Tucker: What Biden's war on White supremacy is really about
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host explains why the president's unity message doesn't include every American
Inauguration Day is always a big moment for this country, and so it was Wednesday.
There were solemn speeches, sworn oaths, belted anthems, all echoing against the backdrop of 26,000 smartly attired federal troops guarding our capital city from unseen threats. It was quite a display, a lot to take in, really.
If you watched and listened to most of the media coverage, you got the impression that Joe Biden will bring hope and decency back to America and fill the yawning void where empathy should be. His arms, lean and hard from decades of empathetic labor on our behalf, will encircle us like lights from the Lincoln Memorial. Joe Biden and his wife Jill are the father and mother of this nation, may their names emerge from our lips in praise forever. And so on.
The funny thing is, every person with a microphone in every TV studio in America knew the fuller truth. They knew, for example, that Joe Biden isn't well. Everyone in Washington knows that, but no one said it out loud. They withheld that news from you, as they have for months. So much for speaking truth to power.
Eventually, we flipped off CNN and decided to check out Joe Biden's speech for ourselves, and we found it interesting both for what it said and for what it didn't say.
One particular passage of the speech stuck out, one we found very hard to disagree with:
BIDEN: On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation, and I ask every American to join me in this cause ... With unity, we can do great things, important things.
To which we say, "Amen." Unity is precisely what this country needs more than anything. We are all in this together, and we have no choice but to hang together. Let's finally accept that we are one country, act like we are and make this a better place for everyone. If Joe Biden can bring unity to this country, he will be a legitimately great president.
But there's a catch. There always is a catch. Unity doesn't mean every single American because not everyone who was born within our borders really is an American. Some of us are beyond the pale of citizenship. These unfortunates may have American passports and birth certificates, but effectively are hostile foreigners. Here's who Joe Biden says those people are.
BIDEN: A rise of political extremism, White supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.
On one level, this is not very remarkable. Not many Americans support White supremacy. Most people in this country find it disgusting, and they should. But the question is, what does it mean to wage war on White supremacists? Can somebody tell us in very clear language what a White supremacist is?
This is not a question of semantics. Joe Biden is the president of the United States, not a high school debate coach. He controls the largest military and law enforcement agencies in the world. He has now declared war, and we have a right to know, specifically and precisely, who exactly he has declared war on. Innocent people could be hurt in this war. They usually are. There could be collateral damage in this war, and the casualties will be Americans.
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So, again, what is a White supremacist? You might be surprised to learn just how broad the definition has become. Bloomberg News has described a wall along our southern border as "a Monument to White Supremacy," so be certain not to support that. Colin Kaepernick, who seems to have the unequivocal support of corporate America, calls the Fourth of July an example of White supremacy. Better put away the fireworks and the hot dogs.
The United States Army, a trusted institution if there ever was one, has an entire manual on what is and what is not White supremacy. Apparently, among the tell-tale signs of a committed White supremacist are these: Celebrating Columbus Day, using the term "American exceptionalism", any support for federal border security or English-only measures or "education funding from property taxes". Using the phrase "there's only one human race" is White supremacy, too, according to the Army.
Here's the problem: Let's say you don't buy those definitions. Let's say you're, for example, White but poor and you have trouble accepting the idea that you're benefiting from some kind of structural advantage. Well, you'd better shut up about it if you know what's good for you, because according to the United States Army, the "denial of White privilege" is a classic sign of, yes, White supremacy. So no complaining.
You can see the problem with this. We certainly can. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" was not on the air six months before there was an organized and highly aggressive campaign by prominent Democrats to denounce us as White supremacists. The first time it happened, the people who work on this show, many of them kids, were shocked and horrified. The very phrase "White supremacist" evokes images of burning crosses and lynchings. It's awful, and in our case, it was totally undeserved.
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"Tucker Carlson Tonight" is completely opposed to the practice of judging people on the basis of their skin color. We have said that repeatedly every week for four years. No show in all media has said it more or meant it more sincerely.
Why have we said that? Why are we opposed to judging people on the basis of their race? Not simply because we were taught to oppose doing that (though we were), but because it's immoral and it's immoral because we believe in God. That's the real answer.
Believing in God doesn't make you a good person, unfortunately, but believing in God does answer the question of where we came from. God made us. That's what believers believe. Once you understand that, it is impossible to think that any one race is inherently better or worse than any other race. God made every person, God assigns identical moral value to every individual, God cares about all of us equally. So we are judged by what we do, not by how we were born.
It's not an accident that Martin Luther King was a Christian minister and Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were not. Secular leaders are the ones most likely to count their populations by race and then embrace collective punishment.
So the question is, why have they kept denouncing us as White supremacists, of all things? We've thought a lot about that. You should think a lot about it, too, now that the Biden administration has declared war on people they claim have White supremacist ideas. In our case, it started when we began criticizing the people in charge. Other channels fill their air with attacks on the Proud Boys, whoever they are, or QAnon enthusiasts or gun owners in central Pennsylvania who fix air conditioning for a living and tend to vote the wrong way. They go after those people, and you can see why.
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Attacking those people isn't hard. None of them have real power. You know who does have power? Private equity has power, a lot of it. So does Google, Citibank, the government of China, even silly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her massive social media accounts. Those are the people who run our country and they don't like to be criticized. On the other hand, they don't care to defend themselves directly with reason and fact, often because they can't. So instead, they denounce you and their critics as White supremacists, and then they just ignore what you say.
We've dealt with this for years and it no longer hurts our feelings, but there's a new regime in power and they seem to be planning to accelerate things dramatically. They're getting the FBI and the Pentagon involved in this hunt for people who may criticize them. That's a very big change, and you should understand what it's really about.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson' opening commentary on the Jan. 20, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight"
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