The educational case of Tucker Carlson

It was not that long ago that ‘centrist’ and ‘left-wing’ commentators lampooned and berated Tucker Carlson as an extreme right-wing buffoon. Certainly his statements and behaviour at Fox News gave them lots of ammunition. But that diagnosis just never seemed plausible. Carlson is not a very good actor and so I never found his supposed extremism convincing. I did not know why he was performing that role, and even now I am not entirely sure, but performing he was.

Now, all of a sudden, he has swung towards political positions that not long ago would have been considered, in the United States at least, those of a ‘radical leftist’. While I believe that some common ground can be found across large parts of the political spectrum, these kinds of shifts given his previously extreme views are just not convincing.

So what’s going on? Well, the first thing is always to look at the facts in front of your face that controversy and drama distracts from.

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The bare facts are that Carlson’s father was one of the most powerful propagandists in the era post-JFK and post-McCarthyist purges in which Republican neoconservatives reached their zenith. He was appointed the director of propaganda outlet Voice of America by Ronald Reagan in the late 1980s: a pivotal time for US propaganda abroad since it coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. He later was appointed ambassador to the Seychelles by George Bush Sr - which one could either interpret as a demotion or a reward. His last significant job was as director of a neoconservative ‘thinktank’ (i.e. lobby group) called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

In that context, it is hardly surprising that Carlson Jr (Tucker) applied for his first job with the CIA.

His father was, after all, deeply embedded in the kinds of propaganda and state networks that the deep state operates in. The odd part of the story is that, supposedly, Tucker Carlson was turned down by the CIA and instead began a career in journalism.

That seems highly implausible given Carlson Sr’s status and connections. What seems much more likely is that Carlson Jr’s application was successful, but he was redirected into journalism where he would be more useful than just a normal operative.

When we look at the facts this way, it seems obviously foolish to celebrate Tucker Carlson reaching some point of enlightenment. Yet many commentators, including the likes of Glenn Greenwald, are doing just that.¹

Rather the questions should be:

1. Why did the CIA want Carlson to perform the role of extreme right-wing buffoon at Fox News? What did that achieve?

2. What strategic objective does his pivot now - for example to criticism of Israel - achieve?

Well, I have already answered the second question in a series of posts last year where I explained that the US was likely pivoting on its relationship with Israel and Israeli leaders like Netanyahu.

But to make that happen requires not just shifting state policy but first shifting public opinion; public opion that has been heavily distorted by decades of unquestioning pro-Israel propaganda, especially on the right of the political spectrum. The sudden pivot of leading right-wing commentators (like Candace Owen) and politicians (Marjorie Taylor Green) is more evidence in support of this theory.²

And maybe this all also answers the first question above, because who better to lead that shift than the man who constructed himself as the doyenne of pro-Israel rightwingers? Tucker Carlson.

1. The Greenwald-Carlson bromance has been going on for some years now: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/why-glenn-greenwald-says-tucker-carlson-is-a-true-socialist.html
Unfortunately, Carlson is the only one winning from that. More on Greenwald’s gradual (unwitting?) slide into the mouth of the ‘deep state’ in a separate post.

2. One interesting dimension of this shift has been the sudden, coordinated introduction of a conspiracy theory that Israel was behind JFK’s assassination. More on that some other time, but suffice to say that many thought the full spectrum of possible conspiracies behind JFK’s murder had been exhausted, so the timing and nature of this new one is certainly intriguing.