Tucker Carlson is helping Putin

Fox News commentator gives Putin propaganda he can't buy

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is on Vladimir Putin’s payroll.

I’m not given to conspiracies, yet Carlson is giving Putin a level of support he couldn’t buy.

Carlson has gone on vicious rampages against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was named Time’s Man of the Year in recognition of his bravery in leading his nation’s resistance to Russia.

He called  Zelenskiy a “welfare queen” and belittled his plea to Congress for aid and admonishments that Ukraine’s battle for freedom is America’s, too. More recently, though, the Fox News commentator accused Zelenskiy of persecuting Orthodox Christians.

If Carlson really cares about Ukrainian religious freedom, he should at least get his facts straight and not distort a complex situation.

Ukraine is indeed searching churches and arresting priests, monks and nuns — those suspected of acting as spies. It is terminating church leases. And Zelenskiy has asked Ukrainian legislators to ban any church that answers to Russia.

The crackdown is directed at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church — the Moscow-based denomination that embraces Putin, his war and his world view. The Ukrainian wing broke off in May due to Moscow’s support for the war,  but the press, government and others suspect the UOC still supports Russia. 

The UOC still is largest of several Eastern Orthodox faiths in Ukraine, with an estimated 12,000 communities just before the war began last February.  

The UOC recently was booted out of the famous Monastery of Caves in Kyiv, and the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine held the first Orthodox Christmas Day service in Ukrainian there in about 300 years. Services had been conducted in Russian.

The UOC contends Ukrainian authorities are on a witch hunt. Nevertheless, Ukrainian security services contend that the church is “an incubator of pro-Russia sentiment (and) is also infiltrated by priests, monks and nuns who have aided Russia in the war,” the New York Times reports.

Clergy have been arrested for spying. Pro-Russian literature, large amounts of cash and flags of Russian client states have been found in churches, which the U.S. Institute for the Study of War called material evidence that the Moscow-aligned church is helping support Russia’s invasion.

Putin himself has been playing up the religious persecution angle, most recently when he pitched a 36-hour Orthodox Christmas ceasefire in religious terms. 

His ceasefire proposal — which Putin himself did not honor — “reinforces another two-fold Russian information operation that frames Ukraine as suppressing religious groups and positions Putin as the true protector of the Christian faith,” according to the War Study Institute. 

 Carlson is playing into Putin’s hands.

Ukraine does, unfortunately, have a long history of religious persecution, particularly of people of Jewish ancestry, such as Zelenskiy. 

Churches of course should not be persecuted for political views, even unpopular ones. But when do church actions become illegal and subversive, especially in a war of survival?  This can be a thorny question — depending on whose side you're on.

The Catholic Church, for example, supported Poland’s 1980s Solidarity Movement against the Communist regime. But the Vatican ordered  its clergy to avoid “liberation theology,” which worked against poverty and social injustice in Latin America.  In World War II,  church leaders were among those to shelter Jews in defiance of Nazi edicts.

One of the tragedies of war is that it gives license to punish anyone suspected of collaborating with the enemy. Such thinking led to the U.S. to unjustly uproot and intern Japanese Americans during World War II. 

It’s easy to view Ukraine’s actions as a bit heavy handed, but planting sedition and materially supporting an enemy do not qualify as religious freedom. And to those who, like Carlson, criticize Zelenskiy’s government — what kind of religious liberty do they think Ukraine would enjoy if Putin wins?

I don’t know what Carlson’s motive is here, or whether it is just nihilist,   MAGA rhetoric intended to sow discord.

Perhaps Carlson and the extreme right want to leverage further aid to Ukraine to wage their so-called “war” on the Southern border. Perhaps they hope to pressure Zelenskiy to reopen the totally discredited case involving Hunter Biden. If so, they’re violating the adage that politics should stop at the water’s edge.

If there is an honest motive here, it might be furthering Trump’s “America First” isolationism, which is growing out of the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If that’s the case, Carlson forgets that isolationist policies did not shield the U.S. from eventually having to fight the Kaiser’s army, Hitler’s Wehrmacht or Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists.

If he thinks America can’t afford to support the war, he should just say so without castigating Zelenskiy and furnishing propaganda to Putin. 

Helping Ukraine defend itself is in America’s national security interests in every possible way — or one day we will need to send our troops to Eastern Europe to halt Russian expansionism.

Polls show that solid majorities of Americans support continued military and other assistance to Ukraine. However, that support has waned a bit, and impugning Ukraine’s  leadership will further erode our solidarity with that  strategically positioned nation.

Ukraine needs to emerge victorious — and Carlson and other critics need to stop giving Putin public relations fodder for his unholy war.