He’s ‘rooting’ for Putin’s war in Ukraine: How did Tucker Carlson get an Australian visa?

Normally, when someone lending support to a fascist leader or a potentially genocidal war announces a visit to Australia, we see a public outcry and calls to deny them a visa.

This happened when historian David Irving was refused a visa three times between 1993 and 2003 thanks to his theories denying the Holocaust. The same occurred in 2019 with conspiracy theorist David Icke and far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos.

Tucker Carlson and Clive Palmer hold a press conference at one of Palmer’s homes in Brisbane.Credit: Glenn Hunt

So you would think there might have been more scrutiny when right-wing American media personality Tucker Carlson announced he would be visiting Australia.

Undertaking a nationwide speaking tour called the Australian Freedom Conference, which is sponsored by mining magnate Clive Palmer, Carlson – who was once a top-rating Fox News anchor well known for promoting conspiracy theories relating to the US 2020 election – touched down in Australia last week. Palmer’s Senator Ralph Babet also planned a reception for Carlson at Parliament House on Tuesday, but the event was abandoned after TV camera crews arrived and appeared to spook organisers.

The issue with Carlson is not so much his general political outlook or unstinting support for Donald Trump. Rather, it is his attitude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Carlson has consistently demonised Ukraine. He reinforced Republican opposition in the US Congress to helping Ukraine defend itself. That delay cost many Ukrainian lives. At the same time, he has failed to criticise Russia’s more egregious war crimes, consistent with his previous statement that he was “rooting for Russia” in its conflict with Ukraine.

He has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “an instrument of total destruction”, and said “He is a dictator. He is a dangerous authoritarian who has used a hundred billion in US tax dollars to erect a one-party police state in Ukraine.”

While arrant nonsense, it is especially pernicious. Not only does it delegitimise support for Ukraine by making the two sides of this war seem as bad as each other, it also implies Ukraine is worse than Russia. Yet Carlson rarely, if ever, mentions the state of democracy there.

Ukraine has had six presidents elected in free and fair elections since 1991, and has had an often fractious parliament. Critics of Zelensky aren’t thrown in jail, let alone poisoned on foreign soil. Ukrainians who oppose the war aren’t being imprisoned or fined.

Vladimir Putin was interviewed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in February. Carlson rarely interrupted the Russian president.Credit: AP

Carlson’s big moment came in February, when he travelled to Russia for a two-hour interview with President Vladimir Putin, where he let Putin’s many outrageous claims – including that Ukraine is an artificial state that had no legitimate historical basis – go unchallenged. Carlson did not question Putin on Russia’s alleged war crimes, or the warrant for his arrest, which was issued by the International Criminal Court last year in relation to the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

In April, Carlson went even further during an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, a blatantly neo-fascist political philosopher and one of several far-right figures Putin has favoured.

Dugin has described Ukrainians as a race of degenerates who crept up from sewers and that the Russians should “kill, kill, kill,” and said Putin is “someone with a nuclear weapon who stands strong defending traditional values”.

Unlike David Irving, whose primary sin was denying fascism and genocidal behaviour committed decades earlier, Carlson is effectively turning a blind eye to war crimes happening today.

Five annexed regions of Ukraine – an area the size of South Korea – are being coercively integrated into Russia. Ukrainian identity and culture are being strategically wiped out through imposed Russian schooling and media. One million or more Russians have illegally settled in the occupied zones, while three million Ukrainians have fled or been forced out. This represents a return to territorial conquest of the kind seen in the Nazi and Soviet land grabs during World War II.

Tools used to suppress resistance include the establishment of torture centres (which one United Nations expert says amounts to “state war policy”), the use of rape and sexual abuse by Russian forces, the disappearance and illegal detention of Ukrainians inside Russia, and several massacres. These all constitute war crimes.

As of November 2023, the UN verified at least 10,000 civilian deaths, but noted this is “just the tip of the iceberg”, with evidence pointing to a real figure much closer to 100,000 deaths. Ukrainian businesses and homes have been expropriated with many handed out to cronies of Russian officials or officers.

This picture of coerced integration, ethnic cleansing and eradication of culture has been pieced together by the UN, human rights NGOs and independent Russian and Ukrainian media. Meanwhile, Kremlin figures and propagandists, including Dugin, spew out hate speech almost daily, referring to Ukrainians as vermin or calling for them to be wiped out, which some experts say amounts to evidence that Russia is committing genocide.

Denying entry to Australia on the basis of objectionable views may not be wise for every case. However, if the government applied the same standards as in previous refusals, Carlson would surely have found himself in the same unwelcome boat as other controversial talking heads.

Jon Richardson is a visiting fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies and a former diplomat.

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