Mad, but not a fascist?
On not being reassured about Trump
Last week the former Fox News host and current J.D. Vance intimate Tucker Carlson, gave a warmup speech for Donald Trump at a rally of the Turning Point Political Action Committee in Duluth, Georgia. Turning Point is a well-funded PAC associated with support for Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the result of the 2020 presidential election.
The most remarkable passage in Carlson’s speech came when he was talking about those who, in his view, had allowed money to be spent on helping migrants to live and work in the US, as well as committing other political sins. It’s worth reading this passage verbatim, partly because I don’t think I’ve heard anything quite like it in my journalistic lifetime. So, Carlson:
If you allow people to get away with things that are completely over the top and outrageous; if you allow your two year old to smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room and you do nothing about it; if you allow your 14 year old to light joints at the breakfast table; if you allow your hormone addled 15 year old daughter to, like, slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you're going to get more of it and those kids are going to end up in rehab.
It's not good for you and it's not good for them. There has to be a point at which dad comes home – yeah - dad comes home and he’s pissed. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be. He loves them because they’re his children, they live in his house but he's very disappointed in their behaviour and he's going to have to let them know. He's going to have say “to get to your room right now and think about what you did’”. And when dad gets home you know what he says?
“You've been a bad girl. A very bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you. I'm not gonna lie. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me and you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.”
It has to be this way. It has to be this way 'cause it's true and you're only going to get better when you take responsibility for what you did. That's not said in the spirit of hate, it’s not said in the spirit of vengeance or bigotry far from it. It’s said in the spirit of justice which is the purest and best thing there is and without it things fall apart”.
It's hard to know what’s more disturbing about this passage (which was loudly applauded by Carlson’s audience), the sexual psychology or the politics. To touch on the former, a “vigorous spanking” for a pubescent girl delivered with some relish by her father is the very stuff of child pornography. Post a picture of that online and you’ll go to jail.
Also you may ask yourself why Carlson chose the girl to get so energetically spanked? What happens to the misbehaving 15-year-old boy? Does he get a vigorous spanking? Or is there a possibility that he might punch Dad right back or go to his closet and get that AR15 Dad bought him for his birthday and take the whole family out? Perhaps that prospect just doesn’t carry the same erotic or misogynistic charge.
What about the politics, though? Who is who in Carlson’s domestic drama? Dad is obviously Donald Trump and his cohorts once they are back in the White House. Mom doesn’t figure anywhere so we don’t need to worry about her. But who is to be “vigorously” chastised, for what transgressions and presuming this is just a metaphor, what form should this corrective punishment take?