'Venomous demagogue' Tucker Carlson is 'emblematic' of the right’s moral decline: conservative

02 May 2023

When he was hosting "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, far-right host Carlson not only demonized liberals and progressives — he was also quick to attack any conservatives and libertarians he considered adversarial to the far-right MAGA movement. It worked well from a ratings standpoint; "Tucker Carlson Tonight," before Fox News fired him in April, was Fox News' top-rated prime time show, hands down.

One of Carlson's targets on the right was journalist Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative and vehement critic of MAGA ideology. In a scathing article published by The Atlantic, Nichols argues that "Tucker Carlson Tonight" was symptomatic of a much larger problem: the GOP's overall descent into MAGA extremism.

"Tucker Carlson is, for now, off the air and lying low," Nichols observes. "But his rapid slide from would-be journalist to venomous demagogue is the story of a generation of political commentators who found that inducing madness in the American public was better than the drudgery of working a job outside the conservative hothouses."

Carlson wasn't always so extreme. During the George W. Bush years, he sometimes expressed libertarian ideas and voiced his admiration for then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

But at Fox News, Carlson went full MAGA and trafficked in white nationalist ideas. For example, Carlson promoted the Great Replacement theory — a racist conspiracy theory claiming that left-wing elites are trying to "replace" whites with non-whites in developed countries.

Nichols recalls that after "Tucker Carlson Tonight" debuted in 2016, Carlson "decided to throw off the pretense of intellectualism."

"What concerned me was not that Carlson was selling political fentanyl; that's Fox's business model," Nichols writes. "It was that Carlson, unlike many people in his audience, knew better. He jammed the needle right into the arms of the Fox audience, spewing populist nonsense while running away from his own hyper-privileged background…. Carlson is emblematic of the entire conservative movement now, and especially the media millionaires who serve as its chief propagandists."

The Never Trumper adds, "The conservative world has become a kind of needle skyscraper with a tiny number of wealthy, superbly educated right-wing media and political elites in the penthouses, looking down at an expanse of angry Americans whose rage they themselves helped create."

Read Tom Nichols full article for The Atlantic at this link (subscription required).

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