Photo: YouTube / Fox News
He's encouraging harassment against children and parents.
By Alice Kelly — Written on Apr 27, 2021
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is telling viewers to call their local child protective services agency to report parents when they see a child wearing a mask outdoors.
Carlson likened the use of masks on children to child abuse and told his audience to treat it as such.
"As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal," he said on his program. "Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately, contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives."
CDC guidelines clearly state that anyone over the age of 2 can and should wear a face mask around people from households other than their own and in public settings.
As wearing a face mask is recommended for personal and public health, contacting police or child protective services is not only unnecessary, it is a waste of resources and renders these services unavailable for real emergencies.
Carlson also encouraged viewers to push back against mandatory masks.
He claimed parents should react to mask rules in schools the same way they would react if their child was “punched in the face by a teacher,” despite offering no correlation between masks and physical assault.
"That’s precisely how you should respond when they tell you that your kids have to wear masks on the soccer field,” he said.
Masks are still necessary in certain situations.
For almost a year, the CDC has been firm in recommending that we wear masks in public to curb the spread of COVID-19.
While millions of Americans have adhered to these rules, Carlson claimed that “the only people who wear masks voluntarily outside are zealots and neurotics.”
The CDC is expected to announce an easing of mandatory mask wearing for those who have been fully vaccinated. But masks are not yet a thing of the past.
This shift in rules stems from the decreased risk of outdoor virus transmission as more and more Americans are vaccinated.
However, as vaccines are not yet available for kids below the age of 16, Carlson’s point about children’s face masks is not applicable.
Carlson has been inconsistent with his own views on masks throughout the pandemic. He claimed in July that the effectiveness of masks has “no basis in science,” contrary to scientific evidence.
This was after he said in March, “Of course masks work. Everyone knows that. Dozens of research papers have proved it.”
Tucker Carlson encouraged viewers to harass mask wearers.
Carlson told his viewers, “Do not hesitate” to approach people wearing masks and tell them “firmly” that their mask makes you uncomfortable.
“We have been shamefully passive in the face of all of this,” he said.
While it is likely that masks will slowly no longer be required for vaccinated people, it is still an individual’s choice to wear a mask if they want to.
Carlson urged his viewers to police mask-wearing during a time in which many people are already facing harassment from anti-maskers.
Since early last year, people wearing masks in public have been assaulted and called “diseased.”
One security guard in Michigan was even shot dead after instructing a family to wear masks in a Family Dollar store.
On the other side of the mask debate, an 80-year-old man in New York died after another man confronted him for not wearing a mask.
This has been an extremely contentious issue for the past year. Carlson’s supporters and others who refuse to wear masks can welcome the easing of restrictions but it is dangerous and unfair to force others to remove masks.
Alice Kelly is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Catch her covering all things social justice, news, and entertainment. Keep up with her Twitter for more.