Ukrainians protest at California church for hosting Tucker Carlson speech

Carlson recently has shown about zero discretion and zero capability of his “nonsense detector” recently in this regard. I’m ordinarily a moderate fan of his, but he’s really been sucked in by the Moscow propaganda here to the point that I wonder “is he even aware that the Russian army is invading a sovereign nation?”

[Bert Perry]

I wonder “is he even aware that the Russian army is invading a sovereign nation?”

How has the republican party gotten to this point? This is not the republican party of Regan that I grew up with. It is a party that is so angered with the liberal agenda, that the agenda of the republican party is just a rebuttal of anything deemed liberal. These media personalities rail against mainstream media, totally missing the fact that they are now the mainstream media in almost every measurable metric. The republican leadership lacks a real agenda and is now blown in the wind by media personalities that are drumming up a very vocal and rabid minority that is driving up their ratings and thus their pocketbook.

[dgszweda]

How has the republican party gotten to this point? This is not the republican party of Regan that I grew up with. It is a party that is so angered with the liberal agenda, that the agenda of the republican party is just a rebuttal of anything deemed liberal.

It’s easy to see how they have gotten to this point. They tried being the nice guys that take the high road and let their principles speak for themselves, and they got run over, because they were unwilling to fight where the other side was fighting.

That has now made them angry enough to fight back (which also explains Trump, who was elected in part because he refused to be a doormat). The problem is this — in trying to harness that anger, many of them now define themselves by being opposed to the other side, rather than expressing and fighting for their own principles.

It is, to a degree, because we’re too often defining our side as simply the opposite of what the left believes, but I think it also probably has something to do with the fact that with Trump, the GOP has had a lot more success reaching out to blue collar and poor voters, especially poor minority voters. So many views which previously hadn’t been seen much in the GOP/conservatism are now being more and more represented. I’m not even sure this demographic was by and large voting, but in my experience interacting with those with “less than average” income, it’s something I’ve seen personally.

Why would a church invite a TV news opinion personality to talk at one of their services?

Mark, I can see some cases—e.g. journalist Lee Strobel, famous for The Case for Christ—but one would certainly want to screen speakers well per the qualifications for elders. Carlson is disqualified, IMO, because of his nonsensical parroting of Russian propaganda in this latest tragedy.

Do parrots of propaganda normally decry the actions of the government for whom they are accused of spreading propaganda?

Tucket has repeatedly criticized Russsssia for invading Ukraine and yet people on this thread are either willfully or ignorantly unaware of this fact. That’s disappointing.

Tucker criticized Putin after he invaded Ukraine. Someone speculated if Tucker realized that had happened. Clearly, the evidence proves that he does. That’s either classic misinformation or outright deception, neither of which should characterize those who claim the name of Christ. Don’t you agree, Joe?

The rest of your post is nothing but a red herring deflection. If we’re going to bring Nazis into the conversation, why overlook one of the principal’s (Zelensky’s) apparent fraternization with Neo-Nazis?

Carlson’s initial statements were clearly in support of Putin, KD. Hence his lack of clue about why it would be wrong for Putin to invade a sovereign country.

Here is a record from 2019. Keep in mind that when he made those statements, 13000 Ukrainians had already been killed in a proxy invasion (and later very real invasion with the war crime of undercover soldiers).

Here is his statement from the day before the invasion started.

In other areas, he accepted the “bioweapons” lie hook, line, and sinker. The truth is that—like any hospital, ahem—Ukraine does have biolabs, and the ones in question were actually engaged in destroying Soviet bioweapons efforts. Oopsie.

Here he argues that elites in this country have always wanted a war with nuclear-armed Russia. He repeats the lie a couple of days ago. Oopsie.

Here he lies about Zelensky creating a one party state by banning the “Opposition Platform for Life.” Reality; the opposition party is a pro-Russian party. Might be very reasonable suspicion that they were, ahem, involved in the invasion while officially “denouncing” it.

Here he approvingly cites Nigel Farage’s warning about not “poking the bear”, and praises Russia fighting Islamists (e.g. use of chemical weapons in Syria at the time as well as carpet bombing of Aleppo and Grozny, killing hundreds of thousands). Reality in Syria, by the way, is that ISIS was just one of many anti-government forces that was brutalized by Russian attacks.

Here he decries the notion that Russia might have been poised to use chemical weapons (again, they did in Syria) and do false flag attacks against the Ukrainians (Russia has claimed that obvious atrocities against Ukrainians were done by Ukrainians already).

See why Ukrainian-Americans might have more than a little disregard for Mr. Carlson? Regarding the notion of the alleged Neo-Nazi tendencies of the Azov batallion, the thing to note here is that it’s had a max of about 1500 members. So even if every one of them were an unrepentant SS man, that justifies the brutalization of a nation of 44 million souls exactly….how?

Going further, the allegations against Azov are…let’s just say rather thin. I’m not seeing clear indications of pogroms, synagogue burnings, harassment of rabbis, concentration camps, and the like that I’d expect out of real Nazis. They’re such lame Nazis, their commander in chief is Jewish! You have a few documented atrocities, but not many, and the actual evidence against them is mostly that they’re a group of people who volunteered to fight overwhelming Russian force back in 2014.

In other words, the notion that they’re ultra-nationalists is about as surprising as finding beets in your borscht, and they’re using a symbol so associated with the Nazis….that symbol is still used by about a dozen German localities. If it were so bad, this would not be the case.

Long and short of it is that while I’m sure there are a few real bigots in Azov, most of the furor against them is driven by guilt by association and (ahem) a country whose illegal troops were pushed out of Mariupol in 2014 by the Azov boys.

Totally agree. He made numerous statements criticizing Putin prior to your post asking if Tucker realized Russia had invaded Ukraine.

Just wanted to address that little bit of misinformation prior to tackling the rest of the post later.