This is a follow-up to the column published yesterday, The Shomer: Ye, Though I Walk Through the Valley of Death-Con 3. For clarity’s sake, it’s a good idea to start there and then read this.
After the column was published yesterday, Vice.com published a series of clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Kanye West (a.ka. “Ye”) that were edited out of the final version that was aired. And the deeper, more insidious story therein is how Carlson manipulated the final interview to suit his personal agenda — from cutting out Ye’s admission to being vaccinated against COVID-19, something Carlson has long professed opposition to, to far more obvious antisemitic statements Ye made in the course of the discussion.
One such example was revealed as Ye talked about his children attending a school that celebrates Kwanzaa. “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa,” Ye said. “At least it will come with some financial engineering.” That particular trope is one of the oldest antisemitic canards — that Jews control the financial systems around the world, which has been proven time and time again to be a baseless and utterly absurd claim.
From there, Ye dove into a wandering missive that started about former President Trump advisor Jared Kushner, but it quickly devolved into an all-out diatribe on the worldwide Jewish community. “All these things that Jared somehow doesn’t get enough credit for with his work…I just think it was to make money.” Ye paused for a moment on that, reflecting on the obvious Jew-hate he was wandering toward. He asked Carlson, “I don’t know, is that too heavy-handed to put in this platform?”
“No that’s your opinion,” Carlson replied. “We’re not in the censorship business.”
“Okay, thank you,” Ye replied. “And I just think that’s what they’re about is making money. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they’re born into money.”
Elad Nehorai, a well-known American Jewish blogger and political commentary writer, in a thoughtfully penned Twitter thread, explained perfectly why what Carlson chose to leave out of the final aired interview was so problematic:
“This provides incontrovertible proof that Carlson knew Kanye was being antisemitic during the interview. This means that when Kanye said, ‘I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own,’ Carlson KNEW Kanye was talking about Jews.” Nehorai tweeted. “In other words: Tucker Carlson and his team purposefully edited their footage to make Kanye’s comments into a dog whistle instead of a foghorn. He purposefully coded Kanye’s antisemitism. Carlson knows how to spread antisemitism while avoiding getting called out. He did it here. This should be a far bigger scandal than anything Kanye has said. Carlson knowingly spread coded antisemitism, knowingly kept the antisemitism that he knew wouldn’t get called out, knowingly cut the part that would get him in trouble.”
He goes on to list out Carlson’s history of antisemitic dog-whistling, which is unmistakably obvious, yet skirts the edges just enough that he has consistently retained plausible deniability — like his takes on the Great Replacement Theory, for instance. In the United States, GRT has become a rallying cry for white supremacist groups, alleging that Jews in positions of power are conspiring to flood the nation with Black and Brown immigrants in order to gain more political power. This became a central theme to the violence that occurred in the Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville in August of 2017, where neo-Nazis bearing tiki torches chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
That rhetoric directly led to the mass murder of 11 Jews at the L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. Gunman Robert Bowers — blaming the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) for the migrant caravan of asylum seekers working its way toward the United States at the time — stormed the synagogue and gunned down 17 people, killing 11 — with Holocaust survivors among them. Prior to the attack, he posted this on his Gab account: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” He then reportedly screamed, “All Jews must die!” in his subsequent confrontation with police before being apprehended. The case against him is still pending; U.S. District Judge Robert Colville issued an order in September setting the date for jury selection to begin on April 24, 2023.
None of this is to suggest Ye gets a pass for his vile commentary. What he believes and espouses is a narrative that — more than 75 years after the end of the Holocaust — still gets innocent Jews slaughtered. But in the focus on Ye’s train wreck of a life and belief system, even as those across the political spectrum now look to distance themselves from him, is a lack of clarity on just how dangerous Tucker Carlson’s platform is, as he’s cleverly worked to push the same narratives with just enough smoke for him to disappear behind and avoid accountability.
It’s long past time Carlson was held accountable for what he’s done.
