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Tucker Carlson, Liberator?
Tucker Carlson visited Canada this week to “liberate” it from … from what exactly?
Well, that’s what thousands of people – including the premier of Alberta – came to Calgary and Edmonton to hear in packed arenas.
Tucker’s two-day liberation tour from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “authoritarian dictatorship” is timed perfectly around two political pieces of populist kindling: Trump’s march to victory in the US presidential primaries and a Canadian judge’s ruling that the Liberal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act during the Trucker pandemic protest was “unreasonable” and unconstitutional.
It all sent a message: The populist forces are gathering and ready to take down Trudeau (and Biden) and save Canada from “disgusting decline.”
Here are the things destroying Canada, according to Liberator Carlson: mass immigration, medical assistance in dying (“genocide”), legalized pot, transgender people, the woke folks, the media, big tech, a “metrosexual” prime minister, anti-Christian groups, solar panels … and then, the great biggie, the authoritarian state itself, which exposed itself during the pandemic. “This is a destruction of you and your culture and your beliefs and your children and your future,” Tucker breathlessly summarized.
Pause for a moment on that sentence, because in it lies, perhaps, the most challenging dynamic facing democracies worldwide: hate disguised as anger. The stark casting of politics as a personal, apocalyptic battle over the imminent destruction of … everything. Your culture. Your beliefs. Your children. Your future.
In Tucker’s End-of-Days casting, this is not a mere election cycle, a debate of ideas, or even a culture war. It is a war. Period. Mao Zedong once said “politics is war without bloodshed,” but as the rhetoric keeps getting hotter and political opponents are increasingly viewed as personal enemies, the lines between politics and war are dangerously blurred. And it raises the question, how to respond to this?
The first thing to establish is that a fierce debate of ideas is the core of democracy. Freely disagreeing with others is the whole shemozzle here, so protecting and defending the right of people to say things you disagree with (outside of hate speech, etc.) is foundational. Disagreement doesn’t make someone the enemy; it makes them a partner in democracy. That’s why the arrest of a commentator from Rebel News as he chased down a Canadian minister was fundamentally wrong. And why having Carlson come to Canada is perfectly normal. It may have a political impact, but it was not and should not be banned. Questioning power and protecting speech is core democratic stuff.
It's also why debates and court cases over, say, the government’s use of the Emergencies Act in Canada are critical.
But contrary to Carlson’s distorted mirror, this happens all the time. That’s why willfully twisting facts, playing footsie with hate speech – Carlson’s stock in trade as he profits from paranoia – needs an equally robust response.
For example, the Emergencies Act is a controversial tool, but the fact is, it was heavily scrutinized when invoked. There was a vote in Parliament, a built-in sunset clause (it was only in use for nine days), an inquiry headed by Justice Paul Rouleau (whose scope included access to confidential cabinet documents), and court cases from civil liberties groups … who just won!
Hardly the hallmarks of a dictatorship. It is the robust debate about a government’s use and overuse of powers, which is ongoing in any democracy. Torquing this stuff as some kind of fascistic conspiracy erodes the hard work it took to build these check and balance systems in the first place.
On one hand, the media and politicians have to be extra transparent, open, and fair, and they should take criticism about their own biases and assumptions. On the other hand, they can’t be scared to check facts, call bullshit, and avoid promoting hate.
For example, as Carlson raged about the government’s overreach on COVID – “hey Canada forcing people to take an untested medicine is not a good idea” – he left out the fact that in January, February, and March of 2020, HE was one of the leading voices calling on the government to do MORE. “People you know will get sick …Some may die. This is real,” he said. In March, he actually visited Donald Trump in the White House to urge him to take stronger action. “Anybody who imagined that this was just media hype turned out to be wrong,” Carlson said. “Feb. 3 is the day that it was confirmed to me by a US government official that this was a huge problem and that a lot of people could die. That’s when I learned it. And that’s the night we went on the air and said, "Wow this is something you really need to worry about.’”
Did Tucker mention any of this during his liberation tour? Is calling out his own call for action against the dangers of COVID political bias or just fact-checking
the revisionist history he’s peddling?
I guess this used to be called “standards,” but standards of shame, debate, and humanity have been abolished by the anonymous shield of social media, the political efficacy of disinformation, and the profitability of anger. Both the far right and the far left, among other culprits, bear responsibility. This is not bothsidesism. The fringes of both political spectrums have destroyed the middle ground on a host of issues – the pandemic, Ukraine, Israel-Gaza – and made reasonable dialogue a helluva lot harder.
Where does it end up?
Look, people are scared about where we are headed, but let’s not arm up.
Maybe it’s just good to remind folks that in the US and Canada, though there are real and deep problems, we have it pretty darn good next to, well, almost anywhere.
In the US this week, inflation was 3%, wage growth was 3% and employment was 3%. Look around the world. That’s not bad.
It sure as heck doesn’t look like the apocalypse or like your children will be destroyed.
Wars require liberators. Democracies require candidates.
Canada may pull the plug on Fox News
Back in March, before Tucker Carlson tried to convince America to invade Canada, and before he was fired in the fallout from the $787 million Dominion settlement, he did a segment that could see Fox fade to black in Canada.
In the rant — about a school shooting in Nashville, where a transgender man killed three children and three adults — Carlson warned about “trans terrorism,” saying Christans should prepare to be targeted for violence by the trans movement, a “deranged and demonic ideology.”
In the United States, with its strong First Amendment protections of free speech and weak broadcast regulation, Carlson’s rant was just another salvo in the culture war. But in Canada, it could have regulatory consequences, because Carlson attacked Egale, a Canadian LGBTQ organization, saying it was lying about violence against trans people, which it wasn’t.
A week after the broadcast, Egale sent a complaint to the CRTC — the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (Canada’s version of the Federal Communications Commission) — asking that it ban Fox News.
“To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer,” wrote Egale.
Egale has a case. Canadian law forbids broadcasting material that “is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt.” Describing trans people as “demonic” would seem to qualify.
The regulator, which is run at arm’s length from the government, has banned other channels. Last March, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the CRTC announced that RT and RT France — which are controlled by the Russian government — could no longer be carried by Canadian cable outlets.
“Foreign channels can be removed from the authorized list should their programming not be consistent with the standards to which Canadian services are held,” said Ian Scott, who was then the chairperson of the regulator.
If that is the standard the CRTC uses, it would ban Fox. No Canadian broadcaster could get away with running a rant like the one Carlson did. The CRTC routinely acts with a heavier hand than the FCC, which has been restrained ever since 1985, when Ronald Reagan repealed the fairness doctrine. In June 2022, for example, CRTC ordered Radio-Canada, the French language branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to apologize for even mentioning the N-word in a radio broadcast about a book important to Quebec nationalists.
Earlier this month, the CRTC agreed to consider Egale’s complaint. It opened a public consultation process that has so far collected 6,500 submissions from both people who want Fox banned to prevent it from spreading hate and Fox fans who would see a ban as an attack on freedom of expression.
Peter Menzies, the former vice-chair of the CRTC, thinks Fox could get yanked. “I think the CRTC is very predisposed to getting rid of them,” he says.
Menzies says the regulator could just note that Carlson was fired and issue a warning: “The other option would be to take a look at it and say, ‘Yeah, we find they did something wrong here,’ and just write a nasty letter, and say ‘please don't do it again.’”
But Menzies, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is worried about the prospect of a ban because the Liberal government recently passed Bill C-11, extending CRTC’s authority to the internet, drawing streaming services under the authority of the broadcast regulator for the first time.
Conservatives warned that this would lead to censorship, while the Liberals insisted it was about ensuring that big streamers like Netflix follow Canadian content rules that apply to other broadcasters. Menzies fears the critics might be right.
And he would like to know why the CRTC has been swift to act on Fox but seems to be dragging its feet dealing with China Central Television Channel 4, or CCTV-4, a Chinese state broadcaster that CRTC approved in Canada in 2004. The CRTC has yet to rule on a complaint from Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was arrested by Chinese officials in 2016. The authorities broadcast Dahlin’s forced confession on CCTV-4, a tool the government in Beijing routinely uses to humiliate activists.
If the CRTC bans Fox News for spreading hate, shouldn’t it also ban CCTV-4 for airing forced confessions? Neither ban would do what the CRTC intended in 1987 when it enacted the Television Broadcasting Regulations: stop Canadians from consuming the content in question. All the content is available on the web, which did not exist in 1987.
Until the Liberals passed C-11, the CRTC based its authority on its stewardship of a public resource — the airwaves — but in the modern internet era, consumers can watch whatever they like from anywhere in the world.
Fox News is not included in basic cable packages in Canada and doesn’t appear to be widely viewed. Canadian TV ratings aren’t public in the way that Neilsen ratings are in the United States, so it’s hard to be sure, but it does not even register in Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news report on Canada.
But that doesn’t mean nobody is watching. Many Canadian Fox fans are getting their fix online. Research shows that Fox reports on the “Freedom convoy” helped energize protesters last year, because the content was spread through social media platforms, where content is unregulated.
Banning Fox would enrage its Canadian fans — further enflaming a group that is already incandescent with rage against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — but it likely wouldn’t do much to stop people watching.
Carlson, after all, is moving his show to Twitter, beyond the reach of the CRTC. Growing numbers of Canadians are cutting the cord, and getting their video online. Canada can send a signal about Canadian values by banning Fox, but it can’t stop anyone from watching.
People pass by a promo of Tucker Carlson on the Fox Corp. building in New York.
What We’re Not Watching: Tucker’s ‘O, Canada’
Chances of an American invasion of Canada fell this week when Fox News dropped Tucker Carlson from its lineup, a move that appears to be part of the fallout from the network’s massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
Tucker’s departure means that a host of far-right Canadians will not be getting the moment in the sun they expected from a special – that was set to air on May 1 – exploring whether the US should launch a military campaign to overthrow Canada’s “authoritarian” government.
In this space last week, we pondered the implications of that broadcast, since Carlson’s millions of viewers could be influenced to think bad and inane things about their northern neighbors. It turns out that we needn’t have worried.
Fox Senior Media Relations Manager Ali Coscia confirmed by email on April 26 that the show will not be aired: “Confirmed — this episode will not run on Fox Nation. There are no further new episodes of Tucker Carlson Originals running on the platform.”
This is bad news, no doubt, for Lauren Southern and the other marginal personalities from the Canadian far right, but it’s good news for the cross-border relationship. Now, millions of Fox viewers will never be told that Justin Trudeau is a dictator who should be overthrown by force.
As for the broader meaning of the Carlson exit, check out this thoughtful New Yorker article, which argues that it doesn’t matter that much. The network, not the talking head, is the real star. Ian Bremmer, meanwhile, believes Fox made the right move, but he also thinks Carlson will simply take his brand elsewhere and still find a way to have a huge impact in 2024.Tucker Carlson wants to invade Canada
When Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s father) was prime minister, he famously said living next to the United States was like sleeping with an elephant: “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
So Canadians should expect a restless night on May 1, because that’s when Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson releases his latest project: a special film called “O, Canada.” The program argues that the US should “liberate” Canada … with military force.
Carlson, known for sharing white nationalist conspiracy theories with 2.5 million Americans five nights a week, just dropped two trailers that portray Canada as an authoritarian hellhole where citizens are jailed for protesting against the government. They highlight interviews with a constellation of figures featured on Rebel News, a far-right Canadian outlet that depicted anti-lockdown protesters as victims of Liberal stormtroopers.
The scenes include two pastors who were locked up for violating COVID public health laws. Populist leader Maxime Bernier, who was arrested for attending a rally that violated pandemic gathering restrictions, and Rebel News broadcasters Alexandra Lavoie and David Menzies all claim to have been roughly treated by police.
But the star of the film appears to be Lauren Southern, a telegenic 27-year-old documentary filmmaker from Surrey, B.C., with a long track record as a white-nationalist provocateur. Southern is shown shooting in the wilderness, lamenting Canadian gun laws (we have bears in trees, she points out). In a sit-down interview at Fox’s California studio, she tells Carlson that the situation is “absolutely maddening.”
“We’ve just found out our elections were almost entirely rigged by the Chinese government,” she says, referring to the recent scandal over Beijing’s alleged election meddling. “Canadians are living in a state of absolute fear of our government, and we’re not even sure if our government is controlled in Canada or overseas.”
“Whether your democracy is real or not, of course, that’s a familiar feeling to Americans,” says Carlson.
The trailers feature unflattering images of Trudeau – including a Hitler-esque rendering of his face – and clips of American leaders announcing military strikes in Iraq and Libya. The implication? That the US should consider a shock and awe campaign in Ottawa.
The premise, of course, is laughable, and about as absurd as Fox’s attacks on Dominion Voting Systems, or Carlson’s 2022 special, which promoted testicle tanning. Canada’s lifesaving COVID restrictions were imposed by democratically elected governments and backed by a majority of voters.
The Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear an anti-lockdown protest in Ottawa, but a public inquiry found that the government acted properly. The manager of the 2021 Conservative campaign has written that while the Chinese did interfere, the election outcome “was not influenced by any external meddling.”
Carlson is going to foist a farrago of lies and nonsense on his viewers, giving them a fundamentally wrong impression of their neighbor. But few Canadians think that gun ownership is necessary as a hedge against tyranny. And polling from Maru Public Opinion for GZERO Media shows that only a small minority of Canadians consider themselves to be oppressed by an authoritarian government.
“It's not representative of Canada,” says John Wright, executive vice president of Maru. “It's propaganda. It's falsehoods. To suggest that this is a country on the verge of revolution ... You're gonna get somewhere between 9 and 17% of the public, depending upon what avenue you want to go down, that feels that way.”
The special may be premised on falsehoods, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on the relationship between Canada and the US. Greg Elmer, director of the Infoscape Research Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, points out that Fox viewers know little about Canadian politics and will believe what Carlson tells them, which could lead to political friction over trade.
“I do think, unfortunately, that we do need to take it seriously just because of the size of the platform,” Elmer says.
If Carlson convinces voters that Canada is an authoritarian dystopia, politicians may act on that impression. Wright points out that a small number of MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives can exercise disproportionate influence because GOP leadership needs every vote, as we saw in the many rounds to select a Speaker.
“It doesn't take much when you have a split House like this to have consequences if they decide that this is part of the rhetoric,” Wright adds.
Carlson’s inane special will also give an enormous boost to Rebel News personalities who are typically on the margins of Canadian public life. Research shows that American outlets, especially Fox, supercharged “Freedom convoy” content in 2022, helping turn a niche protest into a mass movement that paralyzed Ottawa and blocked border crossings.
Pandemic restrictions are gone, and the leadership of the movement is divided and dispirited, but Carlson is about to give them a huge jolt of energy.
And the rest of Canada? It will need to sleep with one eye open until this elephant leaves the room.
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But if the US did invade and take over Canada – which we think is preposterous – what would the new names be for the Montreal Canadiens and the Vancouver Canucks? Send us your greatest names here.
The Graphic Truth: No need to liberate Canada
Tucker Carlson says it’s time to invade Canada because the Canucks are being oppressed by an authoritarian government that won’t let them run amok with guns (and unvaccinated). But a bit of digging by Maru Public Opinion shows that the vast majority of Canadians are not feeling oppressed. Sure, some would prefer looser gun laws, but the majority are not screaming about tyranny or planning a revolution. We look at their views on various freedoms and compare the percentage of each population, American and Canadian, that believes relations between the two countries have gotten worse.
GZERO North is a weekly newsletter that gives you an insider’s guide to the very latest political, economic, and cultural news shaping US-Canadian relations. Subscribe today.