Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro commented on Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News in a measured, unbiased tone. He clearly did not want to jeopardize his status with either Fox or Tucker, and simply concluded that both would be fine. It was no big deal, according to Shapiro.

The hand-wringing eulogies for Carlson came from three frequent Carlson “guests” identified as belonging to the left — Glen Greenwald, Russell Brand and Jimmy Dore. These three have spent much of the pandemic dancing with anti-vaxxers and courting the populist right. They saw Carlson’s ouster as fitting neatly into an apocalyptic narrative of good and evil.

Dore, who will be performing at the Calvin Theatre later this month, had this to say: “I think we did witness a red pilling of Tucker Carlson and that’s why he became the focus of people trying to get him canceled, because he went against the establishment narrative in such a hard way … it finally came down from Rupert Murdoch because it came down from Big Pharma.”

Big Pharma is hugely involved with Fox, but Rupert Murdoch has always managed to balance populist rhetoric with corporate fidelity. Fox hosts, with few exceptions, had been relentlessly dismissive of CDC public health recommendations from day one. Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity, along with Tucker, had called COVID a “hoax” and suggested that fear-mongering about the virus served those who wished to destroy Trump.

The handful of leftist pundits who flirt passionately with the hard right have argued that the true political schism in America does not separate left from right, but traces a more fundamental fault line separating those who are anti-establishment from the toadies of the deep state. Pfizer has decided that anti-vax theater on Fox is no reason to pull corporate sponsorship. Arguing for the drug industry to be nationalized is anti-establishment, while calling COVID a hoax is unhinged. There is a difference. Fox caters to the unhinged, not the anti-establishment.

We find the same catchwords in Glen Greenwald’s newsletter: “But in terms of just relentlessly and intensely forming his worldview based on increasing levels of radical dissent from establishment orthodoxy, there is no one on television who was doing what Tucker Carlson was doing.”

Greenwald went on to laud Carlson for his opposition to U.S. arms spending on Ukraine, and for his alleged willingness to confront the military. However, opposition to Ukraine spending is less an act of anti-establishment courage than it is pandering to the views of Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz.

Greenwald is being coy when he attempts to conflate Carlson’s abrasive stance toward the military with his being opposed to war. Most of Carlson’s rants about the service attack “equity, inclusion and diversity” programs, which he maligned as woke. Carlson sarcastically told us that drag shows on Army bases undermine recruitment, and that U.S. wars have been fought by white men who are offended by woke initiatives.

It is not war that Tucker railed against on a nightly basis, but unmanly, effete, woke armed forces. Carlson’s critical statements about the military invariably conformed to neo-fascist rhetorical style — an indication that he performed his tasks to the letter — channeling Trump’s xenophobic/homophobic vision, exactly as his employers wished.

Russell Brand laid out the most expansive version of Carlson’s firing. To Brand, Carlson is nothing less than a savior: “Tucker Carlson has left Fox News and I see that as the beginning of the end for the mainstream. Where Tucker Carlson goes next will inform us a great deal about our political landscape. If he joins an independent news organization, it will be fascinating. It will show us where the power is moving, and it will show us why authoritarian, centralized systems of power are doubling down and trying to censor, control, surveil, prohibit, smear and destroy alternative voices.”

Here we see Carlson’s odyssey as a harbinger of political and existential transformation. Tucker Carlson, by some reverie of Russell Brand’s imagination, objectifies the replacement of mainstream, lying mind control with the god’s honest truth spewing from independent platforms on Rumble.

So why was Carlson canned? Occam’s razor votes for Dominion and other lawsuits. Tucker Carlson followed orders and got in trouble.

Greenwald argued that Carlson was not a promotor of the “big lie.” Perhaps he missed Tucker’s segment on dead people voting for Biden. Tucker might have also, as an arrogant, narcissistic alpha elite, overestimated his powers and run into the brick wall of corporate hierarchy — Rupert Murdoch.

It really doesn’t matter. He is gone, to be replaced by an equally noxious bigot. Spare me any delusions about Tucker being dangerous to the establishment.

Phil Wilson is a retired mental health worker living in Northampton. His writings have been published in national platforms at Current Affairs and Common Dreams. 

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