Fox News Tucker Carlson Links Taliban Coup To US Gender Studies

US media is report­ing that Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son has attempt­ed to link the fall of the Afghan gov­ern­ment and seiz­ing of pow­er by the Tal­iban on what he calls an Amer­i­can imposed “neolib­er­al pro­gram,” cit­ing gen­der stud­ies as an exam­ple. Accord­ing to the report in The Week:

August 17, 2021 While the world watched in hor­ror on Mon­day as the Tal­iban quick­ly unrav­eled 20 years worth of work in Afghanistan, Fox News, offer­ing a sem­blance of nor­mal­cy, con­tin­ued to do what the net­work does best — make out­landish and politi­cized claims dur­ing a moment of nation­al reflec­tion. Tuck­er Carl­son, host of Tuck­er Carl­son Tonight, used his prime­time slot to claim Afghanistan’s fall is a result of a “grotesque,” Amer­i­can-imposed “neolib­er­al pro­gram” in which “men can become preg­nant” and Afghan women can serve in gov­ern­ment roles. “It turns out that the peo­ple of Afghanistan don’t actu­al­ly want gen­der stud­ies sym­po­sium,” said Carl­son. He also pur­port­ed that a swell of Afghan refugees are now com­ing to over­run Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hoods — “so first we invade, and then we’re invad­ed,” he said.

Read the rest here.

The  Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed last week that Carl­son had spent the week host­ing his show from Budapest where he gave what was described as a “fawn­ing inter­view” with Vik­tor Orbán, the increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an prime min­is­ter of Hun­gary, and pro­mot­ed Hun­gary under Orban as a mod­el for the future of the US. As that report not­ed, a DC lob­by­ing firm was said to have paid Hun­gary $265,000 in 2019, in part to arrange an inter­view on Carlson’s Fox News show. Anoth­er GIOR report indi­cat­ed that Russ­ian gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­dists rely heav­i­ly on Fox News, with clips fea­tur­ing Tuck­er Carl­son reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing on Russia’s most pop­u­lar state TV programs.

Oth­er GIOR report­ing on US rightwing attempts to use dis­in­for­ma­tion tar­get­ing the polit­i­cal left for polit­i­cal gain has included:

• A report from June 2021 that a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm close­ly linked to the pro-Trump youth group cre­at­ed a series of decep­tive ads false­ly attrib­uted to a left­wing group and appar­ent­ly aimed at split­ting the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote in close races.

• A report from June 2021 on a new orga­ni­za­tion launched with an ini­tial over $1 mil­lion cam­paign, like­ly fund­ed by US rightwing ele­ments, to com­bat what it described as polit­i­cal influ­ence in US schools.

For the orig­i­nal Carl­son tweet, go here.