We have to talk about Tucker Carlson, Replacement Theory, and the Right's usage of white supremacist paranoia and apocalyptic fearmongering to legitimize violence.
This is fascism. Period. We've seen it before in Germany and here in America.
What Carlson has done in recent weeks is advocate for a full and open embrace of fascism, launder the violence of January 6th into a legitimized action, and now is pushing white supremacist/white terrorist concepts of Replacement.
2/
Carlson's behavior isn't accidental. It's an intentional story he's telling, complete with calculated escalations.
He is airing white supremacist propaganda to bring his audience into full support of violence suppression of the Left and people of color.
3/
Before we get into the history, and it is disturbing and important, we need to point out that Carlson previously employed a lead writer who was caught posting on white supremacist sites and trafficking the material from those sources into the show.
This trend is continuing.
4/
Replacement Theory is a 20th century holdover found in the work of men like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.
Their white supremacist tomes argued that the "white race" that had "civilized" the world was in danger of losing its control.
5/
These books were incredibly popular and earned Grant and Stoddard fame, fortune, and influence, including being turned into advisers for American immigration policy, which aggressively addressed the danger of "replacement" in its quotas and restrictions.
6/
This will sound familiar because it's an animating influence on the Right, but Grant and Stoddard warned of "cultural suicide" should white-controlled powers allow people of color to outnumber or "replace" them.
White supremacy was a project they advocated protecting.
7/
A lot of people are reading this and thinking, "This sounds like Hitler."
Because it does. Because Grant and Stoddard influenced Hitler. Because racist American ideas cross-pollinated with Nazi ideology. They were consulted, lionized.
We helped inspire Nazism.
8/
The history we lose sight of is that, before battle lines were drawn, Hitler admired America.
He loved its slavery, its genocide, its Confederacy, the racial stratification of Jim Crow, its white supremacist foundations.
He was inspired by its eugenics and white supremacy.
9/
If that isn't enough, it must be mentioned that Nazism and blatant white supremacy crossed the ocean again and found purchase here during the Depression.
20,000+ American Nazis rallied in Madison Square Garden.
They built camps. Supported Hitler explicitly.
10/
With the American First Committee (yes, that's where it came from) national hero Charles Lindbergh found a platform to openly endorse Hitler and call on Americans to join him in defending white supremacy against the rising tide of people of color.
11/
Lindbergh's message was explicitly Nazism.
The need for white people to control the world.
A conspiracy theory that Jews secretly controlled media and culture and that traitorous liberals, in league with people of color, were destroying the white race.
12/
This needs said: Fox News and the American Right are telling the same white supremacist story and selling the same conspiracy.
They say "we're losing OUR America," but what they're doing, not so subtly, is saying, "White America is being taken away."
13/
These stories about immigrants and caravans are just different chapters in a long white supremacist book.
It's about "replacement."
It's about loss of white supremacist power.
It's just told with a wink and a nod and flashy graphics, but it is a fascist story still.
14/
When we see the GOP at the border, dressed as guards and troops, it's just a symbolic nod toward this idea.
When they say they're "protecting" America, they're saying they're protecting white America from "invasion."
It's replacement. Over and over.
15/
This obsession with guns, with starting a new civil war, with "protecting America" is just an iteration of the same tired and played out and dangerous stories of "replacement."
They're threatening wars and violence if their political power is ever threatened.
16/
Make no mistake, this is what the moment is about. Changes in populations and democratic balance are leading to another moment of crisis in which white supremacists are going to advocate violence as "protection" against an "apocalypse."
It's about control.
17/
As the Right and white people lose their democratic advantage, they're going to push more and more for a complete destruction of democratic institutions, open society, and anything that might trouble their power.
This is the truth of "replacement."
18/
"Replacement Theory," which is the animating ideology of white terrorism, is a legitimizing of pre-emptive violence, a narrative that allows these people to pick up a gun, oppress others, and do whatever it takes to maintain power.
We're in the middle of this process.
19/
None of this is accidental, and it certainly isn't harmless.
The Right is embracing violence and open, admitted fascism. This will continue and escalate, especially if we continue to ignore it or deny that it's happening.
Trump wasn't the end, but a beginning.
20/
If you want to read more about this history and issue, there are plenty of books out there, including mine, AMERICAN RULE, which traces these white supremacist notions and American Fascism.
We need to learn this stuff before it repeats itself.
We’re in the middle of a full blown crisis and being forced to have conversations about power and abuse and aging and trauma and the past and the future that we were never taught to have.
In fact, capitalism actively incentivizes not having those conversations.
This isn’t just a political crisis. It’s a mental health crisis. The issues we have with ourselves and our families are scaled to the society level, and capitalism and history in general has burdened us with so much trauma that it keeps us from recognizing what’s happening.
For things to get to the point they’re at it was necessary to live in abusive environments until we got to the point where communicating about what’s happening in our lives and society at large was nearly impossible.
Just a reminder that every single time the Center will warn about the dangers of the Right and the Left and then immediately form coalitions with the Right because their differences are aesthetic and rhetorical, not material. The shared, main principle is service of capital.
This is what keeps getting misunderstood in America.
The Center is fine with liberal democracy as long as it serves their purposes. But when things get dicey, they will soft-wash authoritarianism until they full embrace it.
That's what's happening now.
Everyone gets so confused when the leaders they support pass Right Wing legislation or criticize causes or ideas they support, but the truth is that the Center pays rhetorical lipservice to things until the rubber meets the road. Then, it rushes to the Right.
Alito’s extremism and Thomas’ corruption expose a larger threat: a long term plan by the wealthy to capture the Court and dismantle our rights and protections in order to cement control has come to fruition.
They aren’t outliers. They are perfect representations.
People shouldn’t trust the Court. Since its founding it’s worked as a protector and tool of the wealthy. What progress we have had has been the aberration.
The time to push back and demand reform that serves democracy is here and it is fleeting.
The wealthy have always attacked information and tried to control education and access to information about what they have done, but this new era gives them incredible tools to complete what they have always tried to do: control reality itself.
Right now, we are losing this war.
People are familiar with Steve Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" strategy, but the wealthy have been attacking information for forever.
In America we have been inundated with attacks on empirical reality for all of our lives. This has been a concentrated effort.
Trump’s conviction should be the end of his political career.
The Right rallying violently around him should be a moment for some to realize we’re in a severe crisis and leave behind the comforting lies they’ve been sold.
For years people have been making so much money and gaining influence assuring followers the system would solve the Trump problem. That he would be held accountable and the spell would break.
These are false prophecies. The date of the apocalypse came and went. We’re still here.
The truth is that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease. We’re facing a full-blown authoritarian tilt with complicated factors.
It’s cathartic to see these convictions, but focusing on the joy hides a deeper truth that we must face if we’re going to survive.
Persecution is essential to the Right’s worldview.
They can become wealthy and influential for no reason whatsoever, get treated seriously despite never earning a shred of it, and still it’s never enough to fill the emptiness that defines them.
The Right is defined by undiagnosed and repressed trauma, a self-hatred that has to be projected onto the rest of the world.
There’s not enough money or fame or power to fix it and any measure of it just feeds their self-hate, making them more and more miserable.
We should be grateful to Musk and Trump and all the people in their orbits. They tutor us everyday in the true nature of wealth and power and what fuels the need to hurt others.
It’s an ideology that follows self-hate masked by narcissistic persecution complexes.