Why Do the Left Hate Tucker Carlson, So Much? By Charles Taylor (Florida)

The question of why the Left hate Tucker Carlson so much, is a distinct one from why Tucker actually got sacked. In fact, there is a school of thought that holds that Tucker was not sacked in the sense of “you’re fired,’ but merely removed from air, and held on contract to be neutralised. Still, whatever the reason for the neutralisation, it seems, as detailed below, that the Left have the same derangement syndrome about Tucker, that they do with Trump. On this basis it is wise to conclude that the same psychosis is at work; that anyone opposing utterly anything, in any shape or form, contrary to the big Agenda of leftism, must be regarded as totally evil. Hence apart from a few sensible leftists, such as Dr Naomi Wolf, and Robert Kennedy Jr., the whole ship of fools, is, well, a ship of fools, destined to strike the icebergs of cold reality anytime now. Meanwhile, I hope the likes of Tucker will keep on trucking on.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/29/why-they-hate-tucker-carlson/

“Woe betide the left-leaning hack who deviates from the narrative about Tucker Carlson. Tucker’s a fascist and any liberal who says otherwise should expect swift cancellation. Witness the troubles at the American Prospect. On Wednesday, the day after Carlson’s abrupt departure from Fox News, that young organ of pained liberalism made the grave error of publishing a piece suggesting Carlson might in fact be a complicated figure. Perhaps – whisper it – a rebellious one. Might this boisterous puncturer of the new elite’s ‘lazy pieties’, this primetime critic of war, free-market capitalism and Big Tech, hold some lessons for the left? Oh dear. Summon the mob. A liberal has made unapproved comments about Mr Carlson.

The irregular commentary was written by Lee Harris and Luke Goldstein. Yes, Carlson could be ‘obsessively nativist’, they said, not least by flirting with Great Replacement theories. But he also had a ‘willingness to challenge and mock ruling elites’ and he won a ‘wide audience’ by doing so. Which begs a question, said these reckless dissenters from Tuckerphobia: ‘Why other nightly news shows that attacked him didn’t raise the same critiques.’ It’s a good question. There was Tucker saying ‘You’d have to be a fool to worship [market capitalism]’ and roasting the DC elites for ‘spending tens of billions of dollars’ on war, while Trevor Noah was fluttering his lashes at war criminal Hillary Clinton and asking: ‘What does it feel like being the boogeyman to the right?’ Instead of mauling Carlson some more, why don’t ‘liberal media outlets like the Guardian’ do some of their own ‘skewering [of] comfortable pieties’, asked Harris and Goldstein?

Cue hysteria. Twitter – well, the small portion of it that reads the American Prospect – went nuts. Readers vented, subs were cancelled. Things got so crazy that the magazine’s executive editor, David Dayen, issued a mea culpa. We ‘fell short’, he said. We will ‘work hard to earn back whatever trust has been lost’, he pleaded. He atoned for the American Prospect’s transgression against liberal orthodoxy by publishing a follow-up piece titled ‘The Real Tucker Carlson’. The real Tucker Carlson is a ‘neofascist’ in thrall to ‘racism, xenophobia, misogyny, disdain for democracy, affinity for autocrats and autocracy [and] habitual lying’, it said. Shorter version: Carlson’s scum. Order restored. Narrative reinstated. Sleep easy, rich liberals.

We need to talk about Tucker Derangement Syndrome. You don’t have to be a Carlson fanboy to recognise that the molten contempt for him in liberal circles is odd and disproportionate and possibly tells us more about the frothing liberals themselves than it does about any evil on the part of Mr Carlson. It strikes me that liberal Tuckerphobia is part fear, part envy. These people fret over Carlson’s influence on the white working class, worrying their little patrician heads that he’s exciting dangerous passions among the low-information throng. But they’re jealous of that influence, too. Deep down they recognise that this preppy dude who they mock for his ‘incredulous stare’ and ‘slack-jawed expression’ is able to do something they can no longer do and will never be able to do again: connect with ordinary people. Tucker’s no ‘working-class whisperer’, said that corrective American Prospect piece, which suggests they’re worried that that’s exactly what he is.

My view of Carlson is that he’s a very good broadcaster who has some interesting views and some batsh*t insane views. I was on his Fox show twice. I saw that ‘incredulous stare’ and ‘slack jaw’ in real time as I explained to him that, yes, a woman in Austria really had been convicted in a court of law for being mean about the Prophet Muhammad. Carlson’s agitation with capitalism could be thrilling to watch. Who can forget his impassioned monologue on the low pay of Amazon workers, some of whom are forced to claim welfare, meaning American taxpayers are essentially propping up the Bezos oligarchy. Yet the next day he’d go into a rant about the Dems bringing in ever-more immigrants because they nefariously long to replace ‘legacy Americans’ (oof) with ‘more obedient people from faraway countries’. One night he’d sound like a Novara Media radical (if less posh), the next he’d be channelling Tommy Robinson.”