Tucker Carlson finally did a long-form interview with Glenn Greenwald. It’s good and worth watching, but in the interview, he falsely claims that the US is a “fascist country.” This is a stupid lie he’s told several times.
The US is what it says it is: it is a democracy. That’s what this system is called: you have a group of people who are supposedly elected through some convoluted process involving political parties who govern your country, and whenever you complain about anything, the answer is to go vote for other candidates. However, through the manipulation of media and the electoral process, the only people who win elections are controlled by a small group of elites and special interest groups.
Democracy is a system of tyranny, because there is no way for the people to petition grievances with the government. Because of this system of elections, the government can just blame whatever they do on the people who elected them. Further, democracy has no supreme leader so whenever anything goes wrong, blame can be passed around and no one is ever held responsible for anything.
Conversely, Fascism is an authoritarian system, and it is not tyrannical. It is virtually impossible for an authoritarian system to be tyrannical, at least long term. This is because without voting for politicians, and with the presence of a supreme leader, everyone knows who is accountable for what happens.
In Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Hitler was ultimately responsible for everything that happened, good or bad, and people understood that. In America, the president can blame the courts, can blame the congress, can blame the electorate. Just so, courts and congress can blame each other and other bodies. If you wanted to protest in Hitler’s Germany, you would protest Hitler. In America, who do you protest? Who is responsible for anything that happens? I study this stuff, and I can’t point to even a dozen people, let alone a single person, who can be considered “ultimately responsible.” This means that the government can do basically whatever they want, then if you complain about the government generally (because you can’t complain about a person specifically, because the buck doesn’t stop anywhere), they tell you to vote.
Tucker’s statement came during comments about Biden’s decision to drastically escalate the war in the Ukraine on the way out of office, saying this act specifically was “fascism.” But Biden acts with the authority of the electorate, and of congress, which itself acts with the authority of the electorate. You can say “but people don’t want this,” and that’s obvious, but what options do they have to oppose it, in a democracy? They can go vote, which they did already.
In a fascist system, if a leader tried to start a very unpopular war, he would be protested and ultimately violently overthrown, usually with the military siding against the leader on the side of the mob. If you have an authoritarian system, and a clear supreme leader who acknowledges himself as the supreme leader, you simply cannot forcibly control the population, you cannot force them to do things against their will.
There are always going to be more of us that there are of them, and modern Western universal suffrage democracy solves for that problem by claiming, through this ridiculous Rube Goldberg system, that the masses of people are responsible for the actions of the government.
Tucker Carlson falsely claims that democracy means “the will of the people.” He can redefine that term if he wants, but it just causes massive confusion. In reality, “the will of the people” must be embodied by a supreme leader, or that “will” is just a spook.
As a secondary issue, when you have a totally controlled media, where alternative voices (such as my own) are banned from being heard, “the will of the people” cannot be relied upon to ensure freedom and security for a nation. The controlled American media is capable of manipulating the popular will, and making them believe their interests align with the interests of elites, special interest groups, and foreign nations. In the ideal form of democracy, there is a free media, but we do not live in some ideal form. This ideal form is just a fantasy with no actual connection to reality.
A supreme leader would not be opposed to a free media. A supreme leader cannot be corrupt, because he is not beholden to special interests, as his legacy and his power are tied to the popular will of the people. In American democracy, politicians, from congressmen to the president, look at their time in government as a money-making opportunity, not a place to build a legacy.
All you have to do to understand this situation is look at the approval numbers of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, and see that they have the overwhelming majority of support from their population. The response to that fact is that “Russia and China have a controlled media,” but it is simply insane for Americans to claim another country has a controlled media. Russia and China have nowhere even remotely close to the level of censorship America has, and this fact is not altered by the fact that Russia and China use laws to enforce their censorship. The US system of enforcing censorship through private companies working with the government, through deplatforming, debanking, and civil lawsuits, is much more efficient than laws against censorship, and this system allows for much more widespread censorship.
The reason Putin and Xi are more popular than Biden or Trump is because they are beholden to the will of the people. Both leaders have roughly 10-15% of the country which doesn’t approve of them, and that is the percentage of a population that is not going to agree with any government. You are always going to have this minority that has some kind of grievance, simply because it is impossible to keep everyone happy, and some people will just blame the government for personal problems. In America, people have legitimate grievances, which are never addressed.
The statements made with Greenwald should be considered in the context stated here, which is that Tucker constantly talks about “democracy” as a good thing and considers it be to equated to the will of the people. He has also consistently used the word “fascist” to mean “against the will of the people.”
Tucker Carlson on Vox Journalist who demanded Youtube censor @scrowder:
“He’s called for physically assaulting people he disagrees with politically, even as he whines about being oppressed himself…he’s a fascist posing as a victim. No sensible adult would take him seriously.” pic.twitter.com/9CureWDTQg
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) June 7, 2019
unbelievable LIE:
Tucker Carlson actually Called Single-payer healthcare “fascist”pic.twitter.com/K9r2ZvGfN7
— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) March 2, 2019
TUCKER: “As they used to say in the 1960s, scratch a liberal and you will find a fascist. That was a black panther slogan actually, they weren’t entirely stupid. In fact, in this case they were absolutely right.” pic.twitter.com/OaW5s1RH9S
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 8, 2022
It should be noted, however, that in this particular instance, Tucker made his statements in relation to a war, and fascism is typically defined as being warlike. It is true the fascist states of Europe in the 20th century were warlike. However, that must be looked at in context, with fascism as a reactionary movement against the results of World War I, and the fact that nations believed the solution to the resolutions of that were was more war. That is to say: the wars promoted by fascist governments in the 30s and 40s were widely supported by the masses of people as being in the interests of the nation.
Obviously, the Ukraine war is not in the interests of the people of the United States. No one even makes that argument. The basic argument from the government and media is that we need to support the Ukraine as a charity program because it is so sad that they would lose legal jurisdiction over two provinces in the east of their country which have been a part of Russia for hundreds of years and have never been occupied by Ukrainian-speaking people. There is a vague argument about Russian expansionism and some kind of domino effect, but that is both cartoonish and post hoc. The core argument was about charity for the Ukraine, which was portrayed as a homosexual country fighting against a Russian Christian patriarchy.
We do not need to talk about fascism. It is unhelpful. We need to talk about democracy, and we need to work to abolish democracy and replace it with a system where the will of the people influences the government, where people have freedom and prosperity, where we are not simply slaves to special interest groups, opaque elite institutions, and foreign powers.
Tucker Carlson is influential, and he should not be spreading pro-democracy propaganda. Words have to mean things, and this system we live under is what they say it is: it is a democracy.
I was against Tucker Carlson for a while, after he spent energy promoting various hoaxes, including “China spy balloon” and goofy alien hoaxes. I now believe he is a well-meaning person and simply has a middling IQ, which is the simpler explanation. He’s by no means stupid, he is just easily confused by more complex concepts (although frankly “why would they use a balloon when they have all these spy satellites???” was not a complex question). He should focus on my writing for his materials. He’s not going to talk to me, but he should read my material (which he has done in the past) and then try to find holes in my logic. If he can’t find holes, he should change his positions.
He doesn’t need to promote “fascism,” but rather stop talking about it. The same with democracy: just stop talking about it. Talk about positive things and solutions.
