Former President Barack Obama delivered a keynote address at Stanford University on Thursday stressing the importance of combating disinformation due to the harm it inflicts on democratic institutions. The next night, naturally, conspiracy-peddler Tucker Carlson appeared more upset than usual by that speech and the man who gave it.
Obama “is a full-blown fascist who hates you,” Carlson insisted at one point.
Several times over a period of two minutes, Carlson inaccurately framed what Obama said, only to then play the relevant clips of the speech, in effect making the disconnect quite obvious.
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“Obama argued that only his political opponents lie, and they must be stopped immediately,” Carlson began. Here’s what Obama told attendees:
“People like [Vladimir] Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe.” (In 2018, Bannon indeed told a Bloomberg reporter of his strategy to “flood the zone with shit.”)
Yet Carlson didn’t mention Bannon’s past comment to provide useful context. Instead, he reacted this way:
“Oh, so people who disagree with Barack Obama aren’t just saying things that are wrong—they are flooding raw sewage into our country. So this guy is not just liberal. In fact, he is not liberal at all. He is a full-blown fascist who hates you and wants to keep you from talking, or else.”
That’s not all. Obama, the Fox News host added, “wants censorship of anyone who disagrees with him and now he just comes out and says it.”
Carlson then played this clip of the 44th president:
“While content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough. Users who want to spread disinformation have become experts of pushing right up to the line of what at least published company policies allow, and at those margins, social media platforms tend not to want to do anything. Not just because they don’t want to be accused of censorship, but because they still have a financial incentive to keep as many users engaged as possible.”
Carlson’s reaction, again, overshot: “‘So me and my friends at the Aspen Institute need to be in complete control of every word uttered or else it’s not democracy.’ That’s the case he’s making. That’s the case they’re all making.”
This is all par for the course for Carlson, as even his own lawyers have successfully argued that he shouldn’t be taken seriously due to his propensity for exaggeration and “non-literal commentary.” Yet when the topic itself is how information and disinformation spread, Carlson’s framing of it becomes especially rich.
