Chapter Three: Right Wing - Tucker Carlson, His Struggle
We’re exploring Russell’s continuing rightwing lurch through his videos on the topic of Tucker Carlson, from after Russell’s appearance on Fox News up until his interview with Tucker on Rumble. At this point in our journey, we have discovered that Tucker Carlson has spilled the beans on the Main Stream Media and their globalist overlords and is now a much-loved challenger of elites as a unifying figure straddling the left and right. Oh, yeah, and he’s a racist fascist who lies with aplomb and will say whatever he wants in the moment, so long as it serves his agenda.
But now we encounter Tucker in peril as the reactionary forces of the establishment lash out in an effort to prevent him from commencing his new gig on Twitter, with videos number five and six in our sequence: “IT’S A LIE” Tucker Declares WAR On Fox News; and Tucker’s BREAKING Twitter Announcement! What It REALLY Means! #126 Stay Free PREVIEW both published on May 10, 2023, when we consider…
Tucker The Martyr
And it’s all hands to the pump, five-alarm, gale force 10, category 5, emergency as Russell claims that - sorry “asks if” - Fox News is attempting to besmirch the good name of Tucker Carlson by the foul tactic of, er, drawing attention to Tucker’s own words and actions?
Russell asks, is it because Fox “disagree with him on ‘cultural issues’ or is it because they think Tucker Carlson is about to cost them a lot of money?”
‘Cultural issues’ yeugh. That’s Russell’s new euphemism for Tucker’s rampant racism and white supremacy. Gross.
Russell is inspired in this line of thought by a Tweet from his mentor in sh*t baggery, Glenn Greenwald “There's obviously a decision by Fox to wage a massive war on Tucker Carlson's character -- partnering with both the NYT and Media Matters to do it -- and it's extremely odd for many reasons, beginning with the fact that he hasn't uttered a negative word about them.“.
OK, great, we’re off to a flying start with a conspiracy! Fox News is supposedly “partnering” with the NYT to release highly embarrassing text messages and also with Media Matters to release highly embarrassing unaired footage from behind the scenes at Fox News; at this point, with these clowns, conspiracy theories are par for the course. I suppose they believe that this exposes how the “partisan” mainstream media will band together against a common threat to their shared hegemony - the sainted Tucker!
Nice story, but is it likely?
I mean, given revelations about how he sought to intimidate his colleagues at Fox and the contempt he’s shown for them, including executives it’s not as if there aren’t a few candidates who would be more than willing to leak embarrassing information about Tucker to the press. In fact, didn’t the NYT piece attribute their source as an unnamed “executive”? Hmmm.
Occam’s razor and all that; all we need is one or two disgruntled coworkers - as opposed to a conspiracy between Fox and an organization, Media Matters, whose entire raison d’etre is to critique right-wing media hate, and who describe Fox as “a propaganda outlet for Republicans” whose content is “dangerous, bigoted, and inflammatory rhetoric”.
And even though Tucker and Fox appear to have gone their separate ways, their fates are still intertwined and they probably don't want to alienate each other too much: they continue to have a contractual relationship, which, it is speculated, sees Fox paying Tucker $60 million over the next three years; there are a series of looming lawsuits that both Tucker and Fox will want to cooperate on; and, on the possibility that their relationship could sour, lawyers for both Tucker and Fox will be advising their clients not to “f*ck about” with the other party now, lest they “find out” later in a courtroom.
Besides, Fox News issued a cease and desist to Media Matters - a dumb move if they were the source of the leak. This was on May 5th, a full five days before Russell’s video was published. Surely someone as switched on and well-informed as Russell would’ve been aware of this fact and would have included it in his reporting? Funnily enough, he doesn’t mention it. But surely a man as committed to truth and journalistic integrity as Russell Brand would’ve posted an update or retraction when news broke, on May 26th, that the FBI had arrested someone for hacking the videos from Fox News’ computer network, thus throwing more cold water on the idea of an intentional leak? No, he didn’t mention that, either.
Perhaps that's because Russell wants to present Tucker as a victim of intrigue and a martyr to corporate media. Diverting people’s attention from the horror that is Tucker Carlson is the point of Greenwald’s and Russell’s obfuscation - it creates a drama to distract from the mundane, racist reality of their friend. How much easier to frame the issue as a supposed assault by Fox rather than having to address the full awfulness of Tucker Carlson head-on? And how much easier to hand wave away revelations of that awfulness under the guise of providing balance to underhand or dirty tricks?
So we’ll just have to go with the idea that Fox is waging a nonsensical “massive war” on Tucker’s character.
But can it really be a war on one’s character if the weapon being wielded against one is, er, one’s own character?
This is Tucker’s text message that was published by the NYT:
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
F*******ck, Tucker Carlson really is just human detritus.
First up - that’s a text message? What is that, 190 words? I thought I was verbose, Tolstoy is like, “Sharpen it up dude!”... Who writes like this in a text message? It’s like the giant hand guy from The Simpsons.
And the content? Keep it light! “I’ll be home by 7”, “What’s for dinner?”, “Remember the dry cleaning”, “I’m a fascist and borderline psychopath”. Jeeze Louise!
And the timing? This was sent on Jan 6th, “A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a video” would’ve been Christmas Eve or thereabouts. WTF are the Christmas traditions in the Carlson household? “Let's all gather around the fire with a glass of eggnog and a nice warm mince pie to watch a hate crime on YouTube! Merry Christmas, one and all! Ho ho ho!”
Russell has thoughts: ”Certainly, using terms around race seems like it's adjacent to racism, doesn't it? That's what we all feel if you hear ‘that's not how white men fight’; starts to feel like that sounds like we're moving towards racism”.
Wow, so not actually racism but “adjacent to”, and “feels like it sounds like [it’s] moving towards” racism? Don’t mince your words, Russell. Personally, I would’ve thought if you used terms that are racist, then you were already at a place of racism, that if you hear, “That’s not how white men fight”, the speaker objectively sounds exactly like a racist and had arrived at racism.
Russell goes on to have more thoughts: “sounds like an interesting reflective perspective to me… seems like someone analyzing their own previous bigotry and prejudice and being willing to let go of it.”
This is a pathetic attempt by Russell to excuse Tucker’s racism. Not least because in the two and a half years since Tucker sent this text on January 6th 2021, his on-air racism has only intensified. Since Biden took office, Tucker has been pushing the Great Replacement conspiracy theory HARD and explicitly linking it to Biden’s immigration policy, claiming it “punishes” and seeks to “replace the disobedient ones”, the “legacy Americans”. And with that has come the casual racism of calling immigrants “dirty”, “filth”, “chaos”. He has claimed that, not the January 6th attempted insurrection, but the 1965 immigration act was the “worst attack on our democracy” since the civil war. And I’m not 100% sure what side of the Civil War he thinks was the one attacking democracy.
And even with his obsession with white genocide, Tucker has still found time to fearmonger his audience against efforts to address systemic racism, vilifying protests at the murder of George Floyd, the BLM movement, and CRT as threats to civilization. He’s compared school integration to the apocalyptic Jonestown cult, a snide reference to the racial diversity of its members, nearly a thousand of whom perished at the orders of the cult leader.
So no, Tucker’s racism hasn’t abated, it abides.
Given Tucker’s racist outlook, I believe that some people have interpreted “antifa kid” as a dog whistle indication that the victim was black - but I don’t think so. For Tucker and Co., Antifa occupies the space of a violent oppositional bogeyman, but they remain decidedly white (race traitors), whether presented as privileged enforcers of woke, or Soros-funded storm-troopers, or the armed wing of the Democratic Party. There are plenty of existing dog whistles: he could’ve said “a BLM guy”, or even just a “thug”, or “hoodlum”.
The whole point of Tucker’s parable is about being drawn towards political violence, he acknowledges as much in his climb down “Much as I despise what he [the antifa kid] says and does”. And “If I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”. Tucker Carlson; always taking the high ground.
The casual racism is just dumped on top without adding anything to the central message. You could remove the whole “not how white men fight” sentence from the text, and it would not change the meaning or logic one jot. In fact, putting the statement in there is just racist posturing; a grotesque inversion of virtue signalling.
And, while we’re on the topic - maybe look at “how white men fight” in relation to Emmet Till and the literally thousands of black people murdered by white mob violence in the USA.
Even if you do apply Russell’s reasoning to the text, it simply ends with a renewal of the racism rather than “releasing” it. Tucker’s starting point is racist “Jumping a guy like that ... It's not how white men fight.” He objects to white people acting like his racist stereotype of black people. “Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man”, he pivots, overcoming his racist aversion to mob violence to somehow become even worse! But he then returns to his starting (racist) position “This isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be”. That “something” he doesn’t want to be is somebody who doesn’t see mob violence as the exclusive preserve of black people!
Russell knows that Tucker Carlson’s racism continued after this point. And Russell knows this text was not a soul-searching disavowal of prior racism, it was just racism dumped on top of hate, like so much crawfish etoufee dumped on top of fried catfish.
What of Russell’s claim in the video that he is “completely against all forms of bigotry and prejudice; racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia”?
While he acts as an apologist for racism, can he really claim to believe that "judging people on the basis of … their religion or their race or their identity is not only horrible, it's a stupid waste of time.”? Can he claim that he’s “willing to criticize [bigitory and prejudice] in anybody, absolutely anybody because it's an obstacle to the progress we absolutely must make if we are to change the world” at the same time as he is fabricating excuses on behalf of Tucker Carlson’s racism?
When I first started on this project, I would often speculate to myself if there was a line that Russell wouldn’t cross and how, if brought up to that line, he might extricate himself from the morass that he had sunk himself into. That particular line of thought has become an increasingly depressing exercise in futility.
Tucker is vile racist garbage and, by covering for him, Russell has become vile racist garbage. They deserve one another as they move on to…
Tucker The Redeemed
And now Russell sets out to present Tucker as born again! He asks, “If people cannot change, how are we ever going to change the world? If someone's once done something that is off-key and then they disavow it and move on, and you're like ‘no too late!’, where's the redemption-salvation-Improvement-change process?”.
“Off-key” - nice.
He even attempts to recruit a clip of Jon Stewart, antithetical to Russell, who describes how Tucker is not brokering well-intentioned, honest questions but is actually hiding his true motivations as part of his “cynical manipulation” of his audience. But in Russell's misrepresentation of Stewart’s position, Tucker's anti-establishment antics aren't a mask for his racism, it's actually the case that Stewart choses to ignore Tucker's iconoclasm because he finds Tucker’s prior racism “so insidious”. And Russell provides a rebuttal to his own argument, claiming that he "differs from [Stewart] in believing that people can change".
But Stewart didn’t say that people can’t change. Russell is again deploying a strawman argument, this time arguing against words that he has put in Stewart’s mouth. And it’s beside the point anyway because Tucker hasn’t changed!
I’ll state it again, Tucker’s racism has not diminished, and he has not disavowed it. Jon Stewart has correctly identified that Tucker intentionally manipulates his audience in the service of a larger white supremacist / fascist project - his “true motivations” - but Russell pretends otherwise and, combined with his supposed regret for supporting the invasion of Iraq that we saw in Chapter One, Tucker is now washed clean!
White as the driven snow! (If you’ll pardon the expression.)
But Russell’s own true motives may be less pure, as he muses about the consequences of losing Tucker not only in terms of “an important and skilled ally” but also losing access to his “hundreds of millions” of supporters. Is there any moral line Russell wouldn’t cross if it helped facilitate his own agenda and build his audience?
Russell is annoyed that Jon Stewart can’t get over his aversion to Tucker’s racism. Russell considers both of them to be figures from the periphery, why can’t they just get on? In reality, of course, both are giants of the mainstream media, with Tucker’s two decades hosting on every major cable news channel and Stewart a doyen of liberal media, racking up dozens of Emmys and Grammys for his 16 years hosting the US’s premier satirical news program. Russell has a decidedly short-sighted vision of the periphery! And one which is entirely self-serving and populated by figures that he cherry-picks. But why won’t Stewart join forces with Tucker? Maybe it’s the almost universal affection from mainstream centrists that means that he doesn’t feel the need to pander to fascists for clout.
Russell presents Tucker’s racist, yet not-racist, text message as the pretence for Tucker’s firing from Fox - we’ve apparently moved on from the Jan 6th trutherism that was being presented as the cause in Chapter Two - but he thinks the text is just an excuse because Russell’s not so sure that Fox is really that bothered by racism - I mean, they did give Tucker Carlson his own show, so I guess maybe he’s got a point.
But why so cynical of Fox’s motives now, Russell? Surely, by firing Tucker, Fox News is becoming less racist; it’s trying to change! My god, Russell, why won’t you just accept that, in firing Tucker, Fox has disavowed its prior bigotry and prejudice? if an organization can’t change, Russell, where's the “redemption-salvation-Improvement-change process?” - lol!
Apparently, Fox was really motivated to fire him because of the (then) looming lawsuit by Tucker’s former producer Abby Grosberg alleging that his show was “an abusive place to work, defined by bigotry, misogyny and bullying”. Russell feels that this isn’t fair to Tucker! He waves away her allegations as something you wouldn’t want to be said about your mum or your aunt, but not something that should see someone forever banned from television.
This is a man who divorced Katy Perry for not wanting to come to his mum’s for Christmas, but is now basically ok with Tucker Carlson calling his mum a menopausal slag.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that about me mam, Tucker. But, who am I kidding? I can’t stay mad at you, you little scamp!”
Most of the legal analysts I follow were of the opinion that the timing of Tucker’s firing didn’t make sense in terms of either the toxic workplace lawsuit or the prior Dominion one, yet alone the looming Smartmatic and Ray Epps suits. Reporting on the causes of Tucker’s firing has been all over the place, but there is a consensus that it originated with Rupert Murdoch, who has a reputation for acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner.
And when you think about it in terms of the Dominion lawsuit and Rupert Murdoch’s experience of it, that podcast appearance of Tucker’s that we talked about in Chapter One takes on a different hue. That’s the one where Tucker said that the role of the news media is “not to inform you”, claiming that “They are working for the small group of people who actually run the world. They're their servants”.
Not really a useful message if your employer happens to be one of the world's most powerful people and is the target of a billion-dollar lawsuit alleging that his news organization’s role was not to inform the public but was working at the behest of one of the small group of people who actually run the world - the literal “leader of the free world” - in a conspiracy to cheat the US voters.
See, here’s the thing, at the time of Tucker’s firing, Rupert Murdoch had just been forced to eat a great big plate of donkey d*cks in the form of a $787M settlement to Dominion Voting Systems. That’s got to smart! And while Rupert was locked away with lawyers trying to figure out how to avoid eating that big old plate of donkey d*cks, here’s Tucker Carlson lounging around on some poxy podcast perfectly at ease, shooting off his mouth and just heaping that plate ever higher with those donkey d*cks; blathering on about his fantasies of the Illuminati or New World Order or Elders of Zion or whatever. It was already Tucker’s indiscreet texts that most grabbed the public attention in the run-up to the settlement, providing an embarrassing insight into the low standards of integrity and honesty at Fox News and providing ammunition for their gleeful competition - in a trial by public opinion, Tucker was the star witness for the prosecution!
And who can forget the depositions? As an appetizer to his plate of donkey d*cks, Rupert was made to eat sh*t at the discovery phase of the suit when he was repeatedly humiliated by the plaintiff’s lawyers during deposition. Tucker was also deposed and, in one of the Media Matters’ videos, that was no doubt circulating within the offices at Fox News at the time of Tucker’s firing…
“Holly shit, 10 hours! That slimy little motherf*cker sitting across from me. The amount, it was so unhealthy … the hate that I felt for that guy … It’s totally bad for you to feel that way.”.
Hmm, similar sentiment to the “not how white men fight” text, seems more concerned about the effect hate has on his own health than the effect that the hate he spreads has on the health of society…
“But that guy, he triggered the sh*t out of me…The amount of times I had, ‘First of all, f*ck you,’ on my lips was like, it was unbelievable.”
Poor Tucker! Triggered by mean lawyer making him answer hard qwestions for long time? Awww, poor baby!
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch is chowing down on more than three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of prime donkey d*ck! Rupert Murdoch, who took his media inheritance from a colonial backwater all the way to the seat of empire, where he mobilized the gutter press to remake that dismal island and its sclerotic politics - with its old-boy networks of stuffed shirts and old-school ties of effeminate, tea-drinking poofters! Rupert Murdoch, who used dolly birds with their tits out on page three to unite and mobilize the working class into cowing their upper-class masters more effectively than any lefty politician or trade unionist, even as he crushed the print unions and used their presses to turn the public against the Labour movement. Rupert Murdoch, to whom all successful candidates for the role of prime minister, even the only Labour one in a generation, had to bend the knee and whose mere lackeys- his journalists and editors - were able to capture, or else strike fear into the hearts of those prime ministers.
Rupert Murdoch, who, as the sun was finally setting on that crumbling empire, set his sights across the pond to the New New-Rome, the New Constantinople, where he would again forever sour the political discourse, working with the worst people to create a partisan hellscape, this time not with dolly birds on page three with their tits out, but dolly birds on sofas showing off a bit of leg beneath glass table tops to set the hearts of pre-diabetic boomers a flutter and distract them as he shovelled his toxic agenda down their gullets.
And now comes Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, this ponced-up popinjay, with his old-school affectations- the blazer and bow tie; just the same as those whinging pom poofters that Rupert steamrollered in the old country! His laugh, like a kookaburra being castrated without anaesthetic! A flaming galah who squandered his intellectual inheritance by doing the laziest thing possible in media - rage-baiting, ageing and uneducated white Americans. This pissant simulacrum of a journalist who couldn’t hold a candle up to the old guard he was supposedly replacing - he wasn’t half the journalist O’Riley had been, hell, he didn’t even have the legs of Megyn Kelly!
And he has the temerity to complain about the inconvenience of a 10-hour deposition? As he costs his employer $787 million dollars with his vain preening and posturing to some non-entity on a poxy podcast?!
Nah fams, Tucker was toast because old Rupert had finally had enough of his entitled, whiny over-privileged self-regard and his egotistical, ill-disciplined lack of either situational or self-awareness.
 |
| “Strewth Mate! How's that for some Tucker?”, Rupert Murdoch finds a hog's anus in his plate of donkey d*cks. |
So Tucker had to go and wander the media hinterland, but we will see a reemergence as he once again returns to the stage and bestrides the media world like the colossus that he is in Chapter 4, “Out of the Wilderness”!
But what did we learn today? That there’s pretty much no limit to the amount of misogyny and racism that Russell Brand is willing to tolerate if it serves his purpose; and there is no position that he will not contort himself into in order to make excuses for his new allies; that Russell sees relationships as transactional - that he is untethered from any moral compass beyond the self-serving desire to access a larger audience and align with those who can help him more easily spread lies; that he is unable to understand why others might not be able to overcome their moral aversion to those who spread hatred and division; that he lives in a narcissistic fantasy world with an overly simplistic and Manichean division of people as either goodies or baddies, with Russell's arbitrary judgement the sole decider of who is which.
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