The Atlantic: 'Bigotry' Is The Reason Tucker Carlson Is Anti-War

In the Trump era, some on the anti-interventionist left have developed a tolerance for, even a grudging appreciation of, Tucker Carlson. The reason: He's a caustic critic of hawkish foreign policy. The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, the historian Stephen F. Cohen, and the author Max Blumenthal--all of whom agree with Carlson that the Trump-Russia scandal is fueling a new cold war--regularly appear on his show. After Carlson last month savaged William Kristol and Max Boot as "professional war peddlers," Democratic Representative Ro Khanna--one of the most creative and influential doves in Congress--praised Carlson on Twitter for offering "a devastating critique [of] interventionism" that shows "there is an emerging, left right coalition of common sense for a foreign policy of restraint."

To be sure, the progressives who appreciate Carlson's anti-interventionism do not appreciate his racism--his endless demonization of black and brown immigrants, who he claims are making America "dirtier," or his recycling of white-nationalist conspiracy theories about the oppression of white farmers in South Africa. Lefties such as Greenwald distinguish between Carlson's foreign-policy views, which they consider a useful antidote to the hawkishness prevalent in both parties, and his racial views, which they abhor.

But what if they are inextricably intertwined? That's the message of the decade-old, previously unheard recordings of Carlson that Media Matters released on Monday. They expose the core reason that he evolved from hawk to dove: He decided Iraqis and Afghans were too barbaric to be worth conquering.

[...] Carlson's views of Iraqis and Afghans are classically imperialist. They're straight out of Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden." He just thinks that America's "new-caught, sullen peoples / Half-devil and half-child" aren't worth the bother.