Thursday, June 08, 2023

Shouldn't this be a bigger story in the American media?

On Tucker Carlson's little rinky dink home made media show, which Right wing types are falling over themselves to call the end of mainstream media (due to dubious view counts), he apparently said this:


 This was widely noted on Twitter, and certainly in some foreign press, such as The Independent:

Tucker Carlson calls Ukraine’s Jewish leader ‘rat-like’ as he launches new Twitter show with pro-Kremlin rant
And Haaretz:

Tucker Carlson Trafficks in Antisemitic Tropes About Ukraine's Zelenskyy on Twitter Show Debut

But when it comes to the New York Times, you have to get 7 paragraphs in to get to this, which seemingly takes the attitude "meh, this is just what he does":

Carlson also called Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, “a persecutor of Christians” and described him as “shifty, dead-eyed” and “sweaty and ratlike.” For years, Carlson laundered far-right fringe rhetoric and bigotry on Fox, and there is no sign that, in the anything-goes regime of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the laundry is shutting down.

And the Washington Post?  They seem to have at least 3 pieces on the Twitter show, none of them saying anything in detail about the obvious "let's dogwhistle to anti-Semites" aspect.  (Actually, I reckon it's more than a dog whistle - there is no other way to interpret it.)  All we seem to get is this:

Carlson picked up some of his usual conspiracy-theory-tinged topics and sympathies to the Russian government in the video, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “sweaty and ratlike” and suggesting without evidence that Ukraine was responsible for the destruction of a major dam on its territory. He also accused mainstream media outlets of suppressing a claim from a former military officer that the U.S. government has secret knowledge of alien spacecraft.
To its credit, another piece at WAPO did point this out:

“Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew [the dam] up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline, last fall,” Carlson said. “And in fact, Ukrainians did do that, as we now know.”

Carlson quickly moved on, and for good reason: Despite now saying Ukraine blew up Nord Stream, he spent months on his Fox News show saying something very different. Without any real evidence, he repeatedly claimed it was the United States who blew up Nord Stream.

Anyway, I find it odd that the mainstream American media is not blasting him more directly about this.  

And as for Elon Musk, this tweet sums it up pretty well:



2 comments:

  1. He isl ike Trump one of Putin's useful idiots.
    The russians controlled the dam.
    how did Ukraine blow it up. you would need divers and a large bomb as well!

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  2. I should have added why are people surprised that Carlson is anti-semitic. He does rejoice in the great repaclemen t theory which was all about antisemitism in its origins.

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