Last night, a group of about 20 protestors gathered outside the home of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. In a now-deleted video on the social media pages of the anti-fascist group Smash Racism D.C., the protestors tell Carlson “We are outside your home.” (Carlson wasn’t home at the time. He was in the Fox News studios prepping for his show. Only his wife was home, and she called police, who reportedly responded within a few minutes.)
There are differing reports of what happened. Some say the group tried to break the door down. Others say the protestors stood on the sidewalk chanting and spraypainted an anarchy symbol in his driveway.
Let’s get this out of the way: I’m on team This Is Gross. There’s a big difference between this and publically doxxing someone, but personally, I also feel there’s a huge difference between something like, say, that giant LGBTQ protest dance party outside the Kushner’s home a while back and chanting things like “We know where you sleep at night,” which this group was reported to have done. I’m only speaking for myself there, but I wanted to get that out of the way before we move on to the main point: That of all the things about this that are horrible, the actual protests may be the least so.
No matter your feelings on whether or not you think this is an acceptable form of protest, here’s what’s not acceptable: Police are reportedly investigating this as a hate crime.
Hate crime laws are meant to protect vulnerable or marginalized groups and apply to crimes targeting “the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability” of a person. However, apparently, the Metropolitan Police Department considers political affiliation to be criteria for a hate (or “bias-related”) crime.
Here’s the thing: People aren’t protesting Tucker Carlson because he’s a Republican. We don’t hate him (just) because he supports Trump. The problem with Tucker Carlson is that he’s a racist, fearmongering promoter of white nationalism. The Republican Party has been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) working to make sure white nationalists and racists feel heard and accepted, but racism cannot be a protected tenant of political identity. To call the protesting of racism itself a hate crime is ludicrous and insulting. Especially when actual hate crimes can be so hard to have taken seriously, and when major media outlets use terms like “racially tinged” because they don’t want to commit to calling actions from the president or other Republicans all-out racist. Until those things change (and even then, tbh), sentient soup-stained bowtie Tucker Carlson doesn’t get to jump the line.
Making all of this even worse is that in the reporting of this story, very few outlets have even mentioned the truly despicable things Carlson has done. Like, for example, being party to the doxxing the creator of the anti-Breitbart activist group Sleeping Giants.
Having been a victim of relentless harassment myself, I am not down with people showing up at anyone’s home. My opinion. But the coverage of this neglects to mention that Tucker’s website,The Daily Caller, doxxed me last summer. https://t.co/nqTmc6DNAb
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) November 8, 2018
Last year, Tucker Carlson’s right-wing actual fake news outlet The Daily Caller published the then-unknown name of the founder, along with the names of his family and friends. The comments were full of threats, as well as his home address. And not a word of condemnation came from Carlson or the people rushing to support him now. The site also waited days to delete the comments.
Remember when my family was the subject of death threats after Tucker Carlson’s website published the names of my family and friends against their will and national reporters covered it all day?
Yeah, I don’t either.
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) November 8, 2018
They knew full well that when they published the article about me, there would be harassment. There was no other reason to publish the article. For weeks, my family got death threats, including some against my children. There was no coverage of this. pic.twitter.com/hmbFYb9ivi
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) November 8, 2018
That was by no means a lone incident, either. This is who Tucker Carlson is and what he’s built his career on.
People should not have done what they did at Tucker Carlson’s house.
However…
I wrote something critical once about the calamitous CNN show hosted by TC and Bill Press. TC then shared my private e-mail with what passed for his audience. I, and my family, got death threats.— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 8, 2018
Every news outlet I’ve seen cover this story has provided celebrity tweets or other sorts of commentary condemning the protests. But none are providing any commentary on Carlson’s history of supporting the doxxing of others, or even, say, the fact that he literally and very recently laughed at George Soros receiving a bomb at his home.
Tucker Carlson thought it was monstrous that activists chanted outside his home last night.
Two weeks ago he was laughing about Goerge Soros being mailed a pipe bomb. pic.twitter.com/4FvMWkjbyk
— Alex Morash (@AlexMorash) November 8, 2018
Providing that context does not mean you support the harassment of Tucker Carlson’s family, even though that is, of course, going to be how the right-wing media and probably the White House frames the story. It is infuriating that in covering this “hate crime,” so many respected outlets seem to almost fawn over Carlson and rush to show their support for him. You can condemn both a person and something done to that person. It’s not that hard.
You can agree that protesting outside of Tucker’s house is wrong while also recognizing that its categorically less dangerous than what Tucker does on TV every single night.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) November 8, 2018
(image: Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon)
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