Tucker Carlson, Superspreader – Commentary Magazine

Tucker Carlson's influence on American politics has always been hotly debated. When Carlson was still at Fox News, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly complained about Carlson's influence over congressional Republicans regarding support for Ukraine. “I was amazed and horrified by the number of people who were afraid of a guy named Tucker Carlson,” Johnson told the Atlantic Council last year. “Has anyone heard of Tucker Carlson?” What's with this guy?

What's with this guy? is a good summary of the frustrating experience of continually watching people fall for Tucker's carnival act. And while his exit from Fox undoubtedly reduces the amount of nonsense Republican lawmakers feed into the fever swamps, it likely made Carlson's Jew-hunting an even more problematic issue.

There are two aspects of anti-Semitism in particular that make Carlson's Internet show so poisonous for discourse.

The first is that there is no statute of limitations regarding Jewish-related conspiracy theories. Take, for example, the classic blood libel. It posits that Jews kill non-Jews (especially children) and use their blood for consumption or religious rituals. In Europe, the blood libel has its roots in 12th-century England and has never really disappeared.

And I mean Never. A modern proponent of murderous libel was recently invited to speak at the prestigious Oxford Union, where he received a warm welcome. If the public can't get tired of listening to the same story of Jewish devilry for literally a thousand years, they never will.

This is just one example of a well that never runs dry. Indeed, Jewish stalkers are particularly exhausting, in part because there's never a need for new material, so we find ourselves on the defensive against the same hallucinatory incitement every few years.

Which brings us to a episode of The Tucker Carlson Show this week. Tucker, who revels in the kind of anti-Zionist conspiracy theories that drive online politics at both ends of the political spectrum – he's a walking, talking horseshoe effect – had Jeffrey Sachs as his guest.

Sachs was a respected and dominant academic for many years, but he has become a ridiculous buffoon who loves to feed conspiracy theories to feverish swamp alligators. He is, it almost goes without saying, a professor at Columbia University.

Carlson begins his interview with Sachs by asking him about the big news of the day: the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the monstrous Syrian dictator. The crimes of Assad and his father, who ruled Syria before Bashar, mark the land: mass graves and torture prisons dot the face of the Levant. A rebellion against Assad that began during the Arab Spring was ultimately successful. The story is horrible but simple: a butcher was overthrown by his subjects.

In the clip that opens the show, Sachs gives another explanation: Jews. “This is part of a 30-year effort. It is [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s War to Remake the Middle East.”

Just after September 11, 2001, Sachs preaches, General Wesley Clark was brought to the Pentagon and “told that the neoconservatives and the Israelis were going to remake the Middle East.” This would require war with seven countries, and “we are currently at war in six of them.” And I mean we, the United States, on behalf of Israel… So what happened in Syria last week was the culmination of a long-term effort by Israel to reshape the Middle East his image.

Sachs calls the “Israel lobby” agents of nefarious foreign interests in America, and he describes Jewish control as so hermetic that it “doesn't really matter who the president is.” This is long-term deep state policy. Indeed, Sachs says, “Obama ordered the CIA to overthrow Assad.”

Why would Obama do that, asks Carlson. “Because Israel has led American foreign policy in the Middle East for 30 years,” Sachs responds. “That’s how it works.”

Sachs gives us a rough figure for the human cost of this so-called Jewish control: 1 million people are dead today who would otherwise be alive if not for Israel's so-called bloodlust. This puts a lot of blood on the hands of the Jews. But as stated before, it's a story that never gets old.

The second characteristic of anti-Semitism that makes it so powerful is the way information circulates. He follows a populist trend because “the powers that be” are compromised and cannot be trusted. Tucker Carlson has an audience ready to soak up all the information they supposedly don't want you to know. Carlson can't rehearse everything himself every night because it would get boring, so he brings in guests to help him.

People like Carlson and Sachs rely on the network contagion effect, in which information circulates through social networks after being introduced by a trusted source, to spread their poison. Typical Jeffrey Sachs followers don't rely on Tucker Carlson for their information. So Carlson defers to Sachs, who essentially plays the role of ideological drug mule.

Elon Musk, owner of X/Twitter and advisor to President-elect Trump, himself reposted the interview online. Musk didn't say anything specifically about the Israeli side, but a message from Musk gives a super boost to anyone looking for more networks to spread to.

So yes, Carlson matters here. He is a super-spreader of the brain mold that is making our politics and culture sicker, darker, angrier and more extreme at a time when there is a hungry market for it.