The Tucker Carlson Act Explained
Why Tucker Carlson intentionally makes maddeningly stupid arguments with that dumb look on his face.
One thing was inevitable: The Republican propaganda machine was always going to latch onto racist hysterics about Afghan refugees as their primary response to the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Actually surprising, however, is how the propagandists haven't even bothered to make plausible-sounding arguments, going straight for the stupidest claims possible instead.
The master class in idiotic right-wing arguments comes, of course, from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who on Wednesday tried to blame political refugees for the housing crisis in the United States. "America is becoming a lot more crowded than it ever was," Carlson raved, "and one of the reasons for that is that we are now living through the biggest influx of refugees in American history."
Intrepid Media Matters analyst Matt Gertz quickly debunked Carlson's nonsense, pointing out that this is "the lowest ebb of refugees admitted to the United States since the establishment of the refugee resettlement program in 1980" and that the reason for the housing crisis is "land use regulations make it effectively or actually illegal to increase housing supply."
As important as it is to counter Carlson's lies, Gertz nonetheless expressed despair on Twitter.
"I have a masochist streak," because "it's fruitless to fact-check a wildly dishonest demagogue like Tucker Carlson."
Gertz's gloom is understandable. He's debunking an argument so dumb that it's unlikely that either Carlson or his audience really buys it. Carlson is aware — since he covered the story in his usual "echoing neo-Nazi talking points" way — the most recent census shows U.S. population growth is the lowest it's been since the 1930s. Anyone who passed 8th-grade math understands that even tens of thousands — hell, hundreds of thousands — of refugees are merely a drop in the bucket for a nation that has over 332 million people. Even those bad at math can understand that it's incoherent to argue that refugees cause overpopulation but all the extra babies from white women would not.
The whole incident illustrates one of the most pernicious problems with modern right-wing discourse: stupidity is strategically weaponized. And the strategy is as simple as it is sinister: make arguments so transparently false and silly that it makes people feel stupid for even engaging with you.
Carlson, in particular, is the master at playing dumb. It is a tactic that requires none of the hard work of learning, only shamelessness and a lack of basic morality. Carlson regularly makes claims so preposterous that it's unlikely even the most QAnon-addled conspiracy theorist can take him seriously. On Friday, for instance, Carlson defended Owen Shroyer, a host on the disinformation site Infowars, after Shroyer was charged for his role in the January 6 insurrection, by claiming Shroyer merely "stood on the Capitol steps." (Absolutely no one is actually confused about the events of that day, or why someone like Shroyer was there.) The day before, Carlson compared being criticized for being unvaccinated to lynching and described racist terrorism as little more than "people that want to turn on the unpopular kid." (Absolutely no one actually believes lynchings were about "unpopularity" instead of white supremacy.) In a segment on the census earlier this month, he said "the non-white people [are] cheering the extinction of white people" and that it's "evil." (Absolutely no one actually believes white people — who are still the majority in the U.S. are going "extinct.")
Tucker Carlson's obvious admiration for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán as profoundly un-American.
Carlson recently visited Hungary, where he interviewed Orbán and lavished the authoritarian prime minister with praise. And Carlson is hardly the only far-right supporter of former President Donald Trump with an openly pro-Orbán perspective. Orbán has also been praised by everyone from "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance (who is seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio's 2022 U.S. Senate race) to former President Donald Trump himself.
Dalmia explains, "A strange spectacle has been unfolding among some factions of the American right in recent years: The more Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suspends liberal democracy and turns autocratic, the more they admire him. But Fox News' top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, took matters to a whole new level earlier this month when he declared that he found it 'embarrassing to be an American' during a trip to Hungary."
Orbán embodies a type of far-right nationalism that Trump supporters like Carlson find appealing.
"Carlson is down on America because, unlike Orbán's Hungary, it has allegedly lost its will to defend its cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions against the forces of mass immigration and woke liberalism and is therefore in danger of losing its national identity."
Orbán, Dalmia observes, "has dismantled the institutions of Hungary's liberal democracy and has tilted the playing field decisively to lock Fidesz, his political party, in power."
As soon as he assumed office in 2010," Dalmia says of Orbán, "he used his large parliamentary majority to overhaul the Hungarian Constitution to make it impossible for civil groups to challenge the constitutionality of laws.
Some of Carlson's apologists have argued that his visit to Hungary is no different from President Richard Nixon visiting Communist China in the early 1970s. But Nixon never praised China's communist government or exalted dictator Mao Tse Tung as heroic, whereas Carlson obviously admires Orbán and views him as someone the U.S. should emulate.
Dalmia writes, "Nixon was an advocate of liberal democracy to an authoritarian country, and Carlson is an apostle of authoritarianism to America.... Patriotism — genuine affection for America's core liberal principles — is simply an impediment to his neo-nationalist quest."