Defending Tucker
Let him cook.
In Part I of this article, I made a qualified defense of Tucker Carlson’s willingness to entertain so-called “conspiracy theories,” despite the very real possibility of this open-mindedness being used against him to paint him as a “kook” and thereby tarnish all other views that he espouses. I made this defense on the basis that so-called “conspiracy theories” are often a result of a valid skepticism of government and media authorities, who do not deserve to be trusted after covid and a slew of other lies and cover-ups, and also on the basis that “conspiracy theories” have become more and more mainstream since the 1990s and especially since 2016. You can lament that that is the case … but it do be like that.
Here, I want to look at the main ideas that Tucker has been promoting recently and evaluate them on their merits. His recent speech at AmFest provides a useful focal point, since he was really making a case for his worldview to all of American conservatism. That worldview seems to have the following as some of its main features: free speech and debate, not censorship; individualism, not group or identity politics; Christian values of a non-denominational sort; a preference for non-interventionist foreign policy as a default; America First, meaning American citizens first, as the guiding principle of all government policy.
Now, there are several ways to critique these positions, either individually or as an ideological package. For a radical rightist or traditionalist, this isn’t a right-wing position at all. But I’m not concerned with that critique here because Tucker is a voice for normies. It’s not his job to amplify your based monarchist esoteric theories; his job is to give ideas to the masses in forms that they can accept. I think that Tucker is using this particular framework to make a critique of, and to offer an alternative to, some of the prevailing beliefs and ideas among the conservative base. I don’t mean to say that he doesn’t sincerely believe in these things, I think he does. But he also knows what he’s doing.
The real essence of the controversy, the reason Tucker is getting so much flack, is that he has positioned himself as THE most important critic of Israel and AIPAC on the right. The entire way that Tucker frames his religious and ideological beliefs works to implicitly criticize Israel. He knows it, and so do the neocons, which is why they say he’s being coyly antisemitic. But he’s not being “antisemitic,” he’s just pointing out that the religious beliefs which the vast majority of the audience claim to hold require the moral condemnation of neocons and the Israeli government. When he says that you can’t silence someone by saying “shut up, racist” he also means that you can’t silence them by saying “shut up, nazi” or “shut up, antisemite.” When he says that he’s not an antisemite because his religion teaches that hating someone for how they are born is immoral and that we have to consider people as individuals, not as members of a group, he is criticizing Israel’s attitude and policy towards Palestinians. He goes on to say that hating Jews as such is not a unique sin but is as immoral as hating any other group, such as hating white men, and that if someone was silent or actively supported the hatred of white men, they have no moral standing on which to complain about hatred of Jews. And just in case anyone doesn’t know who he’s talking about, he later mentions the ADL by name.
Many of my friends who are critical of Tucker are also critical of Israel and AIPAC, and so their concern would seem to be that, by entertaining “conspiracy theories” and religious beliefs and ideas, he is discrediting criticism of Israel, as well as any other “serious” issues that he addresses. I don’t think this is the case at all. First, discussion of Israel in America almost entirely revolves around religious ideas, at least in the public sphere. The core of American support for Israel comes from evangelical Christians, and it’s not because AIPAC appeals to their reason and pragmatism—it’s because the Israel lobby has skillfully crafted the idea that the modern nation state of Israel is one and the same with the Biblical “Israel,” and therefore when the Bible says “God blesses those who bless Israel” you better get down on your Gentile knees and praise Bibi. Neocon Christianity is so absurd that they have effectively made American Christians worship Israel and Jews over Jesus himself, and they’ve done this in part by convincing them that Jews were already saved before Jesus came, that Jews don’t need Jesus, only non-Jews do. This is such an affront to what every major Christian denomination has believed for two thousand years that it’s a kind of satanic miracle that they were able to achieve this. But then, I do not hold the collective intellect of religious people in particularly high esteem.
Neocon Christianity can only be effectively opposed by a competing version of Christianity, not by secularism. I said in an earlier article, in which I criticized both Tucker and Christianity, that Tucker represents a kind of non-denominational everyman Christianity, not unlike George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. I think this is a very good position to hold precisely because it’s universalizable, at least across the spectrum of the Christian right. It’s very close to what C.S. Lewis did in Mere Christianity, which is loved by almost all Christians. In contrast, a dogmatic position like that of E. Michael Jones will really only appeal to Catholics, and moreover a very small subset of Catholics who do not adhere to the now-standard liberal orthodoxy of the post-Vatican II Church. Likewise for anyone coming from an Orthodox position, which is fundamentally foreign to Americans and therefore a non-starter. (I say this as someone who esteems Orthodox theology as superior to both Catholic and Protestant. Nonetheless, intellectualism ain’t what fills pews.)
If Tucker talking about demons and God bothers you because you are an atheist or non-Christian, I understand, but frankly, you need to keep it to yourself. I agree that in a better, more rational world we would do our best to keep superstition out of politics, but this is not a better, more rational world and it never has been. If you want to convince people to go somewhere with you, you have to meet them where they’re at. And the fact is that Tucker talking about being afraid of demons and trying to be a better Christian gives him more credibility with the base, not less.
I share the concern that the more Tucker becomes like Alex Jones, the more he is in danger of marginalizing himself and the ideas he espouses. But I don’t think he is becoming more and more like Alex Jones. Alex could never give a speech like the one Tucker just gave at AmFest, full of earnest espousal of basic American principles. Alex wears his heart on his sleeve and has made his reputation by being a kind of shock jock who yells a lot. Alex likes to show off what he knows; if he were speaking at AmFest his speech would be full of footnotes of details about various historical events and theories. Tucker, on the other hand, is very good at pretending to know a lot less than he actually knows. He plays coy and evinces a kind of aw-shucks simple persona which is disarming and mostly likable. Sometimes he laughs inappropriately, but otherwise I think people find him friendly and charming. The neocons are not particularly worried about Alex Jones, despite the fact that he’s been very critical of Israel and AIPAC over the years. They’re not even really worried about Nick Fuentes; on the contrary they seem happy to promote him as their bogeyman du jour precisely because he’s a self-discrediting clown. They’re only worried about Nick Fuentes as a proxy for Tucker, which is why it was a mistake for Tucker to give Fuentes a platform on his show—it just gave the neocons ammunition to attack Tucker, with no upside for anyone except Fuentes.
The biggest problem with Tucker’s ideological package, which will eventually have to be talked about, is that individualism and America First are at odds with each other in a multi-racial, multicultural society. You can’t say that the government should always act with the interests of the citizens as its priority when those citizens are a hodgepodge of competing ethnic groups with different interests—something Lee Kuan Yew understood very well. So for “America First” to really work, there has to be a clearer idea of what—who—“America” is; it can’t just be “whoever happens to be here with the right paperwork.”
Nonetheless, I don’t see the point of nitpicking and criticizing him for saying that we shouldn’t attack Muslims as an entire group. Aside from the fact that it’s perfectly in line with the Christian individualism that he’s espousing, aside from the fact that the last time Americans hated Muslims as a group the only things they got for it was a failed and expensive War on Terror and 3.5 million more Muslim immigrants than they had before—aside from all that, America is not in any danger of having a love fest for Muslims. But, America, and especially the American right, has, for at least thirty years now, had a very toxic and one-sided love affair with Israel, and it needs to end. Tucker lending his voice to that cause is one of the most significant events of the last couple decades. If I may end by paraphrasing my favorite Christmas film: “Lord, I’m not a praying man. But if you’re up there, keep Tucker safe.”
An unwise man once said a wise thing: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Too many of the people criticizing Tucker remind me of the people criticizing Trump: they act like there’s someone better waiting to take his place—there isn’t.