Glenn Greenwald excited by Tucker Carlson’s National Socialism
By 
I almost admire the way Glenn Greenwald has taken away any shred of plausible deniability from his dwindling army of non-wingnut apologists in this interview with the Daily Tucker:
He went on to say that he “would describe a lot of people on the right as being socialists,” such as former White House strategist Steve Bannon and “the 2016 iteration” of former President Donald Trump as a candidate, “based on what he was saying.”
“I consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist,” Greenwald said of the Daily Caller co-founder.
[…]
“I think the vision is, you know, you have this kind of right wing populism, which really is socialism, that says we should close our borders, not allow unconstrained immigration, and then take better care of our own working class people, and not allow this kind of transnational, global, corporatist elite to take everything for themselves under the guise of neoliberalism,” Greenwald said.
Solid list here from Glenn. But my own top 3 favorite socialists of all time have gotta be Lula da Silva, The My Pillow Guy, and Generalissimo Franco pic.twitter.com/L9tOE58hfo— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) March 4, 2021
That is George Wallace erasure!
Incidentally, the attempt to save face by claiming that Trump governed much differently than he campaigned just isn’t true. He in fact campaigned as an advocate for massive tax cuts and deregulation. At any rate, it’s clear what Glenn means by “socialism” and it has nothing to do with any kind of left politics:
Note, however, that we have proven only that Carlson, Bannon, and Trump fail any sane definition of socialism. There is still an insane definition, favored in parts of the right, which claims that Adolph Hitler was actually a socialist. By this definition, the political spectrum is a simple line, with one pole being laissez-faire capitalism as articulated by the American right and the other being any form of “big government.” Since fascism employs a great deal of government power and sometimes even uses the term socialist in its self-definition, fascism is actually on the left.
This was always a ridiculous way to understand fascism. It has become more obviously ridiculous over the past five years, which have brought actual, self-identified Nazis into a broad coalition with laissez-faire conservatives. (There’s a reason the Nazis called their 2017 Charlottesville torchlight rally “Unite the Right,” not “Unite the Left.” It’s because they’re on the political right.)
But yes, if you consider demagogic attacks on immigrants and the “transnational, global, corporatist elite” combined with substance-free promises to “take better care of our own working class” to be “socialism,” then you can describe Carlson’s brand of demagogic hate-mongering as socialist. In place of a redistribution of wealth, it offers working-class people the chance to direct their resentment at cosmopolitan elites [tugs collar nervously] and various brown-skinned people.
Propelled by his unshakable conviction that the Democratic Party is the main obstacle to the progressive agenda, Greenwald has successfully completed his orbit around the political spectrum. He now finds himself hailing the socialist bona fides of a wealthy heir who uses racial resentment to redirect the white working class away from material concerns. It’s a (National Socialist German) workers’ party now.
Since the inevitable next move of his erstwhile defenders will be to claim that this is some kind of new development, it’s worth noting that he’s just being more explicit about what he’s always been. He’s been doing anti-immigration screeds since he was on Blogspot. His preference for Trump over Clinton and Biden was just the logical extension of his preference of Ron and Rand Paul over Obama. It’s not that he’s changed; it’s that a lot of people were in denial about it.