The hullabaloo among the liberal cohort over Carlson’s interview with Putin unveils that those who label communists as tankies and authoritarians are well-aware of the necessity to suppress divergent viewpoints.
It emerges that freedom of expression is limited to ideas that align with the liberal narrative; when faced with opinions they deem detrimental, liberals demand cancellation, imprisonment, or even death for the proponents.
The real disagreement liberals have with communists is over what set of ideas has merit. When liberals screech about authoritarianism what they’re really saying is that it’s their ideology that’s being suppressed.
I don’t like Carlson at all, he is no better than any other liberal when it comes to the rampant sinophobia, he just happens to be more reasonable on one specific issue. On the other hand he didn’t really say a whole lot, and brought a large audience in to see it. His presence was basically a nonfactor, outside the spy advocacy there at the end.
I don’t think the interview was groundbreaking for anyone with a rudimentary undertanding of russian history and geopolitics, but that is probably a very small percentage of the USian audience. So in that sense, it was valuable. Though I wonder how many people actually listened and how many people just go “No, Putin must actually want more land”. Most of us here probably didn’t hear anything that was particularly new whatsoever.