Tucker Carlson is a very infuriating guy to follow on the socials. Sometimes he interviews genuinely interesting people that are unplatformed in the legacy media. At other time he interviews obvious nutters like the pseudo-historian Darryl Cooper. He has views about the Deep State, some of them probably true, but then tells his audience, in all sincerity, that the government is hiding actual real bodies of aliens.
I gave up on his for a while, mainly for his loony take on UFOs. But then came back to him with a fascinating interview of the newly-released ex-governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.
Then came the Darryl Cooper disgrace, where Carlson not only platformed him, but nodded along ,in agreement to his loony take, and I gave up again.
Konstantin Kisin clearly has some of the same issues and frustrations with the man, here below about the Carlson attacks on Churchill. I'd thought the same as KK: namely that a new-found pacifism has broken his brain. Einstein was a pacfist too; until he realised that some wars -- WWII for example -- are unavoidable if we wish to remain free people.
If it's true that Carlson is attempting to cover his new-found pacifism by bagging Churchill, this strikes me as selfish. For his own peace of mind, he craps all over one of the biggest true heroes of the west, with completely asinine and illogical attacks. And in the process only given ammo to the loonies on the Left who also hate on Churchill.
I'm going to post the whole of Konstantin's essay below, with thanks to him.
As regular readers will recall, I’ve written occasionally about a faction of the right which operates in a manner increasingly resembling the Woke Left. There is much debate about me labelling this group the “Woke Right”, with plenty of agreement and disagreement from people I like and respect. Mainly, these arguments stem from what one understands wokeness to mean. If being woke is about being an extreme leftist obsessed with pronouns and open borders, the term “Woke Right” is nonsense. But, to me at least, wokeness was never about policy positions, it was about the philosophy and methodology behind the movement. And it is this— the identity politics, grievance mongering and cancel culture— that is now being replicated on the fringes of the right.
In any case, even those who disagree with the label can’t possibly think it’s a coincidence that this faction of the right is attempting to destroy the very same historical figures as the Woke Left.
Winston Churchill has been the subject of leftist attacks for decades for obvious reasons: since the entire project of the Woke Left is to undermine the West’s belief in itself, they must necessarily target the people we celebrate the most. Whoever we hold up as the best of us must be torn down.
But why would some on the right who are otherwise patriotic and pro-Western, increasingly attempt to denigrate his legacy as Tucker Carlson did over the weekend in a debate with Piers Morgan?
Even though the clip is only 40 seconds long [Full interview here], there is much to unpack. Before we do, however, it is important to recall that last year Carlson hosted a pseudohistorian on his show called Darryl Cooper. In that episode, Carlson famously endorsed Cooper as the “best and most honest popular historian in the United States” before nodding along as the “historian” explained that “Churchill was the chief villain of WWII”. My point is, Carlson’s performance in the clip you just watched is the product of an extensive ideological evolution, rather than an off-the-cuff remark made in the heat of the moment.
Carlson explains that Churchill was no hero because he didn’t save Western civilisation - if he had, where is it? As we’ve discussed previously, much of the animus behind what I call the Woke Right is understandable frustration at the sense of decline in Western self-confidence, a growing feeling of disunity and a generalised moral decay that is palpable wherever you go. While the Woke Left hates the West for its ideals, the Woke Right hates the West for failing to live up to them.
This low resolution worldview is easy to take apart, as, to his credit, Piers Morgan immediately does when he explains that Churchill led the fight against Hitler and the Nazis whose expressly stated objective was subjugation of the entire Western world. Furthermore, how can Churchill be held responsible for today’s direction of the West when he died in 1965 and was last in office 75 years ago?
It is at this point that Carlson engages in what I call “sleight of mouth”- a linguistic judo trick designed to spring the trap into which he has placed himself. “I’m not defending the Nazis!” he exclaims. This is a weird thing to say since no one at any point suggested he was defending the Nazis - what Morgan pointed out is that in standing up to Hitler, Churchill did in fact save the West from Nazi domination.
But defeating Nazism and Japanese imperialism isn’t enough for Carlson. “Everyone wants to yell at you for not loving Churchill,” Carlson continues “but where is the victory?... Where is your freedom? You can’t defend yourself, you can’t control who comes into your country, and you can’t criticise government policies or you get arrested… so how are you free? You’re a slave!”
In doing so, Carlson commits at least two logical errors. First, the idea that a man who led Britain into WWII a full eighty-five years ago should be held responsible for the state of the country today is insanity. FDR, America’s President during WWII, is widely regarded as one of America’s top three Presidents, alongside George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. “But where is the victory?” I can just as easily screech. “What about the southern border which has been wide open for decades? Did Washington fight the War of Independence so that half-naked drug addicts could litter the streets of America’s major cities? Did Lincoln win the Civil War just to have mentally ill children mutilated by doctors?”. This approach is patently absurd.
Second, the reason we celebrate Churchill is that the choice we had was either WWII or Hitler being in charge of Europe and possibly the world. The victory is that by 1945, Western Europe was free of the tyranny and ethnic hatred the Nazis had imposed on it. In failing to understand this, Tucker does exactly what the Woke Left do to our history - they imagine an infinite array of utopian possibilities and then deride our former leaders for failing to deliver said utopia. Churchill didn’t have a choice between the land of milk and honey or fighting Hitler. He could either fight Hitler or let him take all of Europe. This is so obvious that an intelligent person like Tucker cannot possibly have missed it by accident.
My experience both in public debates and in personal relationships is that whenever someone refuses to see something that is in plain sight, it is because underneath their stated arguments lies a different agenda. As the Navajo proverb goes, “It is impossible to wake a man who is pretending to be asleep”. So, why does the Woke Right have to destroy Churchill?
To me the answer is equally obvious:
The reason Churchill must be torn down from his pedestal is that he serves as a singular antidote to the so-called “anti-war” position Carlson has adopted. After supporting and promoting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Carlson had a “come to Jesus moment” when, filled with shame and regret, he had the eye-opening realisation that war is bad.
There are two obvious challenges that our sanctification of Churchill poses to this worldview.
First, in the mythology of the West, and especially the Anglosphere, whose sons and daughters gave so much to stop Hitler, World War II was not, in fact, bad. It was brutal and horrific while also being right, just, and necessary. It is the obvious flaw in Carlson’s new-found maxim: if war is bad, what about WWII?
Second, and equally important, is the fact that in the pre-war years Churchill was a lone voice warning with great foresight about the danger of letting Hitler take bits of Europe, one sliver at a time. Scorned, mocked and derided as a “war-mongerer” by the Tucker Carlsons of his day, he was eventually proved right. In other words, if the conventional view of Churchill as a hero and of WWII as right and just is allowed to prevail, it is not only impossible to claim that all war is bad but, worse, some might claim that there are occasions when acting first, before the threat is allowed to mature, could also be right and just.
I believe this is why people like Carlson have no choice but to undo the West’s reverence for Winston Churchill. How could they not? As with the Woke Left, he stands as a bold and obvious reminder that they’re wrong.
P.S. In the last couple of weeks, Tucker Carlson has “called [me] out”personally (his words, not mine), as well as criticising Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss and others. I have no time for pissing matches and ego games - I praise people when they do the right thing and criticise them when they do the opposite.
With that in mind, I will pre-emptively address several deliberate misdirections that are thrown at me every time Carlson’s comments are challenged.
First, when I mention his conversation with the pseudohistorian, this is not because I believe he shouldn’t “platform” certain people. It is his endorsement of the man I find deeply troubling. Cooper’s comments about Churchill were widely reported, with responses from actual historians like Victor Davis Hanson, Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and others coming thick and fast. What got much less coverage at the time, was that at the end of the interview Cooper also claimed, as Carlson again nodded along, that “being genuinely right-wing has been made illegal in Europe”. This was quite telling given that the only political movements that are banned in European countries are neo-Nazis.
Secondly, Carlson deliberately lumps all of his critics into the pro-war camp. This is strange to me since I vehemently opposed the war in Iraq at precisely the moment he was pushing it. It would be far more honest of him to confront the specific criticisms people have made of his comments. Many of us respect him for his excellent work on other issues, which is something I’ve always made clear whenever I’ve disagreed with him over Ukraine, Churchill or other matters.
Finally, I anticipate being asked why I am “being so divisive”. After all, Donald Trump is in office and those of us who oppose wokeism, know what a woman is and believe that countries need borders should pull together and stop bickering. I have much sympathy for this argument and take no pleasure in criticising Carlson. Doing so has had its costs for me personally. But in the words of the great Jordan Peterson, “when you have something to say silence is a lie”.
Tucker Carlson is no longer a plucky outspoken journalist fighting valorously behind enemy lines in a media environment filled to the brim with his ideological enemies. That was a long time and many elections ago. Today, he’s one of the most powerful men in America. By all accounts, he has direct access to the President and his inner circle. What he says matters. Tucker has made a career out of criticising powerful people in the media. I salute him for that - he set a great example for many of us. Which is why, I’ll keep praising him when he’s right and keep disagreeing with him when he is wrong.
