The False Prophets Of Division: Tucker Carlson & Rob Reiner

My last post dealt with how history has been manipulated by a “critical” scholarship to downplay any issues of class and replace those with issues of identity; whether it be race, sex, sexual orientation, gender orientation etc. Such scholars are fully supported by the ruling class controlled academia, and research by such individuals as Gabriel Rockhill has identified the extensive role of US state entities and ruling class foundations (e.g. Ford, Rockefeller etc.) in supporting and growing a “critical” scholarship that ignores issues of class and wealth and income inequality. The results of their scholarship has also been fully supported by large corporations who see it as a purely performative way of assuaging their worker’s concerns while it also provides for new means of control over those workers.

Another way of keeping a population which may otherwise call for fundamental changes in society for the benefit of working people under control, is to create a false dichotomy between progressives and conservatives that in reality share a great deal in common with respect to political economy. The intensified ruling class support for identitarian concepts in the past decade plays very much into this, sold as “freedom” to progressives and as “godless communism” to social conservatives. With its “Southern Strategy” in the 1970s that focused on white southern voters, many of which were highly religious, the Republican Party created the manipulation of conservative and religious, voters as one of its core weapons; while ignoring the very real political economic concerns that such voters shared with many progressives.

The documentary “God & Country” by the liberal Hollywood elite social activist mogul Rob Reiner, and the response to it by right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, show how the elite can utilize an issue such as religion to separate US citizens along cultural lines though misrepresentation, exaggeration and outright lying. Here is the trailer to the documentary and Rob Reiner discussing it:

It is an interesting exercise to replace “Christian Nationalism” with “Communism/Socialism”, it quickly shows the absolute parallel usage of propaganda and rhetoric between the two cultural “sides”. Also the utter hypocrisy and lack of good faith of those that drive such divisive movements and propaganda.

Having a white liberal member of the elite that fully supports a Democratic Party that is utterly anti-democratic, and did the most to destroy the New Deal institutions in the 1990s while has fully endorsed the Security State, talk about the dangers of Fascism is quite the exercise in lack of self-knowledge and hypocrisy. The most fascist US president of the twentieth century was a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who in 1917 implemented a state that was fascist in all but name. Hochschild details this well in his book American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis. Mr. Reiner serves on the advisory board of the deeply propagandistic Committee to Investigate Russia with a legion of Security State operatives. An organization that was and is part of the multi-year efforts to rile up hatred of Russia, and tar Donald Trump as a traitor, through utter fabrications that continue to be used even after repeated debunking. Reiner is currently working on a propagandist documentary The Spy & The Asset which ridiculously purports to show that Donald Trump is but a tool of Vladimir Putin.

Daniel Darling in his review of Reiner’s documentary correctly identifies many of the propagandist tools that are used within it, and in general by “liberal” commentators:

Ever since the tragic events of Jan. 6, 2021, in which a handful of the violent rioters donned explicitly Christian symbols, much ink has been spilled about the rising threat of Christian nationalism, which critics charge is a malignant anti-democratic force hellbent on overthrowing American democracy.

Fears of Christian nationalism have spawned a burgeoning subgenre of books, conferences and journal articles. One widely cited survey, which included sloppily expansive definitions, found that a whopping 51% of Americans were Christian nationalists.

And the new documentary "God & Country," scheduled for release Friday and produced by Hollywood mogul Rob Reiner, warns in ominous tones about the nationalists lurking around every corner.

He continues:

To address the lack of definition of what constitutes Christian nationalism, one group has released a survey that both dispels some of the hyperbole and gives a more nuanced picture. The group, Neighborly Faith, began with a 14-point definition of Christian nationalism. What the researchers found is that the number of actual Christian nationalists is much smaller than we’ve been led to believe: Only 5% of Americans self-identify as Christian nationalists, and only 11% of Americans fit the category of “adherents.”

Even among adherents, none hold to all 14 points of measurement, and only 31% agreed to more than seven …

The survey also found that the conflation of conservative Christian Republicans with Christian nationalists is in error. While 60% of Christian nationalists are Republicans, 40% are either Democrats or independents. And only 17% of Republicans are adherents to Christian nationalism.

In his review of the documentary Tucker Carlson is nowhere near as balanced as Mr. Darling, using many of the very same techniques as those in the documentary to rile up the conservative base.

He starts by stating the obvious falsehood that “those that run the country” consider faithful Christians as their enemy, then utilizes a vast exaggeration that “Christian churches across the country have been burning”, followed by a misrepresentation of the intimidatory tactics of anti-abortion groups that block access to medical clinics and dox and stalk doctors providing legal abortion services. Jessica Burbank here points out the flaws in treating such activists as simply harmless peaceful protestors, and points out how the state has severely punished protestors on the “left” as well. The ruling class controlled state will severely punish any that challenge its authority, or who do not further its aims, from the “right” or the “left”. The use of the “peaceful protestor” trope mirrors its usage with respect to Black Lives Matter and other such protests; as with this utterly ridiculous CNN report:

Carlson even uses the slur “fake Christian” against an actual Evangelical Christian, David French, who argues for a more tolerant and inclusive understanding of religious and cultural differences; and we are only 59 seconds in! I am reminded of the slur TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) that is used in an attempt to divide and shame gender-critical feminists, or the Trotskyist purity tests of who is truly a socialist. Carlson then brings on the author Megan Basham (of the right-wing Daily Wire) who has written a book that purports to show that Evangelical Leaders Traded The Truth For A Leftist Agenda. I did have a little chuckle at the utter ridiculousness of that title! How dare Evangelicals stray from the worship of the Prosperity Gospel (if you are rich its because God blesses you, and if you are poor then he doesn’t, and God is a neoliberal) and the Zionist Scofield Bible (we have to let the Jews genocide the Palestinians so that our God can then genocide two thirds of the Jews with the coming of the Christian Messiah)!

She immediately misrepresents Evangelical Christians as a monolithic ideological group (see the quotes from the related survey above), removing their great diversity to constitute them as a “block” of 32% of American voters that is “the only obstacle that we still have to the left wing agenda”. She uses the exact same misrepresentation of the highly diverse Evangelical Christian community as Rob Reiner to construct the very same fake political dichotomy of “Christians against leftists” (Basham) or “progressives against Christian nationalist fascists” (Reiner). The two are both capitalist ruling class propagandists providing the great service of divide and conquer for their ruling class masters. Basham is a graduate of the World Journalism Institute an institution focused on providing advanced propaganda techniques to non-progressive Christians, as its site states:

WJI is more than an on-the-ground reporting intensive. Instructors teach the nuts and bolts of backpack journalism and offer a foundation to understanding how a Christian worldview and journalism intersect. Our students get out of the classroom and report for multiple platforms including digital, magazine, and broadcast for both audio and video. Instructors, reporters, and guest speakers who have spent decades honing their craft lead our workshops and give line-by-line feedback to the work that students produce. From brainstorming story pitches to published work on WORLD’s platforms, instructors are coaching students along the way.

Of course, Rob Reiner and those like him have honed their own sophisticated propagandist skills in Hollywood, elite universities and the news and social media.

A ruling class that is divided between the currently dominant “liberal internationalists” (Democrats and Republican Never Trumpers) of internationally-oriented capital and the challenger “conservative nationalists” of the more domestic-economy dependent capitalist sectors. One must not overdo such divisions though, as Trump and his ruling class supporters share much with the ruling class colleagues and may even have beliefs that rest in stark contrast to those they publicly espouse. The propaganda of such courtiers as Basham and Reiner is at least as much performative pantomime to divide and conquer the masses as it is representative of any real divisions within the US ruling class. The parallels with the book 1984 are, I am sure, evident to many readers of this blog.

It would take me many thousands of words to do justice to the myriad of highly developed propaganda techniques utilized in the above episode of the Tucker Carlson Show and in Rob Reiner’s documentary, so instead I will close with some thoughts on the importance of the style of such actors as Carlson. Firstly, no such show can exist as pure propaganda and therefore must utilize a significant amount of more factual material. Carlson most definitely fulfils this criteria, as with his interviews of Vladimir Putin and Jeffrey Sachs, providing himself with the legitimacy required to push his divisive propaganda. His progressive “opponents” also provide much fodder for questioning critique and even ridicule. In other cases he may also be representing the interests of the specific class fraction that supports him in pushing back against Liberal Internationalist policies such as the war in Ukraine. One thing he must never do is discuss the real dichotomy between the class interests of the very small ruling elite and the vast majority of the US citizenry. He also works hard to project a skeptical everyman image, one in great contrast to his $30 million net worth gained by being a courtier serving the US ruling class. This image helps him connect with the working people that his message is being directed at.

Carlson has now set up his own streaming service, as well as placing videos on X and Youtube. Although he still very much plays to the benefit of the US capitalist ruling class, with an orientation toward the Trump constituency, his recent providing of a platform to the anti-Zionist US Representative Thomas Massie places him against the collective US ruling class as well as the foreign influence arms of the Zionist regime. If needed he will be further “cancelled” and some other courtier(s), that remember that they are not more powerful than the ruling class nor irreplaceable, brought forward. The same would go for Rob Reiner if he suddenly discovered a conscience and sided with the occupied people of Palestine. If necessary some seedy episode from the past can be suddenly “discovered” or fabricated. As happened to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer when he decided to actually do his job and hold the Wall Street banks accountable for the mess they caused with the Global Financial Crisis. His usage of high end call girls, which would have been known by the security services, was suddenly made public. The very way in which J. Edgar Hoover operated during his decades at the helm of the FBI.

How many other politicians and public figures have used such services, or done much worse, but such things always seem to be hidden from the public? How many are on the Epstein tapes? Interesting how long the media “sat on” the tape of Sean Diddy beating up his girlfriend. How many tapes were made during the parties at Diddy’s mansion? What did Chuck Schumer mean when he said “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you”?

The intelligence community is a tool of the Internationalist part of the US ruling class. His statement was made on the Rachel Maddow show, a once good journalist who took the pieces of silver to become the “progressive” version of Tucker Carlson.

Those that point out the false dichotomies created by these ruling class courtiers and point out the very much shared agendas of the “opposed” parts of the ruling class (e.g. unwavering support for the Zionist regime, furtherance of ruling class wealth and power at the expense of the rest of society, the control of the state by the ruling class etc.) tend to be removed or sidelined as they threaten the divide and conquer strategy. The most recent cases being individuals that are supportive of the Palestinian cause such as Mehdi Hasan (who had previously been a very well behaved ruling class courtier) by MSNBC and Briahna Joy Gray by The Hill TV. And also of course the platform TikTok that houses so many non-compliant voices.