December 23, 2023 - 8:00am
Is Tucker Carlson entering his David Icke era? Icke himself certainly seems to think so. “Why doesn’t he interview me?” the new-age conspiracist complained on X this week, referring to an interview in which Carlson further elaborated on his beliefs about aliens. In the discussion, hosted by podcaster Tim Pool, the conservative commentator said:
Since trying to recreate on social media the influence of the most popular cable news show in history, the former Fox host has embraced a quasi-spiritual journey of questioning everything. “I’m open to anything,” he replied when recently asked about Flat Earth theory. “How could I not be open to anything at this point? I mean, there’s been so much deception that you can’t trust your preconceptions.”
Accompanying this turn has been a further self-distancing from the conservative establishment. Last month, Carlson even went so far as to agree that the National Review founder and godfather of American conservatism William F. Buckley was one of the “great villains of the 20th century”, while erroneously taking aim at Winston Churchill for locking up members of the “opposition party” in 1940.
For both liberals and conservatives, the story of the cable star who went native on X offers something like a comforting fable. This is particularly so ahead of an election year in which establishment figures are already lining up to denounce the influence of the social media platform. But such a focus overlooks a far more intriguing side to the second life of Tucker Carlson.
While eager to subscribe to X’s apparent mission to embrace conspiratorial discourse as moral force, Carlson is also sharpening up his act as a shadow statesman. An interview on his X show has already paid fealty to Donald Trump, with rumours abounding that he is a preferred choice for running mate. A pre-election interview with Argentina’s Javier Milei racked up nearly half a billion views, with its influence spreading across Latin America. A well-documented friendship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán continues, while recent trips to Europe have seen him visit Vox leader Santiago Abascal in Spain and even Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison.
The real question, therefore, is whether Carlson can effectively work both camps. He has frequently dismissed the idea of running for office, though the Trump circus may offer him the opportunity to be both contrarian entertainer and politician. Yet Carlson’s Icke-lite turn poses another dilemma, not just for the commentator but also for the platform more broadly. Far from “unleashing” conservative voices, is it possible that Elon Musk’s “free speech” campaign, taken to its logical extremes, is simply becoming too weird for the mainstream American conservative discourse Tucker once pioneered?
Here, the other great parable of the media oracle comes to mind. Network’s Howard Beale is the newsreader who shuns the autocue and embraces a messianic struggle against power and corruption on behalf of the people. The path is, of course, doomed. With each target and pronouncement demanding to be overshadowed by the last, Beale eventually burns himself out in search of the truth. Come 2024, Carlson’s big questions concerning everything from aliens to a spiritual struggle between good and evil may mean he finds himself more at home on the X podcast circuit than on the campaign trail.
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SubscribeTucker Carlson is far and away the most interesting interviewer/commentator on TV, cable or the web. When he is in top form he is thought provoking (see his interview of Kyle Rittenhouse, Victor Orban, or Argentina’s newly inaugurated president). His almost immediate analysis of the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (Russia did not do it, the U.S. likely did) was spot on, delivered with a masterful command of the English language.
I don’t envision Tucker functioning well with the ever present political constraints. So being Trump’s VP is out and that’s fine by me.
When he ventures into conspiracies, he at least has the humility to mention he really doesn’t know and if you disagree with him, he’s good with that. Carlson is principly about free speech, open debate and as much government transparency as possible. To me, that’s all to the good.
Carlson is principally about Carlson.
Good. To thine own self be true.
Yes, because people you disagree with are always acting in bad faith, eh?
IDK. This reads like a half-hearted hit job. Is Carlson a problem because he believes in UFOs or for questioning everything? The author doesn’t really say. He just lets it hang out there.
He says the author is friends with Orban, although the link he provides doesn’t make that claim at all. He seems to have a problem with Musk as well.
“Far from “unleashing” conservative voices, is it possible that Elon Musk’s “free speech” campaign, taken to its logical extremes, is simply becoming too weird for the mainstream American conservative discourse Tucker once pioneered?”
Musk is not Conservative. Twitter is not conservative. And why would a free speech campaign become weird?
They can’t handle the truth. One main reason is that their brains don’t open up far enough to encompass much more then their bias.
Maybe he isn’t ‘working both camps’, just saying what he believes – that is being moral and ethical to his beliefs and not playing identity politics.
I think it is particularly stupid to believe there is no other life out there and even stupider to believe we are the most intelligent beings in the universe. And yes, it is spiritual as well.
You are entitled to your opinion (unless like me you do not really have one) but to use the words, like stupid and stupider, does not add anything to the conversation. In fact its rather crass. I mean, still to this day, we do not really have any understanding of why man is so different from the rest of the animal kingdom and ‘how it all came about’.
You say you don’t have an opinion, yet here you are telling me your opinion that is that it is not stupid to believe we are the only and most intelligent species in the universe. I rest my case.
No case to rest. I merely said that your use of certain words is crass.
There is a perfectly good explanation as to why we are so very different from our genetically closest primate relatives: clearly argued .. from 1972 actually … but by an intelligent Woman, and a “Non-scientist”
Latest published book [reprint in 2018, by Souvenir Press] “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis”. This explains, when, where; and why – re why we have lots of suncutaeous fat, walk on two legs, can swim, dive, hold our breath [and then can speak and so very much else.
The Author: Elaine Morgan a Wesh aclaimed writer.
Of course there a huge industry that has relied on discrediting her and theory of human evolution. Such sort of cancellation and discrediting is very obvious now to many re the whole Covid narrative; and wokism.
Check out the “Goodness Paradox” which is by a scientist, ( Richard Wrangham) and which builds on the Bonobo evolutionary hypothesis, and concludes we are a self domesticated species, with capital punishment being a crucial instrument.
Well humans are not that much different from other animals. Indeed humans and chimps are 98% identical at the DNA level! The differences that enable humans to speak, operate tools, etc… involve very subtle differences at the genetic level. Further human behavior is not all that different from social animal behavior.
The difference between Tucker and Icke is that Tucker doesn’t claim to be a know-it-all. There is a concerted effort to conflate people that ask questions with people that claim Absolute Knowledge.
Many of the “Gatekeepers of Dialogue” from the “Order of Science” have run what we might call a “Disinformation campaign” to discredit people that are “just asking questions” because the Gatekeepers have a Monopoly on Truth claims.
Icke is a Gnostic. He thinks he has special knowledge that other people can’t access. Tucker is literally just asking questions and does not claim that he gets everything right.
For Plato and Socrates, the Dialectical Process was just about asking questions and then through a series of debates to weed out what is or isn’t true through testable experience (empiricism)
Science does not exist when people stop asking questions.
He is actually becoming quite an adept interviewer. That is where I see his career path going. I see no entry into the political arena; none whatsoever.
Why would Carlson accept an office described by Vice President John Nance Garner as worthless as “a bucket of warm spit.”
Honestly that’s the aspect of the job that might actually have appeal for Tucker: minimal expectations for effective action w/ a heck of a bully pulpit. Can’t imagine him completely subverting his own voice & agency for “The Boss” though, which would surely be the deal-killer.
Because he lost his Fox News platform and has zero remaining shame. Though any good parent knows he ought to be ashamed of himself.
It is so old-fashioned to dismiss UFOs and conspiracy theories. Only a blockhead striving to join an elite for the perceived status would do so. Carlson is interviewing people frozen out by the MSM, the untrusty plutocratic-owned organs of the left. They are strangely being elected to office by “the Far Right” from Holland to Argentina with Canada next up.
Of course the “Far Right” gets scare quotes! You only acknowledge extremism on the left. But the horseshoe bends together when it comes to alien nonsense. Might as well embrace the Far Left at this point You’re practically in bed with it.
Like countless others around the world my wife and I saw a flying saucer — the classical type, flat on the bottom and a dome top — as it loitered in the air over SFO slowly heading west toward the ocean. We with thousands of others looked up from the freeway bound from the airport to the city. There was a small story in the paper on an inside page a day later. These sightings are really not big news anymore. There is no question whoever they were wanted to be seen.
I must admit that despite our numerous bickering exchanges I think of you as smarter than the average UFO proponent. What do you think it was? (By which I mean: From where, or to what purpose?).
I definitely think there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our science, but I’m pretty prejudiced against UFO and alien claims.
Openness to alien visits and opposition to vaccines are two key areas where the fringe-right and fringe-left tend to bend together. I’m not saying you’re so far right as to be “fringe”, but don’t you agree?
He’s either a crazed conspiracy theorist, just like David Icke, or part of a shadowy cabal of shapeshifting Reptilian overlords secretly pulling the threads of human affairs, just like David Icke.
Or perhaps it’s something in between: He is a thoroughgoing sellout who will say anything and platform anyone if it seems to advance his wealth and influence. He worships money and attention, and nothing genuine stands strongly in the way of his empty faith.
Very good.
I was just thinking about the lizard people! Great comment.
They’re thinking about you.
Okay, I have to ask it. Who is David Icke?
A Holocaust denier. One of the most infamous. Look it up if you’re genuinely curious.
fair question: a very British oddball known only to (ahem) older folks like me. He’s wacky, but mostly harmless.
He’s more infamous than you suggest. An intentional villain, ridiculous but far from harmless.
No one has ever believed that the Earth was flat.
https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/
Few of us realize how much the arrangement of our own mental furniture is constrained by a desire to fit into the Normal, or at least something close to it. Think of the warmfuzzy validation you feel when you read an Unherd comment that aligns with your own opinion. (I can’t be the only one).
But people who live completely surrounded by approval and sycophantic support, financially and emotionally independent, achieve an escape velocity that unties the leash that keeps most of us from seriously exploring phrenology or flat-earth-ism. Without naming any of the obvious celebrities who’ve floated into that sphere, it seems to me that Tucker’s break from Fox snapped the last string that tethered him to traditional political discourse and freed him to explore the great beyond. Whether he finds truth or bizarre tosh out there will be proven soon enough.
I think he is intentionally trying to widen the Overton Window and encourage an anything goes attitude to public discussions. This is obviously a pretty successful formula as Joe Rogan has already shown. Like many journalists he probably had real frustration being told what he can’t report on. I don’t like his discussions of aliens because 1) he is scary when talks about them and 2) he won’t give any details. As to X (Twitter) – I like it and I find my feed sends me posts from my political opposites – I don’t think it is biased in any direction.
.
He had his chance to be an influential leader of the growing populist movement in America. He saw past the whole Democrat vs Republican false choice and spoke about it and did it very well and reached a lot of people and had a impact. But then he went down the rabbit hole, instead he became the second coming of Pat Buchanan(who he admires) with a tad of Alex Jones thrown in, but more refined and more reasonable is his approach. He can ether be thought of as a self-promoting sensationalist or a spiteful, resentful isolationist crank, or something in between. Like many cable news personalities, he flew to close to the sun and self-destructed do to ego, he now an increasing fringe character who is trading on his fading fame. Its all a very damn shame. Plus, Trump would never allow Tucker in his camp because Trump gets very jealousy of anyone who get more attention then he dose.
Yes just like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, JK Rowling and every heterodox thinker that doesn’t conform to the discourse limits of the Ruling Orthodoxy. They must be bracketed from public discourse so The Proletarian Science can reign Supreme.
Moderator: I upvoted 00, but it didn’t change from 0 to 1
00, you are right – Trump will never let Carlson be VP not only because of his rival popularity, but because Carlson’s private, emails showed how much he despises Trump. Trump may be a witless opportunist, but he knows enough not to appoint a, potential Brutus to his admistration.
They both feed of each other!
Return to network news. They’ll tell you what to think with pictures and stuff.
Gosh, can I pull a Gay and plagiarize this?
Tucker makes a decent contribution to the conservative cause but he always appears at least a little unhinged. Given his family history, he is a child not only of the modern American broadcast media but neconservative Washington militarism. This positions him ideally as a GOP candidate of the future as a successor to Trump, especially in foreign policy.
What Carlson is thinking beyond all else is where can he next best ‘Grift’ and mug a few for some cash. He’ll dissemble to support whatever he thinks gives him that ker-ching. Plenty of money in peddling Conspiracies.
You know he comes from old school family wealth right? He was born into wealth and privilege. He could have done anything in life. If he was all about money, journalism would not seem to be the most optimal route to increase that wealth. He’s also a gifted writer – a journalist who was actually exceptional at the craft of writing.
Who thought Trump a liability but only said it in private so as not to limit his fan base. Principled my derrière!
Jim, do you ever wonder why you are so attracted to pathetic grifters like Carlson, Tate, Polievre and Trump? Is there something in your background that draws you to comical losers?
I have literally never once listened to Carlson – not one time. Not on Fox and not on Twitter. I know nothing about Tate and I don’t trust Trump or Poliervre.
But with a missing-in-action moral center. Notes of eloquence to no purpose but self-promotion. Have we reached the place where those with family money are considered immune to greed and self-promotion? Why was his primary election-lie sham concern related to Fox News’ “bottom line”?
What net effect does he bring except more division, chaos, and self-centering? Locate for me if you can the substance alongside or beneath his bouts of eloquence, written or spoken.
Disagreement with the left-wing line promoted by the legacy media is divisive? Get your head out of where the sun don’t shine. Tell the Plonk Socialist to do the same.
Most opening monologues on his show were divisive rants*, meant to gin up an audience dominated by dummies unable to detect how insincere his act was, and still is. You don’t engage with much of anything that doesn’t just echo or reinforce your reactionary appetites. And you consistently go low. Work on getting your own head to a cleaner place you damn-near full-time hypocrite.
*On a (barely) competing channel, so were many of Rachel Maddow’s. But I think she believed a much higher percentage of her own claims than Carlson. And most of hers were less outrageous. (Look them up yourself–I bet even you know, at some level, that’s fair).
The sun doesn’t shine as brightly as you seem to think it does inside your bubble.