Fox leaders were alarmed by Carlson’s text
The Fox Defamation Sued for Sleaking and Killing a White Man: Carlson Embedded in Trump Men’s Fate
Mr. Carlson’s messages were collected as part of the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion, which accused the network of knowingly airing falsehoods about election fraud. Many of the messages shared in the case, including those among Fox executives and hosts, were released publicly. The one between Mr. Carlson and one of his producers remain smilng.
The contents of the text are blacked out and were previously unreported. Interviews with several people close to the lawsuit revealed contents of the text. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a message that is protected by a court order. In public filings, it remains hidden behind a block of black text.
At first, Carlson is right where you’d expect him to be: on the side of the attackers, rooting them on toward homicide, even as he finds their behavior “dishonorable.” “It’s not how white men fight,” he says.
I thought the mob would hit the man harder and kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it,” he wrote. “Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I don’t want to be like that.
An unexpected, chastening eruption of empathy appears to be part of the story about Carlson’s conflicting response to the sight of a group of Trump guys. The narrator’s bloodlust seems to waver as he moves from solidarity with the perpetrators of the attack to a grudging acknowledgment of their victim’s humanity. This looks like a departure from the demonization of political and cultural enemies Carlson had on air, a kind of wishy-washyness he mocked on the air. You might wonder if Fox fired him for going offbrand. But a closer reading elucidates what that brand always was.
That is a jaw-dropping sentence, as empirically ludicrous as it is. It’s clear from the history of America that white men fight exactly like that, with the exception of the lynch mobs and Tulsa race massacre of 1921. Not all white men, and not only white men, but white men in particular when they perceive their symbolic and material prerogatives to be under attack.
Thinking otherwise is more than just a fantasy of Anglo-Saxon righteousness, redolent of Rudyard Kipling and The Marquess of Queensberry. The old imperial myth is believed to hold that a program of plunder and subjugation was a noble crusade, despite everything, and Carlson shows that in his nightly broadcast.
