The main threat to individual liberty “comes not from the government but from the private sector,” Tucker Carlson said Monday.
The Fox News host was the keynote speaker at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference has assembled a group of conservatives who want to guide America in a nationalist direction.
“Nationalism should be the default idea guiding of nations–sort of by definition,” Carlson said.
The idea that the biggest threats to liberty in the U.S. come not from big government but big business is a divisive on one the American right. Libertarians and many establishment conservatives recoil at the idea even as evidence mounts that corporate America–from Kelloggs, to Facebook, to BlackRock–are actively opposed to conservative ideas and using their market power to blacklist conservatives.
When Breitbart News’ Virgil column pointed out the rise of authoritarian leftism in corporate America in 2016, there were few conservatives who publicly cheered. They were still laboring under the delusion that American businesses were not opposed to traditional American life.
That has changed. The 500 or so attendees at the National Conservatism Conference cheered on Carlson’s broadside against Woke Corporatism and laughed when he made fun of the inadequate responses from some on the right.
“When I say I don’t like Oreos or Mondelez pushing woke gender theory on cookies, they tell me to start my own Orea cookie,” Carlson said. “Or to stick to Nilla Wafers. You can’t write on Nilla Wagers I guess.”
Carlson was not the only person to raise the problem of corporate leftism at the conference. On Sunday night, Peter Thiel called on the government to investigate Google parent Alphabet for possible treason.