Better to stick to British politics: Your link to Boris’ racial slurs are not that different and in fact worse than what you call the “virulent ethnonationalism” of American conservatives. This ethno-virulence is mostly in partisan minds and PR.
There are lots of differing segments of those who have traditionally called themselves "conservatives". The intellectual, Reaganite economic and libertarian conservatives - what's left of them - are one thing.
The crazed Evangelicals who worship Trump as a "Cyrus", the degenerate Flight-93 pseudo-intellectuals at the Claremont Institute and "American Greatness", the white militia movements backing Trump, the white nationalist audiences of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, etc. are something else entirely.
Granted, many of these people claim to resist the term "conservative" these days (despite still nominally adhering to it). But when most of the Republican Party is still in thrall to Trump, who clearly panders to ethno-nationalist sentiments, it's hard to quibble much with this characterization.
Tucker Carlson is white, and he is not a globalist -- that is, he's not keen on transferring sovereign authority from national governments to international bureaucracies -- so it may be fair to call him a nationalist. But calling him a "white nationalist" is a low slander, as in common parlance the term is understood to mean that anyone so described is a white supremacist, which Carlson is not. I daresay I have paid more attention to Carlson's nightly commentary than you, Eric73, and I have never heard him say anything that could fairly be called racist.
I take it then you very much disagree with the New York Times piece on precisely this subject.
I will tell you, William (feel free to call me Eric), that I am not one to use the term racist lightly. I believe my fellow progressives have mostly drained the term of it's meaning and significance, and have felt so for quite some time.
To be clear, I don't think Tucker Carlson is a modern day Klansman. But I believe he shows clear signs of being uncomfortable with the idea of an America where people of European descent are not the majority ethnicity. He at times talks about wanting America to "look like" the country he grew up in. He speaks of "replacement theory", without specifically saying "white replacement theory", but nonetheless in the context of exhorting his viewers to be wary of the alleged Democratic plot to flood the country with immigrants who will (he assumes) vote Democratic.
He's smart enough to leave room for plausible deniability that his ideas are racist. But let's not quibble over the definitions of words. If nothing else, the Times article established that people whom no doubt the both of us would consider racist do, in fact, consider Carlson's rhetoric to be speaking to them. Does that fact alone, coupled with his intransigent attitude about it all, not imply at least an irresponsible willingness to pander to repugnant elements of society?
Yes, he conjectures that Biden and other prominent Democrats undermine border control and push for amnesty for illegal immigrants with the ulterior motive of effecting a permanent, irreversible shift to the left in the American public's center of political gravity -- to the benefit of them and their party and the detriment of their Republican rivals. The conjecture is plausible, to say the least, and is confirmed by well-known Democratic-Party officeholders and operatives who have spoken of this anticipated sea-change with undisguised satisfaction in video clips that Carlson has played for his audience. I see no reason to suspect that his concern with the immigrants' political sympathy is a mere ruse to disguise underlying aversion to their skin color or ethnicity. (If you've ever encountered a political conservative who laments the presence of Republican voters who fled to this country from Castro's Cuba or are descendants of anti-Castro refugees I'd like to hear about it; such a rare bird should be stuffed and displayed in a museum.)
I have a different bone to pick with Carlson on this subject. I have never heard him acknowledge that a "great replacement" of some sort will be unavoidable if the mean lifetime birth rate of native-born female US citizens persistently lags below replacement level, as it has for the past several decades -- let alone heard him propose any measure to redress this demographic deficiency.
Better to stick to British politics: Your link to Boris’ racial slurs are not that different and in fact worse than what you call the “virulent ethnonationalism” of American conservatives. This ethno-virulence is mostly in partisan minds and PR.
There are lots of differing segments of those who have traditionally called themselves "conservatives". The intellectual, Reaganite economic and libertarian conservatives - what's left of them - are one thing.
The crazed Evangelicals who worship Trump as a "Cyrus", the degenerate Flight-93 pseudo-intellectuals at the Claremont Institute and "American Greatness", the white militia movements backing Trump, the white nationalist audiences of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, etc. are something else entirely.
Granted, many of these people claim to resist the term "conservative" these days (despite still nominally adhering to it). But when most of the Republican Party is still in thrall to Trump, who clearly panders to ethno-nationalist sentiments, it's hard to quibble much with this characterization.
Tucker Carlson is white, and he is not a globalist -- that is, he's not keen on transferring sovereign authority from national governments to international bureaucracies -- so it may be fair to call him a nationalist. But calling him a "white nationalist" is a low slander, as in common parlance the term is understood to mean that anyone so described is a white supremacist, which Carlson is not. I daresay I have paid more attention to Carlson's nightly commentary than you, Eric73, and I have never heard him say anything that could fairly be called racist.
I take it then you very much disagree with the New York Times piece on precisely this subject.
I will tell you, William (feel free to call me Eric), that I am not one to use the term racist lightly. I believe my fellow progressives have mostly drained the term of it's meaning and significance, and have felt so for quite some time.
To be clear, I don't think Tucker Carlson is a modern day Klansman. But I believe he shows clear signs of being uncomfortable with the idea of an America where people of European descent are not the majority ethnicity. He at times talks about wanting America to "look like" the country he grew up in. He speaks of "replacement theory", without specifically saying "white replacement theory", but nonetheless in the context of exhorting his viewers to be wary of the alleged Democratic plot to flood the country with immigrants who will (he assumes) vote Democratic.
He's smart enough to leave room for plausible deniability that his ideas are racist. But let's not quibble over the definitions of words. If nothing else, the Times article established that people whom no doubt the both of us would consider racist do, in fact, consider Carlson's rhetoric to be speaking to them. Does that fact alone, coupled with his intransigent attitude about it all, not imply at least an irresponsible willingness to pander to repugnant elements of society?
Yes, he conjectures that Biden and other prominent Democrats undermine border control and push for amnesty for illegal immigrants with the ulterior motive of effecting a permanent, irreversible shift to the left in the American public's center of political gravity -- to the benefit of them and their party and the detriment of their Republican rivals. The conjecture is plausible, to say the least, and is confirmed by well-known Democratic-Party officeholders and operatives who have spoken of this anticipated sea-change with undisguised satisfaction in video clips that Carlson has played for his audience. I see no reason to suspect that his concern with the immigrants' political sympathy is a mere ruse to disguise underlying aversion to their skin color or ethnicity. (If you've ever encountered a political conservative who laments the presence of Republican voters who fled to this country from Castro's Cuba or are descendants of anti-Castro refugees I'd like to hear about it; such a rare bird should be stuffed and displayed in a museum.)
I have a different bone to pick with Carlson on this subject. I have never heard him acknowledge that a "great replacement" of some sort will be unavoidable if the mean lifetime birth rate of native-born female US citizens persistently lags below replacement level, as it has for the past several decades -- let alone heard him propose any measure to redress this demographic deficiency.
He also used populism and other bad ideas during his leadership.