Tucker Carlson is doing that not-so-delicate dance again, inciting violence against his ideological foes without literally telling his listeners to beat anyone up in those exact words.
This time he’s accusing teachers who teach sex ed of committing “sex crimes” against children with their words, and imploring American dads to “give out instant justice” — by which he clearly means violence — “to anyone who even thought about sexualizing their kids” by talking about anything vaguely related to sex and gender in their vicinity. It’s really only a matter of time before someone takes Carlson’s implicit advice and does something terrible to a teacher.
This is who Tucker Carlson is. Anyone who has followed him for any length of time know he’s a bigot and a bully, a straight-up transphobe and misogynist and a committed stochastic terrorist who regularly lies about the assorted outgroups he hates the most and vaguely — deliberately vaguely — incites violence against them.
So-called “Gender Critical” activists like to think of themselves as feminists, and progressives of a sort. They’re well aware of what Tucker Carlson is. So why do so many of them set aside their reservations about the far-right bigot as soon as he says anything negative about trans people and their supporters?
Ok, yes, it’s because they’re bigots, and he’s a bigot, and in this case they all agree on the focus of their bigotry. But there’s still some cognitive dissonance going on, as I discovered by doing a simple search for “Tucker Carlson” on Ovarit, the Redditesque hangout for self-described Gender Crits. For some, the cognitive dissonence is enough to keep them from endorsing Carlson. In other cases, not so much.
In one Ovarit thread earlier this year discussing an appearance by anti-trans author Kara Dansky on Carlson’s show, GCers shared their strange and, to some of them, unexpected admiration for “TC.”
Gluhbirne reported that
I fell out of my chair when TC said he was ashamed of Republicans, and ashamed of their backing of big business. WHAT
He clearly has a lot of respect for Kara. He gave her an entire hour without pushing back or talking over her, looking for a gotcha. I have a kneejerk negative reaction to him, but honestly I can’t imagine more civil treatment of her and her ideas
Immersang replied:
Absolutely agree with this. I never would have thought I’d ever say this, but I found him quite likable in this. (I’m sure this will be the only context though that I feel that way.)
Added CharieC:
Thanks for posting! Good interview. Gotta say: my only reference for Tucker Carlson is his interviews with Kara (never even heard of him before she started appearing on his show), in all of which he comes across as a calm and respectful presenter — which is not something I can say about many of the supposed “leftist GC ally” men whose interviews with feminists on this issue I’ve heard. So, it’s always weird to me when everybody says that otherwise, he’s a complete monster. XD
XD! LMFAO! It’s so WEIRD you’re embracing a fascist!
In another thread on another appearance by Dansky on Carlson’s show, BogHag wrote:
You know liberals are failing women when it takes Tucker fucking Carlson to address a women’s rights issue.
A commenter called LunarMoose offered this bizarre appreciation:
I’m not a fan of his … But I will say – he’s always so respectful of feminists who appear on his show. I appreciate that.
Elsewhere in the thread, one commenter was less reserved in her praise.
I’m grateful to Fox News and Tucker Carlson for covering this. I also loved how she concludes by saying she’s not happy about Republicans being the ones to hold the line on material reality. Neither am I, but I’m still grateful.
In a thread with nothing whetsoever to do with Kara Dansky, a commenter called TheEthicalHedonist asked herself:
Why is Tucker Carlson the voice of reason?!? Why do I agree with Tucker Carlson?!? What is wrong with this world???
In a more recent thread, OneStarWolf suggested that Carlson’s support of their anti-trans crusade means it’s time to look less harshly on the right as a while.
This really has emphasized to me that society needs to be careful about categorizing groups of humans as either all evil or good, black or white.
The reality is people are complex, they can both hold good and bad positions and ideas at the same time. It’s all shades of grey, and we need to be careful to not demonize and dehumanize those who we may view as politically opposed to us.
Some GCers, though, still recognize that it’s self-defeating to get into bed with far right-wingers, Carlson included. As eyeswideopen put it in a thread on Ovarit a couple of years back:
I’m worried that too many of us are exhausted by essentially fighting this on our own in the U.S., and so we’re running to embrace “allies” that will make it easy to tar us by association (e.g., Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson). If we lie down with dogs, we -will- get up with fleas, and the GC movement will be dead before it gets off the ground here in the U.S.
In yet another thread about yet another appearance by Dansky on Carlson’s show, doloresonthedottedline offered a similar take:
I mean realistically it doesn’t offset how much harm [Carlson] does the rest of the time. He’s a trust fund kid who plays a buffoon on tv to sell self-sabotaging policies (that benefit the rich) to a right-wing audience and he invites people like Kara Dansky because there’s an opportunity to emphasize the depravity of the left (knowing his audience won’t count that people like her are also coming from the left and are against it). He doesn’t care about women’s rights, he’s 100% in this for the kind of partisan tug of war that helped create the environment where this is happening.
I am grateful for any chance for Kara Dansky to reach a bigger audience but Tucker Carlson isn’t even close to being redeemed by it. He’s still one of the most harmful media figures in the US at the moment, overall.
You don’t have to convince me about Carlson’s perfidy, delores.
But maybe you should ask yourself: If my friends and allies are suddenly cheerleading for a fascist, does that suggest that maybe there is something wrong with the ideology we share? I’ll save you a little time by just saying that the answer is “yes.”
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
don’t mind me, just gently reeling at the levels of irony here
I noticed that as well. I’m not the kind who would go comment on Overt, but if I were that kind of person, I’d kind of have to point out the amazing bullshit folded into that statement.
I get the impression something similar happened with anti-porn feminists in the 1980s. They allied with conservatives who also wanted to ban pornography without thinking too hard about why they shared such a goal. I suppose that was a bit more understandable than current TERFs, but the effect was similar: the feminist community split in two and they all had reasons to call the other half sexist. Though I also get the impression that is a big part of the reason the 2nd wave ended, which of course leaves me a bit worried for the 3rd wave. Though of course a huge difference is now feminism exists as a part of a larger intersectional progressive movement, indeed that is largely why most feminists accepted trans-women. Transphobia was presented as something fundamentally similar to sexism. I strongly suspect that most TERFs never really accepted intersectional thinking in the first place, they might agree that racism is bad, maybe homophobia, but there’s no unified theory as to why bigotry is bad, so if you wanted to start a conversation about how X discrimination is bad you would have a uphill battle getting them to care.
Imagine learning the likes of Tucker Carlson agree with you and your response is to think he’s not as bad as you thought, rather than take a loooong look at your position.
Out of topic, but Kiwifarm Forums (i do not know which provider hosts them currently) claim to have been hacked, and Moon whines about the risk of user information leaks. Some call it karma, some call it irony, many rejoice…
My own (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with GCs is that, in the case of the ones which can still at least semi-reasonably be called feminists, they generally cling to variations of second-wave schools of thought on gender which have no explanation for the existence of trans and non-binary people. So, trans don’t real. And if they don’t real, then they must be some sort of false or artificial phenomenon. So… it must be… reactionary BS… to undermine feminism… or something? But anti-trans is coming from the reactionary Right rather than the progressive Left… so… um…? Basically they either change the subject if it comes up or engage in some pretty impressive pretzel logic trying to explain it.
One of the weirder (but fairly logical, in light of the premises that they’re working from) is that the Left is just building a new, different version of The Patriarchy™. One which uses very different means of controlling women. One where “I choose to do this, it empowers me” really means “I am brainwashed, or enslaved and too afraid to resist”.
I wasn’t actually around for the 80s sex wars, but I joined the activist-feminist community in 1990 or 91 when the 80s were still fresh in the minds of lots of women who mentored me, and they had a lot of stories to tell about the anti-porn feminists.
My best understanding is that for at least a significant portion of them their alliances with the puritanical Right were not limited by the anti-sex feminists, but rather by the PurRight. It’s only more recently that being nominally feminist is considered by enough people to be the minimally just position that it’s become more useful to the Right to have a feminist cover story than it is distasteful to the Right to ever admit that we’ve been right about anything.
Frankly the mere existence of feminism disgusts them enough that they would prefer not to interact with feminists at all. It’s just that we’ve sufficiently transformed society that now they’re compelled to voice an interest in women’s rights, even if they’re arguing for the “right” for women to be trapped in violent relationships, the “right” for women to have their pregnancy decisions made by the government, etc., etc.
It’s all freakishly weird bullshit, but the things they’re demanding haven’t changed. We’ve just left them far enough behind that they’re desperate to try to speak our language, even as they argue for the same anti-woman crap they’ve always wanted.
The anti-porn feminists of the 80s weren’t useful to them, but the anti-trans feminists of the 2010s and 2020s are. And that’s all it is: they’re using women who think they’re fighting sexism to propagate sexism.
Wait until these people figure out that the actual Nazis were on board with “GC” as well.
Dude, maybe the problem is just that dissenting views on trans issue are not allowed in so called progressive media, so those opposing transgenderism have to go to some conservative weirdos, even when not being conservative weirdos at all?
@Lard
Weird how opposing human rights is seen as a bad thing among progressives
@Lard
Feliks, is that you?
Gosh, reactionary views aren’t allowed in progressive forums? Shocking! next your going to tell me that Baptist publications don’t print nudie pics.
Gender critical “feminists” are playing a pretty old game. They love male violence when it’s done by in-group men against the out-group under the guise of protecting women.
It’s a tactic adopted by the right. The in-group men (who, by the way, are responsible for the vast majority of violence against the in-group women) offer “protection” in exchange for submission. And the women, out of a combination of fear and a desire to be in a comfortable second place above the out-group, submit.
It harms the out-group victims the most, but it also does lasting harm to women and girls under “protection”. Gender critical feminists would gleefully see women like me assaulted by their men, simply for being “handmaidens” (women smart enough not to fall for moral panics). They’re happy to put their daughters firmly under the boot of those same men, for their own good. They’ll drag us all backward 50 years just because they think trans people are icky.
@Lard: if progressive circles object to your views on a topic and fascists applaud them, should this not at least make you consider that you might be the one who is wrong?
The cited commenter TheEthicalHedonist concludes that it must be the world that is wrong and not them.
Which is really more likely?
@Lard:
Not sure what you’re complaining about. Unless you’re someone who has previously been banned for becoming excessively abusive or obnoxious (or have been low key-abusive or obnoxious for awhile and showed no sign of changing), you haven’t been banned yet. Though I suspect you eventually will be.
In general, Left-leaning spaces come in two types: safe spaces for specific categories of people, where you will get banned for obviously being not that category of person or an ally, and broad-category unsafe spaces (like this one), where complex and often emotionally difficult subjects are tackled, and Right-leaning perspectives are allowed (generally, exceptions exist)… just not without heavy pushback and deconstruction. I mean you’re in our territory here, what were you expecting? It’s not speech that gets you banned here, it’s behavior. And for reference, just reiterating the same handful of points over and over and over again with only minor variations is not only unconvincing, it’s considered obnoxious behavior, and that’s how quite a lot of Right-wingers eventually get banned.
@Quantuminc, Fourth Wave feminism already started in the 2010’s. They’re mostly intersectional though and they’re opposed to TERFs.
@SpecialFFrog
You are exaggerating a bit. Fascist, or ultraconservative circles aren’t the only one accepting or applauding views opposed to transgender ideology, it just seems that they are more likely to capitalise on those views. It looks like debate regarding transgender topic in US is heavily polarised and frowned upon in progressive circles, and here are the results.
@Snowberry
What ya talking about? As you may witness I am not banned here and I do not complain. Also I am not right-wing.
@Lard: whether non-fascists are applauding as well is irrelevant (even if true). If the fascists are on your side and the progressives are not you should wonder why.
@SpecialFFrog
Many progressive people is not very much into transgender ideology. Also you should form your opinions yourself, not forming your views on certain topics along statistical believes among members of your political tribe.
@Lard: citation needed on anti-trans progressives.
Also nobody forms opinions in isolation. And opinions change all the time as people interact with the world.
The idea that you should sit alone in your room and form a set of immutable opinions based on first principles is ridiculous.
If everyone thinks you are wrong you might not be, but you should certainly consider that you might be and try to understand why they think so.
A really good rule of thumb* is that when you find yourself on the same side as fascists, you should seriously reexamine your position. And your life choices in general, really.
*No, that isn’t what the phrase comes from. An adult thumb is very roughly 2 inches/ 5 cm and can be used as a crude ruler.
@Lard: Apologies if I was mistaken in my impression of you, but in my experience if someone starts remarking about certain topics or lines of discussion being verboten in left-wing spaces, then it usually means they’re about to reveal themselves as some form of alt-right.
@SpecialFFrog: [Not addressed to you but expanding on your point] Certainly, there are left-wing people who don’t like talking about trans rights. Generally they’re moderate liberals who are all like “can’t we just get past this for now by doing something which appears to be a compromise on the surface, but is actually throwing trans people under the bus for yet another generation, so we can take care of the ‘really’ important stuff?” [Centrists who could be mistaken for moderate liberals are a different story, some of them still kind of want to debate both sides of it] But you can’t really call them progressive, because progressives don’t throw people under buses. That sort of thinking leads to an Escher stairwell, where it feels like you’re always going up (or down, if you prefer) but in the long run you’re not actually getting anywhere – always re-fighting yesterday’s battles because you either gave up a past victory for a present one, or gave up on the current one to fight a different battle.
I mean there’s probably a progressive or two somewhere who oppose trans rights for weird reasons, because humans are all over the place. I doubt there are even remotely enough to matter for the purposes of sites like this.
@lard
Fine, I’ll bite. What are the progressive arguments for transphobia?
@ SpecialFFrog
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature