During a speech on Friday, Tucker Carlson drew unsettling parallels between 1917 Russia and the modern United States.
Carlson drew these parallels while delivering the keynote speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 70th Anniversary Gala.
At a gathering of conservative academics, Carlson sounded every bit the conservative, libertarian, populist firebrand his audiences have come to expect.
TheBlaze, a conservative news outlet, posted a nearly 5-minute clip of Carlson’s speech on X, formerly Twitter.
Readers can view the clip below.
Tucker tells the story of Pyotr Wrangel and the Russian Revolution: "The country is in complete chaos. He goes into a movie theater and everyone in the theater is completely absorbed in the movie, like there's no revolution happening outside.
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 29, 2023
He's very close to the Romanovs, the… pic.twitter.com/Rl0KAt3ewL
The clip began with Carlson describing the memoirs of Russian General Pyotr Wrangel, who fought for Czar Nicholas the Second during World War I (1914-18) and later commanded anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War (1917-23).
Wrangel recalled that upon returning from the front lines to the Russian imperial capital of St. Petersburg he witnessed the barbaric early stages of the Bolshevik Revolution.
“Soldiers are going crazy in the streets. And they’re raping women. They’re stealing at gunpoint — soldiers in uniform,” Carlson said on Friday.
Incredibly, many well-off Russians seemed not to notice.
“He goes into a movie theater, and everyone in the movie theater is completely absorbed in the movie, like there’s no revolution happening outside,” Carlson said.
Wrangel immediately went to the imperial court to warn the Czar and the ruling Romanov family, whom he knew well.
“And he notices about 80 percent of the women in the Romanov family are wearing red ribbons in solidarity with the Bolsheviks who wound up — of course we know how it ends — murdering them,” Carlson said.
The former Fox News host then summarized Wrangel’s incredulous reaction.
“How is it that this country is being devoured by a violent revolution, and the people who can afford movie tickets — that is, kind of our middle class — are refusing even to acknowledge that it’s happening, and the ruling class against whom it is aimed are sympathizing with it?”
Carlson saw clear and frightening parallels in the events of 2020.
“And if this doesn’t remind you of [Black Lives Matter], I don’t know what does,” he said.
“I’m reading this on my porch at like midnight. I couldn’t go to sleep. I was like, ‘Wait, I live in that country. That’s happening now.'”
Indeed, BLM Marxists had the same designs as their Bolshevik ideological ancestors.
“This is a revolution. It’s aim is to hurt you. Yes, that would include physically, in the end. Sorry,” Carlson said.
Attacks on free speech and parental rights showcase the revolutionary and authoritarian nature of modern leftists’ assault on Western civilization.
“If someone tells you you’re not allowed to speak, if someone tells you your children are not your children, OK, these are not ideological differences. This is not, ‘Oh, I prefer, you know, this capital gains rate,'” Carlson said.
“These are totalitarian measures that treat you as non-human.”
Carlson identified woke efforts to sexualize children as a particularly dangerous manifestation of leftist totalitarianism that parents must resist.
“People don’t pause to consider the implications of this. If someone says to you, ‘I have a right to make your children hate you, or to say weird creepy sex stuff to your kids,’ what’s your — what’s a valid response to that?” Carlson asked rhetorically.
“Well, in a healthy society, if someone says weird creepy sex stuff to your 8th grader, you get your gun.”
Carlson made no attempt to soften his words.
“‘Oh, you’re calling for violence,'” he said in mockery of anticipated objections. “Yeah. You try and sexualize my children? What? Those are my children.”
“If you’re trying to sexualize my children, I go right to force. And if I can’t do that, I’m not really their father, am I?”
Carlson then summarized his defense of freedom and natural rights.
“I’m calling for applying natural law to American life,” he said.
On the whole, Carlson’s comparison between 1917 Russia and the present-day U.S. should strike us as shockingly plausible.
For one thing, Marxists pursue power by posing as friends of the poor and oppressed. Then, when they acquire power, Marxists render the lives of the poor and oppressed more miserable than ever.
The lives of those who supported BLM have not improved. No one believes that life in the cities has gotten better since 2020.
Thus, every true Marxist amounts to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Likewise, Marxists believe in internationalism. Nowadays, they have a strong affinity for the kind of globalism that touts open borders and omnipotent international organizations.
Indeed, we often forget that many Russians regarded the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as a kind of foreign conquest. Karl Marx and his ideas hailed from Germany. In 1917, German agents helped smuggle the exiled Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin, back into Russia.
In short, Russians never voted for communism.
Furthermore, Marxism promotes — in fact, mandates — atheism. The state displaces God. Families crumble. Pride wins.
Finally, the Marxist’s ends always justify the means. The Marxist revolution takes precedence over all else.
As Carlson said, “it’s aim is to hurt you.”
In spite of all these parallels, perhaps the most unsettling observation lay in Wrangel’s description of complacency. So many people in Russia either did not care or did not even notice.
Meanwhile, many who did notice — including most women of the royal family — foolishly lent sympathy to the Marxist tyrants.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
