Por Hamza Shehryar
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As we still try to come to terms with Israel’s countless barbaric crimes in its genocide in Gaza, as well as its cruelty in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran, many on the left seem to have found a new voice to rally behind to echo our collective repulsion towards the fascist and ethno-nationalist ideology of Zionism: American conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.
Chances are that, in recent weeks, your timelines have become riddled with clips of Tucker Carlson on podcasts and interviews, dismantling propaganda with exactitude and being unrelenting in his criticism of Zionism, as well as the US/Israeli illegal war on Iran, which Carlson has lambasted with particular ferocity. This has taken his reach beyond predominantly American conservative circles, with his scathing words resonating with many liberals and leftists, both within the United States and beyond.
In the last month alone, he has more than doubled his YouTube subscribers, to 5.6 million at the time of writing, while also gaining over 2 million new followers on Instagram, and 4 million on Twitter. Among the many clips driving this monumental recent growth, perhaps the most noteworthy was his takedown of The Economist‘s editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes, when asked by her about Israel’s “right to exist,” which he dealt with how anyone opposed to the wretched settler-colonial ideology of Zionism should – by exposing the ludicrous hypocrisy baked into the question. There’s plenty to learn from his response. This clip has been viewed tens of millions of times and has been endlessly reposted – by the corporate media, independent outlets, and individual creators alike, amplifying his reach and establishing him among the most popular anti-Israel and anti-Iran War voices.
Carlson’s effective communication about Israel has led to progressive attitudes towards the commentator shifting. Many now see him as a reformed soldier: the torchbearer of the fight against colonization, against imperialism, against AIPAC. However, it is imperative to push back against this convenient reframing and see Carlson’s recent shift for what it is: an opportunist repurposing in response to a deeply unpopular war and the recognition that everyone, everywhere, is now anti-Israel – one that does not abandon the far-right, Christian nationalist views Carlson has held throughout his long career.
To recognize that Tucker has not disavowed the positions that put him firmly in line with the neoliberal, corporate interests that define American imperialism, one need not look very far back. As recently as January this year, Carlson celebrated Trump’s illegal kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Soon after, he had Peter Brimelow, a British-born white supremacist, on his podcast to talk about “the global anti-white agenda overtaking the West.” Neither of these things is surprising; they are merely the continuation of the views held over the course of a media career of over 30 years.
Carlson has spent over three decades poisoning the public discourse by laundering fringe white supremacist conspiracies into the mainstream, most notably through his relentless obsession with the Great Replacement theory – a paranoid delusion that claims that Western elites are systematically diluting white American political power by replacing them with a supposedly more compliant immigrant electorate – which he has peddled with bewildering frequency. This calculated attempt to stoke existential racial fear, framing human beings as nothing more than tools for a hostile takeover of the country, is in principle indistinguishable from the ethnonationalism at the core of the Zionist project.
His rhetoric has frequently descended into raw dehumanization and historical revisionism, too. He has notoriously sneered that immigration made the United States “poorer and dirtier and more divided.” He has dismissed Iraqis as “semi-literate primitive monkeys” in leaked audio, for which he refused to apologize. He has sanitized the atrocities of colonial history, claiming the British Empire “civilized” nations with a “decency unmatched by any empire in human history.” He has constantly reiterated claims that Western civilization was created by white men, dismissing non-Western cultures as inherently primitive. The list goes on and on, even amidst his supposed turn. It is telling that even in his public falling out with Trump, perhaps his most forceful repudiation of the American president came because Trump used the f-word in a Truth Social post on Easter; at the same time, he has also attempted to absolve Trump of agency for the heinous war on Iran. The despot may have been manipulated to go to war by Israel, but he was the only US president foolish enough to have been coerced into doing so.
As some left-wing commentators, analysts, and publications have pushed against this sanitization and acceptance of Carlson as one of us, pointing to the ambitious opportunism rooted in his current positions and his commitment to a white-nativist ideology, they have faced forceful pushback, with many offering fervent defenses of the conservative commentator. This is dangerous as it gives Carlson the legitimacy and grounding to repurpose and even grow the MAGA movement. Justin Baragona put it well in a Zeteo piece: “In the end, this is all just a calculated approach by Carlson to not only get ahead of the rest of the right-wing media ecosystem in distancing themselves from an increasingly unpopular president, but also to elevate and rebrand himself as the leader of a new post-Trump conservative movement.”
Therefore, we must not lose sight of the fact that, beyond the satisfaction of seeing the liberal stenographers of the genocidaires squirm, or learning effective messaging techniques in criticizing Israel, or using him to point towards the tepidity of the Democrats as they relent wholly to fascism and Zionism, there is nothing to be gained from letting Tucker Carlson become the face of a collective, broad-based anti-Zionism. There are so many other individuals, activists, and organizations genuinely committed to Palestinian liberation and anti-imperialism who should be the central figures of our fight against genocide, against empire, against settler-colonialism, against fascism.
We cannot let Carlson’s effective messaging against Israel and Zionism mask his white-nativist politics that are dangerous to tens of millions within the borders of the US, and hundreds of millions beyond. We cannot forget that, going into the American presidential elections, Trump had also, for many, managed to successfully represent himself as an anti-war, anti-establishment figure. This feigned, imagined anti-war stance even won him Muslim voters, many of whom ostensibly had forgotten about the Muslim ban in his first term, or ignored his vile racism towards Haitian immigrants, because they were rightfully repulsed by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, funded by the American taxpayer under Joe Biden. In Dearborn, Michigan, which has a significant Muslim and Arab population, Trump did better with voters than Kamala Harris. Many months later, after he continued to finance the genocide, after he set up the colonial Board of Peace, after he bombed a girls’ school in Minab on the day he started an illegal war with Iran, many of these people recognize they were duped, and voice their regret in voting for the tyrant.
It is curious then that many of these same people, who claim to have recognized their lack of foresight and ignorance of Trump’s history when they voted for him, now intently defend Tucker Carlson, a similarly heinous, racist figure who has made his hatred of immigrants, Muslims, or indeed any other minority no secret over the years. We cannot keep going in circles, being deceived by those who exploit our humanity. We must build a broad coalition against the repulsive ideology of Zionism that is rooted in decolonization. We should also welcome the support of those who demonstrate a commitment to Palestinian emancipation, even if they differ on other views. But to actively let – and even support – a Christian nationalist who brought the Great Replacement theory into the mainstream become the central figure of an anti-colonial struggle just because he has finally broken with Trump, who he helped get elected twice, is senseless.
Worse, sanitizing Carlson’s worldview – made clear over a decades-long career – will eventually have material consequences for the most marginalized in the US and beyond. If that happens, I only hope we don’t find ourselves yet another opportunistic white-nativist-turned-anti-imperialist figure to turn towards.
Hamza Shehryar is a writer and journalist. He covers film, culture, and global politics.
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