A Potemkin village is a fictitious façade that makes people think a country that is doing poorly is actually doing well. The term comes from the stories of a fake portable village built specifically to impress and deceive visitors in Russia during the time of Empress Catherine the Great. It turns out that just weeks ago, famous TV host Tucker Carlson went to visit Moscow ready to be pleasantly impressed, so he loved everything: the subway, the supermarket, the streets. Carlson created his own Potemkin village on a visit to Russia designed to sell Putin's government as a social, cultural and economic panacea. In the face of that façade, he declared himself "radicalized" against American leaders who did not provide as pleasant a life for their people as the Russian leader did. What led Tucker to try to sell this Potemkin village with so much passion and impudence?
The answer, beyond lucrative suspicions, possibly lies in the ideological frustration that Tucker Carlson has with the political class of his country, which leads him to venerate totalitarian regimes only for the fact that they present themselves as enemies of his enemies. Embracing the enemy of your enemy is an old and risky formula, but it is ever present. For example, after the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, in the American political discourse, the left mostly aligned itself with the pro-Palestinian claim against the Jewish state's right to self defense, in accordance with the woke narrative. According to this narrative, within intersectional ideology, the oppressive, white, capitalist West--in this case represented by Israel--is the enemy and consequently the Islamist terrorists who rule Gaza and are against Israel are the enemies of the enemy and therefore are good. This is nothing new, as it has been seen in the ideological basis of antisemitism that has grown on U.S. college campuses in recent years and that has spilled into the rest of society. The political left, which propagates these ideas about Israel, is the key driver of rise in Jewish hate. Instead of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 resulting in recognition of the global dangers posed by Islam, hatred of Israel resulted in the terrorists earning sympathy points for being enemies of the enemy, which turned them into friends.
Antisemitism, support for totalitarianism and so many other evils that the left said belonged to the right find in these characters a brutal confirmation of the stereotype that seemed so distant.
While most of the American political and social right has aligned itself with Israel during the current war of self-defense, a very influential group has turned against the Jewish state, providing intellectual cover to those openly involved in the demonization of Israel and Jews in general. The war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza also broke out among the right-wing media. Tucker Carlson and (former) Daily Wire personality Candace Owens are the two most prominent names of this group whose reactions to Oct. 7 have highlighted an ideology that until recently they had disguised.
Carlson became a star on Fox when he emerged as a leading conservative voice on issues such as immigration and later when he opposed his country's totalitarian COVID-19 policy. He was also the most recognized media personality willing to expose the atrocities of Black Lives Matter in 2020, which earned him the admiration of right-wing audiences. On the other hand, Owens, whose ideological path is much more sinuous, also opposed a significant number of identity-politics narratives, becoming exactly what the conservative movement needed. She is young, female, black and an expert in provoking reactions on social media. That is why the positions that Carlson and Owens are taking on Israel after Oct. 7 matter, not only because they are supporting leftist narratives with their radicalization, but because the right did not have these types of personalities early on and took them to be pillars and spokespeople. Antisemitism, support for totalitarianism and so many other evils that the left said belonged to the right find in these characters a brutal confirmation of the stereotype that seemed so distant.
The case of Candace Owens is now more relevant due to her departure from the platform where she worked, The Daily Wire, and the scandal that caused this split that pitted her against another famous right-wing media influencer, Ben Shapiro. Owens said what was happening in Israel was apartheid because the Old City of Jerusalem has a Muslim Quarter and a Jewish Quarter. She was quickly met with ridicule for her ignorance on the subject, as she did not mention the four neighborhoods of the Old City, omitting that there is a Christian Quarter and an Armenian Quarter, and that they were not created by Israel but date back to the urban layout created in the 19th century. She could have verified this herself if she had been interested in the subject, but Owens made these mistakes on Israeli issues with both flippancy and malice.
It is possible that Carlson, Owens and the troupe of influencers who support them ignore everything about history and geopolitics. In fact, they have proven to be shamelessly ignorant before, but even so, the reasons seem different.
Carlson has always criticized American war policy as a lobby that favors foreign adventures while neglecting the internal issues of the United States. This places him against Biden's commitment to the Russian-Ukrainian war and also against the U.S.'s historic support for the defense of Israel. While he never supported Hamas, his reaction focused on arguing against the United States' effort to keep Iran out of the conflict. He even summoned former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lash out at such efforts. On Carlson's show, Ramaswamy displayed his ignorant frivolity by proposing terrorism deterrence mechanisms typical of a video game, but the important thing for Tucker was to use the Republican politician to legitimize his own bias.
Exposing themselves
Carlson and Owens have made up lately. Carlson did a fawning interview with Owens as he had previously done with Putin, where both were astonished by people's overly "emotional" response to Hamas' atrocities, which seemed distant to them. Both said they did not know why Shapiro had criticized Owens' positions, given that neither of them found them antisemitic, even though Owens had accused Israel of being genocidal and had supported a famous Judeophobe and Hitler worshiper. It makes sense that Owens would have her moral compass so broken, since she has her own history of making controversial comments about Hitler. In 2018, when asked about nationalism, Owens condemned the way Americans link nationalism to Hitler: "If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well — OK, fine. ... The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany." Apparently, if Hitler only limited his carnage to within German borders, it would not have seemed serious to her.
When criticized, Owens immediately victimizes herself and claims persecution, classic leftist rhetoric. When her departure from Shapiro's publication was made public, she posted that she felt liberated. Who was holding her prisoner? Who was oppressing her? Owens is not a victim. She is a millionaire, influential and famous, just like Tucker. Both Owens and Carlson have a deep understanding of their audiences. This is how they accumulated so much visibility and influence. They know that to attract antisemitic or anti-Democratic groups, they do not need to use the old, outdated and discredited narratives of the last century that would turn off many of their followers. Usually, they only need to wink at their fans to hide their bias and not be exposed. However, in recent days, they stopped hiding their aberrant postures and exposed themselves openly. Will they believe that their audience is ready to take the leap and become the stereotype that the left has always condemned?
In recent weeks, they have dared to make statements that erase any ambiguity, they have been opposed to the historic alliance between the United States and Israel, and even against efforts to combat Iran and its satellites such as Hamas or Hezbollah. It could be said that these positions stem from the isolationism that Carlson defends, basically a Manichean version of "America first," but one of the most important enemies of the United States is Iran. Are they unaware that for the international terrorists guided and financed by Iran, the U.S. and Israel are indistinguishably its enemies? Do they think that if they isolate themselves from Israel's war against Hamas, the Islamists will stop calling them Satan? It is possible that Carlson, Owens and the troupe of influencers who support them ignore everything about history and geopolitics. In fact, they have proven to be shamelessly ignorant before, but even so, the reasons seem different.
They are a right-wing cohort that has become complicit with the woke agenda, buying and legitimizing its narrative as it relates not only to the State of Israel, but to Jews in general.
To understand the position of these personalities, it is necessary to pay attention to a trick they hide behind: they put before any statement against Israel, or that they know will raise criticism, the qualifier that they are simply asking an "obvious question." Then, while pretending to show concern about the issue, they distort the question. The strategy is based on not recognizing that their "simple questions" actually align with the left that they theoretically oppose on other issues. But they echo all the conspiracy theories of the left, from medieval Judeophobic delusions to the most current one, which is to affirm that those who support Israel put the interests of the Jewish state before those of their own country. And they are not alone, nor are they few. This is an important influential group that rationalizes antisemitism to make it more digestible to the masses to whom they speak every day.
It is true that they are not The Squad, the group of members of the House of Representatives with outstanding anti-Israel stances, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. However, embarrassingly for all of them, they share relevant points of view. Neither Candace nor Tucker hold political office, and because they are right-wing, they lack the support of Hollywood, the mainstream media and the activist groups of the woke left. But perhaps they are more harmful, because they do not influence the Democratic base, but rather the Republicans. They have a large number of followers on social media, a lot of money, and they usually set the agenda of Republican politics.
They are a right-wing cohort that has become complicit with the woke agenda, buying and legitimizing its narrative as it relates not only to the State of Israel, but to Jews in general. They share the same enemy, and that is why they view the enemies of that enemy with sympathy. As long as they remain important voices on the right, they will use their influence to spread their vision of an encapsulated U.S., an Israel guilty of its tragedies and an innocuous Iran. No matter what they talk about, their positions toward Jews and Israel will be mixed in. Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are well aware that this is happening, perhaps in their isolationist and indolent stance, they want to equate themselves with Pat Buchanan's paleoconservativism, but the truth is that they end up joining Barack Obama's side and, of course, favoring Biden. Maybe it is not innocent, it is a matter of weighing enemies, and maybe they just dislike Israel more than Rashida Tlaib.
Following the footsteps of the Democratic Party?
Trumpism puts the antisemitic and pro-Putin right in a difficult position. It forces them to balance between support for Trump, who in turn always supported Israel, and their ideas about the illegitimacy of the Jewish state, but also about other issues such as the foundations of democracy and freedom in general. They consider that to solve the many problems that afflict American society, it is necessary to deprive said society of those who made it prosperous, and instead they proclaim the benefits of totalitarianism and endorse antisemitism. They build on an understandable diagnosis that Western culture and its values are under attack and twist it into a new version of classic antisemitism, all while claiming to be persecuted for condemning this fact and "simply asking questions."
During the years when woke culture grew exponentially, the political and media apparatus of the American left imposed an ideology that judges people and their arguments not by their content, but by the identity of said person or argument. Their dialectical vision of the world is posed between oppressor and oppressed, between white heterosexual capitalist colonizers and all the rest (or the self-perceived rest), and thus they have destroyed the Democratic Party, turning it into a party of reactionary elites convinced of their own moral superiority. But if the right allows itself to be influenced by the same identity-based and resentful ideology, if the preaching by personalities like Owens or Carlson gains support and sets the agenda by fomenting animosity against the Jews, it will suffer an even worse fate than that of the Democratic Party. Because not only will Republicans see their party taken over by nefarious characters, they will become the prophecy that the left created for them: the authoritarian, fascist and antisemitic party. And that will necessarily undermine their political options in the middle of an election year.
