Tucker Carlson's departure from FOX News (surprisingly) helps shed some light on the complexity of criticizing the Russia-Ukraine War

I haven’t been obsessing over parsing various left positions on the Russia-Ukraine War over which are pro-Russian, which are anti-Russian or pro-Ukraine, which are based on anti-militarist concerns, which are opportunistic, which are confused, and so on.

If I ever use the phrase “objectively pro-Russian,” people will have good reason to wonder if I’ve gone neocon. The Trotskyist-influenced neocons during the Iraq War loved to call war critics “objectively pro-Saddam.”

I’ve tried to look at the Russia-Ukraine War through more of the realist and restrainer IR (international-relations) approaches. I take it for granted that everyone should be aware of the interests of the military-industrial complex and how those are never identical to the national interests of the US or to optimal approaches to achieving a peaceful world. (Though in some moments they may coincide.) But I also try not to fall into a simple “it’s-sin-and-I’m-agin’-it” approaches to national-security and military issues, including on Western support for Ukraine.

And when it comes to following an ongoing war, my first guideline is the famous quote of I.F. Stone, "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."¹

Tucker Carlson (?!) and the Russia-Ukraine War

Ironically, the firing of far-right populist and Viktor Orbán fan, Tucker Carlson, from FOX News has provided some useful commentary on the complexity of opposition to particular wars.

Harold Meyerson and Tisya Mavuram look at Carlson's criticism of active Western support for Ukraine in the current conflict:

There is a distinct kind of credulousness masquerading as sophistication that is popular within some media circles, where the goal seems to be to inspire shock and awe within the center-left. Most of the time, it’s harmless, and sometimes even worthwhile. When it becomes dangerous is when that becomes the standard for political discourse. Tucker Carlson has said many things that challenge liberal orthodoxy, because racist and nationalist populists have a critique of liberalism just as progressive populists do. That doesn’t mean they have anything in common with you. …

Carlson’s anti-elitism is highly selective. It doesn’t include Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, or Donald Trump. In fact, Fox stood by him for years, giving him the backing of the Republican Party’s most powerful media organ and putting him, in that sense, firmly within the party establishment. When he’s criticized tech companies, it was only because they’ve occasionally banned white supremacists from their platforms. He’s anti–big business in the sense that Ron DeSantis is anti–big business: deregulating anything that would diminish its profits, but regulating any corporate expressions of social moderation. …

Carlson’s anti-intervention reasons are not those of the left-wing opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and any discussion of his stance requires a discussion of why he holds them. Historians note the very different set of beliefs that distinguished the pacifists and socialists who opposed our entry into World War II from the pro-German, Nazi fellow traveler Charles Lindbergh. A historian who wrote about that movement and didn’t delve into the wildly dissimilar motivations of its members wouldn’t be much of a historian.² [my emphasis]

Jason Stanley, a specialist on historical fascism, also addresses the “antiwar” aspect of Carlson’s public position on the Russia-Ukraine War. He states the antiwar question this way:

So, is Tucker Carlson hard to classify? On the one hand, he spreads tropes central to neo-Nazi propaganda, such as “white replacement” theory, suggesting that leftist elites seek to replace “legacy Americans” by foreign non-white immigrants. On the other hand, he denounces media, intellectual and political elites, as well as US intervention in Ukraine, platforming those who identify as the “anti-war left”, such as Jimmy Dore. How should we best understand this set of views? If Carlson has fascist sympathies, as do, quite inarguably, many of those who applaud him, how do we understand his firm stance against US military and financial support for Ukraine? Surely, historically speaking, fascism is not compatible with the isolationist position Carlson has urged.³ [my emphasis]

Stanley also references the America First movement in the US in the 1930s and 1940s to show what that latter assumption can be mistaken. “Before the beginning of the second world war, all of America’s pro-fascist parties opposed US intervention on the side of its allies against Nazi Germany.” And he provides his own reminder of what Charles Lindbergh’s “antiwar” stand was about.

That’s also a helpful reference to Jimmy Dore, who took a public position for years as a militant progressive but now is working the I-used-to-be-a-leftie-but-I-saw-the-light-and-now-I’m-a-flaming-rightwinger act. A perennial favorite on the right. Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961)⁴ is one of the prototypes of this schtick.

Branko Marcetic looks at Carlson’s “antiwar” position on Ukraine in the context of his extreme hawkishness against China:

Carlson [in a monologue Marcetic quotes] was only putting forward a modified, twenty-first-century version of the foreign policy of Cold War hawks like Richard Nixon, who worked to deepen ties with Beijing in large part to keep China and the Soviet Union divided and eventually win the Cold War. Carlson’s vision also happens to be along the lines of the approach favored by hawks like frequent Tucker Carlson Tonight guest Elbridge Colby, the Donald Trump appointee responsible for the billionaire president’s anti- China 2018 National Defense Strategy. (“I wish you were running the State Department,” Carlson once told Colby.)

But, of course, such a vision has nothing to do with ensuring peace, let alone keeping Americans out of elite-led foreign adventures, like the Middle Eastern ones Carlson denounces. The opposite, actually: by paying lip service to restraint-oriented rhetoric, Carlson has worked to co-opt latent antiwar sentiment and redirect it into his warmongering crusade against China.⁵ [my emphasis]

Marcetic’s article also is a reminder that the US Government since the Obama Administration has taken China to be the main strategic problem in US foreign policy. This is something that any peace movement - or, as the case may be, people who wish there was a sizable peace movement of a serious kind - should always keep in the front of their minds in looking at foreign policy. And US policy toward Taiwan is central to the US-China relationship.

He also stresses:

As Carlson’s coverage of Pelosi’s Taiwan visit indicated, even the occasional dovish segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight expressing alarm over the risk of provoking Beijing was framed around the need to shore up US military strength, at a time when Congress is passing record defense budgets that have the United States spending more on the military than the next ten countries combined — almost all of whom are US allies. [my emphasis]

Here’s another (non-Tucker-related) twist on the topic⁶:

1. Stone, I.F. (1967): In a Time of Torment, 1961-1967 (1967), p. 317. Quoted from: I. F. Stone. Wikipedia 03/06/2022. <https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=I._F._Stone&oldid=3083163> (Accessed: 2023-29-04).

2. Meyerson, Harold & Mavuram, Tisya (2023): The Real Tucker Carlson. American Prospect 04/27/2023. <https://prospect.org/politics/2023-04-27-real-tucker-carlson/> (Accessed: 2023-29-04).

3. Stanley, Jason (2023): Tucker Carlson is not an anti-war populist rebel. He is a fascist. The Guardian 04/28/2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/28/tucker-carlson-politics-fascism> (Accessed: 2023-29-04).

4. Editors (2023): Whittaker Chambers. Britannica Online 03/28/2023. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Whittaker-Chambers> (Accessed: 2023-29-04).

5. Marcetic, Branko (2023): Tucker Carlson Isn’t an Anti-Imperialist— He’s a Rabid China Hawk. Jacobin 04/28/2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/04/tucker-carlson-imperialist-china-hawk> (Accessed: 2023-28-04).

6. War in Ukraine: Who are Russian-speakers in Germany blaming? DW News YouTube channel 28.4.2023. (Accessed: 2023-29-04).