Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson commented on how countries around the world were headed down a path of authoritarianism in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19.
According to Carlson, the trend was the opposite of some historic norms and was impacting society and the environment.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: You’ve heard the name Naomi Wolf before. She has been a prominent person in this country and a prominent Democrat for more than 30 years.
Wolf is one of the founders of third-wave feminism. She worked for Bill Clinton. She advised Al Gore famously. Late last year she voted for Joe Biden. You’ve almost certainly seen her book. She’s written a lot of them.
A couple of years ago, we criticized Naomi Wolf by name on this show. We didn’t think we agreed on much to put it mildly. Yet less than a week after the last election, Wolf surprised a lot of people by tweeting this, quote: “If I’d known Biden was open to lockdowns as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic and a terrifying practice, one that won’t ever end because elites love it. I would never have voted for him.”
Wow. Where did that come from?
And more to the point, how did a faithful lifelong Democrat reach that conclusion? Maybe because whatever her preconceptions, Naomi Wolf has been paying attention. And that’s true for a lot of us actually, regardless of who we voted for.
People who have been watching carefully may find they have very different views than the views they once had, and the reason for that is simple. Reality itself is changing very fast.
All over the world, countries that once seemed like bulwarks of traditional liberal values: freedom of assembly, property rights, freedom of speech and conscience, have suddenly abandoned their long-standing traditions of protecting the individual and now resemble police states. It’s not an overstatement.
The change has been sudden, and it’s been dramatic and the pretext for it, of course, has been COVID. Consider Canada, our sprawling ice-covered neighbor to the north.
Not so long ago, Canada was considered such a stable and restrained place that its main problem was being uninteresting. Nothing seemed to happen there. The great white waste of time, they called it. Not anymore.
Since COVID arrived, the Canadian authorities bear no resemblance to the taciturn Mounties, you may remember. They act like Burmese generals putting down a coup, nothing is too harsh for their own citizens.
This footage, for example, was shot New Year’s Eve in the Canadian city of Gatineau. A group of friends gathered in a private home. No one was selling fentanyl, no one plotting a homicide. Just a group of relentlessly polite Canadians celebrating the New Year.
Apparently, somebody called the police and here’s what happened next.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
CARLSON: That’s pretty shocking, but what happened after that may be worse than the footage you just saw. The police fined everyone at the gathering $1,500.00 a piece and then they arrested the owner of the home.
Now, he wasn’t charged with attacking a cop or spreading COVID, which no one claimed he did. No. His crime was described as, quote, “refusing to provide personal information to the authorities.”
So they barged into his home and when he didn’t answer the right questions quickly enough, they arrested him.
Now that is not a public health measure. It is intentional humiliation, but the humiliation didn’t stop there. You may have noticed that some of the police officers you just saw on that video were not wearing masks themselves.
So in other words, the cops who claimed the people inside were violating Corona law were themselves in violation of it.
When sharp-eyed people on social media pointed this out, the police in Gatineau explained they didn’t have to follow public health laws, because it was a public health emergency.
So just to show you how serious they are about stopping COVID, Canadian Police were willing to spread COVID themselves. That’s what they said.
Canada’s so-called Liberal Party didn’t have a problem with any of this, neither the supposedly liberal Prime Minister. No one in Canada seemed to; and not just Canada, the entire Anglosphere is moving toward authoritarianism that nobody seems to be noticing.
In the formerly free U.K. last week, a group of people in West Midlands created what authorities later described as — and if you’ve got kids, we want to warn you this could be shocking — a quote “makeshift club” with the bar VIP area and a dance room with a DJ. Yes, a DJ.
So naturally, the authority sprang into action. They dispatched a thermal imaging helicopter. They kicked down doors. It was a threat worse than ISIS and they acted like it.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
CARLSON: Did we say this was happening in the Anglosphere? No. If only.
A similar scene played out in Madrid this weekend. You’re seeing the images right now. Police raided on an unauthorized party forced the people inside into closets and cupboards hiding under mattresses.
Madrid’s police later released a statement admonishing residents, quote, “We keep asking you for collaboration and responsibility.” Now even allowing for the translation from the Spanish, that is Orwellian, but it probably no longer shocks you. You’ve been living with less dramatic versions of this for nearly a year.
There may be less door kicking going on in this country, but the result is the same — traumatized citizens and destroyed lives.
Listen to this gym owner in San Francisco explain what has happened to her livelihood under the lockdown regime.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Danielle Rabkin owns CrossFit Golden Gate. She is in a lot of debt.
DANIELLE RABKIN, OWNER, CROSSFIT GOLDEN GATE: I’ve been a business owner for eight and a half years. I’ve been running this business. It’s been leveled to the ground.
I’ve actually thought about leaving the city. I’m watching the city burn to the ground. I’m watching all of my members leave.
I don’t have much of a reason to stay anymore. My business has been completely decimated.
Show me the data, the contact tracing data that shows transmission is happening there and then I will close my doors. Until then, let me earn a living.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Daniel Rabkin, just an American citizen, nobody cares what she thinks, “Let me earn a living,” she says. It used to resonate, the ability to work was once considered a human right, one of the most basic human rights, but then a lot of things were once considered basic human rights.
Remember my body, my choice. You’ve heard people chant that for 50 years. As recently as 2019, Kamala Harris endorsed that idea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Women have been given the responsibility to perpetuate the human species. Our bodies were created to do that. And it does not give any other person the right to tell a woman what to do with that body. It is her body. It is her right. It is her decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, it’s your body. It’s your right. Oh, sorry. COVID. Actually, it is Bill Gates’s body now. Bill Gates isn’t God, just a big shareholder in Microsoft.
But since COVID, Bill Gates has gained extraordinary powers over what you can and cannot do to your own body. Bill Gates would like you to take the coronavirus vaccine. That’s not a request.
If you don’t comply, you could lose your job. Think we’re exaggerating. Listen to this waitress from Brooklyn.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): The 34-year-old says she was fired after telling her employer she and her husband are considering starting a family and she had hesitations about getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
QUESTION: What’s your biggest reservation about getting the vaccine?
BONNIE JACOBSON, FIRED FROM JOB FOR NOT TAKING THE COVID-19 VACCINE: I just need more time. I need more research to come out and I have my reservations about fertility.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jacobson says the restaurant, Red Hook Tavern sent out an email requiring all staff to get vaccinated now that they’re eligible in New York. When she pushed back, she says she received an email terminating her employment.
QUESTION: Do you think it’s fair for a workplace to be able to determine whether or not its employees should be vaccinated?
JACOBSON: I don’t.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: You heard what she said, she’s not a crazy person. She’s not a denier. I’d like more evidence, I’d like more research to come out. She’s got questions about the vaccine, a vaccine that was produced faster than any other vaccine in history. But if you have those questions, you can’t have a job.
Now once again, to be totally clear, we’re not talking about they deride as vaccine denial, anti-vaxxer. The woman you just saw it says she supports vaccines. And by the way, most people do support vaccines because they’ve saved more lives than any other advance in science.
But even the good vaccines can have side effects. And it’s fair to ask what those side effects might be. Why wouldn’t it be fair to ask that?
Just days ago, The New York Times reported that quote: “A few COVID vaccine recipients developed a rare blood disorder. A link to the vaccines is not certain, and investigations are underway in some reported cases.”
OK. So let’s say you wanted to wait for the results of those investigations you read about in The New York Times. Sound fair? No, you can’t. Sorry, you lose your job for that. You might lose your right to travel within this country, the one you were born in.
In a moment like this, where things are moving so quickly in a dark direction, you’ve got to wonder, where are all the liberals? Where are our leaders, the people we elect to protect us from irrational and destructive overreach like what we’re seeing now? Most people are gone.
They’ve ceded all authority to those who describe themselves as scientists. Joe Biden admitted this out loud in August. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: If you’re sworn in come January, and we have coronavirus and the flu combining, which many scientists have said is a real possibility, would you be prepared to shut this country down again?
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus.
QUESTION: If the scientists say shut it down?
BIDEN: I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Now you thought the voters were in charge of the country speaking through their elected leaders. That’s why we have elections, but that’s not true.
The scientists are in charge, I would listen to the scientists. And Biden is not the only one who says this. This is a staple of our public conversation these days.
So what are the scientists saying? Well, yesterday, the most scientific of all the scientists, the supremely, science-based, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told us we could all be wearing masks in 2022. This was a surprise. You thought the vaccine would make your life — it could return to normal. No, according to Tony Fauci, you thought wrong, things are never getting back to normal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You and the President have suggested that we’ll approach normality toward the end of the year, what does normal mean? Do you think Americans will still be wearing masks, for example, in 2022?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, I think it is possible that that’s the case. And again, it really depends on what you mean by normality.
If normality means exactly the way things were before we had this happen to us. I mean, I can’t predict that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, I can’t predict that, if it means returning to the life you love. So what can Dr. Fauci predict? Well, we don’t need masks, he told us. But he said, we do need masks actually, we probably need two masks, maybe three. And in fact, we might need those masks forever.
Those are some of Tony Fauci’s many predictions. We showed you his greatest hits before on the show. We’re not going to wreck your night with it again.
But the question is, and we should be thinking about this. What effect will this current suspension of our Bill of Rights have on American society over time? What kind of country will your grandkids live in? Is anyone even asking that question? No, not anymore, because questions are disloyal.
If you believe in science, simply obey. Meanwhile, the cost mount — the real ones, measurable: bankruptcies, addictions, suicides. So what will the country look like when it’s over?
Well, it could be dirtier for sure, the environment. Here’s one unintended consequence of the lockdown regime that absolutely nobody is talking about, the degradation of our natural environment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Odds are over the past several months of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, you’ve seen a mask or two on the ground.
The Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Jason Ulseth says he has never seen the river filled with so much plastic, and we’re not just talking about water bottles and food containers.
JASON ULSETH, CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER KEEPER: We’ve actually pulled over two million pounds of trash out of the river system, and gloves and masks have not been something we’ve seen in the past.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So where all the people who care about nature? All the environmentalists, where are they on that? Well, they’re probably hiding somewhere with the free speech people and the pro-choice community, too afraid to speak up.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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