They can’t stop talking about Tucker Carlson, more than a week after he was taken off the air at Fox.

He has barely said anything since, other than to let the world know he is quite happy, and preparing his next move.

But the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC can’t stop obsessing about Tucker, casting him as a white supremacist and inferring that the millions who watched him — the largest audience in cable news — are racists, too.

This is simply insane — an Orwellian orgy of innuendo, a “Two Minutes Hate” in which the mainstream media expresses its horror at an apparition of its own creation.

Tucker is many things — provocative, silly at times, and occasionally just dead wrong — but he is not a racist, nor are his fans. He was — and will again be — a leader in shaping the views of the political opposition. He is hated, and was canceled, because he is too good at his job.

The latest furore is about a private text message that Carlson sent to a producer, explaining how he had come to empathize with an Antifa activist who was being beaten on the street in Washington, DC, by a mob of “Trump guys.” The redemptive arc of the tale has been cast aside because of Tucker’s comment that “jumping a guy like that” is “not how white men fight.” We don’t know whether the recipient of that message objected at the time.

It is an odd comment. It makes no sense if you have had any experience with street violence, or combat sports. There is no racial pattern whatsoever.

True, scenes of mob violence are often circulated — and celebrated — by websites like WorldStarHipHop. But WorldStar, in a roguishly admirable way, highlights fights without regard to race.

Nevertheless, if we are to judge Tucker by a private comment, let’s at least apply a common standard.

Take, for example, Times columnist Charles Blow. He appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday night with Lawrence O’Donnell to slam Tucker, above a chyron declaring Tucker’s show “the most racist how in the history of cable news.”

It was O’Donnell who once said that then-Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, who is black, was “dancing” for his “master.” And Blow has a history of anti-Mormon bigotry — in public, not private.

Over on CNN, host Abby Phillip asserted that the racism that she and others have inferred in Tucker’s text message was not a “huge surprise” to anyone who watched his show on Fox News, which she and fellow panelists — without exception — agreed was a platform for “white nationalism.” One guest claimed that what made him “the lead person on Fox News” was that “everybody” — Fox, or his audience — shared his hatred.

He also claimed that Tucker believed “there is a plot to replace White people with Brown people” — an attack line from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which agitated for Tucker to be fired because he pointed out the fact that Democrats’ immigration policy is driven by the desire to add new voters to the U.S. electorate.

The ADL, by the way, once endorsed the racist demand that Black Lives Matter be “led by and for Black people.”

Ironically, the real left — the independent media, those willing to sacrifice for their beliefs — are defending Tucker, because he gave them a platform, and debated them with respect.

But the elitist pundit class can’t let him go. He has replaced Donald Trump in their demonology. They need a devil to sustain the delusion that they themselves are angels.

Hence Tucker Derangement Syndrome continues, well after the show went dark.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.