After years of “just asking questions,” Tucker Carlson has reached the “nadir to which such questions inevitably lead.” He has chosen to “exploit the world’s oldest prejudice while pretending that it’s somehow edgy.”

Featured in the September issue of National Review, available online now, James Kirchick lays it all out in “Tucker Carlson’s Dark Turn”:

A survey of Carlson’s programming and rhetoric over the past several years . . . makes abundantly clear that he is indeed very much “obsessed” with Israel and the Jews. Carlson has devoted more time and attention to the Jewish state, which he portrays in a uniformly negative light, than to any other country in the world. He has suggested that Israel and its agents have been behind everything from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the promotion of “white genocide” to the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed entrapment of the world’s most powerful men via the trafficking of underage girls. To listen to Carlson’s show is to come away with the impression that Adolf Hitler was misunderstood, that Israel is a country systematically murdering Christians, and that American Jews compose a bloodthirsty fifth column bent on conscripting their Gentile countrymen to fight Israel’s wars.

Kirchick invokes NR founder William F. Buckley Jr., who in a monumental 1991 essay, “In Search of Anti-Semitism,” “renounced two prominent conservative figures for comments — much like Carlson’s — revealing their anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus.” In the spirit and tradition of NR, Kirchick’s piece calls out Carlson as “America’s leading purveyor of antisemitic ideas.”

And there’s much more can’t-miss reading in the September issue. In a special section on the defense industry, six writers explore how the U.S. can build a new arsenal of democracy. Arthur Herman is optimistic: “By unleashing the energy, creativity, and drive of the private sector to rebuild our defense-industrial base, we can trigger a tech-industrial revival of the American economy — one that makes us more secure and more prosperous far into the future.” Amity Shlaes observes: “A strong American economy is its own Golden Dome. The more economically formidable the United States, the less likely others are to assail us.” Christian Brose, Mackenzie Eaglen, Jordan McGillis, and Mike Watson cover the tech, the munitions, the strategies, and the lessons from history that will play a role in preparing for the next war.

Also in this issue:

In this month’s Books, Arts & Manners, you’ll find reviews and essays by Joseph Epstein, Christopher Scalia, and Ross Douthat, to name just a few. Rounding it all out in the Happy Warrior, Mary Katharine Ham conquers her phobia and makes it across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The September issue is great reading. If you don’t already subscribe, right now you can try NRPLUS (which provides access to the normally paywalled magazine) for just $1 per week.

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