Since Donald Trump’s election, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has ascended to
become a full caricature of white supremacy. Carlson frequently uses his 8 p.m. slot to attack immigrants with cherry-picked fear-mongering presented as news despite being little more than racist fan fiction. Last week, at least as far as advertisers are concerned, he went too far.
Boycotts resulted in more than a dozen companies pulling ads from the show. Since the corporate exodus began, various media gatekeepers rushed to condemn the boycotting of
Tucker Carlson Tonight. The resulting debate has provided a stark example of the mind-numbing paradigm of “both sidesism,” and the way it scrambles the national conversation. Engaging with different political viewpoints is not the same thing as sponsoring hate speech.
The inciting episode aired last Thursday, when Carlson claimed that allowing Central American immigrants into the country “makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.” Earlier in his remarks, he openly mocked those who believe “we have a moral obligation to accept the world’s poor.” The segment featured an image of literal garbage.
Carlson’s remarks were met with successful calls to boycott companies that advertise during his show. On Friday, Pacific Life Insurance pulled its ads, noting that, “As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson’s statements.” On Monday, Carlson doubled down on his initial remarks and complained he was being silenced by liberals. By Tuesday,
more than a dozen companies asked that their ads be removed from
Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In reaction to the boycott, Carlson is defending himself on the basis of “free speech.” I keep Command-F-ing the Constitution, and can’t seem to find the place where our founding fathers guaranteed that a bigotry variety hour be sponsored by IHOP, but Carlson is not wrong in that he is being “silenced.” Boycotts are a tactic of exerting public will, in which money is used as speech. By applying pressure to the companies who choose to be associated with Carlson’s show, boycotters refuse to allow his white supremacist rhetoric into mainstream acceptability. The goal is absolutely to get Tucker Carlson to shut up.
Given the apparent lack of accountability at the government level (see:
the president doing lots of crimes), the way corporate sponsorship responds to economic pressure is a crucial bastion of public will.
As the writer Alexander Chee wrote on Twitter, “When an un-democratic minority installs itself and is entrenched through voter suppression, gerrymandering, dark money, foreign intervention, and regularly moves against popular will, boycotts become a last way to express the democratic will of the majority.”