By Jeffrey
Blehar
Tuesday,
April 25, 2023
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, perpetually the quasi-cinematic star of her own political
career, could not help but remind us all last night that she is, in fact, the
main character of the Tucker Carlson Saga as well (or a Best Supporting Actress
nominee at the very least). In a video celebrating his demise, she
selfied her triumphal thoughts to the world, treating Carlson like a slasher
villain who may yet return in a low-budget sequel. She summarized her message
to the masses by proudly proclaiming: “deplatforming
works.”
This
last is already causing conniptions on the Right. And why would it not? Her
rhetoric sounds as horrifying to us as Iago’s, striding to the front of the
stage at the start of Othello to deliver his famous “I am a
villain” soliloquy to the crowd. Conservatives watch Ocasio-Cortez sigh with
contentment about how well deplatforming works — “deplatforming” being the
technique by which activists lobby platforms and institutions to pre-censor
“objectionable” speech and speakers, denying them both cultural legitimacy and
a megaphone — and our reaction is something akin to: “Can you believe it? She’s
just admitting it! Right there in public!”
But to
her audience, Ocasio-Cortez is simply stating an obvious truth. Deplatforming
works and is a critical tool in the activist toolbox to wield against
undesirable views. In this case, the activists obviously did not waste their
time lobbying Fox News directly to drop Tucker Carlson; instead, they focused
their energies upon Tucker’s advertisers, threatening them with boycotts and
media infamy should they “consent” to their products appearing during
commercials for his show. Fox News hosts are keenly aware of this if
yesterday’s discussion between Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck is anything to go on.
The two famous Fox veterans came together on Kelly’s show to lament their
colleague’s firing. Almost in passing, Kelly noted that while “there’s not a
bigger star on Fox [than Tucker], there are bigger
moneymakers.”
Kelly’s
point, which I would love to see expanded upon with the sort of detail that she
and Beck are well-positioned to divulge, is that Carlson’s show had become
radioactive to most mainstream advertisers due to a succession of the very same
“deplatforming” activist boycotts that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised.
Moreover, although they did not note this, I will: a huge amount
of Tucker’s personal legal exposure in the Dominion case directly resulted from
the fact that he was so heavily reliant upon his show’s biggest advertiser,
Mike Lindell — remember the constant barrage of MyPillow ads during Fox’s
highest-rated primetime hour? Procter & Gamble wasn’t
returning Fox’s calls anymore — and thus was easily cowed into handing
over chunks of his show and credibility to Lindell’s perfervid conspiracy
theories.
Deplatforming
clashes so harshly with the the classical liberal worldview because it actively
sets itself against the idea of open discourse; its advocates embrace it
without any of the moral repulsion conservatives associate with it. To these
people — who are, it must be noted, experiencing nearly unchecked success in the
culture wars — “open discourse” is a vaguely understood notion at best and an
actively reviled principle of white privilege at worst. Instead, they
want control, and are alarmingly unguarded in their willingness to
acknowledge as much.
I hold
no brief for Tucker Carlson — I somehow doubt we’ll ever speak after my last
few pieces about him — and his behavior during the Dominion case was but one in
a series of glaring ethical lapses; he was the agent of his own demise in the
end, just as Nixon was his own worst enemy. But I am also under no illusion
that the weapons successfully used to turn the screws on him from the outside —
social media pressure campaigns, coordinated attempts at driving away
advertisers, and the like — will not now immediately be turned against other
inconvenient targets as well. These are the master’s tools; they are unethical
to use, but know that soon they will be used in an attempt to master us as
well.
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