On Tucker
This is about an interview by Tucker Carlson of Mike Huckabee
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This Monday, paid subscribers got this month’s ET Read Home. I wrote about Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
NEWS
For the Forward, I wrote about Bret Stephens, the ADL, and what rethinking the fight against antisemitism might look like instead of giving up on it completely.
I am going to be moderating a panel on antisemitism at J Street’s convention next Monday so if you are going to be there, consider coming to it.
I loved this profile of the plucky Slovak Olympic hockey team. Unfortunately, after it was published, they lost 6-2 to the United States and then 6-1 to Finland.
Speaking of Slovakia, here’s a book excerpt that looks at the—since overturned—verdict that acquitted those believed to be behind the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. I helped its author, Tomáš Madleňák, on the English language version of this book so I am biased, but: I think it’s an important story for understanding not only Slovak politics, but corruption and illiberalism today.
From Politico EU: “When European Commission and Council Presidents Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa arrive in Kyiv for a day of remembrance on Tuesday, they will have little to offer other than condolences. Four years to the day since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the EU hoped to bring some comfort in the form of fresh sanctions against Moscow and a €90 billion loan to Kyiv. Hungary has stopped that happening.”
This isn’t “news” per se, or at all, but I need to note this and I’ve already written this week’s mini-essay (below) and so I am putting this rant here: Why is my email asking me if I need AI to summarize it? No, I do not need artificial intelligence to summarize for me what somebody wrote to me in an email. “Oh, it’s not for an email, it’s for the whole exchange,” you say. Oho! The whole exchange! A whole back and forth! A whole conversation! I do not need this summarized. This entire concept makes me feel completely untethered from reality, an existence in which I am perfectly capable of understanding my emails on my own. I do need to send fewer emails and/or to send fewer apologies about how many emails I send. However, no, I do not want AI’s help with that either.
MY VIEWS ON…
…Tucker Carlson and his interviews!
Tucker Carlson, former Fox News personality turned “Tucker Carlson Show” host, interviewed Mike Huckabee, the current US ambassador to Israel and a Christian Zionist who has previously said that he does not believe in the West Bank or Palestinians conceptually and that “of course” he’s open to formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Carlson is of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and so the long interview was a contentious one, with Carlson saying things like, “I’m mad at my lawmakers for not protecting my country with the care they’ve protected Israel” and falsely alleging that Israeli President Isaac Herzog had visited Epstein’s island and claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was going after his, Carlson’s, family because of Netanyahu’s belief in “blood guilt” (“There’s no idea that’s less Western than that, more anti-Christian than that. Christians reject that. Netanyahu doesn’t. That’s why he’s talking about Amalek, and he was going after my family, literally, so I felt very threatened by that”). Huckabee, meanwhile, said he would be “fine” if Israel were to conquer parts of the Middle East.
Many have noted, rightly, that this is evidence of a development on the right: there is a real split between those who are fervently pro-Israel and those who are extremely anti-Israel and, as I have written before, they offer different kinds of antisemitism (and Christianity and American nationalism and intersection between those three). But what interested me was the reaction from some on the left who noted that they were not supporters of Carlson but nevertheless praised his interview.
Two things can be true and often are, and I think that is the case here.
The first—and I will admit that, to me, this came to mind first of the two—is that you do not have to, and should not, hand it to Tucker Carlson. Carlson has done as much as any person in this country to push antisemitic smears about George Soros specifically and replacement theory (the idea that shadowy elites are flooding the country with migrants to change its demographics and hijack its democracy) more generally. He has also repeatedly been accused of using his platform to proudly spread Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and sexism. I do not see how we can separate Carlson’s history as an interviewer from any individual interview, or that his contention that American elites care more about Israel than they do America can be peeled apart from his belief that American elites (“elites”) are trying to undercut the country’s democracy through demographic change, and I do not think any interview, or any portion of any interview, is worth lifting up Carlson’s journalism. I do not think that those who are offended by Mike Huckabee on progressive grounds should try to make common cause with Carlson (who, in the interview, appears to criticize Netanyahu by implying there’s something uniquely sinister and Jewish about how he approaches blood relations instead of sticking to any of the many other excellent reasons), or encourage others to take what he says seriously.
And the second is that, while I believe all of that to be true, part of the reason that some on the left elevated clips of Carlson interviewing Huckabee is that those were the available clips of Huckabee being grilled. Huckabee once said that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” (since I am critiquing Mainstream Media, I will offer credit to CNN for obtaining the video where he did) and is now representing the United States in Israel. If journalists with major platforms who were not Carlson were filmed similarly pressing Huckabee when he sat with them for interviews, maybe those would be the videos lifted up on the left. But they don’t, so they aren’t. Carlson is, I think, getting more of a hearing than he should (he should get none at all) because he did something other journalists haven’t.
Do I think that makes it good to share Carlson? No. As I said, I think that it is irresponsible to lift up Carlson. But, as mother used to (infuriatingly) say, “it’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason.” This isn’t one to one, but I’m reminded of when some otherwise liberal Jewish people I know approvingly shared video of Rep. Stefanik grilling university presidents on antisemitism: they weren’t fans of hers, they said, but they were glad she was taking antisemitism seriously (I thought she was doing so disingenuously and in a transparently politically opportunistic way and that in fact many people were speaking about antisemitism on university campuses, but I digress).
All of which is to say that the point of the second thing is this: When people feel like reality isn’t being reflected—indeed, like it’s being shunted to the side, or like naming reality gets labelled antisemitic—by the more reputable mainstream, they turn elsewhere. They even turn to Tucker Carlson. We understand this with every other area of politics. Why wouldn’t it be true of journalists and US policy toward Israel, too?
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
I found the way this blog post was written a bit odd but the finding in it that I’ll be thinking about is that apparently 45 percent of Republicans under 44 expressed “elevated concern” that Jews threaten the American way of life. Okay!
I thought this piece asking whether Jewish art can be seen outside the context of “pro-Israel/anti-Israel” was good.
From JTA: “Israel’s highest court has delivered a unanimous rebuke to state and municipal authorities over long-stalled plans to upgrade the Western Wall’s egalitarian prayer section, intensifying a dispute that has come to symbolize broader tensions over religious pluralism in Israel.”
Here is Etan Nechin in Haaretz with a look at a recent conference on the Jewish left in Boston and here is Shaul Magid offering his reflections on that conference.
Thank you to everyone who texted and emailed to make sure I knew that the US hockey player who scored the winning goal is Jewish. It’s no Aly Raisman doing a floor routine to “Hava Nagila” (unironically a high point of American Jewish history), but, sure, good to note, even if he did not exactly honor his Jewish mom in the locker room after.
-ET
"Television" by dailyinvention is licensed under CC BY 2.0.