This started as a post simply about the weird homophobic nonsense I saw from Tucker Carlson on Twitter last night, but then I realized it (and something he said at MSG over the weekend) fit snugly into the broader conversation over fascism.
The main posts:
The supporting examples:
And here is the proximate inspiration:
The clip is from The Tucker Carlson Show from about a week ago. It also spanned this gross, unpleasant, and utterly juvenile “editorial” at The Daily Caller (which Carlson founded), Tucker: ‘Tim Walz Is Very Obviously Gay’. This was not the first time he floated this “theory” (see, also, Tucker Carlson Resorts to Insinuating Tim Walz Is Gay on The Megyn Kelly Show).
Several thoughts occur.
First and foremost, it shouldn’t be considered an insult or some detrimental condition for someone to be gay. I know we haven’t hit that level socially yet, although progress has clearly been made in my lifetime. This should be an obvious position to take, but I felt it needed to be said.
Second, this all sounds like school-yard taunts from my childhood in the 1970s.
Third, this appears to be part of the overall “bro” culture that has propagated especially on podcasts, and that Tucker clearly sees as his audience. From an election POV, I guess he thinks if some of the listeners think Walz is an icky gay person, that would persuade some white males concerned about such things to vote for the oh-so-manly Trump?
Fourth, I would note that two of Stanley’s seven indicators of fascism (that I discussed here) include unreality and sexual anxiety. Both are on display here.
In terms of unreality, Tucker admits he has no evidence, and really doesn’t care. Walz just “looks super, super gay” (which, again, sounds like a childish taunt). Tucker is willing to just assert his own version of reality, the real reality be damned.
In terms of sexual anxiety, Stanley writes: “The politics of sexual anxiety is particularly effective when traditional male roles, such as that of family provider, are already under threat by economic forces” (127). He notes as well, “Transgender individuals and homosexuals are used to heighten anxiety and panic about the three to traditional male gender roles” (127-128).
Also worth sharing: “In times of extreme economic anxiety, men, already made anxious by a perceived loss of status resulting from increasing gender equality, can easily be thrust into panic by demagoguery directed against sexual minorities” (135).
Now, I would note that we are not in times of “extreme economic anxiety” but we are still living in a world shaped by the downsides of neoliberal trade policies over a multi-decade period that have hit smaller communities and the working class hard in specific sectors. We additionally had the Great Recession and then the effects of Covid I(including some very real inflation). We also have a lot of people on social media making the plight of the younger generation seem more dire than it actually is (for example, see this story from 2023: Is the U.S. in a ‘silent depression?’ Economists weigh in on the viral TikTok theory). On top of all that Trump, and by extension the Republican Party, keeps telling us how terrible everything is.
To be clear: I am not blaming “economic anxiety” as much as I am pointing to both real and perceived losses of relative power. There is also just the degree to which life is simply hard and seems especially so in our youths. It becomes easier to blame some “other” than to simply deal with reality. Unreality is much more satisfying for many people.
And, side note, if you watched any of the World Series you saw Trump commercials doing exactly what Stanley detailed: there were at least two commercials aimed at scaring people about trans people.
Along similar lines would be his racist smear of Harris at the MSG rally.
So, two things on that one.
First, this fits, again, with Stanley’s analysis. “Fascist propaganda promotes fear of interbreeding and race mixing, of corrupting the pure nation with, in the words of Charles Lindberg, speaking for the America First movement, “inferior blood” (127). In the clip above, Tucker is clearly playing on racist tropes and is mocking Harris’ own multiracial background.
Second, as Anne Applebaum notes in The Atlantic (Trump Wants You to Accept All of This as Normal):
And how, Carlson suggested, could there be such a “groundswell of popular support” for a person he demeaned as a mongrel, an incompetent, an idiot? The answer was clear: There can’t be, and if anyone says it happened, then we will contest it.
Indeed, she notes the rather frightening ways in which Trump and his allies are setting the stage to challenge the election results if they lose. Which is, I would note, another stab at unreality.
All of this sums to some highly concerning politics. There is a clear attempt to appeal to a certain class of white male voters by appealing to their own anxieties about power and lying to them about reality. And there is, further, an utter lack of care for reality and fair play. Instead, the goal is to scare enough people to create post-election chaos. This isn’t hyperbole or speculation. We already saw is happen on January 6, 2021. And who do you think is inspiring people to burn ballot drop boxes?
Here is just one example from August of 2020.
There is no responsibility here. Worse, there is a conscious understanding that they are mobilizing angry people.
And speaking of weird sexual politics, there was Tucker’s Authoritarian Rant from the other day, in case you missed it.
