Step right up for the conspiracy theory of your choice at the Tucker Carlson and (sort of) Clive Palmer show

The most annoying thing about US right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson is that he’s good at his job. The former Fox News superstar is so slickly charismatic that it’s easy to laugh at his flattering one-liners about Australia (“where men are men, women are beautiful, and the animals are all dangerous, but you’re not afraid of them”) before realising, wait a minute, did he just suggest we’re in the midst of a literal war between good and evil? Is he saying wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced people’s IQ? Does he really believe the mainstream media, of which he was a member before “parting ways” with Fox last year after it settled a $1 billion lawsuit over election fraud claims, is “legitimately evil” and trying to destroy civilisation? The answers seem to be: yes, yes and yes. “I’m completely convinced there’s a spiritual war going on,” he told the 2500-odd crowd who packed out the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre’s Riverside Theatre on Monday night, shortly after delivering a riff on pronouns that wouldn’t have been out of place in a mid-tier comedian’s Netflix special. “I don’t see another explanation for it . . . civilisation hangs in the balance. The people in charge . . . their goal is to destroy the civilisation.” Pump the brakes there, mate. Is it possible that some of your discomfort stems from the fact that society is changing in a way that’s costing you — a wealthy, straight, white guy — some of your power? Nope? Just checking. It’s a shame billionaire Clive Palmer’s laryngitis kept him from attending the show, for which he shared top billing with Mr Carlson as part of the Australian Freedom Conference. However, if he had, the audience might have been denied the revelation — contained in the filmed speech we got instead — that Mr Palmer believes Captain James Cook discovered Australia. Mr Palmer’s absence wasn’t communicated to the crowd until more than two hours into the marathon event, which felt somehow aggressively on-brand for a professional . . . look, Mr Palmer is famously litigious so let’s just leave it with professional. The most impressive performance of the night was the bum endurance of the crowd, who mostly made it through the four-and-a-half-hour grab-bag of alt-right talking points. Here for the anti-vax rhetoric? We’ve got you covered. More interested in US election fraud? Why not watch this largely discredited documentary about it? Feel squicky about trans people? So do we! It’s hard not to admire that kind of commitment. The only thing I want to spend four-and-a-half hours watching on a Monday night is old episodes of ‘90s sitcoms, having already assured my husband that I “don’t have it in me to watch a whole movie tonight”. At times, the night felt like attending a pantomime: the crowd booed references to Bill Gates, Mark McGowan and Anthony Fauci and cheered at mentions of Mr Trump, guns and how mass migration is “destroying the lives of your kids”. Speaker after speaker, from US doctor Pierre Kory (“I’m not going to do too much science tonight”, he promised the crowd and boy, was he right) to Melissa McCann, the Australian doctor spearheading class actions over alleged COVID vaccine injuries, and US filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza told the crowd what they wanted to hear: nothing bad that’s happening is your fault. The problem is the government. The problem is mass migration. The problem is Them. At one point during Mr Carlson’s talk, someone in the crowd shouted something he clearly missed. “I didn’t hear what you said, but I agree with you!” he called back. That about sums it up.