It’s rather uncommon, to put it mildly, for something to evoke outrage both from conservative columnists, politicians and pundits, and also from MSNBC, every Jewish member of the House of Representatives and the Biden administration.
Thanks for creating much-needed unity, Tucker Carlson!
The fired Fox News commentator did it with a two-hour interview of a self-styled “historian” named Darryl Cooper, who contended, among other things, that Winston Churchill was the real villain of World War II, and the German Führer was a pursuer of peace—someone who simply sought “an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.”
Mr. Cooper patiently explained to Mr. Carlson’s fans that the beleaguered Nazis didn’t really mean to kill millions of people in concentration camps; people just “ended up dead” because the Germans lacked the resources to handle all the prisoners they held. Gas chambers? What gas chambers?
Notorious Holocaust denier David Irving rightly complained that he hadn’t been given due credit by Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Carlson didn’t just host the quack chronicler but lauded him as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
The ex-Fox host has also said that pro-Israel Jewish Americans “don’t care about” their country “at all.”
And so, since Mr. Carlson, despite his exile from mainstream media, still enjoys great popularity, observers across the political spectrum felt a need to speak out.
Every Jewish Democrat in the US House of Representatives signed on to a statement castigating Mr. Carlson for platforming the Nazi apologist, noting that Mr. Cooper’s “revisionist and morally repugnant retelling of history is an insult to the six million Jews who were methodically murdered at the hands of the Nazi regime and is especially dangerous now, as anti-Semitism is on the rise globally.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that “Giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over six million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism and to every subsequent victim of anti-Semitism.”
Conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson posted: “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are.”
New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler told a reporter that “Platforming known Holocaust revisionists is deeply disturbing.”
Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston joined the condemnation, writing that, by amplifying Holocaust denial, Mr. Tucker had “crossed a line.”
The title of Mr. Galston’s piece pointed to a pachyderm in the penthouse. “Trump,” it read, “Must Disavow Tucker Carlson.”
What he was alluding to was that Mr. Carlson has played a prominent role in the MAGA world. He had a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and reportedly was the impetus for Mr. Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his running mate.
(Mr. Vance has tried to defend Mr. Carlson for his choice of guest. A spokesman for the vice presidential candidate told the Washington Post that Mr. Vance “doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture”—eliding Mr. Carlson’s fulsome praise of Mr. Cooper.)
Ugly fringes are a problem for both political parties. The Democrats have their AOC and Ilhan Omar as sitting members of Congress, and a rabble of vocal and obnoxious Hamas-defending constituents. It’s a fact of politics, unfortunate but true, that each party has to tolerate extremists in its camp in order to win elections.
Kamala Harris met with pro-Palestinian (read: anti-Israel) protesters; and her running mate, Tim Walz, although he, like Ms. Harris, has full-throatedly condemned Hamas, recently said that protesters against the Gaza war were speaking up for “all the right reasons.”
But what matters in the end isn’t whether either party tolerates its crazies. It’s whether they offer them a role.
Despite concerted efforts by Palestinian apologists to get a speaking gig at the Democratic National Convention, they were denied that perk (and fumed at the slight).
Mr. Carlson is scheduled to appear onstage with Mr. Vance on September 21 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It would seem a perfect opportunity for the Republican Party to demonstrate, by finding some excuse to cancel the event or change the roster, that their fringe may be tolerated, but isn’t embraced.
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