Post by ck4829 on Mar 17, 2022 9:26:16 GMT
There was a brief moment, when Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine, that the GOP wasn’t shopping Kremlin talking points. A few weeks ago at CPAC, the right was divided over how to message Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The right has been full of Vladimir Putin fanboys going back to the Trump administration, but here was their favorite authoritarian just cruising into Ukraine bombing hospitals and killing children. It was hard to imagine how the far right could twist itself into a pro-Putin stance when what Putin was doing was completely indefensible by any human. What I failed to imagine was the anti–anti-Putin movement.
A person does not need to be pro-Putin to be anti–anti-Putin. Pro-Putinism is, after all, completely untenable. Instead, one merely asks questions about anti-Putinism. Or if you’re Tucker Carlson, you deliver a bizarre monologue attacking those who oppose Putin, as he did in late February: “Democrats in Washington have told you you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. … Anything less than hatred of Putin is treason … hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy.” Tucker can defend himself by saying he’s not for anything. He’s just asking questions about why the rest of the world recoils at hospital bombings.
On Monday, two of Fox News’s own were killed in Ukraine: cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova, who was working with Fox reporters. On Tuesday, Carlson did devote a segment to Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova. And yet he also pressed on with his usual routine, saying:
“Masks were a training exercise. Mandatory masking was a shock collar designed to teach Americans unquestioning obedience and, of course, it worked because shock collars do work. In a single day last month we watched, for example, our entire professional class dutifully changed their Twitter avatars from mask up to the now mandatory Ukrainian flag. There was no debate about doing this, no reflection. There was not even a real conversation. They just did it. Millions of people simply assumed reflexively a partisan position in a highly complicated foreign crisis, the next crisis, and as they did it, they moved in perfect lockstep.”
newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/62323220199fdd002140baa5/gop-tucker-carlson-putin-propaganda/
A person does not need to be pro-Putin to be anti–anti-Putin. Pro-Putinism is, after all, completely untenable. Instead, one merely asks questions about anti-Putinism. Or if you’re Tucker Carlson, you deliver a bizarre monologue attacking those who oppose Putin, as he did in late February: “Democrats in Washington have told you you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. … Anything less than hatred of Putin is treason … hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy.” Tucker can defend himself by saying he’s not for anything. He’s just asking questions about why the rest of the world recoils at hospital bombings.
On Monday, two of Fox News’s own were killed in Ukraine: cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova, who was working with Fox reporters. On Tuesday, Carlson did devote a segment to Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova. And yet he also pressed on with his usual routine, saying:
“Masks were a training exercise. Mandatory masking was a shock collar designed to teach Americans unquestioning obedience and, of course, it worked because shock collars do work. In a single day last month we watched, for example, our entire professional class dutifully changed their Twitter avatars from mask up to the now mandatory Ukrainian flag. There was no debate about doing this, no reflection. There was not even a real conversation. They just did it. Millions of people simply assumed reflexively a partisan position in a highly complicated foreign crisis, the next crisis, and as they did it, they moved in perfect lockstep.”
newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/62323220199fdd002140baa5/gop-tucker-carlson-putin-propaganda/