Tucker Carlson’s attempt at “defining” white supremacy.
Tucker Carlson’s accusation of Biden instigating a war on white supremacy attempts to mediate the centrist (at-best) administration’s rather warm and welcoming inauguration speech as an attempt to cancel the voice of conservative America. While Carlson repeatedly “condemns” white supremacy, his monologue is focused on defining white supremacy, and discrediting allegations of white supremacy which might be made against himself and his supporters. Carlson clearly names his Christian audience while including himself amongst them with his use of “we” in addressing his audience; with this interpellation, he draws attention to Christian values and principles and used adjectives like good, equal, and decent to both imply that he believes the accusations are white supremacy are unfounded, and that he likes his audience just the way they are. Despite Biden’s religious identity, Carlson abruptly changes focus to secular power structures, like that of Stalinist Russia, and suggests Biden’s rejection of white supremacy likens him to this leadership; something that he suggests does not happen with a Christian leader.
How convenient for him to forget that the conquests of the Americas followed a religious imperative of “converting” and “enslaving” natives — and even this was just an extension of the grand inquisition in which Christians stormed Muslim and Jewish settlements, either forcing conversion or committing genocide in their quest to “civilize”. There is an entire history of religious leaders oppressing and murdering other civilizations, but the history is recounted selectively and strategically by many nationalist historians, and Carlson is attempting to extend that tradition here by positioning Christianity as a civilizing and moralizing force while denying the reign of terror that led to Christian dominance in the first place. Carlson makes this connection explicit when he suggests that celebrating Columbus day could get one labeled as a white-supremacist. It can. Christopher Columbus was a horrible person who enslaved, tortured, and murdered native Americans purely for his personal gain — characteristically someone unworthy of being celebrated.
While Carlson almost connects the dots here — he defers responsibility at this point in the argument, shifting his focus to the ways that liberal politicians have “weaponized” white supremacy against conservative voices. Though he repeatedly condemns white supremacy, he also suggests that anyone who receives the label of white supremacist should brush off any ill association. Carlson’s efforts to delegitimate the calling out of white supremacy are posed after a brief remark about unity — which Carlson claims he supports — but framed as an us versus them argument, in which his viewers and himself are clearly the “white supremacists” at issue. No need to think about his motivation for denying the credibility of the threat of white supremacy, Carlson uses himself as a martyr to reveal the ways in which the label has been used against him; despite, he recalls, the fact that he says all the time that white supremacy is bad. Let us not forget that when David Duke endorsed Trump leading up to the 2020 election he strongly urged him to replace Pence with Tucker Carlson.
Carlson’s monologue is an effort at dissociating white supremacy from political opinions and religious beliefs. His personal denials work to condemn white supremacy as acts of violence, like “cross burning”, but to distance his viewers’ understanding of white supremacy from history and politics. Carlson’s rhetoric is built around an understanding of racism and white supremacy which only acknowledges the legitimacy of acts of violence and malevolence but denies the existence of systemic racism. Politicians like Barry Goldwater, Lee Atwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan famously used this same “Southern Strategy” to help them establish laws which are “colorblind”, but still disproportionately affect minority communities through Dog Whistle politics, which coded racial rhetoric to make it more socially acceptable — politically correct, if you will. Techniques like repetition, reversal, and negation are used to rhetorically strengthen parts of the speaker’s argument, but as we can see here, can be strategically built upon selective foundations of knowledge. The selective inclusion of details in his “definition” of white supremacy act as a defense of and for his viewers, who will inevitably echo his words. Carlson wants viewers to condemn racial violence motivated by white supremacy, but it’s more important to him that his viewers understand systemic racism as a liberal myth.
As we move away from a political administration which has preyed on the American people by decrying fake news and claiming liberal witch hunts — escalating the partisan tensions within the country — I think it’s more important than ever that we remain diligent in the work of anti-racism and attempt to understand how media can sway narratives to fit a personal agenda. Carlson’s monologue here is the first of what I anticipate will be many conservative attempts to dissociate white supremacist violence from the Republican party in the upcoming months.
While I’ll always condemn white supremacist violence, too — I also understand that the nature of racism is systemic, and based in privileges more than in violence. Carlson’s condemnation of white supremacy, here, is only a diversion as he clearly denies the validity of white supremacy as it is associated with history and politics. It’s easy to condemn white supremacist violence — but tackling the issue of systemic racism requires personal reflection, critical inquiry, and, of course, diligence. While American history might reflect the understanding of racism as ill-will, which Carlson is attempting to pin to white supremacy here, I think now is an important time to remember that the definition of racism was actually changed this year in an effort to correct the systemic harm of viewing racism within such a limiting framework. The definition is below:
racism
1: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief :
2a: the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another specifically
2b: a political or social system founded on racism and designed to execute its principles
Sources:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-joe-biden-inauguration-war-on-white-supremacy
