March 29, 2024 2:28 AM
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Opinion: Times Attack on Tucker Carlson Backfires – Gregory Hood

Photo: Tucker Carlson (Credit Image: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia)

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in opinion pieces on the PrescotteNews website are solely those of the authors. These opinions do not necessarily represent those of the staff of Prescott eNews or its publisher.]

The New York Times used to be called “The Gray Lady” for its sober, restrained prose. The paper deserves a new nickname. The New York Times just published a three-part series primarily written by Nicholas Confessore on Tucker Carlson. Considering the thousands and thousands of words that went into it, there’s not much that is new. Mostly, it repeats what Mr. Carlson said, with the expectation that readers will be disturbed. What if they aren’t? The overall title – “American Nationalist” – reflects the social divide between media elites who find the term scary and Americans who embrace it.

The series begins with one of Mr. Carlson’s nightly monologues, in which he is “claiming on air that mass immigration made America ‘dirtier and poorer.’” This is supposed to be shocking. “Many wondered what price he might pay,” said the Times, because “blue-chip advertisers were fleeing,” and some within Fox thought he had “crossed some kind of line.”

This tells us a lot about the way the media works, with “blue-chip advertisers” apparently having a huge impact on what can or can’t be said. This supports Mr. Carlson’s view that there is a ruling class that limits debate.

The Times says that when Mr. Carlson “dismissed those protesting the [George Floyd] killing as ‘criminal mobs,’” companies such as Angie’s List and Papa John’s (which has its own reason for being politically correct) dropped their ads, amidst “nationwide outrage.” Who cultivated this “outrage”? The story says Fox occasionally takes local news stories and has them “turbocharged by the channel’s vast digital news operation.” Wasn’t that what national media did with George Floyd and a thousand other stories? Compare that treatment to what happened after a black man killed children and Dancing Grannies in Waukesha during a Christmas parade. The Times buried that on page A22.

The paper uses words such as “mainstream” or “provocative,” and expects us to accept their judgments.  However, the article acknowledges Tucker Carlson has the “highest-rated cable news show in prime time.” Why doesn’t that make him mainstream?

In an article about a show watched by millions of people every night, the Times explains Tucker Carlson’s arguments as if speaks in code. In Part One, the Times lists Mr. Carlson’s “encyclopedia of provocations,” and explains more “provocations” in Part TwoPart Three just shows video segments and calls them extremist, conspiratorial, etc.

Mr. Carlson’s opinions are almost treasonous.

Mr. Carlson has become the most visible and voluble defender of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Donald J. Trump in office, playing down the presence of white nationalists in the crowd and claiming the attack “barely rates as a footnote.” In February, as Western pundits and politicians lined up to condemn the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, for his impending invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Carlson invited his viewers to shift focus back to the true enemy at home [people who call him “racist”] . . . . He was roundly labeled an apologist and Putin cheerleader, only to press ahead with segments that parroted Russian talking points and promoted Kremlin propaganda about purported Ukrainian bioweapons labs.

This kind of writing suggests that the Times knows its readers will not watch Mr. Carlson for themselves, so the Gray Lady can call him whatever she likes. In Part Three, the Times summarizes Mr. Carlson’s core message: “They [the ruling class] want to control and then destroy you.” I would say this series is more evidence he’s right.

The Times inadvertently raises the question of why “extreme” ideas are so popular. It suggests that this popularity was manufactured. “’Tucker Carlson Tonight’ is the apex of a programming and editorial strategy that transformed the network during the Trump era,” the Times clams, after interviewing “dozens of current and former Fox executives, producers, and journalists.” The Times adds that the network is trying to “wring rising returns out of a slowly declining audience: the older white conservatives who make up Mr. Trump’s base and much of Fox’s core viewership.” It’s a “slowly declining audience,” yet the series calls The Great Replacement a “conspiracy theory.” At the same time, the Times also calls Tucker Carlson Fox’s future, “a star whose intensity and paranoid style work to bind viewers more closely to the Fox brand, helping lead them through the fragmented post cable landscape.”

Like many conservatives, Mr. Carlson left libertarianism for more nationalist views. An article about this change might be interesting, but instead Mr. Carlson’s views are dismissed as “white backlash” or a “nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan.” Apparently, Mr. Carlson’s views are both lucrative theater and an expression of his “true views.” The series also includes a bizarre section about Tucker Carlson’s troubled mother, and his recovery from a difficult family situation. This is supposed to have shaped his views. The article also describes Mr. Carlson’s ferocious work habits, something you’d expect in a successful person.  There are also random stories from “one former employee,” “one friend,” and “another Former Fox employee.”

One named former colleague is Eric Owens, whose Twitter feed suggests he’s a liberal now. He says little of interest except to note that Mr. Carlson is worried his views might make it hard for his children to find jobs. “It’s not right for this to affect my family, and literally affect my children’s future,” Mr. Carlson reportedly said. He clearly fears the ruling class’s ability to strike back.

“He is going to double down on the white nationalism because the minute-by-minutes show that the audience eats it up,” said one “former employee.” Does Tucker Carlson preach “white nationalism?” Discussing culture change, immigration, or reasons to be skeptical about new wars does not make him a “white nationalist.” That term, if it means anything, means someone who wants a separate white state, not someone who wants to keep the increasingly diverse United States together.

The Times insists that Tucker Carlson’s approach is rooted in race. “The show would grasp the emotional core of Mr. Trump’s allure — white panic over the country’s changing ethnic composition . . . .” So Trump’s appeal is “white panic”? The link in the Times story is to an article written in 2016 by the same author. In it, Nick Confessore quotes Jared Taylor as saying he has “no idea” if Mr. Trump agreed with him. At most, Donald Trump was “expressing the discomfort many white people felt about other races.” This is hardly white nationalism. President Trump disavowed robocalls Jared Taylor made on his behalf, and promoted a Platinum Plan of privileges for blacks. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Carlson talk about things that worry many whites, but not as white advocates.

“One former employee” says stories occasionally “originated farther afield” than mainstream sources. Most white advocacy sites don’t do original reporting; they post articles from other sources and talk about them. But merely looking at sources “farther afield” is somehow awful. The story argues that “Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists,” “story lines otherwise relegated to far-right or nativist websites like VDare,” and rhetoric similar to “sites like American Renaissance – which promotes ‘the biological reality of race.’” The author suspects that The Daily Stormer could once have been a source. Again, these sites mostly discuss and analyze publicly available stories and opinions from which the Times averts its eyes.

The story mentions Somali migrants in Maine as a “parable of replacement” for both American Renaissance and Mr. Carlson. So what? Mr. Carlson has simply noticed the same things we have – he has a house in Maine, for heaven’s sake. The New York Times calls The Great Replacement a “conspiracy theory,” but a staff columnist wrote something called “We Can Replace Them.”

Unless you deliberately ignore it, there is plenty of news on blacks murdering white South African farmers, but Mr. Carlson is somehow disreputable if both he and VDARE.com talk about it. For most of Mr. Carlson’s monologues, he wouldn’t need any source besides the Gray Lady herself. Just get the facts, strip away the commentary, and point out implications the Times ignores.

The Witkruismonument outside Polokwane, a series of crosses erected in memory of murdered South African farmers. (Credit Image: Johnnyhurst via Wikimedia)

The story makes much of “Mr. Pillow’s” advertising, which is important financial support, but “Mr. Pillow” is hardly a major company. Corporate America, broadly speaking, doesn’t want to associate with Mr. Carlson even though he has the highest rated primetime cable news show. That suggests there is a ruling class that doesn’t want certain things discussed, even if advertising on a show that touches on them would boost sales.

Cardboard cut outs of Mike Lindell are seen throughout the MyPillow manufacturing facility in Shakopee, Minnesota on Wednesday, February 17, 2021. (Credit Image: © TNS via ZUMA Wire)

The story mentions Blake Neff, one of Mr. Carlson’s writers who was posting politically incorrect ideas under a pen name. When this was revealed, Mr. Neff lost his job, and Mr. Carlson had to talk about it on air. This is hardly the behavior of a “white nationalist.” The fact of doxxing and its consequences again seem to confirm Mr. Carlson’s view of a hostile elite.

It’s hard to imagine a left-wing equivalent. Joy Reid wrote unfashionable things about homosexuals on her old blog. Her initial defense was to say she didn’t think she wrote them and suggested she was hacked. She later apologized. There were no consequences and she still has her show at MSNBC. Will the Times ever investigate her writers and researchers, and try to get complaints about her?

The story says the ADL called for Mr. Carlson’s head after he mentioned demographic “replacement.” The ADL gratuitously added that “the same concept had helped fuel a string of terrorist attacks, including the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.” However, when an unrepentant Mr. Carlson again talked about the Great Replacement, ratings among 24-54 year-olds increased by 14 percent. Just brushing up against racial questions draws more viewers. The question is not why Tucker Carlson is so popular. The question is why no one else with media power is copying him. If anything, there may be a greater media market well to Tucker Carlson’s right.

If Mr. Carlson has gained such a following despite boycotts, opposition within his own company, snide pieces like this, and even an attack on his house, what would cable look like if media companies really did pursue ratings at all costs? They appear to be more concerned with controlling the message than attracting a following.

Fox’s supposed rightward turn led to it lose “some of its most respected news journalists, most notably Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox’s flagship Sunday show.” Viewers didn’t follow Mr. Wallace out the door. He got a show on the streaming service CNN+ that was canceled within three weeks. “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” will be his new show, this time hosted on HBO Max. I suspect the answer to that question will be “no one.”

The article is full of language like “testing his boundaries” and “crossing some sort of line,” as if Mr. Carlson’s existence, and his willingness to talk about issues like immigration, anti-white hate, and leftists’ cultural extremism, is somehow illegitimate. Clearly, there are certain things Americans can’t freely discuss, but Mr. Carlson’s popularity shows that these are issues Americans want to discuss. The length, depth, and effort of this New York Times article shows how frightened the system is of even a single dissenting voice.

What happens if white advocates are allowed to compete fairly in the “marketplace of ideas?” I suspect that we could give Mr. Carlson a real challenge. We’ve got an awful lot more to say than Brian Stetler. This article unintentionally shows how vast our potential audience is, but the Times seems to think fighting “misinformation” means stopping free speech and protecting children from the wrong arguments.

Here’s the paper on Elon Musk. (a Tweet)

Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid’s atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda. He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation.

 

The “misinformation” the ruling class fears is the truth. It fears debate so much it’s now edging towards using state power to try to stop it. Mr. Carlson laughed at this series. Calling him an “American Nationalist” is especially funny. In a real country, all citizens are nationalists.

Mr. Carlson believes the old America still exists. This shows he is not a “white nationalist.” We want a white nation or at least a white supermajority, not a multiracial, multicultural state. An American nationalist thinks that this country is worth saving as it is.

For America to survive, Mr. Carlson’s arguments would have to be taken seriously, not banned. Many white nationalists think our rulers will muzzle us more than ever. For that reason, a white nationalist is already looking to what comes after America.

If our ruling class were wise, it would recognize that Tucker Carlson isn’t a threat but a warning. It almost certainly won’t, so there will be hard times for all citizens. If anything, Mr. Carlson is trying to save this foolish ruling class from itself. If it doesn’t listen, we become the final argument. Whites are receptive to our message, and if the repression weakens, our message will prevail.

The New York Times may even sense that. Perhaps it isn’t really scared of Tucker Carlson. It is scared of what comes next.

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One Response

  1. Our Founding Fathers approved the Bill of Rights as demanded by 9 of the13 colonies-states as a condition of approving the new constitution. And the first of the amendments declares free speech, freedom of religion and the right to peaceful assembly are paramount. Second only is the freedom to protect ones self and property from the tyranny of government.
    The New York Times has always supported unamerican socialist government. In the 1930’s the NYT supported a correspondent in Moscow , a Mr. Durante who falsely reported the U.S.S.R. was making great strides in improving conditions in Ukraine by putting collective farming as a top priority of government. And we know how well that played out. FOX and Tucker Carlson had better hold to their freedom of expression or our freedom of speech will be a candle with very little wax left.

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