Is Tucker Carlson a Russian Asset?
-- In which "Russophile" Carlson's latest interview with Aleksandr Dugin leads us to some uncomfortable questions
Since leaving Fox News in humiliation, Tucker Carlson has been up to what can only be properly construed under the category of … some weird shit. He’s been palling around with anti-Semites and white supremacists in Eastern Europe and Russia, platforming despicable people like Viktor Orban on his grotty little X show (Averted Gaze). But his singular obsessions — the white race, George Soros, the fate of masculinity — dovetail neatly, all-too-neatly, in fact, into the sweet spot of Vladimir Putin, who, we cannot fail to note, went above and beyond in granting an extraordinary interview with the former Fox News host. Which leads me to ask the uncomfortable question aloud: Is Tucker Carlson a Russian asset?
Let me say at the outset that the notion that Tucker Carlson would be on the take for Vladimir Putin appears fundamentally absurd. Utterly beyond the pale, at least on the face of things. This is, after all, the same Tucker Carlson that used to work for MSNBC and -- believe it or not — on a public affairs program on PBS. Carlson was always, until Trump (a fellow “Russophile”), a sort of an ideological journeyman — he was nominally a “conservative,” but largely created controversy for the sake ratings for whomever would employ him.
Then something strange happened. After the election of Trump, Carlson headed deep into the bosom of the far-right, even granting the squid-like proto-racist Charles Murray free range on his television show. There was the angry public service announcement denouncing men who tan their testicles. To paraphrase former President Dubya on Trump’s inaugural speech, “that was some weird shit.” But even those events were nothing quite like what is happening now, post-Fox. By that I mean -- why the fuck is Tucker Carlson interviewing Aleksandr Dugin? This is really some next level Russian nationalism.
Aleksandr Dugin — also known as “Putin’s brain” for providing intellectual cover for his invasion of Crimea and the Ukraine — is an ultranationalist thinker. And if you take some time with his writings (which I don’t suggest), you will see why Putin behaves the way he does on Ukraine, on mercenaries, on disinformation and in opposing the West in all things. Here’s a brief summation, from Joseph Gefler, in Counterpunch:
As a political philosopher, Dugin came to the attention of many with his 2009 book, The Fourth Political Theory. So it’s worth looking at this foundational text to see what Dugin says about sex and gender when he is at his most expansive. Let’s briefly outline what Dugin means by the Fourth Political Theory. Dugin argues that the past hundred or so years have been characterized by three key ideologies. First is liberalism, which Dugin sees as being defined by the centrality of the individual. Second is communism, which was a response to liberalism and its bourgeois-capitalist system. Third is fascism, whether focused on the state under Mussolini or race under Hitler. Dugin sees liberalism as the last of these ideologies standing, with communism having withered on the vine and fascism flaming out early due to Hitler’s insane objectives. The Fourth Political Theory is what comes next: it is a resistance to postmodernity, the post-industrial society, liberalism, and globalization.
So what of sex and gender in the Fourth Political Theory? Dugin dedicates a whole chapter to the subject, outlining first his perception of how gender evolved through the first three political theories, and then how it will unfold in the fourth. In short, under liberalism, gender is occupied with “man” (given that women are not really given any personhood), and not just any man but “the rational, rich, adult White male.”
Sound familiar? This 2009 book is essentially a blueprint for the alt-right. Richard Spencer raves about it. Which, clearly, drew in Carlson, who, in turn, platformed him to his audience in -- of all places — America. In fine, Tucker Carlson is broadcasting “Putin’s brain” into the American far-right ecosystem, which has increasingly turned away from funding the Ukraine war. “His books have been banned by the Biden administration in the United States. You cannot buy them on Amazon,” Carlson tantalized his X audience. Reagan, I imagine, is spinning in his grave. Which leads me to ask, once again, the uncomfortable of uncomfortable questions: Is Tucker Carlson a Russian asset?
Putin, a KGB guy formerly stationed in then-East Germany, has embroidered the dirtiest tricks of spycraft into his statecraft in a way like no other head of state in modern memory. Russia is essentially a spy state, and Carlson, who once had millions of followers, clearly would be valuable in disinformation warfare. Pjotr Sauer of The Guardian reminds us in his twenty year summation of the Russian autocrat’s methodology of dealing with defectors:
The form of the attacks has varied, from underwear daubed with the nerve agent novichok and polonium-laced tea to more straightforward assassinations by bullet, but throughout Vladimir Putin’s 23 -year rule, Kremlin critics, journalists and defected spies have met with similarly ruthless treatment for opposing the Russian president.
The fatal crash of a private jet carrying the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin two months after he spearheaded a mutiny against Russia’s top army brass two months ago appeared to have added a new method to the Kremlin’s extensive assassination menu.
All unhappy autocracies are more or less similar, by the way. Putin, as we have established, dramatically kills “traitors” within Russia’s borders and, beyond, in Europe. Ask Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Sidebar — The despotic apartheid regime in South Africa also had poisoned underwear on their “assassination menu,” same as Putin. In 1989, former police commissioner Johan van der Merwe received a 10-year suspended prison sentence under a plea bargain after admitting that he ordered the security police to kill anti-apartheid activist the Reverend Frank Chikane by poisoning his underwear with a nerve agent. In the 80s at least 250 anti-apartheid activists were killed in South Africa from toxic clothes …
But back to Russia. It is interesting, timing-wise, that Tucker has apparently forgone his Fox News severance in order to put on this Russophilic, white supremacist content. So it is not inconceivable that Tucker is indeed on the take. After all, Vladimir Putin generally does not give interviews to potential wild cards, particularly American potential wild cards outside of his jurisdictional kill-zone. And yet, he gave an audience to Tucker Carlson, which, to my mind at least, suggests that Putin had to have been completely assured of Tucker’s fealty to him. There would be no deviations; there would be no outright Western liberal pushback. Because it is very unlikely that Putin would do a television interview with an American right-winger — no matter how obsequious — unless he had that assurance.
But how could Putin be assured of such a thing? That the interview wouldn’t make him look bad? Were they in communication? Who coordinated? Did “Tucker’s people” contact “Vladimir’s people”? I guess what I’m asking is how were their competing alt-right “masculinities” navigated? So many questions …
That having been said, I have a hard time imagining Tucker Carlson being on the FSB payroll. A little less so with Trump, though, who is equally bizarre when it comes to Putin. So far as I know -- and I have been covering Trump for over a decade — he has never had a bad word about the Russian President. And Trump badmouths everyone — from ex-wives, to best friends, to his own children. Further, Putin has moved heaven and earth to help Trump get into the White House. There is no question he will do the same again in 2024, amounting to an in-kind donation from the federal republic of Russia to the RNC, which will no doubt help close the fundraising gap with the Democrat party, which, we cannot fail to note, does not rely on aid from a geopolitical foe.
But back to Tucker Carlson. Is he “on the take”? Do they have some sort of disgusting kinky sex kompromat on Tuck (And — yyuck!)? Or is this a simple case of Tucker Carlson following the path of former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke, who, in the 1990s went after the lucrative and disgusting Russian anti-Semitic marketplace. I simply do not know. There are too many unknown variables in this equation for me to solve for x. But this reminds me of Bill Buckley’s infamous quote at the end of his Brobdingnagian, 40,000 word essay “In Search of Anti-Semitism” on whether or not Pat Buchanan — another former Crossfire host — was a Jew-hating bigot, as many at the time suspected. "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament," wrote Buckley at the time.
Perhaps the same is so for Tucker Carlson. Perhaps not. But something certainly smells rotten in the federal city of Moscow.
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