Tucker Carlson Is Not Your Friend, FFS

The American Prospect turns itself into a fascist tool.

You can find an index of all my substack posts on fascism here.

The American Prospect, a ostensibly left publication, honored Tucker Carlson’s defenestration at Fox News by…celebrating his brave lonely war against the elites.

The pro-Tucker piece is by Lee Harris and Luke Goldstein, and it’s a thoroughly repulsive whitewashing of the leading fascist propagandist of our day.

Tucker’s willingness to challenge and mock ruling elites went alongside an obsessively nativist message that alienated viewers who might otherwise have embraced his populist perspective. His popularity with a wide audience begs the question why other nightly news shows that attacked him didn’t raise the same critiques, without the nativism.

One answer is that Tucker Carlson Tonight was an outlier in corporate-owned cable news, which is typically hostile to independent critiques of executives and political elites. The show declined to play the gatekeeping role that many of Carlson’s detractors demand of mainstream media platforms. Carlson hosted heads of state in the same week as fringe characters of both the far left and far right. He tapped into populist insights, cutting through left- and right-wing echo chambers and putting hard questions to corporate executives and members of the political establishment.

The article goes on to fawningly praise Carlson for his opposition to self-driving cars, his attacks on some Silicon Valley firms, and of course for his Lindberghian devotion to Vladimir Putin, which the Prospect unaccountably thinks has something to do with a commitment to peace.

The Prospect authors add some obligatory links to round-ups of Carlson’s nativist views. But the nativism—or, hey, let’s call it what it actually is, the fascism—is presented as somhow caducous rather than essential to Carlson’s persona and ideology. If only we could duplicate that smug smirk but without the loathing of women, Black people, Jews, queer people—we could convince Carlson’s audience of violent Nazi shitheads to slap money down for a subscription to the American Propsect!

As I’ve noted before,  Carlson directs death threats and harassment at leftists all the time. His business model is terrorizing progressives. If you’re a progressive, and you can’t show minimal antifascist solidarity for the people Carlson has come after, I’m not really sure that there’s much hope for you.

But I guess it’s worth making a couple of points.

First, from the Dominion discovery, we know for a fact that Tucker lies not only about facts; he lies deliberately about his own beliefs. Carlson knew that the election was not rigged. But he went on the air and repeatedly said the election was rigged. He adopts positions he does not believe in order to boost his ratings. Or—possibly—in order to infiltrate and influence naïve dipshits on the left who are desperate to feel relevant or iconoclastic.

Why would Tucker bother with co-opting leftists? This is pretty straightforward; co-opting leftism was the whole reason for fascism in the first place. Per Robert Paxton

Fascists…profited from the inability of centrists and conservatives to keep control of a mass electorate. Whereas the notable dinosaurs disdained mass politics, fascists showed how to use it for nationalism and against the Left. They promised access to the crowd through exciting political spectacle and clever publicity techniques; ways to discipline that crowd through paramilitary organization and charismatic leadership; and the replacement of chancy elections by yes-no plebiscites.

Fascism is a mechanism for seizing mass politics from the left. As Alexander Reid Ross explains in his book Against the Fascist Creep, “it draws left-wing notions of solidarity and liberation into ultranationalist, right-wing ideology.”

The Prospect authors write as if Tucker’s fascism is separable from his populism. But Tucker, who is quite aware of his fascist audience, spouts some populist talking points specifically to divide the left.

That’s why Carlson reacted with such fury when Dutch historian Rutger Bregman called him out. Carlson brought Bregman on because Bregman had excoriated the wealthy at the Davos Economic forum; Carlson hoped he could use Bregman’s endorsement as a way to prop up his anti-elitist bona-fides. Instead Bregman accurately told Carlson he was “a millionaire funded by billionaires.” Carlson, enraged, told Bregman, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, you tiny brain”—a typically eugenics-tinged insult.

The American Prospect could easily have pointed out that Carlson is a millionaire who inherited a fortune and that he is a fascist piece of shit. Instead, they decided to do what Bregman wouldn’t, and debase themselves for a little exposure and the desperate hope that Carlson’s fanbase will love them.

But fascists don’t love leftists, and allying with violent liars and bigots is a solid way to smash your coalition to bits and set any marginalized person in the vicinity up for horrific betrayal. A leftism without antifascism is worse than useless. If you look into Tucker Carlson’s slack face and see an ally, then you’re not a leftist. At the very best, you’re a dupe and a tool.

Update 12:37 PM: David Dayen, the editor of the prospect, acknowledged on twitter that the piece praising Carlson “fell short”. I don’t really think the response was adequate, but it’s better than nothing.

You can find an index of all my substack posts on fascism here.