Great conversation starter @admin (as I guess you knew )
I’ve not got to the end yet as there have been a spate of videos and I sometimes take notes and go hunting for references.
I’ve just watched a couple of the items so far; I’m sure I’ll have comments on some of the items; I’d just like to give my thoughts on the intriguing question you raise of how to perceive people like Tucker Carlson…
I reckon Carlson’s conversion is sincere enough for where he is (as opposed to where he has been), he was already railing against foreign policy and must have foreseen his inevitable ejection. I think the ‘right refugees’ in the public sphere dropped out of the system because it was hard for them to be individual in the new regimen of total conformity. The clear deceit in what they were speaking out against has given them easy lies to ridicule, and eased their reinvention as speakers of truth. Their great existing reach has ironically induced many more to think for themselves. I think this has been easy to see in comments under covid stories; very many people now don’t trust the system or its mainstream media one bit, and don’t need to express extreme or fringe political views to challenge official narratives.
The pair being interviewed might be good examples. Doctor Casey Mearns dropped out of her own volition remarkably quickly, and seems to have caused her errant Pharma-lobbyist brother Calley to have a change of heart. Oddly, I didn’t like the way he spoke - despite largely agreeing with what he was saying (maybe I just couldn’t shake his Pharmalike aura).
There might be some politics going on there too - there are some rightish references, reflecting the probable audience and perhaps with one eye on the November elections.
If like me you (meaning ‘one’ in the Royal sense) equated ‘left’ with ‘good’ and ‘right’ with ‘bad’ (dropping the Royal sense ), you might also, like me, be having your eyes opened. To me these values themselves are still ‘true’ or at least useful, but the tectonic shifts we are seeing suggest you can’t judge people by their political attire alone as the labels themselves are coming unstuck - they don’t mean what they used to.
Accusations of supporting the politics of the F-word would cause traditional lefties to froth in paroxysms of rage yet there isn’t a better word to describe the process of merging corporate power, state, and the interests of the very rich that we have seen merging in covid (and before, in medicine); and that TPTB are so very seen to ramp up and complete ASAP.
No wonder people like Carlson and even Jordan Peterson now come across for many as role models of resistance, with everything forgiven.
To the question whether people like Carlson and Rogan and their followers have become ‘good’, the companion question is whether left figures who support the new tyrannies have become ‘bad’. People like Chomsky, President Lula. Assuming that they are ‘good’ they probably haven’t seen fit to educate themselves in some medical and associated political realities. If you’re from the left-good side, it’s being on the right/wrong side of those realities that has caused the gap between the old right and left to narrow, or disappear. If there is really to be a new world order then the old gap will be irrelevant to the political dynamic.
To the question of what happens after the dawn of this order, as in who is best equipped to survive the impacts, well I think that would probably reflect old politics of wealth vs poverty. If the turkeys themselves usher in Christmas, we know what will happen.
An extreme view perhaps - but you have to consider the people who are driving it, in which case it might also be seen as jolly logical, even consequential.
Thanks for the post!