Tucker Carlson has been kicked off of Fox News, just like his predecessor Bill O’Reilly. (Sorry, he’s been “future endeavored” if you like.) Like O’Reilly, Carlson was the target of years of boycotts and advertiser pressure campaigns from activists who opposed his right-wing demagoguery. Like O’Reilly, Carlson easily withstood it all. And like O’Reilly, what eventually brought down Tucker Carlson was the irresistible power of the democratic state.

O’Reilly, remember, was fired from Fox after the New York Times reported that he had settled multiple sexual misconduct lawsuits. Fox was able to ignore twenty years of consumer activism from liberals who had hoped that they could leverage the market against him, but had to fold when it became clear that he was becoming a legal liability. Carlson withstood multiple aggressive boycott campaigns led by media watchdogs like Media Matters for America, NGOs like the Anti-Defamation League, and politicians like Ilhan Omar; but as Politico noted just a few years ago, the high ratings he brought to the network made him “all but cancel-proof.” But when Carlson exposed Fox to the threat of state action and, ultimately, a historic $787.5 million defamation settlement, it couldn’t defend him anymore.

Liberalism presents consumer activism as an effectively omnipotent cure for every problem capitalism can inflict upon us. It has to, because if we recognize the limits of things like boycotts and advertiser pressure campaigns then we have to accept that sometimes state intervention is the only possible solution. Capitalism has to resist this principle because once you acknowledge the state’s ultimate sovereignty over markets, you’ve destroyed the premise of private property — the foundation upon which capitalism is built.