If you haven’t seen it, there’s a clip that’s been going around of Tucker Carlson talking about the “rescue of Ilhan Omar”. As much as I don’t want to direct more traffic to Carlson’s Twitter account, the rest of this post wouldn’t make sense without that clip attached. So, here it is in all its glory.

I’m not writing this post to debate or to cast judgement on his opinions. I’m a socialist and it should be PRETTY damn clear what my stance is on everything that Carlson is spewing. But that’s for another blog post and for another time. What struck me, though, was the extremely clever way that Carlson writes his pieces. For better or for worse, Carlson is a master of propaganda. I want to tear this little speech apart and talk about just what I noticed while watching it.

Now I’m not an expert on persuasive writing or propaganda but I think that it’s pretty sad to see people having to resort to these sort of techniques in order to shift views to their side. In that way, Carlson’s night show acts as a platform for radicalization. It’s an effective and dangerous platform at that; if you’ve ever met someone who gets their news exclusively from Fox you will know what I mean. Carlson manages to detach the discussion from reality in a way that allows him to both depersonalize and bend facts to his will.

From the very start of the video, Carlson invites the viewer to “Think about that [the rescue of Ilhan Omar] for a minute.” He places the perceived onus of thought into the viewer’s hands. “These aren’t my thoughts,” Carlson seems to say, “these thoughts are your own!” You’re more likely to feel like something is true if you feel like it’s something you thought up yourself. It’s sort of like a back and forth game of internal confirmation bias.

“Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single worst place on Earth”, continued Carlson. With this, he creates an extreme us-vs-them mentality. He makes us feel responsible for this brave act of letting Omar into the country from Somalia, her place of birth. (Note how this phrasing is much less heroic: “we let Omar into the country” as opposed to “[we] rescued [Omar]”.) He then reinforces this mentality by talking about how “we” didn’t let her in for the money, no, rather, “we” let her in because we’re kind people. His use of the word “we” is very strategic: it implicates the viewer in being part of Omar’s alleged saving grace. Viewer, you too are a kind person because you weren’t there in New York in 1992 to turn away Ilhan Omar at Liberty Island.

Also, note that by saying that the US “rescued” Omar from Somalia implies that we had some sort of active participation in doing so. This is downright misleading. In fact, calling it a “rescue” at all reeks of racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. She emigrated from her birth country on her own volition, without any sort of active participation on the part of the United States at all. In short: this wasn’t a rescue; the events that lead up to Omar taking residence in the United States didn’t affect or ask anything of the US in any way, shape, or form.

Calling Somalia “the single worst place on earth” is not entirely accurate, but it reverberates with the nationalistic idea of America being the best place in the entire world. Somalia might not be a nice place to live, but this level of dehumanization is textbook. This leads us into the idea that America is somehow ordained to be more than what Somalia could ever be.

American citizenship is just that: citizenship. It means you can live here, you can work here, and you can pay taxes here. To Carlson, it isn’t citizenship, it’s a “remarkable gift”. He plays into the nationalistic leanings of his viewer base throughout this entire piece, but this was the first place where you could really pick it out in one succinct phrase.

Carlson then goes on to describe Omar’s alleged reaction to becoming an American citizen. “She scolded us and called us names; she showered us with contempt. It’s infuriating! But more than that, it’s also ominous” says Carlson. There are a few important things to piece apart in this sentence alone. First off, he continues referring to “us” in such a way as to implicate the viewer. When Omar scolds the American people, she’s not just scolding some abstract thing. She’s scolding us, and therefore she’s scolding you. Carlson has turned Omar’s reaction towards the American people into something distinctly hateful.

That’s not to mention how deeply entrenched you must be into the radical right wing mindset to even understand and associate to what Carlson means by the above. Essentially, he refers to Omar’s activism as a Democrat as something substantially more malicious than it actually is. Instead of framing her work as pushing to improve American society aligned with left wing ideals (feminism, anti-racism, egalitarianism, etc.), Carlson sweeps away all the legitimacy it carries by framing it as something akin to an ungrateful hissy fit. This is a common tactic the right wing uses. It includes the idea of calling left wing social activists “snowflakes” – that is a way to reframe work towards egalitarianism as inconsequential whining about things that don’t matter. The reality of the situation is that these things do matter, they just don’t matter to Carlson’s intended audience. This is why this tactic is so effective.

Up next is when Carlson talks about America’s immigration statistics. Here is when he begins to debase reality and supplant his own. He claims that “the United States admits more immigrants than any country on Earth – more than a million every year.” This is, well, just not true. While the US has by far has the largest immigrant population in the world (source), we do NOT admit over a million immigrants per year. We really admit around 300,000 per year (source). But, I get it. A million is a scary number. God forbid Republicans find out that the second highest immigrant population in the world live in Saudi Arabia…

On top of that, the amount of immigrants that we have as a raw number is a useless statistic. What we should really be looking at is how many immigrants we have per capita and how many we let in per capita, if we really want to make this argument. These numbers tell a much, much different story. Humorously, it’s the story of how the Vatican City consists of 100% immigrants. On a more serious note, though, it’s a story about how the United States practically has near the lowest amount of immigrants per capita of any first world country that could support it.

More about Carlson, though. “Americans like immigrants. But immigrants have got to like us back. That’s the key! It’s essential, otherwise the country falls apart,” he says. These are incredibly large, daunting, sweeping generalizations. This calls into play the idea of identity politics once again. It’s Americans up against Immigrants, and we (note the use of the word “us”) are the good guys. There’s a funny implication here: I guess immigrants – legal or not – aren’t intended to watch Carlson’s show. Immigrants aren’t the “us” that Carlson implies when he uses that sort of polarizing language. So much for being color blind, Tucker. He is pandering to a xenophobic crowd (which he himself is a part of) who are terrified of the immigrants wreaking some sort of unspecified havoc on good American society. That’s where the last part of that statement comes in: “It’s essential, otherwise the country falls apart.” Tucker raises the stakes and turns this into a life-or-death situation. We aren’t just dealing with an unspecified immigrant-related threat anymore, we’re dealing with unspecified immigrant-related destruction of the Union. This is the very definition of fear mongering.

Tucker finishes up his rant with “We made that point last night. We’ll continue to make that point because it’s true – and it’s important to say it out loud even if no one else is willing to.” Again with the polarization; except this time he establishes the idea of us versus the media who refuses to report on the truth. This has the effect of legitimizing the information that Tucker presents through some false facade of bravery. Only Tucker Carlson has the gall to tell you, the viewer, the truth about immigration, says Tucker Carlson. He appeals to whatever authority he may have by asserting that “we” (you’re either with him or against him!) “… make that point because it’s true,” implying that other mainstream media doesn’t spew xenophobic hate because they don’t report the truth. He toys with reality itself in the worst kind of way, by establishing himself as the sole distributor of reality – period, end of discussion.

Reread the quote from the last paragraph without context, and please tell me in all honesty whether you would be able to distinguish it from something that came straight out of the mouth of a crazy conspiracy theorist. That’s what gets me so angry about this whole situation – Tucker has the entire worldview shared by his viewers in the palm of his hand, and he asserts that control by delegitimizing every other source which could point to the contrary. This is, again, a common tactic in the radical right playbook. They’re not “feminists” as per the radical right, they’re “SJWs” or “feminazis”. It’s not “antifa”, it’s “violent counterprotesters”. It’s not “activism”, it’s “being a special snowflake”. Removing the very ground from which your opponent stands is an extremely effective way to ensure that none of your followers even stop to listen to their points.

Carlson, you’re charming. You’re clever. You’re god damn smart and you get on your show every night to consciously mislead the American people by preaching hateful propaganda laced with cruel psychological tricks.

For shame.