Tucker Carlson, who has been accused of spreading Russian disinformation on the invasion of Ukraine via his widely watched Fox News show, on Friday attempted to twist Barack Obama’s Stanford University address on disinformation.
Carlson claimed the former president’s sounding of the alarm on the dangers of social media actually meant he was a “full-blown fascist who hates you.”
Obama, in his speech, highlighted the problem of people like Russian President Vladimir Putin or former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon knowing they can flood “a country’s public square with enough raw sewage” and conspiracy theories “that citizens no longer know what to believe.”
“Oh, so people who disagree with Barack Obama aren’t just saying things that are wrong, they are flooding raw sewage into our country,” Carlson said, conveniently forgetting to mention Bannon’s infamous quote about dealing with the media, whom he called the real opposition, by flooding the zone with shit.
“So this guy is not just liberal. In fact, he is not liberal at all. He is a full-blown fascist who hates you and wants to keep you from talking, or else,” Carlson added of Obama, claiming the former president “wants censorship of anyone who disagrees with him and now he just comes out and says it.”
Responding to Obama’s comments that content moderation on social media “doesn’t go far enough” because the platforms will, for financial gain, allow users to push “right up to the line” of what is acceptable, Carlson declared:
“‘So me and my friends at the Aspen Institute need to be in complete control of every word uttered or else it’s not democracy.’ That’s the case he’s making. That’s the case they’re all making.”