Tucker Carlson — The World’s Most Important Journalist

Who is Tucker and what it means to interview Vladimir Putin

Tucker Carlson. Carlson Tucker. Boom-boom boom-boom. Four syllables that trip off the tongue to awake an array of emotions; some very good; some very bad.

I don’t agree with the man on a great many things. In fact, I fundamentally disagree with his views and values on a few points of existential importance.

My issues with the man and some of his viewpoints do not, however, cloud my judgement as to his importance as a journalist.

Hard-hitting news journalism is about getting into the trenches and tackling those questions that burn the biggest and brightest for our societies. It’s about shedding light on things others shy away from. It’s about a willingness to talk to people excommunicated from the mainstream. It’s about facilitating conversations with the other to understand how things look from their side of history and humanity: Vladimir Putin is the ultimate other for the Western World.

Tucker Carlson is a thoroughly fallible individual. Nevertheless, this eminently flawed man is interviewing the President of Russia so he can tell his country’s version of events, a version which has been largely suppressed by the governments of the West. The fact that Carlson has been able to open a dialogue with Vladimir Putin as the world slips ever closer to World War 3 makes him the most important journalist of our time.

The man

My views converge with Tucker’s more or less on international relations, but sharply diverge on much else you care to name, often fundamentally so.

For some, he is a Trumpist who outtrumps Trump.

For others, he is a brave maverick unafraid to look at and speak the truth; a non-systemic figure standing beyond the pale of easy classification.

For others still, he is merely a peddler of whatever political division he thinks will sell best; his one true value being venality.

Let’s take a look at his views. My survey of his political positions will have to be, as I am sure you can appreciate, summary.

Carlson is anti-abortion and has called abortion and the reproductive rights of women a ‘spiritual battle’.

Believing in a supernatural power will lead an otherwise sane and sober-minded individual to make weird and wicked conclusions. Thinking that a woman’s womb should be the jurisdiction of anything other than herself, be that a secular state or some spiritual institution, goes against the essence of what America is, and look, you’ve guessed it, it took religion to propel Carlson to his seeing the issue in terms of the spirit.

Letting people govern their own bodies in the way they see fit lies at the heart of liberalism. It should be a no-brainer for someone like Carlson; regrettably he’s religious.

Some have even been talking about the ‘collapse’ of civilisation, Elon Musk among others, as if it is an individual woman’s duty to care for the whole of the humanity in the abstract. This is a non sequitur for a number of reasons, but the scale of its stupidity will have to wait for another day.

In fact, female empowerment seems to be the cure for poverty, so whether we look at is as an issue of individual rights or societal good, there is only one position to take.

As you can probably guess, Carlson, also holds strong views on the trans movement. Following a shooting in Nashville, he claimed that transgender people were targeting Christians, and that the trans movement was the natural enemy of Christianity.

It also shows just how venal and vindictive he can be in manipulating issues to his advantage.

This is wholly unfounded, wholly unfair and cruel to use a vulnerable group as a scapegoat for America’s stupidest and saddest social problem — gun violence. It also shows just how venal and vindictive he can be in manipulating issues to his advantage.

Yet, when we talk about radical gender ideology and its unassailability in many quarters, trans children and the shunning of prominent and popular figures from polite society, there’s more than an element of truth in what he says, which many will concede.

It should also be underscored that Tucker Carlson has been quite happy to get into bed with a number of extremist and conspiratorial movements, vociferating some of their tenets when it seemed to serve his ends. This has seen him pillory immigrants, give voice to replacement theory, and generally be racist, homophobic and sexist, both publicly and privately. This is part and parcel of Trumpism as a whole, and is dangerous, ugly and untrue in so much of what it asserts.

Does this then adduce deep-rooted racism and bigotry or a casual relationship with one’s pronouncements or a lack of integrity in his viewpoints?

I think it is hard to distil what is at play here, but suffice to say there is extremely little to admire and a great deal to abhor.

Before we move to the international sphere and world politics, I will touch on climate change and global warming. Many of the above issues are both political and politicised, and it is impossible to appeal to something outside of politics to ground the veracity of the stance one takes.

This is not so with climate change. The majority of scientists and vast swathes of the data confirm human activity as the sole culprit driving the shift in climatic conditions.

This is the biggest epistemological blind spot in Carlson’s worldview. Even if one is a scientist, some pretty exceptional proof is required if one is to diverge from orthodoxy. Tucker Carlson is not a scientist, and so his consistent repudiation of what most scientists confirm holds no water, and owing to the fact that he does not seem a stupid or uninformed person, I am forced to bring his integrity into question more than his intellect.

Lastly, international relations and America’s role in the world. I am largely in agreement here.

My general formula is that moral absolutism in a multipolar political ecosystem will sooner or later precipitate a world war.

We live in a world where there are now multiple power centres and a number of countries which have all the means at their disposal to resist the American hegemon, most especially on their borders, but also beyond their propinquitous spheres of influence.

Moral absolutism and radical liberal ideology thrive within the old guard of the Democratic Party, but also enjoy many supporters among the Republicans. My general formula is that moral absolutism in a multipolar political ecosystem will sooner or later precipitate a world war.

Tucker Carlson shares the same view. He has been much castigated for this and often labelled a patsy for Putin and the Kremlin. However, as John Mearsheimer and the Intercept concluded, propaganda and true genuine criticism can often be one and the same: what distinguishes them is not so much the content of the critique but the motivations and incentives of the speaker.

It is also true that the claim of propaganda functions often much like propaganda itself and can be easily weaponised to cast dispersion on a person’s views and tarnish their reputation.

More to the point, many of the things Carlson has said, from the culprit of the Nord Stream sabotage to the insanity of continuing to arm Ukraine indefinitely and not try to reach a peace resolution to the expansion of NATO having playing at least some role in sparking the invasion have come to be believed and endorsed by more and more commentators and politicians as each week goes by.

Carlson has been a consistent advocate for not continuing to arm Ukraine, and of deescalating tensions with Russia and China. He has also cautioned against continuing to support Israel in its decimation of Gaza and countenances a more conservative approach to foreign policy.

The interview

Carlson holds more than a few positions that should make anyone with a head and a heart recoil.

At the same time, he makes more than a little sense on others.

And in terms of international relations and how close we are to World War Three, he’s bang on the money.

As I write this Tucker Carlson is in Moscow to the best of my knowledge and is strongly rumoured to have already interviewed Vladimir Putin, which has been confirmed by the Kremlin.

That Carlson has been granted the opportunity to do the interview and that he actively sought it out is partly a function of the very values and views examined above.

Russia requires some degree of intellectual honesty, some amount of understanding and compassion for its position and some objectivity regarding the history and dynamics that gave rise to the war that most no one else in the West of Carlson’s reach and influence could vouchsafe.

A second part of the story is Tucker Carlson’s willingness to reach out to the leaders of the anti-hegemonic world who refuse to kowtow before the US-led Liberal West. This is all the more important as we stand on the precipice of massive global war.

The incandescence and incense that has met the news that Tucker Carlson has conducted the interview, with talk of sanctions against him even being voiced, is proof of two things

The first is the importance of Carlson as a figure of global clout and influence who is not only willing to speak to the other side but can be accepted by that other side as someone not wholly and irredeemably consumed and swallowed by vitriol, anger and absolutist ideology.

The second is the power of that absolutist ideology, that, despite being in its death throes as the only possible game in town, can still splay out across the globe to cast all dialogue and discussion with the other as dialogue with the Devil and unconscionable heresy.

The radical strain and perversion of liberalism that can and will never back down, as it insists on poking bears and slapping dragons right up until they explode, will only make massive conflict all the more likely and the world a far more dangerous place.

The world is a complex place and one value system cannot and should not be forever in ascendency as universal and unquestionable. The radical strain and perversion of liberalism that can and will never back down, as it insists on poking bears and slapping dragons right up until they explode, will only make massive conflict all the more likely and the world a far more dangerous place.

For the long-term safety and security of countries like Taiwan and Ukraine, as well as Russia and China, and for the world at large, dialogue, compromise and middle-ground resolutions will be essential.

And for dialogue and discussion, to gain an understanding of the other and to show that the Western World can listen and is open to hearing from that other from its side of the table, there is no one better at the present time than Tucker Carlson. This makes him the most important journalist in the world.