Tucker Carlson- American Fascist

Or, how a spoiled trust fund baby wants to save America for White Conservative Christian heterosexuals

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is doing something rather unusual this week: He’s broadcasting his show from Hungary’s capital, Budapest. He’s also doing some high-profile cultural immersion while he’s there, having already met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Monday. On Saturday, he’s slated to attend a far-right conference and deliver a speech titled “The World According to Tucker Carlson.”

If you’re not familiar with the scene in Budapest these days, this might all seem kind of random. But unfortunately it’s just the opposite.

Orbán is an energetic right-wing authoritarian who has in recent years become a darling of right-wing populist movements growing across the West. And he has strived to cultivate Budapest’s emerging role as an intellectual and cultural center of right-wing nationalism in Europe. Carlson, one of the most popular hosts on American cable news, is very conspicuously strengthening ties with others in that scene during his visit — and inviting his millions of viewers to learn about it and admire it, as well. Carlson’s agenda seems quite clear: to encourage his followers to consider Hungary’s disturbing political model as a possible future for the U.S.

Once upon a time, overt racists had to work pretty hard to get a mainstream platform. Then along came Donald Trump, who gave awful, hateful Americans permission to be their true selves. Enabled by Far-Right media platforms like Fox News Channel, racists and bigots peddling hatred and fascism can no longer be considered unusual.

This helps explain Tucker Carlson, the trust fund brat and Swanson’s Foods heir, whose claim to fame is an affinity for spreading hatred and dezinformatziya without guilt. Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary this week. He’s using his trip to undermine American democracy, which is hardly surprising. Carlson’s built his brand on fascism, racism, lies, slander, and character assassination. If hating the very system that created his massive sense of entitlement is wrong, he doesn’t want to be right.

Carlson is actively sucking up to a tyrannical despot with no use for democracy…except insofar as it can be manipulated to keep himself in power.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

Viktor Orbán has managed to dismantle virtually every aspect of what represented a free society in Hungary. That he did so free of the prying eyes of Western journalists is an indictment of the world’s free press, who stood idly by as it happened.

And Tucker Carlson is absolutely here for it.

Experts who follow extremist behavior on the right tell me they’re concerned. Hannah Gais, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies right-wing extremism, said in an email that Carlson’s broadcasting in Hungary is particularly alarming given the tremendous platform he commands at Fox News.

“Night after night, he’s promoted rhetoric that was once on the fringes, or at least should be on the fringes, to millions of viewers,” Gais wrote. “Tucker has already carried water for Orbán’s anti-immigration policies and his attacks on philanthropist George Soros — now he’s further whitewashing this authoritarian government for an American audience.”

Carlson is by no means new to being an Orbán fanboy. In fact, he’s a long-time admirer. In 2019,

Carlson praised Orbán’s policies to financially incentivize married couples to have children and asked his audience whether “the U.S. should follow Hungary’s example.”

Sure, why wouldn’t Carlson be enamored with a European fascist’s “f**k for the Fatherland” project? First, it’s a long-term scheme intended to repopulate the country with young, malleable minds that can be manipulated and trained to defend a despotic strongman. Second, it’s a “big picture” plan that incentivizes patriotic (i.e., White, Conservative, Christian, heterosexual) families to reproduce, thus reducing the likelihood that minorities might eventually become the majority.

Galvanizing the White majority to maintain population and economic growth will ensure that economic and political power remains firmly entrenched in the hands of Viktor Orbán and his cronies.

This is wholly in keeping with Carlson’s objectionable White replacement theory, which holds that America must maintain a White majority if it’s to have any hope of maintaining its essential historical character.

America is a White Paradise, founded by and for White Conservative Christian heterosexuals. All others should get in line and be content with such crumbs as the White majority deigns to send their way.

Carlson sees in Viktor Orbán someone who exists in a milieu in which he can act on those beliefs, something not yet possible in America.

Orbán’s nativist record is well-known on the right. He has been a fierce critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to allowing immigrants into the European Union, and he built a wall on Hungary’s southern border (sound familiar?) to keep refugees out of the country. His ethno-nationalist goal of keeping “Hungary for the Hungarians” is laden with antisemitic theories that Jewish financiers are destroying the country.

If Orbán sounds like an unchained version of Donald Trump, it’s because that’s exactly the sort of thing that Trump (and Carlson) have advocated for. Of course, neither has yet openly advocated for a “White Makes Right” domestic policy, but that’s exactly what they stand for.

Viktor Orbán represents for a substantial number of Far-Right zealots everything they wish Donald Trump could’ve been.

“Orbán is the leader they wish Donald Trump could be — smart, politically savvy, and genuinely devoted to their ideals. Hungary is, for them, the equivalent of what Nordic countries are for the American left: proof of concept that their ideas could make the United States a better place.”

Orbán’s appeal to the right extends beyond his ultra-nativism. He is also a social traditionalist who has banned gender studies at universities and shot down the legal recognition of trans people.

And what the Hungarian strongman has gained perhaps the most attention for globally is his yearslong corrosion of Hungary’s democratic institutions, through measures like consolidation of hundreds of media outlets under the control of political allies, gaming elections and using emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic to dramatically expand executive power.

The truth is that Trump is the anti-Orbán: dense, politically obtuse, and genuinely devoted only to his massive ego and grotesque self-interest. Trump lacks the political instincts and intelligence to duplicate what Orbán has done in Hungary.

Of course, Hungary is a very different political climate. It’s a relatively small and comparatively ethnically homogeneous country. America is far larger and significantly more diverse, making it more challenging to duplicate Orbán's accomplishments in Hungary.

One aspect of Orbán’s "accomplishments” that Tucker Carlson clearly admires and is openly advocating for here at home is the idea of “electoral autocracy.” Orbán has created a system that votes “democratically” but is in no way a functional democracy.

“Orbán has arguably been among the most successful sitting leaders at creating an electoral autocracy,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who studies authoritarian leaders, wrote in her newsletter. “The 21st century way of being a strongman that entails keeping a veneer of democracy going while turning elections into sham events, taking judicial and press freedoms away, and suffocating society slowly.”

Should we be alarmed that Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary, where he’s lauding the autocratic “White Paradise” created by Viktor Orbán?

Should we be upset that America’s #1 cable news network- Fox News Channel- provides a platform to Carlson, who openly and enthusiastically advocates creating a “White Makes Right” version of America?

And should we be angry that Carlson is not the only voice on the Far-Right pushing for the dismantling of “one man/one vote” American democracy in favor of a sham “electoral autocracy?”

Yes. Yes. And HELL, yes.

There’s nothing admirable about what Viktor Orbán has done in Hungary. He’s destroyed the country’s free press. He’s suppressed freedom of speech and assembly. He’s made it increasingly uncomfortable for Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community. He’s consolidated political power to the point of becoming an unchallenged autocrat. He’s corrupted the country’s judiciary, turning it into an impotent instrument of state power. Perhaps worst of all, his ultra-nativist agenda has made Hungary utterly unwelcoming to refugees.

That’s what Tucker Carlson admires. There’s nothing in what Viktor Orbán has accomplished in Hungary that should be considered applicable in any way to American democracy, yet that’s not what Carlson’s concerned about. No, Carlson’s primary concern is maintaining a system where White Conservative Christian heterosexuals remain firmly ensconced at the top of the socioeconomic food chain.

Don’t get me wrong. Unlike Viktor Orbán, I believe in freedom of speech. So while I abhor everything Tucker Carlson stands for, I’ll fight for his right to embarrass himself on national television. It just strikes me as sad that America’s #1 cable news network is actively advancing a narrative devoted to destroying American democracy.

Think about that for a moment. An American cable “news” network openly celebrates Viktor Orbán, an autocrat completely opposed to everything America is supposed to stand for.

I don’t know that it gets much more pathetic than that.