Wednesday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue about the riots seen at the U.S. Capitol that left four dead and many more injured.
After emphasizing how “horrified” he was by the violence, Carlson said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that as long as the people feel that “their democracy is fraudulent” and are silenced while speaking out about it, the people will act out as seen on Wednesday and in history. He warned that the chaos at the Capitol could be used by the nation’s leaders to strip Americans of their basic rights.
Partial transcript as follows:
As long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting, they stay calm. They don’t storm the bastille. They don’t burst into the House chamber. They talk and they organize and they vote. But the opposite is also true. If people begin to believe that their democracy is fraudulent, if they conclude that voting is a charade, that the system is rigged and it’s run in secret by a small group of powerful dishonest people who are acting in their own interests, then God knows what could happen. Actually, we do know what could happen. It’s happening right now. It’s happened in countless other countries over countless centuries, and the cycle is always the same because human nature never changes.
“Listen to us!” screams the population. “Shut up and do what you’re told,” reply their leaders. In the face of dissent, the first instinct of illegitimate leadership is to crack down on the population. But crackdowns never make it better. Instead, they always make the country more volatile and more dangerous. The people in charge rarely understand that. They don’t care to learn or listen because all of this conversation is a referendum on them and their leadership, so they clamp down harder. “Obey, I tell you. Obey!” This is the Romanov program. It ends badly every single time. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try it again. Of course, they will because it’s their nature. It’s how we got here in the first place.
Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy, you can call them conspiracy theorists, you can kick them off Twitter, but that won’t change their minds. Rather than trying to change their minds to convince them and reassure them the system is real, that the democracy works as you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here, our new leaders will try to silence them.
What happened today will be used by the people taking power to justify stripping you of the rights were born with as an American. Your right to speak without being censored, your right to assemble, to not be spied upon, to make a living, to defend your family, most critically. These are the most basic and ancient freedoms that we have. They are why we live here in the first place. They’re why we are proud to be Americans. They are what make us different, and they are all now in peril. When thousands of your countrymen storm the Capitol building, you don’t have to like it. We don’t.
You can be horrified by the violence, and as we said and we will say it again, we are horrified. It’s wrong. But if you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you’re a fool. You lack wisdom and you lack self-awareness. You have no place running a country. We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault. It is their fault.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent