Exit Fox’s “Vulgar Vulgarian”

Bye Bye Tucker… for Now.

Radical and violent mass movements need propaganda mouthpieces to ratchet up the primal emotions of frustrated and already angry people who need someone to blame for their situation. These propagandists are not always the official propagandists of a party or movement, but usually have their own platform such as a newspaper, radio program, or more recently podcasts. The most “successful” of such people are not the ones who merely parrot the party’s message, but those that find targets to stoke up the already existing anger and frustration of their audience by playing up to their fears, victims for their audience. The conspiracy theories play to already existing fears regarding of their audience. These usual play into racial and religious prejudice, and the fear that their audience has about losing their social status, seeing their religion lose its influence, or being “replaced” by immigrants or ethnic minorities.

Tucker Carlson is but another in a line of such propagandists. I will come back to him at the end of this article, but first a brief look at two other conspiracy theorists whose radio programs, newspapers, and rallies supporting Fascism, poisoned millions of minds, and in the case of Julius Streicher, helped lead to the popularization of blood curdling hatred and prejudice that led to the Holocaust.

Father Charles Caughlin peddled antisemitism throughout the 1920s and 1930s, until his Bishop forced him after his anti-American comments following the attack on Pearl Harbor under the penalty of being defrocked from continuing his program. The Canadian born Catholic priest was one of the first to use radio to spread a message of hate in the United States. Caughlin began as an economic populist and his popularity skyrocketed during the Great Depression. His radio program, The Hour of Power attracted tens of millions of listeners, including many Protestants. But, following the election of President Franklin Roosevelt his message turned openly antisemitic, linking as Hitler and his Nazis did to the Communists.

In 1938 he founded an armed militia, as did other American Fascists such as the German American Bund, and the Silvershirts. Coughlin’s men terrorized and attacked Jewish businesses and Synagogues, and individual Jews. In November 1938 he praised the Nazi action which was planned and executed by the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, in which hundreds of Jews were killed and thousands of Jewish institutions and businesses destroyed or damaged, with the Jews being forced to cover the damages. Caughlin argued that Kristallnacht was justified as retaliation for Jewish persecution of Christians. He told his listeners on November 20, 1938, that the “communistic government of Russia,” “the Lenins and Trotskys…atheistic Jews and Gentiles,” had murdered more than 20 mill Christians and had stolen “40 billion [dollars]…of Christian property.” But none of those things earned him the censure of the Church. It took the FBI labeling him as a “reported pro-Nazi” following Pearl Harbor where he blamed the war on the influence of Jews.

But, the most prolific propagandist in terms of fomenting racist and religious hatred and intolerance of the Jews, who were a small minority group in Germany. They numbered less than 1% of the German population, and most were completely assimilated as German citizens and proud to be German. But, the Nazis, especially, Streicher, who published a nationwide newspaper call Der Stürmer. The paper published the conspiracy theories of the German and European right wing fringe about the Jews. But even more that printing them, they were published with illustrations that showed the Jews as bloodthirsty animals, and urging readers to take action against them. He was tried at Nuremberg where the Chief America prosecutor, Associate Supreme Court Justice called him a “Vulgar Vulgarian.”

In his closing arguments Jackson said, “Streicher, the venomous vulgarian, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of “race purification.”

Jackson noted: “Had it not been for Der Stürmer and its publisher, German Fascism would not have been able to educate at such short notice those mass murder gangs who put into effect the criminal plans of Hitler and his thugs, by murdering over six million European Jews.”

“The defendant Streicher is an accessory to the persecution of the Jews within Germany and in occupied territories which culminated in mass murder of an estimated six million men, women, and children. The propaganda in Der Stürmer and other Streicher publications, for which he had admitted responsibility, was of a character calculated to stir up fanatic fear and hatred of the Jewish people and to incite to murder…. Through propaganda designed to incite hatred and fear, defendant Streicher devoted himself, over a period of twenty-five years, to creating the psychological basis essential to carrying through a program of mass murder. This alone would suffice to establish his guilt as an accessory to the criminal program of extermination.”

When questioned about his publication’s antisemitism and race hatred, Streicher denied it by saying what he said were facts.

His cross examination at the trial was conducted by British Lieutenant Colonel Mervyn Griffith Jones, one of the British prosecutors. Jones presented Streicher with his own published words and the following dialogue took occurred:

LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And do you think to call them "blood-suckers," "a nation of blood-suckers and extortioners"-do you think that's preaching hatred?

STREICHER: I beg your pardon. I have not understood you?

LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: You may call them a race or a nation, whichever you like, now; but you were saying, on 1 April 1933, that they were a "nation of blood-suckers and extortioners." Do you call that preaching hatred?

STREICHER: That is a statement, the expression of a conviction which can be proved on the basis of historical facts.

LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Understand me. I did not ask you whether it was a fact or not. I am asking whether you called it preaching hatred. Your answer is "yes" or "no."

STREICHER: No, it is not preaching hatred; it is just a statement of facts.

He was executed by hanging following his conviction at Nuremberg.

In his years at CNN and MSNBC, Tucker Carlson, like Coughlin in the 1920s muted his racism and antisemitism. But at Fox Carlson dropped all semblance of being a traditional conservative. He not only embraced, but willing spread some of the most hateful and destructive lies ever propagated by an American, among them the COVID conspiracy theories, supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, egging on racial tensions by supporting police and others who murdered Blacks in cold blood, supporting attacks on LGBTQ people, and especially the tiny Trans community, disenfranchising voters, and was, and remains, a part of the 2020 election denial and conspiracy movement. It was his blatant lies, especially in his defamation of Dominion Systems and their voting machines which forced Fox to settle their defamation lawsuit for 787.5 million dollars that led to his firing. However, until they had to pay, Carlson was never once even slapped on the wrist by the network for anything that he said or did while in their employ.

But the most malevolent is his promotion of the Great Replacement Theory, something that loomed large in Nazi ideology. That theory proposed that the Jews plotted with the Communists to replace the “Aryan” White Race. In its modern American form, that promoted by Carlson, outside elements, notably Hungarian financier George Soros funds Blacks, other minorities, and immigrants in order to replace white people, take their jobs, replace their culture, and remove them from political power. He stoked, and will continue to stoke the flames of the hatred, division, and violence. Other Fox News hosts said similar things, but none went to his lengths to turn his audience into a cult that hung on his every word and pronouncement.

Like Streicher, Carlson has in the words of Jackson, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of “race purification.” The racial and cultural civil war that he is stoking hasn’t fully started, but there are troubling signs that the Republican Party embraces his propaganda, especially the base and those in state and local politics are acting upon them.

One cannot deny all the things Carlson has said that are similar to those of Streicher and Caughlin, nor his effect on his audience. Carson has said many things as incendiary as Streicher. More than any other person, even possibly more than former President Trump, Tucker Carlson, has prepared tens of millions of Americans to be ready to do the worst to fellow citizens, or to look the other way.

Carlson is a modern day Streicher. He is our Vulgar Vulgarian. The sad thing is, that being fired will probably the worst that happens to him. That being said he is probably planning a bigger comeback, and his now disappointed cult will be ready for his orders.

Thanks for reading. Posts might be scarce for the next week and a half as I am catching up in finishing this semester’s doctoral assignments.

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“Steven L. Dundas has written the definitive account of America’s onerous history with African Americans. A must-read to fully understand, teach, or discuss the institutions of slavery, racism, and religion and their current impacts. Every school library should have a copy.”—Lloyd V. Hackley, president and CEO of Hackley and Associates and former president of the North Carolina Community College system