David Neiwert Profile picture
Author, 'The Age of Insurrection: The Ongoing War on American Democracy,' in bookstores June 2023 (Melville House). Blogging at The Spyhop. I block shitheads.

Aug 16, 2019, 39 tweets

1) Dear Tucker Carlson:



Hope you enjoyed your vacation. I would like to pick up where you left off.


You keep insisting the threats of white nationalism and its attendant violence are just a “hoax” concocted by liberals.

Dude, I only wish it were a hoax. Thread follows.

2) Believe me, my life would be so much better if all the stories and strange events I’ve covered as a reporter over the years were hoaxes. Then I could just go back to writing about things like killer whales and humpbacks, which is my real-world preference by a millennial mile.

) I wish the Aryan Nations had just been a hoax, instead of a lethal presence who spread crime, fear, and hate throughout the Pacific Northwest landscape for the 25 years that they were present.

4) If only The Order had been a hoax. Several people, including talk-show host Alan Berg, might still be alive.

5) It is beyond unfortunate that the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in April 1995 by a white supremacist named Timothy McVeigh was not a hoax. Just think of the children who would still be alive.

6) Or that the backpack bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, as well as the subsequent bombings of two women’s health clinics and a gay bar by the same white-supremacist terrorist, were not hoaxes.

7) The world certainly would have been a better place if Chris Simcox and his Minutemen hadn’t come along and turned vigilante “border watching” into a media-enshrined noble and patriotic pastime, targeting brown people.

8) That’s particularly true of his onetime protégé, Shawna Forde, who cooked up a scheme to fund her Minuteman militia compound on the border by pulling off a home-invasion robbery in which everyone was shot.

9) She and her cohorts are on death row now, fortunately. But somehow, the reputation of vigilante border watchers has been rehabilitated in the intervening years, no small thanks to Fox News.

typeinvestigations.org/investigation/…

10) Everyone who is not a white nationalist certainly wishes that Anders Breivik’s 2011 terrorist attacks on Oslo and Utoya Island had just been hoaxes. Some 87 innocent people, including 78 schoolkids, would still be alive if they had been.

11) If only the sovereign citizens’ movement were a figment of liberals’ imaginations, over a dozen police officers would still be alive instead of being gunned down by far-right fanatics. (H/t @JJMcnabb)

@JJMcNabb 12) I certainly wish that far-right “constitutionalist” Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with federal law enforcement in Nevada in 2014 had been concocted by a bunch of crazy liberals. Then everyone could have just gone home. Though you folks at Fox were sure happy.

@JJMcNabb 13) Especially Jared and Amanda Miller. They could have stayed home in Indiana instead of, two months after participating in the Bundy standoff, murdering two police officers and a bystander in Las Vegas.

@JJMcNabb 14) Likewise the armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge by Bundy’s son Ammon in rural Oregon two years later.

@JJMcNabb 15) It’s tragic that Dylann Roof wasn’t actually a “crisis actor” pulling off a “false flag” operation when he gunned down nine black parishioners in a Charleston church. Sadly, he was no figment of the liberal imagination either.

@JJMcNabb 16) The three Kansas militiamen (Trump fans all) who were plotting to set off McVeigh-style truck bombs amid a community of Somali refugees were no hoax: They had the materials and were set to go the day after the election.

@JJMcNabb 17) The deranged right-wing extremist who fatally stabbed two people on a Portland MAX train—and then shouted about “Free speech!” and "Leave this country if you hate our freedom!" at his arraignment—was, sadly, not a figment of anyone’s imagination.

@JJMcNabb 18) Unfortunately for all of us, those violent white-nationalist street marches that followed Trump’s election have been anything but a hoax—though the claims these are caused by antifascists qualifies as one.

@JJMcNabb 19) The men who chanted “Blood and Soil!” in Charlottesville, rioted the next day and eventually killed a counterprotester were not exactly figments of liberals’ imaginations. (H/t @sandibachom)

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 20) The man who murdered fifty worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, was definitely inspired by a hoax called “cultural Marxism,” but his act was very much a living nightmare.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 21) Remember the white nationalist who murdered 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue because he too believed people like you who claim that whites are being intentionally replaced by Latinos? He was all too real.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 22) The murderer in El Paso believed the same “Great Replacement” theory, which is part of the “cultural Marxism” hoax. He killed 20 people. That too was no hoax.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 23) Indeed, strangely enough, YOU, Mr. Carlson, and your colleagues at Fox News have done more to spread this poisonous “replacement theory” garbage than any other single entity.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 24) Maybe this is why neo-Nazis and white nationalists actually watch your program devotedly so they can pick up ideas and talking points. You actively help fuel white-nationalist racism.



buzzfeednews.com/article/joseph…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 25) Oh, and speaking of hoaxes: You know those episodes you devoted to the supposed genocide of white farmers in South Africa? It’s a hoax.



huffpost.com/entry/tucker-c…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 26) Specifically, it’s one of the more prominent components of a much larger white-nationalist hoax called “white genocide.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_gen…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 27) You should be proud: You even suckered Donald Trump into one of his more embarrassingly revealing moments, when his own white nationalist impulses were laid bare. Nothing like helping create an international incident!



nytimes.com/2018/08/23/wor…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 28) But then, this is just one of many steps in your own gradual descent into complete immersion in white-nationalist ideology and propagandizing. And now you want to pretend it into nonexistence.


mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 29) No wonder they love you so much in all the white-nationalist chat rooms: “Tucker is a blessing, definitely our guy.”



forward.com/news/national/…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 30) “Tucker is a national treasure and will be the catalyst for real social change.”

“At best, he’s a gateway for us and they know it.”

revealnews.org/blog/the-hate-…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 31) Now, your argument takes on some bite when you talk about how large the white-nationalist movement really is. You contend that it could at best fill a single sports stadium.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 32) But look back through the above videos. And thumb through the list below. Then recognize that only one or two white nationalists can wreak a whole lot of havoc. A stadium full of them is an existential threat.



@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 32) Your contention is that membership in organizations is relatively limited. This is true, and more so in recent years. But that is entirely because WN radicalization has shifted primarily to an online phenomenon.

splcenter.org/20180419/mcinn…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 33) How large is the community of people who have been radicalized online by the white-nationalist? It’s difficult to say with any certainty. But it is very large: 4chan, one of its main wellsprings, gets 20 million visitors a month.

vice.com/en_us/article/…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 34) But let’s get real here. Did you really expect us to believe that you’ve “never met anyone who thinks white supremacy is a good idea”?

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 34) Well, yeah, you have. Surely you remember your old pal Rep. Steve King, who has graced your show on several occasions. He's been in the news again this week.

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 35) King thinks it’s a lovely, perfectly defensible concept.

theweek.com/speedreads/816…

@JJMcNabb @sandibachom 36) You say you are not actually acquainted with any white nationalists?



Yeah, you are.

You see him every morning in the mirror.

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