Why Tucker Carlson Was The Tom Buchanan Of Fox News

Yes, he probably fully believed the awful things he said.

 A stunned nation learned last week that Tucker Carlson, who made racist comments publicly, also made racist comments privately. It’s hard to believe that Carlson’s blatant racism shocked the conscience of Fox News executives, but if we take these known liars at their word, they must've assumed Carlson was a punch-clock villain and didn't believe most of what he said on-air.

If so, they weren't alone. Even his fiercest detractors insisted he was just play-acting the bigot, appealing to the simple rubes who watched his show every night. After all, Carlson comes from a wealthy family and is well-educated. That must make him different somehow from the robed Klan member. (In reality, KKK leaders have included college professors and doctors.) 

Elitist liberals have been guilty of promoting a similar narrative about Kayleigh McEnany. She’s openly racist but we’re constantly reminded that she’s a Harvard Law graduate so obviously can’t really believe what she’s saying.

Tucker Carlson has long reminded me of Tom Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . Carlson lacks Buchanan’s commanding physical stature that narrator Nick Carraway describes in almost erotic detail, but he’s just as much a priggish, entitled bully. It’s not long after readers have met Buchanan that he goes off on a racist rant.

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If We Found Out For First Time That Tucker Was White Supremacist, We'd Freak Out Just Like Fox Did 

 Judge, Fox Lawyers Agree: No 'Reasonable Person' Would Believe Tucker Carlson 

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From The Great Gatsby:  

“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”

“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”

“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”

There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.

This scene is shockingly prescient. The Rise of the Coloured Empires is a riff on Lothrop Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy (1920). The Harvard-educated Stoddard warned that accelerating population growth among people of color and industrialization in China and Japan were existential threats to white supremacy. He advocated restricting non-white immigration to white-majority nations, and like Carlson, he seemed obsessed with the imagined "uncleanness' of brown immigrants. (In an earlier draft, Buchanan mentions how “one Jew” is fine. He just doesn’t appreciate when their numbers increase.Casual anti-semitism persisted at "Tucker Carlson Tonight," with Carlson's clear approval.)

The passage is also commonly misinterpreted. Fitzgerald is hardly making a “woke” stand against white supremacy. Yes, Buchanan is a racist asshole, but Nick doesn’t necessary think he’s boorish solely because he’s racist. Nick himself makes casually racist remarks, most notably when he see a limousine "driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry." (The 2013 Baz Luhrmann fever dream version whitewashes Nick's bigoted sentiments.)

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Nick thinks Buchanan is a paranoid idiot, latching onto racist conspiracies because he’s bored. Buchanan might as well have interrupted dinner to discuss alien abductions. Nick can’t imagine a nightmarish future where the “colored races” are running the show. When confronted with an upset in the racial hierarchy, he literally laughs out loud. How many of today's Never Trumpers had similar reactions to Carlson's show?

White liberals and moderates often dismiss Carlson’s own racist rants as simple fear mongering, intended solely to goose up ratings. The Great Replacement Theory is silly, even though Carlson and others are correct that a diverse electorate is more politically progressive than a predominately white one. If the racial demographics of the 2008 and 2012 electorates were the same as in 1980 and 1984, John McCain and Mitt Romney would’ve won in landslides. The day before the January 6 insurrection, Democrats gained control of the Senate with Georgia runoff victories where the Republican incumbent candidates lost while carrying more than 70 percent of the white vote. This is the future Tom Buchanan predicted and feared.

Here's a telling passage from the climactic scene at the Plaza Hotel, when Buchanan unloads on the social upstart Gatsby.

“Wait a minute,” snapped Tom, “I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more question.”

“Go on,” Gatsby said politely.

“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?”

They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.

“He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.”

“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out… Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

“We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan.

Jordan Baker’s quip is one of my favorite lines, even if obviously racist, because it reveals so much about her character. She feels invulnerable in her status and privilege, while Buchanan feels the proverbial “colored” wolf at the door. Nick dismisses Buchanan’s remarks as “impassioned gibberish,” but not because he is racially tolerant. He just thinks Buchanan is absurd.

Conservative Never Trumper Tom Nichols at The Atlantic has described the MAGA movement as comprising "bored middle-class narcissists who yearn for some sort of dramatic crusade to give meaning to their empty lives." Nick similarly condemns the "careless" Tom, Daisy, and Jordan (though they are several tax brackets removed from comfortably middle-class). Nichols also distinguishes between MAGA voters and the Republican "elites" who can't stand them. However, it's the Never Trumpers who are probably more like Nick Carraway, who was chummy with Tom Buchanan until the final chapter. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are very much Tom Buchanan's spiritual descendants. Their racism is no pose to win over the white working class. It's who they are and always have been.

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