A few weeks ago, I travelled to the studio from which Tucker Carlson films his “Tucker Carlson Podcast.”
It was an appealing, down-to-earth studio, in an out-of-the-way location. I was impressed — as I had been in his studio locations in years past — with the pleasant, well-organized calm that prevailed among his excellent team, in what was surely a vortex of power, scrutiny, audience feedback and controversy that could have put other workplaces into a stressful tailspin.
This podcast has given Carlson and his message many multiples of audience member numbers, after Fox New mysteriously got rid of its most-popular show.
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“Tucker Carlson Tonight” had been the top-rated news show across cable news, since at least 2020.
So, in the world of media, the fact that a network could kill its multi-year most popular show, and dramatically oust, with no reasonable explanation, its most popular host, means that we must understand that we are living in a full censorship society, and not in a capitalist society with a First Amendment or a free press.
If we were still in the world of the journalism of capitalist, free America, Fox News would have kept its top-ad-earning show, no matter what.
One can only speculate as to why Fox News killed off the network’s most popular content and content creator. But one can safely assume that a main reason was that Carlson repeatedly broke what has become, in the news business, the one remaining rule:
“MSM Reporter, You Must Never Question the Narrative.”
Since 2020, Mr Carlson has dared to face what are objectively the most important stories of our time.
He kept asking, from 2021 on, for evidence to support “lockdowns” and “masking”; he gave air time to the grievances of small business owners whose livelihoods were crushed unlawfully by “lockdowns”; and Carlson even dared to ask basic questions about the science behind mrna-vaccine propaganda and mandates.
I was looking forward to the interview for many reasons. As I’ve written before, I often felt a sense of collegiality in relation to Carlson, as if we were peers who had turned out differently, but had grown up in similar settings. I don’t always agree with Carlson, but I get his stubborn outrage at the corruption of America, because I share it.
Both of us grew up in what was an idyllic time, relatively speaking, for many US institutions, including for the institution of journalism. Both of us were born in San Francisco when that city, and California in general, was exemplary of beauty, civilization, quirkiness, and tolerance; when that state modeled the pre-”multiculturalism” that resulted in a beautiful, meritocratic “melting pot.” Both of us went to the kinds of universities that led us to believe we were learning “the best that’s been thought and known”, as educator Matthew Arnold described the goal of a liberal — in the 19th century British sense of “open-minded” — education.
So it is not surprising that we confront similar pain points these days, as neither of us can believe what has happened to issues such as “diversity” (which used to be called “unity”); to “free speech” (which used to be called, “speech”, because the nation itself was free); and to our corrupt, even murderous elites, who used at least to claim that they supported ideals of tolerance, respect for the facts, and critical thinking.
It’s perhaps a uniquely productive time in American history, though, in that all the policy issues that still do divide Mr Carlson’s views from mine — ranging from environmental differences, to differences in our approaches to criminal justice, abortion rights, and to foreign policy, etc — are not nearly as important as is our shared alarm about the state of the Constitution, and our common horror at the low status of what we used to call “truth.”
I think our respective audiences feel the same way, and that may be one reason our interview, which aired on Friday April 12, 2024, has been so warmly received.
Mr Carlson featured an excerpt on Twitter.
And I immediately received a defamatory “Community Note”.
Why is it so important to censor and discredit what I have to say? Perhaps because it’s been true all along.
Investigations are called for, or have been underway, in relation to “lockdowns”, bad statistics, and the mrna injection campaigns, in our own Congress; in Texas; and in the UK. The truth is being pursued around the world in other legislative bodies.
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I was happy to have the chance to discuss with Mr Carlson and his immense audience, the political and material themes of the last four years, that I describe in Facing the Beast. I was pleased to share the story of my expulsion from the false Eden of liberal media elites; to detail how I witnessed the morals of the Left fold in upon themselves during the creation of a vaccine-status-based two-tier society. I shared the way people are coming up to me now at New York City parties — total strangers — who start in not by introducing themselves, but by describing their and their loved ones’ symptoms.
I was glad to be able to explain how I understood early what was actually behind the “pandemic” policies, due to the good luck of my having studied the demise of democracies, and the rules that allow totalitarians to prevail, when I had pinned them down for my 2007 book The End of America.
What I did not expect to discuss in the way we did, though, was the spiritual aspect of the last few years.
I addressed these issues in Facing the Beast. But I went much further than I had intended to do, in this interview, and shared far more about these matters than I had expected to, in this public discussion with Mr Carlson.
But perhaps that is the great benefit presented by great interviewers. They do push their subjects, imperceptibly and without “gotcha!” journalism, bit by bit beyond where the subjects had intended to go; beyond soundbites, and beyond received knowledge. Sometimes they push beyond even the subjects’ own understanding of their own received knowledge.
