A Great Replacement

Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. His departure will be mourned by his loved ones, such as neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin and right-wing extremist Ben Shapiro.

The diabolical brilliance of his racist character was that he was able to occupy a grounds between traditional Republicans and actual Nazis, bridging the beliefs of both groups and winning the adoration of both. “Tucker Carlson is literally our greatest ally. I don’t believe that he doesn’t hate the Jews,” wrote neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin in the Daily Stormer, a white-supremacist publication. Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative, marked Carlson’s departure from Fox by calling him “immensely talented and one of the most important voices on the right, and he’s going to continue to be those things no matter what comes next.”

And while I have no doubt Fox will replace him with an ambitious right-wing go-getter who is eager to prove he can be just as racist as Carlson ever was, in this moment it's hard not to feel satisfaction.

Russia Invades Ukraine

The war has begun. It is pure, unadulterated, irredentist imperialist aggression by a far-right authoritarian state against an American ally, and if there's the tiniest of silver linings it's that every serious commentator -- which includes people like Bernie Sanders but excludes people like Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tucker Carlson -- is unapologetic in recognizing it as such.

We can only hope that something convinces Russia to turn off this course of action with a minimum of bloodshed and human suffering. But acts require a united response from the liberal democracies of the world, and so far thankfully it looks like that's what we're seeing.