This week, Senator Ted Cruz named the social media firebrand Tucker Carlson “the most dangerous demagogue in America”. He’s not wrong. Commanding a following of about 33 million followers across all platforms, Carlson uses his massive influence to spread a cocktail of vicious conspiracy theories that has done untold damage to Western culture.
Carlson, who is nothing if not unhinged, has suggested that he was mauled in his sleep by a demon and regurgitated countless conspiracy theories, from claiming that secret American laboratories were producing biological weapons in Ukraine to spreading the Great Replacement Theory, the motherlode of rightwing antisemitism.
His sycophancy towards Vladimir Putin is well known; in 2024, he travelled to Moscow to produce a cosy interview with the tyrant, and his rhetoric often reflects Kremlin talking points.
It is when it comes to Israel, however, dubbed by Carlson “the most violent country in the world by far per capita”, that the demagogue really gets into his stride. Through interviewing brazen antisemites like the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, the former Fox News host has incubated a powerful groundswell of Israelophobia on the political Right.
The Zionists control American politics, he has claimed, and Mossad carries out “false flag” operations for nefarious reasons. Israel swamps the West with immigrants – see the “Great Replacement Theory” above – and lurks in the shadows of arch paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Why do I draw all of this to your attention? Because this week, the formerly reputable Sky News lent Carlson legitimacy and expanded his reach by way of a cosy interview with world news presenter Yalda Hakim.
The tone of the interview is illustrated by a clip in which Hakim failed to challenge Carlson’s description of the Gaza war as “genocide” and leads him to make explicit his accusations of American “complicity”. The mood is one of conspirators comparing notes.
Such are the depths to which our mainstream media has sunk. As if that was not enough, this week Sky News has leapt with great enthusiasm on the disgraceful United Nations report claiming that Israel “deliberately targeted” children during the war in Gaza.
The merest of glances at the document shows that it does not even pass the laugh test. For one thing, as in the “genocide” report before it, Hamas is not mentioned, giving the impression that this was not a war but simply a wanton massacre of civilians.
Secondly, all the allegations are woven of a tissue of half-truths, hearsay, speculation, unreliable evidence and pure conjecture. Take the headline claim, that an Israeli quadcopter killed a breastfeeding baby with a single shot to the head. Really?
As the brilliant UN Watch has provided a detailed rebuttal of the report, there is no need to repeat it here. One point, however, deserved to be emphasised: the set of smears was produced by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which has a long history of the most grotesque bias against Israel.
Not only has it condemned the Jewish state more than twice as often as any other nation, but Item Seven of its agenda compels it to discuss the “human rights situation in Palestine” at every single meeting, regardless of whatever else is happening in the world.
All of this is obviously pertinent information for any serious journalist covering the latest report and should play a prominent role in stories about it. Sky News, however, omitted all of this detail and its senior reporters – notably special correspondent Alex Crawford – made a point of defending the calumny.
What lies behind this Carlson interview? According to former Sky presenter Colin Brazier, whom I interviewed alongside former BBC executive Danny Cohen on my podcast, The Brink, it begins with declining audiences.
Part of the reason why viewers are abandoning mainstream television in such numbers is a lack of trust, as channels demonstrate time and time again that they are more interested in projecting a liberal worldview than reporting the facts.
Falling numbers has meant that ratings are no longer a measure of success for broadcasters, causing journalists to try to win industry awards instead. The way to do this is to conform to the prevailing ideological orthodoxy of the profession, which is shot through with antipathy towards the West and Israelophobia.
More recently, however, as the numbers have continued to slip south, Sky News and other broadcasters have taken a fresh approach towards halting their decline. Here lies the true irony.
As a result of mainstream outlets abandoning standards of impartiality, alternative media figures like Carlson, who have no obligation to play by any semblance of the rules, have attracted massive audiences.
Rather than fixing their reputation for objectivity, however, outfits like Sky News are now desperately courting the monsters of their own creation to bask in their reflected glory.
That is how Hakim’s interview with Carlson can be understood: as a horseshoe of betrayal. The more desperate legacy outlets get for audiences, the more closely they are aping the figures whose main contribution to our culture is to contaminate our lives with falsehood and debase the public conversation.
So we arrive at an overlap between Sky News and the most dangerous demagogue in America. They are both as bad as each other.
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