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.
People are rightfully feeling a ton of anxiety about the election.
We must take these last few days to calm and fortify ourselves, recognize the control we have, replenish ourselves, and decide how we will continue the fight to make the world better.
This podcast tries to provide strategies to overcome election anxiety and ground ourselves in reality and focus on what we can do to combat authoritarianism beyond Tuesday.
We need to take this anxious energy and convert it into actionable things.
Combating authoritarianism is exhausting. It’s systematic, weaponized abuse designed to ground you down.
We have to find the moments of calm to replenish ourselves so we don’t burn out, so we don’t fall into despair the way authoritarians want us to.
One of the biggest issues of the 2024 Election is going largely unreported.
Elon Musk has used his wealth to buy the shambling, decaying corpse of Donald Trump and MAGA in order to seize control over the government without ever appearing on a ballot.
Everyone knows Trump is in decline, and Musk recognizes a prime opportunity to install a puppet who will rubber stamp his agenda while handing him unmatched and unaccountable control over the functions of government.
This is a major, major threat.
Trump as a spectacle soaks up so much attention, but the donors behind him and the oligarchical Musk are pulling the strings with only light scrutiny.
We are watching the co-opting of the presidency in real-time, and if it’s allowed to happen the consequences would be dire.
It’s time for people to understand that Republicans and MAGA aren’t actually interested in curbing immigration.
They want to profit off fearmongering tethered to white paranoia and create an environment of sheer terror in which immigrants are more easily exploited.
The billionaires puppeting the GOP rely on immigrant labor as a means of maximizing profit and circumventing regulation.
What they’re pursuing is a country where immigrants have a huge, brutal system over their heads to keep them from challenging anything.
As resources are more scarce and conditions worsen, the Right will absolutely brutalize immigrants. They have created a subsection of people who are vulnerable and exploitable and expendable.
That’s it. The whole ballgame. And the framing everyone accepts is disastrous.
The episode of The Midnight Kingdom is out and explores our present crisis, including the rise of authoritarianism, attacks on democracy by the wealth class, and what we must do to get out of this mess.
The five part series is now complete. Please share.
The series tracks modern history, explaining how the powerful have used racism, religious mythologies, and weaponized conspiracy theories to control us and expand their power.
It's a reconsideration of where we came from and where we are.
Episode 1 starts with the merging of Christianity with Roman power and dissects how religion was used to create "Western Civilization" and a feudal empire where control was almost total, which is where many Right Wing ideologues want to return to.
Last night JD Vance was allowed to lie and present himself and Trump as moderates.
It was repulsive and dangerous. Winning this election, and defeating MAGA as an authoritarian movement, means breaking this facade and communicating how extreme they are.
It is disgusting how Vance, who has hundreds of hours of available podcasts and videotaped interviews, wasn’t confronted by his antidemocratic, misogynistic, and wildly authoritarian and extreme positions.
Instead, he was allowed to say time and again that he and Walz agreed.
It’s bad enough that CBS dropped the ball in one of the most embarrassing debates we’ve seen in awhile, but Tim Walz had two jobs: communicate how dangerous MAGA is and provide an alternative.
He didn’t do that. And that should serve as a wake up call for the campaign.
There’s a real Roman-Empire-Telling-Britain-They’re-On-Their-Own vibe to everything right now.
Only it’s now this weird, hard for some people to explain caveat of capitalism having fully possessed the US and overtaken its process for the purposes of system operation that just makes everything worse and very difficult to grasp for people who haven’t been taught about it.
Watching what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon with the backdrop of worsening climate change, infrastructure collapse, austerity, and intentional inequality, leaving people drowning and suffering and roads and bridges and dams collapse is just…awful.