It's better to hate Tucker Carlson than to hate war.
That's the theme of Frank Bruni's latest New York Times column, in which he accuses naive peace-loving progressives of developing a crush on the Fox News personality for his audacious antiwar messaging and his critique of Donald Trump's assassination of Quassim Soleimani.
Suddenly you’re digging him. At least a little bit. I know, I’ve seen the tweets, read the commentary, heard the chatter, detected the barely suppressed cheer: Hurrah for Tucker Carlson. If only we had more brave, principled Republicans like him.Never mind the lack of brave, principled Democrats, whose own opposition to Trump's actions was limited to a nonbinding resolution that only pretends to limit his war powers. Because Fox News regularly and unfairly blasts the Democratic Party, it behooves us to defend establishment Democrats even when the criticism "from the other side" is valid. Therefore, Bruni gushes that Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposed the Iraq invasion but only very grudgingly admits that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer voted for it.
Right out of the gate, he protested President Trump’s decision to kill Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian military commander, noting that it didn’t square with the president’s determination not to get bogged down in the Middle East and warning of the possibility and horror of full-blown war. Your pulse quickened. You perked up.
Instead of writing an antiwar column of his own, from a more humanistic point of view, Bruni chooses instead to highlight Tucker Carlson's history of racism and Trump-worship, thereby giving both the liberal interventionists and the neocons a complete pass and tainting antiwar sentiment across the board.
As Matt Gertz of Media Matters perceptively noted, Carlson’s antiwar stance “is not a break from his past support for Trump or his channeling of white nationalist tropes, but a direct a result of both.” Gertz explained that in the mind-set of Carlson and many of his fans on the far right, energy spent on missions in another hemisphere is energy not spent on our southern border. It’s no accident that, in regard to the Middle East, he and (White nationalist Richard) Spencer are on the same page.See how subtly Bruni simultaneously gaslights and indirectly smears by association the leftist antiwar movement? I'm only surprised he didn't pounce, as other pro-war establishment Democrats have done, on the appearances of Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard on Tucker Carlson's show to offer their own more leftist critiques of US imperialism and militarism.
Bruni's column succeeds in completely changing the subject. It also ticks off the requisite "shoot the messenger" box. If you still think Tucker Carlson might have something valid to say, the warning is, then you'd better think again. You don't want to get caught inadvertently quoting him and then risk getting called a racist or a closet Trumpist by your friends, do you?
Since Tucker Carlson holds such loathsome views on many social issues, the implicit message is, then it must naturally follow that liberals make up for wars' destruction by being more inclusive and diverse and sincere and well-meaning. All Bruni is saying by omission is, give war a chance. And never mind that the bipartisan bombs dropped in the past two decades on at least eight different countries in Africa and the Middle East are almost exclusively killing and maiming black and brown-skinned people. War and imperialism and colonialism are racist in both thought and in deed. The "good side" of the oligarchic duopoly simply stifles the racist rhetoric more adeptly than the "bad side" does.
My published comment on Bruni's column:
With CNN and MSNBC stuffed to the gills with CIA and Pentagon analysts. it should come as no surprise that one of the few antiwar pundits left standing will attract a certain amount of squeamish liberal enthusiasm.
Does anybody remember when MSNBC summarily fired Phil Donahue for his own antiwar sentiment during the run-up to the Iraq invasion? Follow the weapons industry/fossil fuel/corporate sponsor money!
An overlap between liberalism and libertarianism is nothing new. Ron Paul, for instance, attracts a fair number of lefties for his opposition to the war/surveillance state despite his connections to the racist John Birch Society and his opposition to government health and welfare programs.
One of the best antiwar analysts writing today is Andrew Bacevich, who contributes regularly to The American Conservative. and who has criticized US wars of aggression from Vietnam to Iraq and beyond. His latest book, "The Age of Illusions," chronicles how the end of the Cold War unleashed a rampage of neoliberal capitalism and neoconservative militarism which have become the subversive new definitions of democracy. It also helped usher in the Trump presidency.
Of course, Trump himself will likely never read this book or any other book for that matter. So if it disturbs you that a racist antiwar poser like Carlson occasionally stays the itchy trigger finger of our Fox News addict of a president, that's a clue that we need many more progressive antiwar voices in the media.
I think Carlson is just NewsCorp's way of probing for replacement audience. They know their present audience is dying, and if they can hornswoggle a passel of under-65's, they can set themselves up with the next bunch of rubes for another generation. Carlson is probably positioning himself for a run for President, as well.
ReplyDeleteIs Bruni saying if Tucker Carlson is against war then liberals must be for war? Because, gasp, how could liberals ever agree with Tucker Carlson!? A few weeks ago, Naked Capitalism posted a video of Tucker Carlson lambasting private equity for killing small towns (particularly Cabela's and Sidney, NE). Ok, Tucker Carlson can get it right sometimes. It's ok. It's not the end of the world. Perhaps Bruni is channeling a major point in Matt Taibbi's Hate, Inc.: we've been conditioned to be against anything the other side is for (or for anything the other side is against). And often, the "other side" is simply manufactured.
ReplyDeleteBob from Wyoming
U.S. Warns Iraq It Risks Losing Access to Key Bank Account If Troops Told to Leave.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-warns-iraq-it-risks-losing-access-to-key-bank-account-if-troops-told-to-leave/ar-BBYRkYd
"Must-not-stop-war" (and the associated weapons purchases) is the prime directive of the U.S. military-industrial-political complex.
If they were smart, the Iraqi leadership would simply leak that it is considering making a deal to lease bases to Russia or China if the U.S., when booted out, imposes financial freezes or other sanctions on Iraq.
The Third World successfully played "The West" against "Communism" for decades, to their own financial benefit (often squandered, but that's a separate story). And that "play-off" strategy would still work, just that an insecure oligarchic-capitalistic Russia and an expansionist-capitalist China would take the place of "Communism". Faced with the prospect of those spheres expanding their geopolitical influence into Iraq, the U.S. would withdraw its threat so fast it'd make your head spin.
Lately we have seen a significant increase in coverage in the left press of "conservatives" who are opposed to some of the policies of the Trump administration. When they speak out from their positions on the right and hard right, somehow, they are heralded as:
ReplyDelete1. Having greater insight due to their perspective
2. Being behind-enemy-lines champions
3. Proof that even people we hate can hate Trump
4. Suddenly being converted to the progressive view due to realities
5. Having more credibility than progressives because they are not true believers
6. Needing praise to encourage them along a progressive path
This is sort of what we are seeing from some parts of the evangelical community toward Trump. "The greater the sinner, the greater the welcome."
On a tactical basis, we welcome Carlson's statement against another adventure in Iran. But it is foolish to elevate this to a matter of principle. This is a quarrel within the imperialist camp on how to best advance their cause. If winning over the rightists becomes a strategic goal, we will find ourselves in company with the "centrist" Democrats. That also might be a good tactical approach but they want to always take the lead and we know we cannot allow that to happen again. Two quotes to consider:
"...we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks."
"...pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies."