There are a couple things to keep in mind while viewing the latest edition of Tucker Carlson's White Nationalist Power Hour. The first is that the premier neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, absolutely loves Carlson. He's their favorite pundit, according to a study by BuzzFeed, which found posts from the site's founder, Andrew Anglin, calling Tucker's Fox News offering "basically ‘Daily Stormer: The Show.'" He also called Carlson "literally our greatest ally." That's thanks mostly to the escalating anti-immigrant propaganda Carlson's been serving up, including his diatribe about how immigration is making U.S. cities "dirtier." Anglin was clear why: "Other than the language used, he is covering all of our talking points."

Another thing to keep in mind is that, even a decade ago—before Donald Trump showed conservatives that they could really say the quiet parts out loud—Carlson was spewing disgusting anti-Muslim vitriol. In 2006, as the United States sunk deeper into a disastrous war in Iraq, Carlson told Florida shock-jock radio host Bubba the Love Sponge that Iraqis were "semiliterate primitive monkeys" who don't "behave like human beings." He expressed disdain for Iraqi culture and, separately, credited "white men" for "creating civilization." Never mind that the area of the Tigris and the Euphrates, home to Syria and Iraq in the modern day, is the cradle of human civilization. Tucker's got a chauvinist point to make for laughs while we bomb 'em!

All this is to say that his astoundingly racist rant about Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Tuesday night was entirely in line with things he's always been willing to say on TV and radio. Carlson just decided to up it a level, calling Omar "living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country."

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An absolutely stunning racist attack on @IlhanMN from Tucker. I'm shocked



She is "living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country"



She "is a living fire alarm. A warning to the rest of us that we better change our immigration. Or else" pic.twitter.com/p2IQWsqP5Q — Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) July 10, 2019

It is obviously no coincidence that the right in general, and Carlson in particular, consistently chooses a hijab-wearing Muslim woman as the target for vitriol about the destruction of The America You Know and Love. She is one of four progressive women of color who, while they're certainly outspoken, are the subject of an outsize number of right-wing rage cycles. The replies to any tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are a cesspool of vein-popping hate. It's the same impulse that's so common in interactions online: only Certain People are expected to express opinions in the public square.

Carlson packages this as an attack on Omar's views and ideology, because she has questioned U.S. imperialism and called out its failures to live up to its founding ideals. (She has also, in response to this segment, called Carlson a "racist fool.") But really, he is asserting she has no right to question these things—that she should just be grateful to be here. This is a crucial undercurrent of Trumpist conservatism, which holds as a fundamental tenet that the United States is a country built by and for white people—in particular, white men—and everybody else should just shut up and take whatever they're given. The idea Omar is not just a U.S. citizen, but a federal official elected by her constituents to debate and make American policy, doesn't seem to figure in.

Omar is a constant target for attacks from the right. Josh Brasted Getty Images

More than that is the subtext: Omar will always be The Other—that is, fundamentally un-American. Carlson suggests Omar has failed to "assimilate," as if she did not, again, win a campaign to get elected to the American federal legislature. But the suggestion is that American Values are not religious liberty or freedom of expression or equality before the law, but something...else. "Maybe we're importing people from places whose values are simply antithetical to ours," Carlson said, and then you begin to see the undercurrents. It's code. His viewers' brains were firing by this point. Sharia Law!

(Also, you might notice Carlson kept referring to the immigration of human beings as "importing," as if we're talking about cheap plastic goods from China. The goal is to dehumanize people, just as it is when you refer to them as "illegals," thereby reducing them to an immigration status.)

"No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and expect to survive," Carlson said, breaking out a bizarre Drunk Uncle reference to "the Romans." This idea that questioning American policy in an attempt to make it better is unpatriotic or anti-American is a classic reactionary trope. It was common under George W. Bush, when questioning whether we should send American men and women to die in Iraq was characterized as an attack on the troops and a failure of national loyalty. But now this device has been weaponized by people who really do not believe there is a place at the American table for people like Ilhan Omar. The Other should be neither seen nor heard.

The real danger, though, is in the escalation of rhetoric. Anti-immigrant fervor has reached a fever pitch on the right, and the president now routinely speaks in terms of invasions and monsters. Characterizing Omar as a threat to America itself, an outsider bent on "undermining" the nation, is incredibly perilous. It was broadcast to millions of viewers last night. The congresswoman already receives a huge number of threats, which spike after attacks from prominent right-wing figures—like when the president smeared her by connecting her to 9/11 in a Twitter video. But none of that will matter to Carlson, who's always willing to spread hate for money or laughs. Or maybe, just maybe, he's exactly what he's telling you he is.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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