Great read and thank you. Tucker’s show on Fox News, especially his opening segment, was a never miss. It was effective resonance. He was on to something. I’m surprised with his tolerance of Jew hatred. He’s either really clever and is pandering to the far right, “wink-wink”, or like billions of others, he irrationally hates Jews. He’s realizing this alt-reality is a bigger audience and it’s all about him growing his brand. He clearly doesn’t care about historical accuracy and is further supporting conspiracy theories and other nonsensical theories difficult to prove or disprove. He is a provocateur, and I’m okay with interviewing people we dislike, and disagree with. Charlie Rose interviewed Kahled Mashal on his show a decade or so ago. However supporting media personalities who have no expertise but selling them as such is dishonest and denies his credibility. He should have at least challenged Cooper. At least he would have been a responsible journalist. Time to not spend any more time on Tucker Carlson. He’s not an intellectual. He’s now just another grifter.
My life, activities and information interests have always been far from Tucker Carlson. More precisely, not far, but in a parallel space. Of course, I knew the commentator, whose head I sometimes saw next to the Fox News logos, I even heard that he wrote some books that I was not going to read, and his political views did not interest me at all. Sometimes, someone would send me a link to his statement or post on Twitter and a quarter of an hour later I would forget about him.
And I would gladly continue to live with Tucker Carlson in parallel worlds, but since 2022, with the beginning of Russian aggression, Tucker Carlson began to get too intrusively into the sphere of my information interests and worst of all, he wrote crap. This was not just crap, but the crap that I had seen for many years, first in Soviet and then in Russian propaganda (I was surprised: "Does this guy really think he is right, repeating Soviet slogans adapted by modern Russian propaganda?"). He almost verbatim relayed the stories that Putin instilled in his people to explain why Russia is always good and the West is always bad.
Then I watched his interview with Putin...
I thought it was the end of his career, because sitting opposite a dictator who talks nonsense, make a concentrated face, nodding occasionally and inserting meaningless phrases, this is not a report, not an interview and not journalism.
But he did not fall and did not lose popularity and I forgot about him again.
And here are new achievements, a conversation with a pseudo-historian, an incomprehensible guy who appeared like a rabbit from a top hat and whom Carlson rewards with excellent epithets.
Regarding Cooper, I can say that he is one of many who have appeared in the last twenty years, his theories are not new and if anyone read the speeches of Molotov and Stalin in 1939-40, then the ideas were taken from there. The Soviet narrative at the turn of the 30s-40s was exactly like this: "Germany is trying its best to maintain peace, while Great Britain and France are fomenting war, leaving no way out for Germany, which, together with the USSR, is striving for peace." Cooper, it seems, slept through all the history lessons after September 1939, or he has a very good customer for writing the "New History", which will look like what you already understood. But that's a different topic.
As a conservative living in Israel, I spotted Tucker Carlson years ago. Obviously he wants views, and I had my suspicions about his antisemitism way back then. A certain smugness. I couldn’t actually point it out, but I figured it would show up at some point.
Balanced discussion. The older I get the less I like extremists of any ilk. And by extremists I don’t mean most of middle America, despite the best efforts of the MSM. This midwit Nazi apologist is serving some purpose for Tucker Carlson. I just don’t know what it could be.
Well it got Tucker what he wanted. Now everyone is talking about him. We are officially post-truth society. Everyone is an expert, historian, entertainer and fiction writer. There are no clear lines.
This stung me a little, since I market myself as an expert, a historian, an entertainer, and a fiction writer. Thanks for reminding me to draw the requsite bright lines.
One would’ve thought that when Carlson welcomed this antisemitic clown to touch the third rail of WWII, the majority of his fans would acknowledge that he had finally jumped the shark. Especially when a lot of prominent conservatives wondered what the hell he’s thinking in these days.
But no. The “Woke Right,” as Konstantin Kisin calls them, brush it off and call Tucker the GOAT.
Carlson has spread wacky conspiracy theories about things like UFOs, the JFK assassination, and Covid vaccines, among others, which he blames on the CiA or a mysterious “they” pulling strings in the government. He’s given a platform to the sex trafficker Andrew Tate, as well as an anti-Israeli pastor from Palestine. There’s his adoration for Vladimir Putin and his hatred of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he said was “rat-like” (where have we heard that trope before?)
But he’s “just asking questions.” Right. And I have some beachfront property in Kansas for sale.
Well, the under-educated have been ill served by American public education, which has declined to a point where alt-history has invaded classrooms all over the place. And the gullible have always been with us.
Great read and thank you. Tucker’s show on Fox News, especially his opening segment, was a never miss. It was effective resonance. He was on to something. I’m surprised with his tolerance of Jew hatred. He’s either really clever and is pandering to the far right, “wink-wink”, or like billions of others, he irrationally hates Jews. He’s realizing this alt-reality is a bigger audience and it’s all about him growing his brand. He clearly doesn’t care about historical accuracy and is further supporting conspiracy theories and other nonsensical theories difficult to prove or disprove. He is a provocateur, and I’m okay with interviewing people we dislike, and disagree with. Charlie Rose interviewed Kahled Mashal on his show a decade or so ago. However supporting media personalities who have no expertise but selling them as such is dishonest and denies his credibility. He should have at least challenged Cooper. At least he would have been a responsible journalist. Time to not spend any more time on Tucker Carlson. He’s not an intellectual. He’s now just another grifter.
My life, activities and information interests have always been far from Tucker Carlson. More precisely, not far, but in a parallel space. Of course, I knew the commentator, whose head I sometimes saw next to the Fox News logos, I even heard that he wrote some books that I was not going to read, and his political views did not interest me at all. Sometimes, someone would send me a link to his statement or post on Twitter and a quarter of an hour later I would forget about him.
And I would gladly continue to live with Tucker Carlson in parallel worlds, but since 2022, with the beginning of Russian aggression, Tucker Carlson began to get too intrusively into the sphere of my information interests and worst of all, he wrote crap. This was not just crap, but the crap that I had seen for many years, first in Soviet and then in Russian propaganda (I was surprised: "Does this guy really think he is right, repeating Soviet slogans adapted by modern Russian propaganda?"). He almost verbatim relayed the stories that Putin instilled in his people to explain why Russia is always good and the West is always bad.
Then I watched his interview with Putin...
I thought it was the end of his career, because sitting opposite a dictator who talks nonsense, make a concentrated face, nodding occasionally and inserting meaningless phrases, this is not a report, not an interview and not journalism.
But he did not fall and did not lose popularity and I forgot about him again.
And here are new achievements, a conversation with a pseudo-historian, an incomprehensible guy who appeared like a rabbit from a top hat and whom Carlson rewards with excellent epithets.
Regarding Cooper, I can say that he is one of many who have appeared in the last twenty years, his theories are not new and if anyone read the speeches of Molotov and Stalin in 1939-40, then the ideas were taken from there. The Soviet narrative at the turn of the 30s-40s was exactly like this: "Germany is trying its best to maintain peace, while Great Britain and France are fomenting war, leaving no way out for Germany, which, together with the USSR, is striving for peace." Cooper, it seems, slept through all the history lessons after September 1939, or he has a very good customer for writing the "New History", which will look like what you already understood. But that's a different topic.
As a conservative living in Israel, I spotted Tucker Carlson years ago. Obviously he wants views, and I had my suspicions about his antisemitism way back then. A certain smugness. I couldn’t actually point it out, but I figured it would show up at some point.
Balanced discussion. The older I get the less I like extremists of any ilk. And by extremists I don’t mean most of middle America, despite the best efforts of the MSM. This midwit Nazi apologist is serving some purpose for Tucker Carlson. I just don’t know what it could be.
Well it got Tucker what he wanted. Now everyone is talking about him. We are officially post-truth society. Everyone is an expert, historian, entertainer and fiction writer. There are no clear lines.
This stung me a little, since I market myself as an expert, a historian, an entertainer, and a fiction writer. Thanks for reminding me to draw the requsite bright lines.
❤️ I guess it’s only a problem when the entertainment is masked as “news” and fiction is sold as the truth. Keep up your good work.
Fine article, Thomas. The works you cite in the first paragraph are speculative fiction, but that’s a semantic quibble.
It’s the worst of the left, manifested on the right.
The horseshoe effect. A pox on both their antisemitic houses.
That’s exactly right, isn’t it?
One would’ve thought that when Carlson welcomed this antisemitic clown to touch the third rail of WWII, the majority of his fans would acknowledge that he had finally jumped the shark. Especially when a lot of prominent conservatives wondered what the hell he’s thinking in these days.
But no. The “Woke Right,” as Konstantin Kisin calls them, brush it off and call Tucker the GOAT.
Carlson has spread wacky conspiracy theories about things like UFOs, the JFK assassination, and Covid vaccines, among others, which he blames on the CiA or a mysterious “they” pulling strings in the government. He’s given a platform to the sex trafficker Andrew Tate, as well as an anti-Israeli pastor from Palestine. There’s his adoration for Vladimir Putin and his hatred of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he said was “rat-like” (where have we heard that trope before?)
But he’s “just asking questions.” Right. And I have some beachfront property in Kansas for sale.
Tucker by extolling this douchebag intellectual as anything other than a putz has vastly diminished his own standing.
No wonder his mommy walked out on him when he was a wee laddie.
She clearly knew something was wrong with him.
You know, that just the right word. If you looked up puts in the dictionary, Cooper’s picture would be right there.
All true.
But also at fault are the under educated and gullible who accept these "facts" because they do not have enough education to evaluate these statements.
Nor the intellectual curiosity to delve deeper into a subject.
And because many of these lies support their biases.
Well, the under-educated have been ill served by American public education, which has declined to a point where alt-history has invaded classrooms all over the place. And the gullible have always been with us.
I loathe The Erroneously Convinced Incurious more than The Dumb.