The Boogeymen Barely Exist And Deplatforming Tucker Hurts The Ones That Do

The deplatforming of Tucker Carlson and the worst of the old media giants will go a long way in relegating the fringe worst groups to the dark depths of the internet.

The Barely Existent Boogeymen

Noah Smith says in Tucker Carlson and the Age of Bad Feelings

But all the hatreds and suspicions that Tucker discovered and exploited are still out there in America, waiting to be exploited by someone else.

But it’s not really… It’s like how you can say Nazis are out there, but barely. The world’s largest English language Nazi publication, Stormfront, is now a blog run by a single person on a single server. After he failed to get enough donations to get enough donations to hire a staff he whined how the movement was failing. The Unite the Right rally, the largest White supremacist in decades managed to attract a few hundred people. The Boston version fit into a single gazebo.

Meanwhile the counterprotestors filled the streets

Richard Spencer’s meetings famously took place in the back of bars where they attracted more reporters than attendees. I’d include pictures but unfortunately the reporters who attended didn’t provide comparative pictures to visually illustrate

Further, I don’t follow Fox News. But is there another one of their anchors that is promoting the outright anti-Ukrainian Russian propaganda that Tucker does? I seriously doubt it. Because no one else is employing the same tactics that Russia uses to spread its misinformation, which I outline below. The Russian propagandists on their own are a fringe group wholly outside of the mainstream Right and Left. Without Tucker Carlson they no longer have a mainstream mouth piece.

Why Tucker Was A Unique Problem

Noah says

Being a successful media commentator is like being a startup founder — you have to find out what people want to buy from you, and figure out how to deliver it to them. In the startup world, this is called product-market fit

But he’s not a startup by any means. He’s more like when the NY Times responded to the blogosphere and started hiring New Media 1.0 bloggers to change with the times. In other words acquiring a startup is far different from being a startup. And sometimes the established brand doesn’t understand what they have and kill it. But if they do understand it they can Shark Tank it far greater than that startup could have done on its own.

Because as Noah points out

Tucker famously scrutinizes his minute-by-minute ratings in order to tell which topics generate the most engagement

But that ratings data is just how he validates the value of his acquisitions find. And what allows Tucker to be the Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful) for the alt-right.

But that’s not how he generates his product. What you have to understand is that Tucker’s show has parallels to the way Russia spreads misinformation as described here by Ryan McBeth. In short it involves 3 phases scattering, harvesting, and amplification. Russian intelligence scatters misinformation on sites like Telegram and 4Chan. Then they harvest that and start putting it on more reputable sites. Bigger Telegram channels, Facebook, Twitter and see what gets traction. And from there they amplify the stuff that takes hold.

From what we’ve seen of Tucker’s writers consisting of fringe Nazis he’s essentially copied the harvesting and amplification parts of this. His alt-right writers take the stuff that is gaining traction online. Then they give it Tucker to read on air where he amplifies it to his audience. This is how he stays on the cutting edge of the alt-right. And likely why he so often winds up a mouthpiece for anti-Ukrainian Russian propaganda.

But if you think of this as an industry with many suppliers and many retailers. Tucker’s firing doesn’t affect the supply side of things. But his firing does destroy the distribution retail end. It would be like if Costco and Walmart were wrapped into one and suddenly collapsed. And then someone tried to start a new big box store from scratch in the age of cheap Amazon deliveries (I mean maybe they could. But it’s a metaphor not an economics white paper).

Because Tucker could only amplify it so effectively because he came in with an old media audience. People followed him from Crossfire to his own show on Fox News. Where he built an even bigger audience there. But without that preexisting audience there’s no mechanism to amplify. It all stays buried in that harvesting phase amongst fringe groups who barely exist. And are mostly just lonely teens, most of whom will grow out of it by the end of college. And there’s too many of them saying the same things for any of them to stand out. Tucker only stood out because he adopted this model after he already stood out.

The Death of Thulsa Doom

A good analogy is The Great Disappointment. One the unifying force was killed they splintered into the Pentecostals and a few other extreme groups on the fringes of the larger Evangelical movement. But while the Evangelicals might have been a long lasting problem. And the Pentecostals might not be anyone’s favorites. But no one serious considers the Pentecostals alone an existential threat. Similarly, reactionary conservatism isn’t going anywhere. But as Tucker’s head rolls down those steps his followers will scatter into disunity.

EDIT: Tucker's Racist Text