( Postponed from an earlier date ).
Within minutes of The Top’s Market shooting, which occured on the morning of May 14, before all ten victims had been identified, Tucker Carlson was informing his viewers that he was the victim, not the people who had been gunned down by a white nationalist inspired by the Great Replacement theory, a theory that he incidentally had been accused of promoting hundreds of times. But that’s beside the point. No one is, or ever has been, more of a victim than Tucker Carlson, and Tucker provided the evidence during his monologue.
The following is a breakdown of Carlson’s rambling monologue of events before and after the shooting occured.
He opened his monologue describing gun violence in cities across America, in an apparent attempt to instill in the minds of the rubes who make up his audience, that Democrats are responsible for all of the crime, and they’re somehow allowing it to happen.
…”And of course, most famously of all, on Saturday afternoon, a teenager in a mock military uniform walked into a grocery store in Buffalo and shot more than a dozen strangers with a rifle. No doubt you’ve seen accounts of this on the news.
“What you probably haven’t seen are the details about any of the 10 Americans who were murdered in that store in Buffalo. You may not even know their names, much less who they were and who they loved. Most of them were black, we know that. But beyond the way they look, not a lot has been reported about them because the coverage hasn’t been about them. Nor, in fact, has it really been about the gunman.”
Carlson described the gunman as mentally ill, whose “document is not recognizably left-wing or right-wing. It’s not really political at all.” It contains scribbled ramblings of a conspiracy theory described as the Great Replacement, a conspiracy popular among white nationalists and Nazis. But, according to Carlson’s logic, that doesn’t mean it’s political.
…”But the truth about Peyton Gendron does tell you a lot about the ruthlessness and dishonesty of our political leadership. Within minutes of Saturday’s shooting, before all bodies of those 10 murdered Americans had even been identified by their loved ones, professional Democrats had begun a coordinated assault to blame those murders on their political opponents,” the host said.
Carlson complaining about dishonesty, is the ultimate in irony. Carlson’s trademark is propaganda. If he were to be honest and tell the truth, as he has claimed he does, he would lose a large part of his audience. They don’t care if he’s honest or not. All they care about is hearing how they’re the ones being victimized by gays, trans people, feminists, black people, and immigrants.
“They did it,” they said immediately,” he continued. “Peyton Gendron was the heir to Donald Trump,’ they told us. ‘Trumpism committed mass murder in Buffalo, and for that reason, it followed logically, we must suspend the first amendment. That’s hardly an exaggeration of what they’re saying. Here’s the selection from Sunday’s shows:
He aired a clip of a few Democrats mistakingly claiming that hate speech is not protected by the Constitution, which was proof that every Democrat was calling for the suspension of the first amendment.
Actually, it was an exaggeration.
As had been previously pointed out by Justin Peters writing for Slate, “A quick Google search for the term “Peyton Gendron was the heir to Donald Trump,” indicates that no one other than Tucker Carlson himself is actually saying those specific words, or anything particularly like it. Likewise, no one credible is saying that anyone other than Gendron is directly responsible for the attack. Carlson knows this, just as he knows that his viewers do not particularly care whether or not the things he says are fair, accurate, or logical. What his viewers want is to be made to feel like they are the true victims of every real or imaginary outrage that makes the news.”
“What is hate speech? Well, it’s speech that our leaders hate. So, because a mentally ill teenager murdered strangers, you cannot express your political views out loud. That’s what they’re telling you. That’s what they’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but Saturday’s massacre gives them pretext, a justification.”
In Tucker’s mind, and the minds of the rubes who believe everything he says is gospel, he became the victim because he was criticized for his replacement rhetoric, and the perpetrators are the Democrats who have effectively and efficiently muzzled him and are silencing him.
“You have to ask yourself: Who behaves like that? What sort of person uses mass murder as an excuse to give a campaign speech or seize more political power? We’ll find out tomorrow when Joe Biden travels to the scene of this atrocity in Buffalo to speak to the country. We haven’t seen an advanced copy of his remarks, but we can guess what we will hear…”
When Biden gave his remarks in Buffalo, he neither made a campaign speech or used the opportunity to seek more political power. What he did do, was speak candidly about the victims and the threat of white supremacy and the violence it breeds. Both of which Tucker and his race baiting colleagues at Fox News have never seen fit to do.
After complaining about Biden’s low approval rating, which he claims is the lowest of any president this century – which is nonsense, most presidents have had low approval ratings throughout their terms in the White House – he says:
“Biden has decided to attack those who disapprove of him. According to Politico, Biden has taken to telling aides that he no longer recognizes the GOP, which he now views as an existential threat to the nation’s democracy. People who disagree with Joe Biden, according to Joe Biden, are now an existential threat to the nation like al-Qaeda or climate change, a threat that by definition, is so profound we must declare war upon it if we’re to survive.
“Now, keep in mind, this threat that Biden is referring to, is you. He’s talking about his fellow Americans. No president has ever spoken like this, ever. Joe Biden does it regularly, and he’s certain to do it again tomorrow, but most painful and destructive of all, Biden is likely to use racial wounds in order to make his point. There is no behavior worse than this. All race politics is bad, no matter what flavor those politics happen to be. No race politics is better than any other. All of it is poison…”
“Race politics subsumes the individual into the group. It erases people. It dehumanizes them. Race politics elevates appearance over initiative and decency and all the other God given qualities that make every person of every color unique yet morally equal to every other person. And above all, race politics makes us hate each other and always in a predictable way…
…”How could you be surprised when that leads, as it inevitably will, to white identity politics? Well, you could not be surprised – you did it, and it was always going to happen. And then what happens next? Nothing good. Race politics is a sin. Race politics always leads to violence and death.
According to Tucker, noted race expert, there is no worse behavior than a president – or anyone else for that matter – talking about racism. Condemning racism is making it worse. Talking about the problems of inequality, talking about diversity, demanding that immigrants be treated like human beings, talking about the dangers of white supremacy. Anyone addressing these problems, is just making it worse. They made it happen. They’re the reason we have white supremacy in the first place. White supremacy wouldn’t exist without these people, the ungrateful Americans who complain about how racist and sexist America is. It would be better if they just bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong.
Or, they can do what Tucker does on a nightly basis: blame minority groups, marginalized individuals, gays, trans people, and immigrants for all of America’s problems – which ultimately leads to harassment, violence and death, as we saw in places like Buffalo, El Paso, and Christchurch. And when that happens, when he gets called out for his bigotry and race baiting, he plays the victim. It’s a grift that pays well.
Sources: Fox News, Slate.
The Weekly News 