Tucker Carlson: Propagandist, White Supremacist, Criminal
Years ago, around 2016, my sister commented online that “Trump supporters are Nazis.” One of her “friends” (more of an acquaintance) took umbrage with that. He was a Trump supporter and didn’t like being called a Nazi.
Yes, he could, and can continue to, fuck himself. But unbeknownst to him, he had a bit of a point.
My sister was not strictly correct in saying that Trump supporters, implying all of them, are Nazis. Even using the word Nazi loosely to scoop up all reactionary and white supremacist smegma-smears, it can’t be applied to literally all of them. Not all of them are bigoted monsters. Some of them are just very stupid.
She would have been more accurate in saying, “Nazis are Trump supporters.” That statement is inarguable. Nazis supported Trump. They felt allyship with Trump. Ask a Nazi, a neonazi, a white supremacist, a Klansman, a skinhead, an incel, a QAnon’er, a troll, a pedophile, a fascist, a mass shooter, a dickhead, a domestic abuser, a shithead, a degenerate, or a douchebag who their preferred candidate was in 2016 or 2020, and they’ll answer Trump.
Not all Trump supporters might not be Nazis, but all Nazis are probably Trump supporters. Pedantic, but accurate.
Whether or not Trump is a white supremacist (he is), the fact that he had/has the white supremacist bloc on lock makes the question moot. If you’re in the crowd with all the Nazis, your beliefs and allegiances coincide with those of Nazis. You’re either a Nazi, or are going to get confused for a Nazi, or better get out of there and away from all those Nazis.
Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist. He would argue against that assertion publicly, furrowing his heavily makeuped caveman bitchboy face in feigned bewilderment and offense. But he is. He regularly expresses opinions which are not only in line with white supremacist ideology and conspiracy theories, but sometimes taken directly from white supremacist sources. He is the greatest purveyor of white supremacist propaganda in mainstream media.
Whether you yourself are a white supremacist, receiving mass support from white supremacists makes the matter almost moot. When you are actively parroting white supremacist propaganda and disseminating lightly sanitized versions of their idiotic and toxic rhetoric for mass consumption, there’s no point arguing that you’re not a white supremacist. It’s disingenuous. As is claiming that you’re not responsible for any violence done as a direct or indirect result of your propagandizing.
Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl did not personally kill people or directly instruct others to do so. They were just propagandists, who stirred up nationalist fervor, promoted hatred against “undesirable” categories of people, helped create the environment in which violence was done by a relative handful of the citizenry and accepted by many more. Propagandists of this sort do not personally commit violence, but incite it and justify it and make it palatable to their audience. On the scale of Riefenstahl to Goebbels, Carlson is near the top.
Tucker Carlson hides behind a thin veneer of plausible deniability. He pretends that he’s not encouraging anything, most of the time not even making direct statements. Instead, he shrewdly “only asks questions.” He drones on and on about bigoted views and myths about immigrant invasions and LGBTQ indoctrination and white genocide or “replacement theory,” and caps his screeds with culpability loopholes, like saying that maybe people who believe that garbage “have a point.” He won’t openly take credit for the vitriol he’s vomiting and claim his role as a white supremacist mouthpiece, but he’ll grant validity to fascists, Nazis, monsters, and murderers by suggesting to his audience that “maybe they have a point.”
Fox News has been the premier outlet for bigoted rightwing propaganda since its inception. It came into being because the neofascist oligarchs who created it believed that the existing conservative corporate media establishment had too strong of a leftist bias. It has since been crowded out of its spot on top of the batshit reactionary fascist shitpile by the likes of OAN and assorted social media psychotics. But this has only made Carlson amp up his bullshit and made Fox double down on their investment in him. He gets them their highest ratings, even as he drives away advertisers and anyone with sense and the absence of a severe personality disorder. Fox is able to take that hit because their profits don’t come primarily from advertisers but from subscribers. Meaning if you pay for cable, and Fox News is included in your package, you’re paying to keep them afloat and keep the toxic propaganda flood coming. You’re paying for multi-millionaire Tucker Carlson to continue riling up the “real America,” inciting hatred and violence through disinformation, packaged in conspiracy rhetoric against “liberal elites” originating in antisemitic tropes, from his home studio in Maine.
If you have a problem with that, insist that your cable provider remove Fox News from your subscription or cancel their service. Or put him on trial, like Goebbels would have been if he hadn’t killed himself. Or just keep hoping that Carlson will do the country a favor by blowing his brains out in a bunker.