Clockwise from top left: Tucker Carlson with world’s #1 fascist organizer, Putin; Carlson with now out of office ethno nationalist Viktor Orban; Carlson with rape apologist & accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate; Carlson with supporter of fascist ideologue Dugin; – “Professor Jiant”; Carlson with racist anti-semite Nick Fuentes; and Carlson with Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper. These are some of the people Carlson has platformed.

In 2024, Oaklandsocialist published an article explaining how Putin was drawing the left into his far right web. Today, Tucker Carlson is taking it one step further. He’s drawing a far wider layer of workers and youth into a similar web. He is attempting to lead workers and young people into a disastrous trap, linking tens of millions up with the far right, including actual fascists. It’s been done on an even wider scale before. Gregor Strasser did it to build the National Socialist Party – the Nazis – and Carlson is playing a similar tune. Not that fascism is about to take over America, but the danger is very real nevertheless.

In order to really understand where Carlson is leading, a knowledge of his past is

The pro-Nazi Daily Stormer. Carlson was a big hit with them and he never disavowed them.

necessary. As we showed in our first article on Carlson, he built his earlier career through connections with Nazis like those in the Daily Stormer and through defending the fascist January 6 insurrectionists. He is now expanding from there.

Israel
Tens of millions of Americans are disgusted at Israel’s genocidal and imperialist wars and at US support for those wars – first against Palestine and now against Lebanon. Carlson speaks to that disgust. For example, in his recent interview with NY Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Carlson said, “I think what we’re seeing is evil. Are you allowed to kill people who’ve committed no crime? No. Super simple. You’re not allowed to do that. Under no moral standard is that allowable. All of a sudden it’s allowable in Gaza, and our leaders are like, ‘Yeah, it’s totally fine.’ It’s not fine.”

Carlson betrayed his real concern, however, in a podcast of his in which he talked about Israel’s assault on Lebanon. “Christians define the life of Lebanon… In some basic sense this is a Christian country” he said. He then showed the results of Israel’s bombing, including the death of a little girl. In other words, he’s conjuring up the image of Israel killing not “Lebanese” but Christians to millions of his followers. He then went further, emphasizing the name of Israel’s war against Lebanon – “Operation Eternal Darkness”, which he says “is a euphemism for hell, and that’s exactly what Israel brought to Christians in Lebanon today.” Not just any Lebanese; Lebanese Christians. Carlson continues: ““Israel seems to have… a desire to destroy Europe. Prime

Depiction of the fall of Jerusalem. According to Carlson, the Jews still want revenge.

Minister [Netanyahu] said it himself, ‘Rome is our real enemy.’ Still angry about 70 AD, 2,000 years later. His words, not mine. So clearly Israel wants to harm Europe. They’ve said so. They’ve helped do it. That would definitely harm Europe and the West. [meaning the U.S.]”

In his NY Times interview, he’s more circumspect; he just drops a dog whistle: “Beirut and Jerusalem – greatest cities in the world,” he says. The average reader may not get the hint, but is far right followers will. Jerusalem – the Christian holy land – is connected with the “Christian” Beirut.

Anybody who is unclear about comments like this should read Oaklandsocialist’s article Anti-Semitism is a growing danger – but not in the way you think. The author, who grew up in a working class Catholic background, explains how extremely widespread anti-semitism is among tens of millions of Americans. They were taught on the one hand that the Jews bear the blood of Christ on their hands and on the other that a hidden Jewish cabal is manipulating the world. Carlson is playing to this view. It is a barely disguised dog whistle. In his NY Times interview with Garcia-Navarro, playing to a wider audience, Carlson adamantly denies being anti-semitic. That is his other face.

Claim that Israel controls U.S.
In the United States, one form of the Nazi-style anti-semitic idea that Jews are manipulating the world takes is the claim that Israel controls US foreign policy. Since that view is more widespread, Carlson can be more open with it, including with the NY Times. He does so both in the Garcia-Navarro interview and on his podcasts.

Carlson told Garcia-Navarro that Trump is being “held hostage” by “Benjamin Netanyahu and by his many advocates in the United States…. the Democratic leadership really… they’re completely under the control of the same forces,” which is Israel. Carlson can say this openly because it’s commonly accepted. Then he hints at what he says more openly elsewhere: “I have a lot of thoughts and theories about things which may or may not be rooted in reality. So I hesitate even to spring any of my theories on you because they’re probably insane.” He knows that his Nazi style anti semitic followers will hear– that there is a secret Jewish cabal that is manipulation the Gentiles in the United States. (See below.) As was typical throughout the interview on one issue after another, Garcia-Navarro did not press him on the question.

The actual facts are the following: In a 1986 speech, then-Senator Joe Biden

Biden speaking on Senate floor in 1986, explaining why US must support Israel alone

made the issue clear: for historical and cultural reasons going back all the way to the Crusades, the US can never trust the Arab states to reliably advance US interests. Only Israel can be counted on as a base for US interests in the region. If Israel controlled US foreign policy, how come Obama signed the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal despite Israel’s adamant objections? And how come Netanyahu was unable to convince Clinton, Obama and Biden to go to war with Iran? Netanyahu only succeeded with the easily manipulated (and strongly Islamophobic) Trump.

Carlson continues with his duplicitous approach when it comes to racism. His past is full of connections with the Nazi Daily Stormer. In one of his podcasts, he gave a friendly interview to the pro-Nazi overt racist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes. In his interview with the NY Times’ Garcia-Navarro, however, he denies even knowing what Fuentes stands for. That is impossible. Here is his take on racism: “Most of the debates about race, ethnicity, religion, to some extent immigration, are less resonant long-term than debates about economics…. Race is thrown up as a distraction so often, as in this case, to distract from what actually matters. Fuentes himself is a distraction from the conversations that matter because power is displayed through the structure of the economic system globally and per country and in the use of force…. Wall Street’s response as well, is to be like, Let’s have a race war and you guys can argue over Blacks or whites or that JD is married to an Indian woman. So [raising the issue of] Fuentes is incredibly useful for people with actual power to

The murder of George Floyd. According to Carlson, such racist murders should be ignored.

divert the conversation to something that is both irrelevant and divisive, because it’s a divide-and-conquer strategy”. In other words, we must ignore racism. This is a dog whistle to the more overt racists who defend the cops who murdered George Floyd and every other act of racism.

Economic popiulism
Carlson has been sounding the economics populist drum increasingly, and he did so with Garcia-Navarro: “I had dinner the other night with a bunch of really smart kids from Stanford. And one of them said that his best friend just graduated with a degree in computer science last year and has not been able to find a job. Stanford computer science, can’t find a job. So that’s a window into the total destruction of the economic opportunity for young people, and what looks to me as a non-economist like the true hoarding of capital by a tiny group of people, a very lopsided and unfair economic system guaranteed to radicalize young people — and not just young people, but especially young people. And so I think most future conversations politically will be about economics.”

But what he has to offer is a complete dead end – racial/ethnic division and America First, and here once again he can be more open because his views are more commonly accepted. “Anybody who’s for diluting our labor pool with foreign labor is clearly not acting in the interest of the country,” he says. Again, he’s hinting here at something he said more openly in his podcast interview with “Professor Jiang”, who is a Traditionalist supporter of Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin. There, Carlson said: “Of course, the white populations are killed on purpose. And the question is, why? And I don’t have the faintest idea, and there’s a lot of speculation as to who’s doing it. I’ll just say bluntly: I don’t mean I know who the instruments are, of course. But Keir Starmer is not in charge of Great Britain. Macron is not in charge of France. I’m not sure how many leaders really do have control of their countries. I don’t know how many countries actually have sovereignty. I really don’t know the answer. Something is going on…. There’s no such thing as multiculturalism. There’s always a dominant culture that you know, that insists on dominance. Of course, I just don’t think there’s ever been anyone who thought this could happen globally, like a systematic targeting of a race for elimination globally. Well, it wasn’t possible until pretty recently, but it would be interesting to know what the plan is. There’s clearly, like a plan behind that. There’s a plan. I wonder, how many Americans do you think understand what’s actually happening in the world right now?”

This is straight out of the Nazi Daily Stormer playbook: “We can’t prove it because it’s all covert conspiracies, but the Jews are manipulating white Christians in order to replace us. They’re using the blacks to do so,” is the theme. This view of the world opens the door to sectarian violence and leaves workers unable to unite both within the United States and with workers internationally, which is more important than ever under the irreversible conditions of global capitalism.

Carlson may come close to socialism: “I don’t know what you would call our economic system, I’m often told it’s free-market capitalism — it doesn’t bear any resemblance to what I thought free-market capital was,” he said. But taken in the context of everything else he says, it’s closer to national socialism than

Gregor Strasser addressing some Nazi supporters. Carlson takes a page out of Strasser’s playbook.

anything else. The Nazi left populist Gregor Strasser played a similar role. He spoke to the economic crisis German workers were facing in the 1930s and came close to blaming the capitalists, but he blamed Jewish capitalists. Carlson presents the same view in a slightly disguised form. In the Garcia-Navarro interview, he blames “certain forces – the banks, people loaning the money.” This is a dog whistle for “Jewish money lending conspiracy”. The Nazis saw the “Aryans” as the superior race. The Nazi-friendly Tucker Carlson takes a similar course. All his political and economic attacks lead to one end: Privileging white workers.

Tucker Carlson’s other faces
There are many other faces of Tucker Carlson. For example, he interviewed the Nazi supporter Darryl Cooper about Epstein. During that show, Carlson and Cooper both vigorously condemned Epstein. Previously, however, Carlson had platformed and defended the rape supporter and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate! In the more public eye he comes off as an isolationist who simply doesn’t want the US involved with other countries. “My main concern is with the destruction of the United States,” he said to Garcia-Navarro. But in his interview with “Professor Jiang” he supported the idea of dividing up the world between Russian, Chinese and US imperialism. Jiang also said that Ukraine is finished, which is a typical pro-Putin claim to which Carlson didn’t object at all. Since that time, the Russian invaders are actually losing territory, and Ukraine is attacking military targets within Russia with increasing success. Carlson, of course, gave a very friendly to his political soulmate, Putin, just as he did to Viktor Orban. Orban is now out of office and Putin may be entering a political crisis.

There are many other aspects to the Tucker Carlson message. For example, he told Garcia-Navarro “I also think there is a world beyond our senses. Every culture and civilization has understood that from the beginning of time…. And this is a realization that’s dawning on me. I wasn’t thinking like this at all until several years ago…. There are unseen forces that act, that there is a spiritual realm, and we are subject to those forces for good and bad.” He’s probably telling the truth when he says this is a new “realization” for him, but what he’s probably unconsciously staggering towards is Traditionalism. This is the 21^st century ideology of fascism, as more clearly propounded by Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin. Briefly: Traditionalism holds that every ancient civilization – by which they really mean feudal society – held certain beliefs. They also had rigid gender and class structures. It is necessary to return to those ancient ethnic nations. To fully understand Carlson, and to understand where such figures as Darryl Cooper, Professor Jiang, and ideologues like Aleksandr Dugin already are at, as well as Putin and also JD Vance (Trump is too stupid to hold any ideology) it’s necessary to understand Traditionalism. Oaklandsocialist deals with the issue in depth in our article “Aleksandr Dugin – alchemist of “Traditionalism”, mystecism and fascism. This is where Carlson is headed. If he can, he will bring tens of millions of people along behind him.

Whatever Carlson builds will not be as broad as the electoral coalition that Trump put together. For one thing, having lived through the unfiltered Trump, a layer of voters are a little more on their guard. More important is the fact that Trump built his coalition purely pragmatically. He combined Christian fundamentalist Zionists with Nazi-friendly anti Semites, America First tariff supporters with voters angry about rising prices, etc. Carlson starts with a more ideological base; it might be narrower but it is more focused.

Who can stop Tucker Carlson?
Garcia-Navarro’s failure to question Carlson on his statement that he has thoughts that “are probably not based on reality” was typical of the entire interview. She didn’t question him on his past association with the Daily Stormer nor his past support for the violent January 6 fascist insurrectionists, nor on his support for Putin and Orban, nor on a lot of other issues. Whatever her reasons, she enabled Carlson to leave the impression that he’s not really the fascist-friendly figure that he really is. This will be the general approach of the liberal establishment.

Much of the “left” has been drawn into Putin’s far right web.

As for the “socialist” left, they are even worse. They agree with Carlson on his anti-Semitic claim that Israel controls the United States, which blends right into all the rest of the Nazi-like anti-Semitism that Carlson is building. Just like Carlson, they have no sense of international working class solidarity as their apologies for Putin’s invason of Ukraine shows. In general, they tend to live in their own echo chamber, as their role in the 2024 elections shows, when they spent almost all their energy attacking the Democrats while largely ignoring the far greater danger of Trump. As for the broader working class as a whole, the 80 year war that the union leadership waged against all the best traditions of the labor movement has had an undeniable effect. As with the working class in most of the world, the US working class is in crisis. It may be down, but it is not out. A renewed upsurge is possible at any time. The role of working class oriented socialists is to be on the lookout for any signs of such a renewal and encourage them like the first sprouts of spring. At the same time we must unsparingly struggle to understand the forces at work, how they may develop and what is necessary and possible.

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Further reading: 

• Book review: Hated by all the right people, biography of Tucker Carlson The first part of this two part series on Carlson summarizes his early career, up to the time of the second Trump administration.
•  The Nature of this period, an Oaklandsocialist pamphlet  This pamphlet discusses the swings from revolutionary periods to counter-revolutionary ones and concludes that in general we seem to be in a period of counter revolution.