The fallout from Fox News Corporation’s nearly $800 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit stemming from claims that Dominion machines were used to rig the 2020 election has claimed the job of Tucker Carlson, the hugely popular host of Fox’s highest-rated show.

On Monday, Carlson was abruptly fired without so much as an opportunity for a farewell show. His dismissal, apparently related at least in part to the litigation-related discovery of text messages in which he trashed his Fox News bosses in vulgar terms, has caused gloating among Carlson’s liberal and progressive foes and cries of indignation on the right, where some people declared that Fox had gone “woke.” But one could argue that as much as Carlson was seen on the left as a threat because of his tendency to mainstream far-right narratives and discourse, his prominence has been far more harmful to the conservative media.

For one thing, Carlson has played a significant role in moving American conservative rhetoric in the unsavory direction of legitimizing the right-wing version of identity and grievance politics: the idea that white Americans, especially white working-class males, are constantly under siege. His promotion of conspiracy theories about Democrats promoting “the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries” is a case in point. The disparagement of “Third World” immigrants has been a disturbing leitmotif on Carlson’s show in recent years, complete with classic bigoted tropes of migrants bringing filth and disease to our shores. A particularly vile 2017 segment about the struggles of Roma (gypsy) refugees in a Pennsylvania town seemed fixated on children defecating in the street, an “issue” apparently based on a single incident.

Where such nativist bigotry rears its head, antisemitism usually isn’t far behind. A 2019 Carlson segment contrasting the patriotic capitalism of Henry Ford (a rabid Jew-hater) to the supposed rapacity of modern American capitalist elites as represented by Jewish financier Paul Singer was assailed as overtly antisemitic not just by liberals but by some Jewish commentators generally sympathetic to populist conservatism.

Other elements in the toxic stew of Carlson’s brand of “conservatism” include his frequent blatant misogyny. But in the past year, his new persona as a peddler of Kremlin talking points on Russia’s war in Ukraine has eclipsed the rest of his awfulness. He has amplified conspiracy theories about American “biolabs” in Ukraine. He has portrayed Ukraine as a corrupt dictatorship where opposition parties and dissenting churches are shut down; in wartime, the Ukrainian government has taken measures against political organizations and churches that collaborate with the aggressor. He has circulated phony casualty figures supposedly showing that Ukraine is losing.

After Carlson was sacked by Fox News, some Kremlin propagandists publicly reached out to offer him a show on a state-owned Russian network. And indeed, it’s hard to see that he’d have to do anything differently on that network. The Russian propagandists who peddle such fare have no other options unless they emigrate. What’s Carlson’s excuse?

The normalization of such views has been terrible for the conservative media. Also terrible: the fact that, as the recently unveiled text messages show, Carlson is a thorough cynic who doesn’t believe in many of the things he says. He privately fulminates against Donald Trump while publicly genuflecting. This, too, is something he has in common with the Kremlin propagandists who rightly see him as one of their own. American conservatism, though, deserves better