Tucker Is A Douchebag That’ll Say The Most Controversial Things If It’ll Make Him More Popular. Talk

Tucker is a douchebag that’ll say the most controversial things if it’ll make him more popular. Talk about selling your soul to the devil!

The illiberal right and the threat to democracy

One of the questions running around these days is, how can people like Tucker Carlson be so dismissive of Ukraine and so openly pro-Putin? After all, for all of its flaws, Ukraine is democratic, peaceful, and seeking to connect with the nations of Europe in a cooperative and engaged way. Isn’t that what the Cold War was about? Didn’t “we” win?

Alas, not from Tucker’s point of view – or that of lots of his fellow travelers on the illiberal right.

A quick definition of the illiberal right. Here, I am thinking of “illiberal” as anti-Liberal. This does NOT mean what are typically described as “conservatives” – e.g., people who want lower taxes, more guns, less government regulation and the like. Instead, I mean people who are fundamentally opposed to the long-term, Enlightenment-derived notion that everyone has a set of core human rights; that these rights require tolerance and mutual respect (most of the time, anyway) if they are to relatively successfully implemented throughout society; and that elections are the best way to keep a government going that periodically assesses and rebalances political coalitions to maintain a relatively rights-respecting, relatively representative, and relatively responsive to changing circumstances political system.

Illiberalism is by no mean only a right-wing phenomenon, although right-wingers dominate the sector today. Go read people like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, and Rod Dreher for various representatives of the type. Meanwhile Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary, is a prominent example of a political leader who has emerged as a hero to illilberal rightists around the world.

Thus, one reason people like Tucker Carlson are pro-Putin is that they are, in fact, anti-Liberal. They do not believe in democracy and fundamental, universal human rights, nor do they believe that people should adjudicate political differences through elections. Instead, they insist there are *right,* *moral,* *good* ways to live, and that it is perfectly proper for government to use its power to compel “proper” lives and values while at the same time punishing or excluding “improper” ones. For someone like Patrick Deneen that means compelling traditional family and religious structures; for Rod Dreher it means (among other things) making gay and trans people anathema. For Tucker Carlson, it’s all about race: he has repeatedly invoked what is known as “White Replacement Theory” in imagining what liberals, progressives, and globallists seek to achieve across the Western world.

Orban, notably, is a hero to such people not only because he “stands up to” the “evils” of liberalism, but also because he used the tools of democracy to undermine democracy. He was democratically elected president, but since winning power he has systematically rigged elections, taken over media outlets, undermined academic freedom, and otherwise cemented his power and his agenda across Hungarian life. (Conveniently, illiberal rightists ignore the deep corruption in Hungary that has enriched Orban and his allies to the cost of the Hungarian people. But eggs and omelettes, you know; eggs and omelettes.)

This, of course, is also why Donald Trump was attractive to the illiberal right, one branch of which is firmly rooted in conservative Christian thought. Want to understand why evangelicals and ultra-conservative Catholics dug Trump? He was their ticket to the illiberal future they fantasize about making … and he may yet be their ticket again.

So why is Tucker pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine? Because Tucker is just doing Tucker. The question is, are we going to let him get away with it?