Fox News Talker
“They” want to destroy “you” – like Tucker Carlson spreads fear and terror from the right
Tucker Carlson’s message: “They” want “You” to be quiet and obey.
© Brian Cahn / Picture Alliance
He spreads Kremlin propaganda and says the population will be “exchanged”. US talker Tucker Carlson has been agitating on the far right for six years. The “New York Times” analyzed 1,150 programs and explained the fear-mongering system.
“If you take the United States, only Fox News is trying to present an alternative view.” The man who said these words in a recent interview is Sergey Lavrov and he is Russia’s foreign minister. Now the 71-year-old has a legendary flexible relationship to the truth. A few days before the invasion of Ukraine, he claimed that the West’s war warnings were pure scaremongering. Or, most recently, that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood”. But sometimes his statements really work. Because Fox News actually values ”alternative points of view”, better known under the term: lies.
“Every day Tucker Carlson looks you in the eye”
Lavrov’s March praise also went to the work of the station’s most successful presenter, Tucker Carlson. Since the end of 2016 he has been leading the talk show of the same name during prime time. Three million Americans watch the 52-year-old every workday as he praises every escapade of former US President Donald Trump over the green clover, as he utterly condemns everything that could be somehow “left” (tightening of gun laws, Corona measures, everything with gender) and recently even runs Kremlin propaganda. “Putin doesn’t want NATO membership, but Joe Biden wants a hot war”. With these and other statements, he achieves the highest ratings.
Because “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is so successful, has the “New York Times” (NYT) bent over 1150 editions of the show, analyzed them and put the results online in an elaborate multimedia article. Her conclusion: “Every day during the week, Tucker Carlson comes and looks ‘you’ in the eye for an hour and tells ‘you’ that ‘they’ want control in order to destroy ‘you’.” “You” and “you” are the two antagonists that Carlson uses to explain his point of view to his viewers. “The ‘you’ versus ‘you’ loop is a favorite stylistic device used by populists and authoritarian leaders to connect with audiences” and break down the world into easily digestible black-and-white chunks, the paper said.
At the heart of almost all of Carlson’s discussions is a sort of campaign by the powerful “ruling class” against the impotent average American. “They” threaten “you” and everything that “you” believe in, the moderator hammers into his audience every day anew. “They” are democrats, media representatives, big business, academics, but also sports and Hollywood stars. The spectrum ranges from US chief immunologist Anthony Fauci, to New York’s ex-mayor Bill de Blasio, basketball superstar LeBron James, ex-CIA boss James Comey, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala harris. The term “ruling class” appears more than 800 times in the 1,150 programs, according to the NYT.
Lying is part of the business model
Any topic can become a “ruling class conspiracy”: legalization of marijuana, feminism, immigration. His trick is not even original, but effective. He begins his explanations with real information or correctly cited studies, but then distorts them in such a way that they fit his views and presumably those of his viewers as well. The fact that the truth is twisted beyond recognition is apparently part of the business model. In 2020, a court followed Fox News lawyers’ reasoning that any “reasonable viewer would follow Tucker Carlson’s remarks with reasonable skepticism.”
© Screenshot/”New York Times”/stern
In addition, the television man primarily uses positions that range from arch-conservative to openly right-wing extremists:
- At least 600 times, Carlson has propagated apocalyptic scenarios according to which “Western civilization is destroying itself” because “the leaders in Washington, Berlin and Paris do not consider it worth preserving”. For this, according to the Fox News moderator, there is no need for an attack from outside, “we are rotting from within”. Vladimir Putin’s verdict on “the West” is almost identical.
- The conspiracy narrative of the “great exchange”, which is widespread in right-wing and anti-Semitic circles (also in Europe), has been very popular for some time. After that, “they” (in this case the ruling Democrats) would want to replace the population with the help of “third world” immigrants who, among other things, are “more obedient voters”. This crude claim appears in more than 400 episodes.
- Other enemy images that appear regularly include feminists and people who do not fit into classic gender norms and would therefore “lower birth rates”. Frequency: around 200 broadcasts.
- Other popular topics: “obsession with skin color”, “equality” and “discrimination against whites”. “They” would create a world where “you” would be discriminated against because the rights of minorities would be worth more than “your”. He also applies this narrative to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when thousands of mostly white Trump supporters broke into the House of Representatives. According to Carlson, “they” made sure that the white perpetrators were punished more severely than the offending perpetrators of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The topic was on his show almost 600 times.
However, Tucker Carlson is not alone in his studio in Florida; at least one guest is present on every show. However, their political spectrum has narrowed considerably in recent years. While discussion partners who did not share Carlson’s opinion made up a considerable proportion at the beginning, from 2020 they were only invited occasionally. The following year there were only three guests who were not politically on the side of the host. Carlson claims that “liberals” (as leftists and liberals are called in the US) refuse to come on his show. Fox News says viewers don’t like debates.
“NYT” leaves open whether Tucker Carlson, who once worked for more left-wing stations such as CNN and MSNBC, believes his sometimes absurd conspiracy theories himself, or whether he just tells his audience what it wants to hear. Prominent ex-right-wing extremist Derek Black says it ultimately doesn’t matter if he endorses things like “white nationalism” because he uses “the same rhetoric” and thus gives the idea “credibility” in front of large audiences. David Duke, neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan leader, has already proposed Carlson as a vice presidential candidate for Donald Trump and his next campaign.