In late February 2022, then Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, began a pro-Russia monologue urging his audience to ask themselves the question: “Why do I hate Putin so much?” The gist of Carlson’s comments about Russia’s leader is that Putin should not be regarded as an enemy. Instead, the real enemies of America are those who call white Americans racist, those who teach so-called critical race theory in schools, business elites who ship jobs abroad, and those who imposed Covid lockdowns on the United States.
Biden did not seem very keen, at least initially, on helping Ukraine. He too wants to concentrate on America's internal problems. As Obama had said, Wokeism was most dangerous to the Democratic party. Now, Vivek Ramaswamy- who first attracted attention with a book attacking 'Woke Inc.', is being taken seriously as a Republican candidate for the Presidency.
In short, Carlson urged, the real enemies of America are internal
America may have external enemies, but it has proved very good at killing them. Still, every country- Russia more especially- has to concentrate on internal issues rather than invade foreign countries or seek to bring about 'regime change' there.
– racial minorities,
WASPs? Americans of German origin?
doctors and politicians,
some doctors have been very naughty as have a lot of politicians
professors and educators,
again, some of them have been very naughty indeed.
and large corporations who shift jobs to other countries.
Presumably, Jason approves of this.
Carlson has been resolutely against US support for Ukraine.
Biden was initially rather lukewarm.
Insofar as Carlson has since that point gone to war, it has rather been against these supposed internal enemies.
So, is Tucker Carlson hard to classify?
No. He supports Trump as his recent interview with Trump shows.
On the one hand, he spreads tropes central to neo-Nazi propaganda, such as “white replacement” theory,
but this type of theory may also be propagated by anti-Nazi conservatives. Don't forget, both Mussolini and Hitler were supposed to be against the bourgeoisie and believed that Capital must serve the interests of the Nation State.
suggesting that leftist elites seek to replace “legacy Americans” by foreign non-white immigrants.
Tyler Cowan and other economists who want more immigration aren't exactly 'left-wing'.
On the other hand, he denounces media, intellectual and political elites, as well as US intervention in Ukraine, platforming those who identify as the “anti-war left”, such as Jimmy Dore.
a stand up comedian who supported Bernie Sanders. I suppose the fellow is entertaining and that matters in Television.
How should we best understand this set of views?
In the same way ordinary people do. Some people are entertaining to listen to more particularly if they say outrageous things. But TV is just TV.
If Carlson has fascist sympathies,
he would think POTUS should be the Fuhrer to whom the big billionaires must bend the knee. The TV stations must follow the line laid down by the Ruling Party which, obviously, should outlaw every other political party. The Trade Unions too must be placed under the control of the Government.
as do, quite inarguably, many of those who applaud him, how do we understand his firm stance against US military and financial support for Ukraine?
He is saying 'we have a history of getting involved in pointless wars. Who really gives a toss about a far away part of the world?' For Europeans the answer is 'we do. If Putin wins in Ukraine, Poland will be the next target. Even the Swiss are beefing up their army. We can't directly intervene for fear of Putin's nukes but it is in our own national interest to do everything we can for that valorous nation.' Americans may feel differently because they are perfectly safe no matter what happens in Taiwan or Eastern Europe.
Surely, historically speaking, fascism is not compatible with the isolationist position Carlson has urged.
It is perfectly compatible. Franco stayed out of the war and thus was left in peace. Hitler declared war on America. Had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour, isolationism would have prevailed.
We should look to history as our guide here. But the history that best informs us in this case is not European history, but American history.
Which says Nazism does not matter because elected governments were about as pro-capitalist as it was possible to be. Democratic administrations tended to be worse for African Americans than Republican ones.
Before the beginning of the second world war, all of America’s pro-fascist parties opposed US intervention on the side of its allies against Nazi Germany.
There were no 'pro-fascist parties'. Both Democrats and Republicans tended to be isolationist. However, some progressives did express hatred for what Hitler was doing.
Often, the opposition to the US supporting Britain against Nazi Germany was represented as “isolationism”.
America has always had an interest in upholding the freedom of the seas. It was profitable to trade with Britain and its Empire. The question of 'unrestricted submarine warfare' would always be a casus belli. However, it was the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour which tipped the balance. Otherwise FDR had been re-elected as the man who had kept the US out of the war.
There were openly fascist organizations during this time, such as the German American Bund.
It was Nazi, not Fascist. When it was formed, Mussolini was opposing Anschluss. But it was tiny and collapsed quickly as the national mood changed.
Somewhat more ambiguous was the America First movement.
It wasn't ambiguous at all. It was isolationist.
As the historian Bradley Hart recounts, in a packed America First rally in Madison Square Garden in 1941, the Montana senator Burton K Wheeler denounced “jingoistic journalists and saber-rattling bankers” who were pushing the nation into war against Germany.
He changed his mind after Pearl Harbor but lost the 1946 election after a scurrilous pamphlet was published accusing him and Truman of being Fascists. No doubt, Jason agrees with the bit about Truman.
While the agenda of some members of the America First movement at the time might have genuinely been pacifist, it’s quite clear that the main agenda was in fact support for Hitler.
Why stop there? Why not say that America only entered the War to enable White rule of Asia and Africa to continue? The plain fact is that wars are expensive. Lots of blood and treasure is squandered. Neutrality is not necessarily a bad thing. Switzerland has done well out of it
The America First movement had strong support from American fascist movements of various stripes. Its most prominent spokesperson, Charles Lindbergh,
the son of a Socialist legislator
published the following words in support of his anti-war position in an essay entitled “Geography, Aviation, and Race” in Reader’s Digest in 1939:
… It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us. It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea. Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on strength too great for foreign enemies to challenge; on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood; on an English fleet, a German air force, a French army, an American nation, standing together as guardians of our common heritage, sharing strength, dividing influence.
Apparently he was good at flying planes. Also he had married the daughter of a billionaire. Still, he was a silly man. But silliness does not mean a belief that the POTUS should be the Fuhrer or Il Duce of the country.
It is simply inarguable fact that American racial fascism
American racism didn't need to be fascist. The thing was 'bottom-up'.
has a clear isolationist tradition, especially when the wars in question are against fascist opponents.
America entered the First World War when Fascism did not exist. It did intervene against the Bolsheviks though rather briefly.
But is Putin’s Russia fascist?
It is a corrupt shambolic kleptocracy.
In Russia, opposition politicians and journalists are regularly imprisoned or murdered. Russia has passed harsh laws against LGBTQ+ communities. Russia’s ideology is based on a militarized Russian nationalism, and its war against Ukraine is quite clearly genocidal in nature. Just as Nazi Germany represented itself as the defender of Christianity and Europe’s classic traditions against an existential threat posed by leftist atheist Jews, Putin represents Russia as the sole defender of the European Christian traditions against similar existential threats, such as “gender ideology”.
Putin says he is fighting the Nazi 'Azov Battalion' and the Hitler worshipping Zelensky. Jason and Putin both call people they don't like Nazis or Fascists.
Putin’s Russia is the international leader of the global far right, promoting ultra-nationalism, religious traditionalism and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment across the world.
Russia isn't leading shit.
If Russia is not fascist,
It isn't. It isn't a single party state. It is difficult to say if the ruling party has any ideology.
then even Nazi Germany in the 1930s was not fascist.
What about Italy? If Italy was Fascist, so was Germany as Mussolini recognized.
As the historian Timothy Snyder has urged, “we should finally say it”: Russia is fascist.
There is little point saying it when Putin is saying Zelensky is a Nazi. Nazi is worse than Fascist. But Jim Crow America was worse than both.
Just as claims to be isolationists by American inter-war fascists were quite rightly taken to be expressions of support for Nazi ideology,
only stupid nutters thought so. The plain fact is Japan attacked the US and then Hitler, very foolishly, declared war against it. Franco was pretty damn Fascist and talked about invading Portugal but he didn't actually do so and after the War the Church helped his regime (which profited by getting rid of 'Phalangist' nutters) get rehabilitated. The Greek Colonels could have been called Fascist but America had no problem with them. It is foolish to pretend that America has entered ideological wars. Vietnam was about a foolish 'domino theory'. Kissinger explained that realpolitik is better than geopolitics. Ukraine is important according to the latter theory. Mackinder, its founder, thought that control of Eastern Europe would determine control of the 'World Island' and hence control of the World. This was silly but it can't be denied Ukraine is important. But this is because Ukrainians are very brave, very capable, very decent people.
there is good reason to take Carlson’s similar claims not as denunciations of American militarism but as expressions of support for Putinism, which he seems largely to share.
One may take Jason's denunciations of people he doesn't like as support for Putin. Maybe the chap is merely stupid and paranoid- like Jason- not evil and greedy.
What about Carlson’s scorn for the media, intellectual, financial and political elite, which he lacerates with regularity on his show?
Is Jason appreciative of such elites? If not, how is he different from Carlson? The latter says silly things to stay on TV. Jason says stupid shite so as to pretend to be an 'authority on Fascism'.
Here too there is little ambiguity. Carlson does not scorn all elites – after all, he himself was making as much as $20m a year from Fox news. He only targets certain elites.
Jason only targets those he doesn't like. But instead of calling them Fascist- which is what Putin does in connection to his enemy Zelensky- Jason should find some other word- like 'Conservative'.
In the ideology of American fascism, the elites he targets are associated with liberal democracy and Jewish control.
So, 'Conservative' is the mot juste. William Buckley's brother won an election back in the early Seventies as a Conservative.
American fascists have always denounced the media, intellectuals and politicians.
The Left has consistently praised media moghuls- like Murdoch- and Professors like Milton Friedman and politicians like Ronald Reagan.
Carlson is careful to avoid explicitly antisemitic statements. But his show is the home of anti-Soros conspiracy theories. The antisemitism in his programming is clearly dog-whistled, and Jewish organizations have been among the first to cheer his ousting.
Soros is anti-Zionist. Mainstream Jewish organizations are wary of him.
Indeed, if Carlson did not regularly denounce media, intellectual, financial and political elites, regular targets of Nazi ideology, the case for calling him an American fascist would be much less clear.
The case against doing so is that Putin is waging war on Ukraine because he says its leader is a Nazi.
At one time it was okay for educated people in England and America to use the term 'Jew' not to mean members of a particular religion or ethnicity but some supposed trait shared by those who do well in business but who lacked 'blue blood'. Then Hitler & Co took over that type of anti-semitism. It ceased to be cool. The fact is Jews are an ancient people and thus more not less blue blooded than the descendants of Goths and Vikings. Come to think of it, Lord Jesus Christ was Jewish. You can't get more blue blooded than sharing descent from King David with 'the King of Kings'.
Nazi ideology supported strict gender roles – one of the central targets of the first mass Nazi book burning on 10 May 1933 was Magnus Hirschfeld’s collection of LGBTQ+ literature, the largest in the world and the largest documentation of gender fluidity (Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexual”).
But Britain and America had much more stringent laws against homosexuality. Hirschfeld collection would have been burned in England and he would have been sentenced to hard labour. Still it is true that prosecutions under the Nazis went up ten-fold. But Weimar too persecuted homosexuals. After the War, West Germany continued to prosecute homosexuals for a dozen years after the East stopped doing so.
Carlson has used his platform to denounce transgender Americans as existential threats to Christianity.
Only if they hold an absurd doctrine which the fool invented. But anybody at all can hold that doctrine. I could say 'I am a cat. Miaow, miaow' and hold that if I want this to be the case then this is actually the case because I have God like powers. But I don't actually believe anything of the sort which is why I haven't given up my job bagging groceries at the Kwiki-Mart.
Fascists target cosmopolitan ways as existential threats to masculinity – a viewpoint Carlson also clearly shares.
Don't be absurd. The thing is a joke. Still, it is true that if you eat a quiche rather than a steak then your dick is replaced by a clit. But the same thing happens if you read the Guardian.
Finally, fascism praises violence against democracy, valorizing violent street mobs attacking democratic processes and institutions as martyrs to the nation. Here too Tucker Carlson fits perfectly into the tradition.
Fascists praise people with beautiful boobs. Carlson does so too. This means he has beautiful boobs- right?
It is not difficult at all to classify Tucker Carlson’s political ideology.
Only if, like Putin, you enjoy calling guys you don't like a fucking Nazi
He is an American fascist, only the latest in a long historical line.
No! He is a Chinese Fascist! Did you know Chinese people praise nice tasty food? So does Carlson. This proves he is Chinese!
Jason, however, is the Chinese Putin because, clearly, he is neither. But that's how his 'epistemology' works. Tim Willamson must be so proud.
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