"It's Not How White Men Fight"

Tucker excelled at race-baiting ... and was fired for being honest.

The other shoe has dropped in the Tucker Carlson case. The redacted text messages from the Dominion lawsuit, whispered about for a week, have been leaked to the New York Times. Tucker was, no doubt, fired from Fox for a variety of reasons, but these text messages were pitched as the inciting incident or final straw.

I was expecting racial slurs, pornographic images, or admissions of drug use. Instead, we got this:

EXHIBIT 276

Tucker Carlson January 7, 2021 — 04:18:04 PM UTC

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

Tucker’s words are honest and, in fact, self-critical. The line that Tucker’s critics seized upon is this: “It’s not how white men fight.” Tucker demonstrates that he has a basic sense of what it means to be White, and this involves honor, decency, and a kind of sportsmanship. In context, Tucker shows an awareness of the poison of hatred, how it leads to sadism and brutality. (It’s not racial hatred exactly, but contempt for Antifa.) Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the missive is that it was sent as a text message, which is usually the domain of typos, auto-corrects, emojis, and meaningless chatter. Here we find eloquence and sincerity. If any kind of proper, above-board “identitarianism” is possible in contemporary America, it would be found in words like these.

I could complain about the hypocrisy: Imagine if the situations were reversed! Would a Black journalist be fired if she remarked, “That’s not how a Black women should act”? The answer, of course, is no. I could also delve into the reality of Black crime and interracial crime. But that’s beside the point. This missive is “controversial” precisely because it’s honest, deep, down-to-earth, and self-aware. I’m not a fan of Tucker, but he deserves to be defended here.

Tucker had become notorious for his promotion and endorsement of “Great Replacement Theory,” regarding the displacement of native-born Americans through mass immigration and self-loathing. But Tucker being Tucker, and Fox being Fox, his comments were enveloped in language about “voting rights” and how Black Americans are the real victims, etc. “It’s not about race,” he would say. But, of course, it was always about race.

Tucker’s segments on GRT were headier than most fare on Fox, but they were not particularly novel. Since its inception, the “fair and balanced” channel has regaled its viewers with tales of “caravans” and “knock-out games”; both of which are dubious as issues of national importance but potent as forms of “race-baiting.” As I wrote a decade ago,

With race-baiting, racism remains just that—bait. The ultimate object is for Whites to continue voting Republican, and to view this as resolving their fears and anxieties and fulfilling their hopes. The moment racism ceases to be a short-circuit in the minds of the American Majority, it must be censored furiously.

Fox will endlessly tolerate race-baiting on its broadcasts—the more salacious, the better. Being honest and forthwith, however, is verboten.