Tucker Carlson loses moral compass on Gaza, Putin and the US

 

Click above for the video 

Tucker Carlson is an influential conservative commentator. He’s smart and insightful. He’s also a bit kooky. Like, believes in aliens. And other things. In the interview above, in Doha, after his hugely famous interview with Vladimir Putin, he says some smart stuff. And also some stuff that I think is morally wrong. It’s morally wrong, for example, to say that nazis and anti-nazis are the same. They are not. Hamas and the IDF are not the same. They are not brawling children who must be disciplined by “daddy” America, as he bizarrely suggests.

Above is Tucker Carlson, talking in Dubai, with an Egyptian journalist, about his interview of Putin. In which Carlson claims that Putin and Biden are something like the same, because “all leaders kill”, here. Then that Moscow is a beautiful city and this shows the benefit of someone like Putin. Which is kind of like the “at least he got the trains running on time” defence of Mussolini. There are many ways to have a clean and safe city without a dictatorship. 

But mostly it’s at the 49’ mark, where he talks of Gaza and the US is like “dad”, a dad who has couple of unruly kids to discipline . Like Hamas is just a kid. Like Israel is just like another kid. And you have to keep them in check, as the Dad. That’s not only paternalistic, arrogant, imperialist. It’s also plain wrong. Because Hamas is a murderous, genocidal, sectarian, brutal, nazi outfit. And Israel is not. That’s it. Sorry Tucker. Shocked that he says what he says. 

My view: demanding a ceasefire now, just before the IDF enters Rafah, is to demand the preemptive surrender of Israel to the terrorist outfit of Hamas. It’s immoral to demand ceasefire at this time. Yet to the men above this is what’s needed. They lack moral clarity. 

ADDED: in a separate talk with Russel Brand, link here: 

Carlson says America committed war crimes in WW2: the fire bombing of Dresden, the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These he says have made America “Evil” with a “broken soul”. But we who are not Carlson know that these things have been endlessly discussed, the ethics, the morality, the practical need… discussed endlessly since the war, most often in the United States media, academia and politics. And so we know, we who are not Carlson, that contrary to his “broken soul” thesis we have a much deeper understanding of war, of war crimes, of “collective punishment”, of rights and wrongs and through this we know that America is not Evil. Not perfect, but also not evil. 

Moreover Carlson fails to mention that the dropping of two atom bombs set the stage for the next eighty years of no world war, such was the fearsome demonstration effect of the atom bomb

ADDED: critique from another conservative commenter, here.