For Part Two of Tucker Carlson’s racial attack on MSNBC host Joy Reid, he hosted Mark Steyn to help whitewash their bigotry as common-sense observations no worse than the bigotry they tried to project onto Reid. It was yet another dog whistle to Carlson’s white nationalist fans.
Carlson and Steyn suggest that hostility toward (black and brown) immigrants is merely “prudence”
Despite his long rant attacking Reid in the opening monologue, Carlson’s fee fees were, apparently, still smarting from her describing him as having a "pretty blatantly white nationalist view" on her show over the weekend. In his introduction, Carlson painted Steyn as a fellow (white) racial victim by saying he had been “the subject of many attacks online since his last appearance on this show.”
Steyn’s last appearance was a jaw-dropper. First, he attacked Democrats for showing more love for immigrants than for white supremacists. Then he smeared Arizona as more Mexican than American: “In Arizona, a majority of the grade school children now are Hispanic. … That means, in effect, the border has moved north, and the cultural transformation outweighs any economic benefits…” Steyn said.
Steyn got right to work justifying and doubling down on his bigotry. The essence of his argument was the not-so-subtle suggestion that since ethnic strife between white people is bad enough, having brown people come into the U.S. would be catastrophic.
STEYN: I go to Rosengård, in Sweden, and what I see there, I think is a tragedy for the Swedes who’ll be an ethnic minority in their own country by mid-century. I go to Molenbeek, in my mother’s country of Belgium, and I think that’s a tragedy.
[…] In the scheme of things, there is very little difference between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. Yet, that has caused tragic bloodshed in our lifetime. There is very little difference in the scheme of things between Francophone Quebecers, a half hour north of me here in northern New England, and Anglophone Canadians. Yet, 20 years ago, in the 1990s, a majority of Francophone Quebecers voted that they didn’t want to be part of the same country as Canadians. So putting aside race, small group differences can have huge consequences.
And that’s why I come back to a point I make a lot on your show, Tucker, that when you’re talking about public policy, it’s best to err on the side of prudence.
CARLSON: That’s exactly right.
Steyn and Carlson falsely portray Reid and others as the real bigots and themselves as the real racial victims
A regular theme on Tucker Carlson Tonight is that black and brown people get special privileges, while white people are the real victims of discrimination. That was the gist of this beef:
STEYN: The Democrats all the time are about how – as we’ve just established with Joy Reid, it’s not that you can’t talk about this subject, it’s just that, as Joy sees it, only certain people can talk. So she can say the Democrats should give up on white, rural voters and just focus on black voters.
Kirsten Powers, Democrat, can say on Election Night, 2012, that “This is about the browning of America.” Bob Beckel, on Election Night, another Democrat, can talk about “the white vote.”
So what Joy and co. are saying is that basically they can talk about it incessantly but just that nobody else can.
It speaks volumes that Steyn and, by implication, Carlson, portray advocacy on behalf of blacks or immigrants as the same as hostility to whites. But the fact of the matter is that Reid was arguing that Democrats should stop pandering to white, rural voters when they could more readily boost turnout from already like-minded African Americans in urban areas. Unlike Steyn’s “prudence” over keeping out immigrants, Reid was not suggesting Democrats only focus on African Americans nor that there was anything wrong with having white, rural voters in the Democratic Party. You can watch her clip below, if you don’t believe me.
As for Powers and Beckel, I do not recall either of the comments Steyn referenced, nor could I find them online. However, Powers has forcefully spoken out against racial bias on Fox, not advocated for black over white. Beckel, on the other hand, was fired over his racist behavior.
Rather than correct the record, Carlson doubled down on his white-advocacy defiance: “Yeah, I’d rather not play by those rules and we’re not going to. And neither are you, which is why we love you,” he said.
Watch all the dog whistles below, from the January 22, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight.