The New York Times recently published a very long – it’ll surely be a book – two-part article about Tucker Carlson. Carlson has been, of course, a fixture of the American media for years. He’s already rich and famous, known both for the extremity of his views and his outsized audience. In consequence, as the author of the Times piece, Nicholas Confessore, testifies, from the prominence of his prime-time perch at Fox News Carlson has amassed considerable power and even more influence.
For those among us who happen not to concur with his strongly held right-wing views Carlson is, then, a leader to be feared. From the evidence of his already astonishing success, and what could well be, despite the predicable denials, his vaulting ambition, it is easily imagined that someday not far into the future Carlson could have not only outsized power and influence but, additionally, outsized authority. The kind of authority that is bestowed by holding high office – say, for example, the American presidency.
Reasons for people like me to fear Carlson include:
- The level of his success.
Tucker Carlson is single most watched individual on America’s single most watched cable network. His impact on the American psyche is immense, incalculable.
- The level of his ambition.
Carlson goes to great pains to conceal his zeal to succeed. He lives in rural Maine, far from the madding crowd. And he denies aspiring to political office. However, his willingness to bend to the prevailing wind suggests a man who might yet have other fish to fry. This is a man who has strayed far from where he was not long ago, a conservative to be sure, but a mainstream conservative who seemed to take pleasure in mocking those to his right. Now no one is no more vocal and voluble a defender of those who stormed America’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, than Tucker Carlson.
- The level of his autonomy.
Carlson answers to no one. The owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, leaves him alone so long as their political views are synchronous – and Carlson brings home the bacon. For her part, Suzanne Scott, Fox’s chief executive officer, is clearly no dummy. She’s canny enough to keep hands off her most prized commodity.
- The content of his rhetoric.
Carlson’s extended and extensive commentaries are loathsome to many Americans. But Carlson’s extended and extensive commentaries are not loathsome to many other Americans. Quite the contrary. What Confessore describes as the “most racist show in the history of cable news,” is precisely what appeals to much if not most of Fox’s audience. The firehose of fear mongering issuing from Carlson’s mouth is all about America under siege. An America beset and beleaguered by protesters who are criminals and traitors, by immigrants who are dirty and diseased, and by unnamed, unmitigated elites who profit at the expense of the working class, especially white males.
- The implications of his rhetoric.
The specifics of what Carlson says add up to a general world view, a weltanschauung reminiscent of nothing so much as fascism. A fascism consisting of racism, nationalism, populism, and isolationism. A fascism implying autocracy not democracy. A fascism that sometimes is fact, other times is fiction. Fascism that is Trumpism – whether Trump is or is not at the top.
- The style of his rhetoric.
Carlson is not mealy-mouthed. To the contrary, he is a loudmouth: fiery and fearsome, intent, and intense, as relentlessly persistent as he is apparently paranoid. He is the total opposite of news anchors of old who, the more moderate and temperate they were, the better. Who prided themselves on nothing so much as their objectivity and neutrality, who considered it their job to bring Americans together rather than to drive them apart. Not so long ago Carlson had guests on his show who disagreed with him. Now nearly never. Now his show is an echo chamber.
- The nature of his followers.
Think of Carlson as a performer who wants nothing so much as to please his audience. Of itself, this is no indictment. Everyone who gets before a group wants to win it over. The question is what are we willing to do to have that happen? In Carlson’s case the answer has been to pander to members of his audience, to satisfy their appetites so before long they come back for more. Carlson has hit on his magic elixir – it is to wed his anger to his passion. So now it’s his stock in trade. He divides people into “us” and “them” – into “us” versus “them” – us being the innocent defenders, them the virulent attackers.
- The nature of his context.
- The times in which we live are fractured and fractious at home – and fractured and fractious abroad. There is no respite from conflict nationally, and conflagration internationally. All this is grist for Carlson’s mill. He thrives on that which divides us at the national level – high on the list are integration and immigration. And he thrives on what divides us the international level – high on the list are Russia and its president, Vladmir Putin, and Hungary and its Prime Minister. Viktor Orban. Finally, Carlson has brilliantly played the hand he was dealt, Donald Trump the man and Trumpism the movement. He has lashed himself to the latter but, cannily, cleverly, not so much to the former.
It’s precisely this canniness and cleverness – his ability, as Confessore perfectly put it, to “alchemize media power into political influence” – that make me nervous.