Tucker Carlson and the Woke Right

Many people in the West have been surprised by the events of the last week in which American TV presenter Tucker Carlson followed his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin with a series of increasingly bizarre videos. Tucker discovers that Moscow Metro stations are grand and impressive, that Russian supermarkets have shopping carts that can be rented with a coin that you can retrieve on returning the cart, and that food is cheaper in Russia. I don’t wish to bore the time-starved reader by addressing this silliness but if you’re interested, read this footnote¹.

Instead, let me explain why I am not surprised.

I appeared on Tucker’s show twice during his tenure at Fox News. On both occasions we discussed subjects on which we agree: the erosion of freedom of speech in the West and the dangers the woke left poses to our society.

My second appearance took place in January 2023 as the debate over the war in Ukraine raged all over Western media. In the months prior, Tucker ran segment after segment on the supposed persecution of Christians in Ukraine which were full of fabrications and lies. Not only were they dishonest, they demonstrated an inexplicable ignorance of the facts for someone with his audience and prominence in American journalism.

I went into my segment with Tucker intent on challenging him if the opportunity presented itself, but the brief appearance focused on my Oxford speech and ended before I’d had the chance to raise my objections to his coverage of the war in Ukraine.

His producer Whatsapped me immediately after to congratulate me on the appearance with the invitation to “Please come back soon!”. ”Here is my moment”, I naively thought to myself and replied with the offer to come back and discuss my disagreements with Tucker on the war in Ukraine.

The response was telling:

”I’m just not sure it would be great TV to have him debate you on the war”.

Why?

“Because it would get heated”.

What if we just had a rational debate about it? And besides, if it did get heated, that would get a lot of views.

“There are many angles to this. For example how Biden is using the war. Hunter - Ukraine nexus.”

After a long back and forth, the producer finally revealed that he didn’t want to “ruin things” for me. After all, if the debate got “heated and nasty” it would be a “risk” in terms of my appearing on the show ever again.

The message was clear: we don’t want to have a discussion about this and if you keep pressing the issue you won’t be coming back on the biggest show in America.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. No one is entitled to appear on anyone’s show to talk about a subject they nominate. Tucker and his producers are perfectly entitled to invite the guests they want to discuss the subjects they want. But the incident made it obvious to me that Tucker was not a truth-seeking journalist and that when it came to Russia and the war in Ukraine, at least, he had no intention of being objective. That much is obvious, especially after the events of the last week. But the real question is why?

Why the Dissident Right is Going Woke

In Russia, we have a saying: everything new is something old that has been sufficiently forgotten.