Ken Burns has accused Fox pundit Tucker Carlson of rewriting history for his use of archival footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection provided to the conservative talking head by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Burns, the documentarian who directed the acclaimed 1990 American television documentary miniseries The Civil War, compared Carlson’s use of the footage to propaganda techniques used by the Nazis and Soviets.
McCarthy granted Carlson access to a staggering 40,000 hours of security footage taken on Jan. 6. He has not released the footage to any other outlet, although he claims his office is “working on” doing so according to CNN. The footage Carlson chose to air showed Jan. 6 participants, including Jacob Chansley, aka the “QAnon Shaman,” walking through the Capitol freely without police interference. However, Capitol police testified in court documents they repeatedly engaged with crowds and asked them to leave the premises.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has criticized Carlson’s framing of the event as a “bold-faced lie” that attempts to use the footage to belie the fact that the Capitol was invaded by Jan. 6 protestors. “To say January 6 was not violent is a lie — a lie pure and simple,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prime-time cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr. Carlson did last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain, and he’s going to come back tonight with another segment.”
On CNN this morning, Burns categorized Carlson’s methods as akin to building a “Potemkin village” — a construct used for propaganda purposes such as the Nazi German Theresienstadt concentration camp, which was used to portray the Nazi’s Final Solution of exterminating Europe’s Jewish population as a benign relocation program.
“It feels like a Soviet system or, you know, the way the Nazis would build a Potemkin Village. Tucker Carlson is doing the same thing with the footage from 1/6 — it’s just a kind of rewriting of history at the most dangerous level. It’s a huge threat to our republic.”
— Ken Burns
Burns was on the CNN morning program to discuss Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ House Bill 999, which bans funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at state colleges and removes fields such as gender and ethnic studies classes from curricula. “America’s greatness stems not from its suppression of our complicated history but our willingness to engage and understand it,” Burns tweeted on Monday.
