*We all know the deal with Tucker Carlson, but John Oliver decided to go a step further on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” Sunday to methodically and thoroughly explain why the Fox News host is a white supremacist.
Armed with receipts, Oliver took the Fox News host up on his oft-repeated request that someone please “tell us in very clear language what a white supremacist is.”
Oliver mocked Carlson’s past defense. “I don’t burn crosses or lynch people, so I can’t be a white supremacist,’ is a pretty weak argument. It’s like saying, ‘I can’t be an anti-semite because I didn’t do the holocaust.’ Or, ‘I can’t be a sexual predator because I didn’t produce “Good Will Hunting.”‘ There is more than one way to be a terrible person. And Tucker, conveniently for him, doesn’t fit neatly into a lot of people’s perception of ‘white supremacist,’ especially if they share his definition that it must require burning crosses, clan hoods and a name tag that says, ‘Hello, my name is a racist.’”
Oliver then showed a segment in which Carlson ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar for “hating America,” with the Fox News host saying, “We have every right to fight to preserve our nation and our heritage and our culture.”
“Wow, ‘preserve our heritage and culture’ — that is direct,” Oliver said. “In fact, his prewritten caption there, ‘We have to fight to preserve our nation and heritage,’ drew a lot of comparisons to the ‘Fourteen Words,’ the famous white supremacist slogan that says, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’ And when you put the two together there is, you know, a slight similarity there.”
Oliver made the point that Carlson’s brand of racism “can actually be even more dangerous” than that of a Klan member burning a cross, or former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
“No one in their right mind would sit down, pop in their headphones and fire up David Duke’s podcast and think, ‘Hey, I’m not a white supremacist.’ But millions of people watch Tucker on TV every night, spouting well-laundered versions of pretty much the same talking points. And there is real harm in that,” Oliver said. “Because while white supremacy is clearly dangerous when promoted by self-avowed white supremacists, it can actually be even more dangerous when it isn’t. And what Tucker Carlson’s show sells, in addition to utterly terrible pillows, is very seductive. It’s the idea that this country is fundamentally colorblind, that anyone who mentions race is just trying to start trouble, that historic oppression is no longer relevant, and that, in fact, you, his viewers, are the ones currently being oppressed.”
He added: “And if he can sell his audience on his white-identity politics, if he can persuade them that the big existential threat to America right now is diversity, it sort of doesn’t matter if he says aloud what his preferred solutions to that might be. And while it’s bad enough to hear that white supremacist families gather around to watch Tucker twice, the fact is, millions of viewers a night watch him once, and once is already more than enough.”
Watch below.
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