannon anchored their discussion in commenting on the recent horrific stabbing attack in Dublin, Ireland, which was allegedly committed by an Algerian immigrant and quickly triggered widespread anti-immigration riots.
Ep. 41 Dublin in flames. What’s happening in Ireland will happen here, at scale. Steve Bannon explains. pic.twitter.com/KzrRUJq0ZL
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 27, 2023
Five people, including three children, were injured in the attack outside the Dublin school. The suspect, a 50-year-old Algerian immigrant who has lived in Ireland for over 20 years and is a legal resident of the country, was hospitalized after being subdued by passersby.
Peaceful protests in response to the incident later devolved into much-publicized riots Thursday night, in which hundreds took to the streets to torch vehicles and damage properties. The head of Ireland’s national police force blasted the rioters as “complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology.”
But Carlson expressed sympathy with the protesters who have been angered by rising numbers of immigrants entering their country from around the world.
“The country’s been completely transformed by immigration,” he said during his opening monologue. “Many people in Ireland are absolutely sick of this.”
The attack and subsequent outraged response comes as illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees have flooded into Ireland in recent years. The tiny country of five million people saw some 121,000 immigrants enter the country last year alone, a 15-year high, with many coming from the EU, UK, and Ukraine. Twenty percent of the total population of the Dublin region is now foreign-born.
Carlson pointed out that the issue of mass migration isn’t isolated to Ireland but is concurrently happening “across the west.”
Bannon noted that, just as Ireland has experienced a surge of immigration, millions of illegal immigrants have also flooded into the U.S. from Latin America and many other countries.
He referenced Republican commentator and author Ann Coulter, who has suggested that as many as 60 million illegal immigrants could be currently living in the U.S. And Carlson and Bannon also noted that the drastic rates of immigration are coinciding with sharply declining birth rates among the existing population.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 1.72 million illegal border crossings during fiscal year 2021 and a staggering 2.76 million in fiscal year 2022, per NBC. Meanwhile, as LifeSiteNews has reported, a 2021 CDC report found that births in the U.S. had dropped to their lowest level since 1979, with the overall fertility rate reaching a record low.
READ: Elon Musk challenges ‘overpopulation’ narrative, warns about risks of low birth rate
Bannon said that any discussions about the “mathematics” of simultaneously increased immigration and decreasing birth rates lead to accusations of promoting the “great replacement theory.”
Broadly speaking, the “great replacement theory” suggests that globalist politicians are intentionally encouraging widespread immigration from third-world countries to replace the dying-out populations of western nations, including the U.S.
The theory as such has been associated with racist and white supremacist ideology, but its premises have also been openly articulated by some Democrats.
Last year, pro-abortion U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer claimed mass immigration was vital for the survival of the U.S. because not enough Americans are having children, LifeSiteNews reported at the time. The remarks drew swift mockery from conservatives, who pointed out that Democrat policies on issues including abortion and same-sex “marriage” have been massive contributors to America’s declining birth rate.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro remarked that Schumer had “outlined the so-called ‘great replacement theory,’” something that’s “fine when he says it” and “only wrong when you notice it.”
In their commentary, Bannon and Carlson suggested that the so-called “great replacement theory” could actually be articulating a “common sense” observation concerning immigration policies coexisting with social policies in the west concerning abortion and euthanasia.
“They’re telling American citizens who were born here, ‘Have an abortion. Go ahead. End your life with euthanasia. Make sure your kids are trans,’” Carlson said of left-wing social policy messaging, arguing that Americans are being actively discouraged from “leading longer lives and having more kids” while leftists are “telling the rest of the third world: ‘Move here.’” Global organizations like the WHO also actively advocate for abortion in developing countries.
Bannon argued that “people know that something’s quite wrong here in the country and throughout many countries of the world,” but contended that “if you stand up to it, you’re called a nativist, xenophobe, a racist, a domestic terrorist, a violent extremist.”
He said he doesn’t “blame the people” coming in large numbers from other countries seeking to live in the U.S. and other developed, western nations, noting that “if I was in that situation, I would too.”
“But that’s not what our asylum system and immigration system are supposed to do,” he said.
As LifeSiteNews has noted, critics assessing the impact of widespread illegal immigration point out that the phenomenon has led to increases in America’s crime rate, and that failure to assimilate new immigrants leads to cultural balkanization.