It’s a double-burn, because while saying he knows Carlson isn’t a serious person, Putin actually prefers when stupid, easily-manipulated people ascend to positions of high authority in other countries.
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Invited Tucker for tea at a rooftop cafe and then fly home on Putin’s personal jet.
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I don’t think I could sit through 2hrs of Putin pontificating, but I will want to find a synopis of the whole thing later.
The handful of clips I have seen were pretty humiliating for Tucker. Basically he was there to nod and look stupid.
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I think we should all be grateful to Tucker for giving us a little perspective.
If you ever feel bad about yourself for any reason, you can always tell yourself “Well, at least I’ve never grovellingly kissed the ass of a brutal dictator in front of a global audience for two hours.”
On a 1 to 10 scale of personal integrity, Tucker Carlson is so far into negative numbers that even the James Webb Space Telescope can’t see him any more.
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Tucker was just playing his part in the right-wing propaganda script, as the only thing that appeals to his audience more than a bully is a bigger bully.
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The most amazing bit of this farce of an interview was when Putin defended Hitler, eliciting precisely zero response from Carlson. To quote a translation from Newsweek:
I even forced myself to search for that part of the video to figure out the context (the quoted bit starts at 14:25 in the full two hour video, if you feel like punishing yourself), but there’s not really any context worth talking about. Carlson tries to interrupt Putin’s rambling rehash of historical grievances by asking why Putin didn’t invade Ukraine when he first became president if the claim is so old (in other words: “please say NATO”), but Putin ignores him and says the bit about Hitler which, I guess, is meant to show that Poles, who had been mean to Russians, got what they deserved? Putin then moves on to list all sorts of territorial changes in Eastern Europe, not mentioning the poor peace-loving Hitler again.
If Carlson had even a tiniest fraction of journalists’ intuition, he would have pounced on this, because even on the surface level this looks like a goldmine. Is Putin sympathising with Hitler? Is this an analogy where Putin is Hitler and Ukraine is Poland? What about Hitler’s later invasion of the USSR - was that also the Soviets’ fault?
And if Carson had a bit of historical literacy, he could have gone deeper. It is true that Nazis tried to negotiate with Poland, and invaded only after the negotiations failed because Poles were “uncooperative”. But the thing is, Hitler wanted Poland to ally with the Nazis and attack the Soviets, whereas Poles believed that they would prevent a Nazi-Soviet war by standing as a neutral buffer between them. So, is Putin suggesting that Poland should have joined forces with the Nazis and attacked Russia?
It’s a massive self-own by the self-proclaimed denazifier but it was allowed to slip though unchallenged.
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As did the Soviet Union. For a little under two years, there was a non-aggression pact between Soviet leaders and the Nazis. It didn’t end until the Nazis reneged on the deal and attacked the Soviet Union.
I can’t imagine why Mr. Denazifier didn’t mention that little piece of Russian history. Perhaps he ran out of time.
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I’m British and out of touch with the speed at which the Overton window has moved in the US. Can anyone explain how/why it is that the right wing in the US now supports Russia?
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They support Putin because he’s an authoritarian kleptocrat and a bully who allows the church and state to mix, who enacts bigotry into law, and who puts “elites” and experts (i.e. people with book learnin’) in their place. Just like their orange-hued god-emperor, who’s only had good things to say about the Shirtless Wonder and who’s been a prime beneficiary of disinformation campaigns originating in Russian tr0ll factories.
In their eyes that makes him the only major world leader currently willing and able to be the saviour of white Christian civilisation as they define it.
The KGB and Soviet stuff? Bygones. He’s a proper rapacious capitalist now, thieving exactly like they would in his position.
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It’s a long road - start with Nixon in the 70’s and the deliberate attempt to court ‘behind the sheets’ racists with language tailored to sing to their hearts. Next comes the impeachment and that spawned Fox News (eventually) as a specific Republican propaganda machine. Now follow with Regan and his embrace of the ‘christian coalition’ into newt gingrich’s ‘contract with america’ - follow this line to the tea party who were funded mostly by the Koch brothers with the intent to get more radical politicians that didn’t just talk the rhetoric but honestly were true believers.
Add into all that mix a little experiment conducted by Steve Bannon who at the time was making money selling gold in World of Warcraft and saw the ‘gamer culture’ that comprised of many young teen men who had bred this online ‘machismo’ culture that was very insular. He used known psy-ops tactics and experimented with this culture to see what kind of propoganda would stick and how he could weaponise the anger that was simmering - the anger that was young men who couldn’t find jobs due to the economy, and couldn’t move out, and were stuck with parental control and had little to no other outlet for their emotions, but were given re-enforcement from the ‘gamer’ culture.
This leads to Gamergate - which was only really an experiment for Bannon - but who used all the things he learned about how to use the internet to make a weapon and turned it against ‘the establishment’ in the 2016 election. Follow along to Trump being the ‘Republican Candidate’ and then having the Russian intel dossier leak (the Steele Dossier - that came from you guys - in England) - and because of all the above the Republican party who had been guided into complete tribalism when… yeah if that’s the case then Russia is good!
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It doesn’t make sense even in that context. While Poland did pick up some pieces of Czechoslovakia/Slovakia after Munich and the First Vienna Award, the Danzig corridor wasn’t part of either deal. It quickly became clear that it was next on Hitler’s menu, and is the reason Poland entered into an alliance with the UK. That’s Putin’s definition of being “uncooperative”: not giving into bullies who threaten to steal from you.*
Meanwhile, Hitler – lacking any internationally recognised claim to Polish territory or Danzig – “implemented his plans” with a manufactured false flag attack by Polish soldiers (really dead and disfigured prisoners from Dachau dressed in uniform) on a German radio tower. And of course, dividing Poland up with the USSR was part of the plan. Not that Vova would include any of that in his “history” lesson. Not that it makes a difference to Carlson or the fascist cretins who still follow him.
[* I’m sure he thinks that Ukraine was being similarly “uncooperative” over Donbas. If anything, that’s the “we had no choice” comparison he’s trying to make between himself and poor ol’ Hitler.]
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Moral abdication seems to be a persistent theme in Russian politics–
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Worst Mr. Six ever.
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These are the end-days for Putin
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