Ed, I have the greatest respect for the constitutional acumen of author of your referenced Substack post below, but he has “jumped the shark” with his unfounded KKK racial slur. There is no basis in fact for the predicate for the KKK allegation, i.e., that the referenced Antifa “creep” was Black. In fact, those who watch the news or have access to reporters like Andy Ngo know that the masked Antifa Black Shirts are overwhelmingly White.
There is no reason, either, to have sympathy for hoodlums who launched nightly firebombing attacks over the course of 120 days against the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, along with countless arson attacks on local Portland businesses, violent physical attacks on Portland law enforcement officers and violent, anti-First Amendment attacks on speakers with whom they had political and ideological disagreements. These people are, indeed, the “creeps” who have made major cities on the West Coast - San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle - unlivable.
What is so interesting about Carlson’s interior monologue is his admitted remorse for having succumbed to the mob mentality.
“I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”
Regrettably, Tucker Carlson was “deplatformed”, not because of racial issues, but because he provided a national voice for the _expression_ of views on the issues important to the Committee for the Republic and most of the participants in our Salon—Empire, War, Peace and adherence to Constitutional principles enunciated by our Founders. With Tucker gone, who will carry the torch on the following issues so important to the continuation of Constitutional government in our country?
- Ukraine War. Tucker was virtually the only voice on a national platform who dared to voice criticism of the Ukraine War. Unlike Jamie Raskin, he didn’t turn-tail and run when he had his knuckles rapped by Nancy Pelosi and the media for daring to suggest that we needed a negotiated peace in Ukraine. Unlike virtually every other media personality, Carlson was unable to discern any legitimate national interest that the US might have had in the Donbass and Crimea that would justify spending billions of dollars to prop up a corrupt regime in Kyiv and effect regime change in the Kremlin. He provided a platform for anti-war critics, near and dear to the Salon, like John Mearsheimer, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard and Doug McGregor. With Tucker gone, they will be silenced.
- Russia Hoax. Tucker publicized the role of Michael Morrell, a former CIA director, in inflating the Russia Hoax, at the behest of the Clinton Campaign/DNC, in 2016, and then organizing, at the behest of Tony Blinken, the infamous “50 Fibbers” who used their intelligence community “creds” to effectively squelch the Hunter Biden laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation on the eve of the 2020 election. Morrell either knew, or should have known, that the laptop in the custody of the FBI was both legitimate in fact and a legitimate item of political news that would have been damaging to the Biden campaign. He did, he said, because he wanted to win.
- Disinformation Industrial Complex. Tucker publicized the work of Elon Musk and the Twitter Files team (Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger) in unearthing from the bowels of pre-Musk Twitter the outlines of collusion between Big Tech, government (FBI, Homeland Security/CISA) and legacy media (WAPO/NYT) to form a coordinating committee and hold a “table top exercise” at the Aspen Institute to suppress the expected arrival of the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “hack and dump” operation. Matt Taibbi’s latest Racket posting deals with this matter in detail. However, with Tucker’s departure it is likely that this bombshell will be like a tree falling in the forest. https://www.racket.news/p/who-helped-overturn-the-pentagon?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Tucker may had had his faults, but his banishment creates a huge and apparently unfillable void in our national discourse and informed understanding of national and international events. So, I beg to differ.
From: Salon <salon-bounces@listserve.com> On Behalf Of Edward Hughes via Salon
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 9:05 PM
To: Chas Freeman <salon@listserve.com>
Subject: [Salon] Tuckers
Bruce Fein has an uncompromising Constitutional view of our national opera and this one is true to form regarding Tucker Carlson. I don't agree with all of Bruce's positions but his intellectual honesty is powerful and piercing. If you don't already, you should follow him on the substack.