The cautionary tale of Tucker Carlson, rightwing radical bomb thrower

The right has a radicalism problem.

This may sound obvious to those who have been railing against Trump and MAGA and all that for years, but I'm not talking about that. I mean the fact that the right's cultural and media ecosystem is so hogtied to being an opponent and an outsider railing against the establishment that too many have lost any real connection with truth or facts or even any kind of principled position for its own sake.

For too many who consume and produce news and commentary on the right, all that matters is being the opposite of whatever the liberal left stands for. If Chuck Schumer were to say that the moon is not made of green cheese, or that 2+2=4, you'd hear at least some of the commentariat praising the tastiness of lunar brie or explaining how, actually, 2+2=5.

We are now all Groucho Marx: Whatever the left is, we're against it!

Which brings me to Tucker Carlson.

Carlson is very far from the first relatively normal rightwing writer or even provocateur to go off the deep end of bigotry. Patrick J. Buchanan took pride in being against the Voting Rights Act and "just asking questions" about Auschwitz. Ann Coulter went from being a standard conservative to someone who openly lamented the idea of any immigration to the United States, including the damned Irish in the early nineteenth century.

If the left is often a victim of its own hubris, arrogance, and domination of governments or of news media and culture, the right - not just producers but also consumers of content - have far too often let themselves go from strident but often accurate critics of the status quo to that weirdo muttering to himself in the bar corner or more often today - in the comments section of obscure forums.

A lot of people will say that Carlson is simply a hack. That he's bought. That his forays into WWII "revisionism," in subtly and not so subtly accusing Jews of trying to ruin America and in playing defense for all of the countries that hate America (seriously, Tucker? Iran? Russia?) are all because he's on the take.

Maybe.

But Tucker Carlson is a man who does not need the money. What he does need, what he and every media commentator on the right craves - is the affirmation of his increasingly angrier, increasingly more skeptical, increasingly anarchist audience.

Tucker Carlson, in short, is nothing without his audience. If they did not exist, he would not be "going there." He would not sell his soul for a few thousand crazies.

No, Carlson and some others are diving into the hole because more and more on the right want the message. Even if they disagree with particulars here and there, the catharsis of simply tearing down everything the "establishment" or "the deep state" supports is reason enough to tune in.

What does this mean for the right in general? It's hard to tell. Polls pretty consistently show that most Republicans support Israel, like Jews, and are not particularly pro-Russia, either. Carlson's audience may be large, but for the time being, it is in the minority.

But that may not last. Because angry people - including people who are justifiably angry - tend to destroy their own restraints and their own critical faculties. The skepticism they used to have turns into a passion and will to believe the worst of the other side, no matter the reason, no matter the facts, no matter the contradictions in logic.

A right that is in such a state may well be ready to go the Tucker Carlson route at some point, a product of a radicalism problem which - however justified by genuine failures and misdeeds by old hands on the left and right - will lead it down dark paths, with no-one to shine a light back to reality as it is.

No-one they would trust, anyway.