Tucker Carlson Promotes Hitler Apologist
Who did Nazi this coming?
One of the marks of the Intellectual Dark Web and the Alt-Right, in general, is an addiction to contrarianism. The idea is that if most people (aka “sheeple”) think “X,” then, chances are, “Y” is secretly right. We got a great example of this on Monday as Tucker Carlson proudly dedicated two hours of his program to a “historian” who believes that the real villain of World War II was Churchill. From the Daily Beast:
Liberals and conservatives alike have turned on Tucker Carlson after controversial podcaster and self-proclaimed historian Darryl Cooper claimed on Carlson’s show that “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps.
Cooper also painted U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War II.
Carlson said on X that Cooper “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” when posting The Tucker Carlson Show Monday episode, which featured topics like Christianity and authoritarians like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.
Of Churchill, Cooper told Calson, “Now, he didn’t kill the most people, he didn’t commit the most atrocities, but I believe… that when you get into it and tell the story right and don’t leave anything out, you see that he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did,” Cooper told Carlson.
He went on to claim that didn’t mean he thought Adolf Hitler was the hero of the war. “That’s not the case,” he said.
But where Hitler went wrong, Cooper suggested, was by entering Germany into “a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners.”
“They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps,” he said. “And millions of people ended up dead there.” [source]
Much like in reports of police violence, the passive voice is doing a LOT of hard work in the phrase “And millions of people ended up dead there.” I mean, who knows how they “ended up dead.” It’s not like the Nazis under Hitler had well-documented, mechanized plans for the extermination of Jews and other undesirable. Oh wait, they did.
This is not the first time that Carlson has promoted alternate histories of World War II. Earlier this year, after praising Vladimir Putin for keeping the trains running on time, he let the dictator put a very Russian spin on the history of Ukraine.
And like moths to a flame, Carlson’s guest’s galaxy-brain contrarian takes on the Second World War were immediately promoted by the type of folks who think technocratic bodybuilders and people on the spectrum should be ruling us all:
Elon Musk has deleted a post on X, formerly Twitter, promoting former Fox News host Tucker Carlson‘s latest interview after receiving heavy backlash.
On September 3, Musk shared a post from Carlson which included his interview with Darryl Cooper, a podcaster who hosts the history show Martyr Made. The pair discussed the Holocaust and events of World War II, with Cooper making comments that have been widely called out for appearing sympathetic towards Hitler.
In the now-deleted post, Musk wrote that the interview was, “Very interesting. Worth watching.” He quickly received severe backlash along with Carlson, as Cooper claimed in the video that the Nazis did not intend to kill millions of people, but that they instead “ended up dead” because Hitler was unprepared for war. …
The interview has gained 21.3 million views, 37,000 likes, and 10,000 reposts on X and has been criticized by both liberals and conservatives. Former congresswoman Liz Cheney was among those who referred to it as “pro-Nazi propaganda.”
Musk’s post amplifying the interview came in the same week as backlash for reposting a theory about why only “alpha males” should be allowed to vote, in which he also referred to the controversial view as “interesting.” That post remains visible on his website. The Carlson and Cooper interview post appears to have been deleted early Wednesday morning. [source]
All dunking aside, it’s worth noting that Musk and Carlson remain some of Former President Trump’s most vocal supporters. Musk recently hosted Trump for an “interview” on Xter. Carlson had a prime-time speaking spot at the Republican National Convention in July and is about to start touring the US in support of the former President’s election campaign. In fact, current reporting documents how Carlson has the former President’s ear. It’s also been reported that Carlson played a role in RFK Jr.’s decision to drop out of the Presidential race and endorse Trump.
As an optimist, I hope that this incident will contribute to the mounting scads of evidence that will ultimately cause folks to reconsider their hagiography of Musk, Carlson, and, ultimately, Presidential Candidates who seek out the support of other powerful folks whose contrarianism always seems to lead towards fascism.
As a realist, I also admit it will probably take a lot more evidence and time.
Aside: I wish the Conservative movement could decide how they feel about Nazis. For the longest time, modern, populist and “intellectual” Conservatives seemed to think Nazism was bad. As I remember it, beyond all of the mechanized slaughter, there’s also the fact they were against religion, Hitler was a vegetarian, and “Socialist” was in the party name. They loudly proclaimed that Nazi thinking helped lead to the modern liberal movement. Now, with the rise of the Alt-Right, it seems like Nazism isn’t as bad as they were told. Does that mean, by the transitive property, that liberalism isn’t as bad as they were told as well?
This year I finally read Arno Mayer’s Why Did The Heavens Not Darken?. Mayer has a functionalist take on the Holocaust. He connects the Final Solution to the setbacks in 1941 against the Soviet Union along with the amount of territory they absorbed, which included millions of Jewish people who were a threat.
You take this type of functionalist approach to the Holocaust–where the camps were never a preplanned dream of Hitler but were outgrowths of power, war, and Nazi ideology–and twist the dial and you might get a mealy-mouthed ‘people died in work camps’.
To me, the truth is that the Holocaust’s pure evil could have become, in official American history, the mitigated unpleasantness of a reactionary regime fighting communism. And there’s always been an anti-communist idea that somehow working with the good Germans at the end of war was preferable to letting the Soviet Union get Berlin. That was the plan of the idiots who tried to kill Hitler. Cut a deal with the western Allies and blame it all on Hitler. And they made a movie about those guys, treating them like heroes.
That seems very true. It explains the popularity of cryptocurrency. And people on the right way smarter than Tucker Carlson are prone to this fallacy. Elon Musk springs to mind. And it’s not just “sheeple”, if established authority believes it, it must be wrong, e.g. vaccines.
@Modulo Myself: Wow. How does Mayer deal with the Germans of Jewish ancestry who had their citizenship taken from them (followed by their rights, homes, possessions and lives) before the war even started?
There’s plenty of things to blame Churchill for. Stuff that’s well documented, like the 1943 famine in Bengal, India. where:
There’s no need to make stuff up.
Hmm, there’s this thing called “pathological demand avoidance” which is a thing in itself, and also associated with the spectrum. It seems like it might be relevant here. Especially to the knee-jerk contrariness.
@rachel:
He distinguishes between the Nazi drive to make Germany free of Jewish people before the war and the Final Solution. He’s not an idiot. His immediate family left Europe because they were Jewish and some of his relatives died in camps. The book is not an apology for Germany or anti-semitism.
@Kathy:
100% this.
@Jay L Gischer:
Musk’s autism has nothing to do with why he’s a Nazi. Being raised in a family that made it’s fortune off slave labor in South Africa does.
@rachel:
It is well established in the relevant literature that the Final Solution was indeed a response to Germany’s failure to defeat the Soviet Union in 1941.
The initial plan appears to have been to drive all Jews out of Greater Germany, i.e., those parts of Europe directly annexed to Germany itself. However, the ongoing war with the Soviet Union made this impossible.
The decision to exterminate the Jews wasn’t made until January 1942, specifically at the Wannsee Conference. Of course, that doesn’t mean that mass killings didn’t occur before then. The so-called Einsatzgruppen that followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union killed tens of thousands of Jews.
But mass extermination in deliberately constructed death camps did not occur before 1942. There were earlier camps or ghettos were Jews driven out of Germany were housed in horrendous circumstances (and where many died), but these were – in theory at least – intended as transit camps where Jews would stay before driven even further east. (This was prevented by continued Soviet resistance.) A similar idea was to deport displaced Jews to Madagascar, but that fell through, too.
How everything would have worked if Germany (contrary to what happened) had defeated the Soviet Union is anyone’s guess. It wouldn’t have been pretty regardless.
Perhaps the thing to remember is that even Nazis can radicalize further…
I’m sure there are plenty of people who sincerely believe things that are contrary to conventional thought, but I have to think there are many who say things for attention, to be shocking, because their team seems to be saying it, to intentionally seed chaos, to be contrary purely for contrary’s sake, etc. It is a path to social and other media fame and fortune for some, unfortunately.
Tucker like Trump has a problem with the truth, but then again his program and ideas are aimed at the stupid.
There once was a man name Trump
Who had a very large rump
So when he sat down
He looked like a clown
Which caused him to be such a grump
@drj:
The death camps were made because they had already been murdering Jews by odd lots since before Kristallnacht, but wanted to do it faster.
So Tucker is a Nazi sympathizer. And we all know what the shortened version of Nazi sympathizer is: Nazi.
Tucker spoke at the national convention for one of the two major parties, guess which one. Hint, it’s the one where many of the delegates would have no problem hearing a speech from a Nazi.
@TheRyGuy: Here’s a challenge: explain how normalizing excusing the Holocaust is a good thing.
Because, that is the topic of this post.
As most things today the core of the issue is well acknowlaged that if churchill had given the east to hitler in 1939 there would not of been a world war at that time in Europe and maybe never but not likley never unless Hitler and his core was disposed of by the German Army soon as thet tried to do early and later in time. (later would not of made much difference except less destruction of Germany) The outcome between hitler and Stalin might of worked out many ways with out the west being engaged, hard to say. Its an interesting alternative history but pointless really and a separate issue from hitlers evil of all types inclusing expansion or causing holocaust of Jews then more Slavs.
These Headlines are just political against Tucker who is worse on his WTC tower collapse sceptisim which is very uneducated on the structure of these buildings
@Deblitzz: You DO get that Churchill WASN’T the PM in 1939, right?
For the title of “20th Century Cassandra” (i.e. someone who warned of the future but was ignored) I nominate mid-twentieth century Republican Senator and Party Leader Jacob Javits. In 1964, desperate at the path the Goldwater people were taking, he wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes Magazine section warning against the Southern Strategy (I believe his was the first public use of the term). One of his reason for opposing it was the folly of the Goldwater Republicans belief they could invite the bigots and racists into the fold, but through the back tent flap and only temporarily. They needed them to elect Goldwater, but only because he was such a bad candidate, an anomaly. Afterwards they could steer them out of the tent and pretend they were never there. Javits correctly saw that once inside, they would be there forever. Even he, though, didn’t see that they would eventually not just be a thorn inside but would actually become the Republican Party, which now houses actual Nazis and White Supremacists that would shame even Bull Connor. You know, the very good people on both sides
@Steven L. Taylor:
Why are you trying so hard to blame the interviewer (Tucker Carlson) and the owner of the online platform that aired this (Elon Musk)? Why not reserve your ire for the guy actually making the offending statements?
You radical pro-censorship types are getting tiresome. Truth (like democracy) dies in darkness.
Tucker likes to have conversations- even with those hey might not agree with. This is how it used to be. CNN could interview ex-Grand Wizard David Duke, and they won’t be accused of “racist propaganda”. The new left do not like uncomfortable discussions or debates.
@August:
CNN and other mainstream news outlets interviewed Duke when he was the Republican nominee for governor of Louisiana and had already won a state legislative seat. After he left politics, they stopped giving him a platform.
(That said, they have made some questionable choices for interview subjects in their quest for balance–for instance a while back they did a brief interview with Richard Spencer. I disagreed with that decision.)
@rachel:
Nope.
Initially, the goal was have the Jews gone and too bad if a bunch of them would end up getting killed in the process. Only later did outright extermination become the goal.
Also, this isn’t really up for debate. There is plenty of scholarship on this issue and you are not better informed than serious Holocaust historians.
@TheRyGuy:
Wow, I did not expect “Hitler wasn’t that bad” would be a hill you’d be prepared to die on.
Much like “ended up dead”, “talks wrongly” is doing a LOT of work there. Being wrong is thinking 2+2=5. “Talking wrongly” is suggesting ingesting bleach is a good way to fight Covid-19.
Saying the following is beyond wrong:
Note that he’s suggesting that the Holocaust was just a “humane” solution. That’s not exactly the type of talk I’d decide to defend out of a knee-jerk need to show that the left are far worse. Heck, you couldn’t even bother a “No one should be defending Hitler, but…”
Further, for this particular “historian”, this appears to be part of a larger pattern of “talking wrongly” about the Nazi’s and Euporean Fascists:
Nice attempt to change the topic. First, can you point out where I ever said that the protests were “no big deal”? I’ve written about them only once (or possibly twice) that I can remember.
Second, I’m more than happy to acknowledge that there is definitely an anti-Semitic issue within far-left spaces. I don’t think that’s necessarily the key motivation for all–or even most–of the protesters. But there is a clear, sizable portion of those protester who are consciously or unconsciously anti-Semitic.
Which gets us to:
This is bothsidesing of the worst magnitude. Yes, there are without a doubt nakedly anti-Semitic comments that have been spoken, in person, at those protest gatherings. Again, I am not supporting that or condoning that.
And the reach of those speeches is very limited (more or less to the people in attendance).
On the other hand, here we have someone peddling revisionist and wrong history on Tucker Carlson’s show (with no pushback from Carlson. From the article: “The interview has gained 21.3 million views, 37,000 likes, and 10,000 reposts on X.” And we have people like you being an apologist for mainstreaming this theory… congrats!
And the most important part of this discussion is:
Carlson is a mainstream Trump supporter. You know, the Presidential candidate you keep defending who “accidentally” has dinner with neo-Nazis. And then cannot admit that was a mistake. Heck J.D. Vance defended the Fuentes dinner:
Under no circumstances do you need to talk to Nick Fuentes. Under no circumstances do you need to promote someone who is “just asking questions about the Holocaust.” Frankly under no circumstances should you feel the need to reflexively defend that.
Beyond all that, note that Carlson, who has an ongoing record of platforming autocrats and Dictators (the folks that Trump praises in campaign speeches), SPOKE AT THE RNC. IN PRIME TIME. He’s a Republican insider.
On the other hand, the entire free Gaza movement is so political powerful that… checks notes… they couldn’t pressure the DNC into giving them a spot where they could read a prevented message about the need to end the war in Gaza.
These two things are not the same. That you think they are, and are willing to take the time to try and explain away and downplay Carlson, tells us much more about your priorities and morals than anything else.
BTW, I’m still waiting for you list of things that it’s fair to critique Trump about. Much like the video of his staff’s attack of Arlington workers, you keep promising to share that but never end up doing it.
Oh, the Nazi apologist apologists have arrived!
@Robert Jones: No one has suggested censoring Misters Tucker and/or Cooper. There were no calls for the government to shut them down.
I do think we should be examining whether Musk operated businesses should be government contractors, as military and defense contractors should be apolitical.
@August: The right wing’s flirtation with Nazis, Neo-Nazis and sparkling White Supremacists is a discussion that we really should have.
CNN may have interviewed David Duke, but they were well informed about Mr. Duke’s positions, and were prepared to challenge falsehoods. This is not the Tucker interview style, which is to platform loons and let them spew their falsehoods and misinformation unchallenged.
@August:
Can you point out to me where Carlson actively pushed on any of Cooper’s points? Or Putin’s for that matter? Likewise, let me know when fierce intellectual and objectivist Elon Musk pushed back on Trump being wrong in any serious way.
I mean, I know that folks are upset that CNN’s interview with Harris was a softball. But those interviews were even more fawning.
Further, there really is no reason, with all of the scholarship out there on things like race or WWII, to platform people who are so wrong.
Finally, can you ever point out a time when Tucker has someone on with really leftist ahistorical views on anything? For some reason, he always seems like he feels like the “pro-Fascist” voices are the ones who need the most amplification. I wonder why that is.
@Matt Bernius:
What if he is double parked, and you need to get out?
What if you’re doing a documentary on the rise of the alt-right, and the mainstreaming of White Nationalism in Republican politics?
That’s just two examples off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more.
@August:
Did they promote him as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” when they interviewed him?
Did they present him as a sympathetic politician who really should be listened to?
@Robert Jones:
Asking a commenter a question is a “radical pro-censorship” position?
This seems unlikely.
@just nutha:
Or that the objective to take revenge on France and retake Alsace-Lorraine was about as important to Tucker hitler as his ambitions of lebensraum.
@Robert Jones:
Ok, so here’s how this goes…
1. Tucker Carlson has a booker who seeks out guests. So Carlson’s booker thought that Cooper would be someone who would appeal to Carlson’s audience. Carlson, who again has establishing a track record of being “pro-ethnofascist” agrees and hosts the person with little to no pushback on “the Holocaust was a humane decision.”
So, if you agree that Cooper was wrong and deserves ire, shouldn’t the booker and, ultimately, Carlson bear responsibility for not vetting the guests or questioning their viewpoints?
2. Then we get to Musk, who has increasingly moved in a rightward fascist, RVTVRN political direction and is a prominent Trump supporter. He chose to platform Carlson, again because he thinks that he appeals to a core portion of his site’s audience. And then he promotes the interview saying the viewpoints are “Very interesting. Worth watching.” Yet for some reason, you think he doesn’t bear any responsibility either.
I’d love to hear what you thought of the interview. And understand why you think that Cooper deserved to have a platform.
I don’t think you understand what that means. Pointing out that no one needs to platform Holocaust apologists (especially without pushing back on them) is not censorship as we are talking about private spaces and content booking and promotion choices that people are choosing to make.
BTW, if we were true radical pro-censorship types, why would we allow you post, RyGuy’s post, and Augusts to still be up here.
Which gets to:
@August:
Speaking for myself, I don’t have an issue with uncomfortable discussions. It’s a skill I’ve been working on for years.
I do have an issue with people who think “uncomfortable discussions” mean anyone can say what they want without pushback or acknowledging counterfactuals. That’s not a discussion. That’s just saying edgelord shit. See, for example, 911 truthers, 2020 election truthers, vaccine truthers, racial science truthers, Climate Deniers, etc. To be clear, no political side has a monopoly on these folks.
A real uncomfortable discussion involves listening to, acknowledging, seriously considering, and addressing counterfactuals.
I honestly didn’t expect this post to be so triggering for Carlson or Musk defenders.
With regard to the necessity to platform Holocaust defenders or anti-Semitic Gaza protesters I’m reminded of the following advice:
Apparently JD Vance follows this guy on twitter.
Final open question, especially for those of who don’t like this post:
What’s an affirmative argument for choosing to platform someone, for profit, who is “just asking questions” about topics like the Holocaust?
For extra points, what responsibility–if any–does the person platforming said “just asking questions” to push back on things? For example, to @TheRyGuy’s point, should Carlson platform an anti-Semitic critic of the war on Gaza and just let them talk?
Which get’s to @Deblitzz:
I am shocked to learn that (a) Tucker is uneducated about things he takes a stance on, and (b) that in the past he’s advanced conspiracy theories and bad history (see also Putin’s history of Russia and any number of other topics he’s been wrong on). Yet, at the same time, he might just be right in suggesting that Hitler isn’t that bad and Libs like me are critiquing him out of “politics.”
This is why I’m so tired of the “he really wasn’t that bad when he was saying things I liked” excuse. Sure everyone gets to be wrong about someone. But in most cases, you can see their heel turn coming miles away.
@Modulo Myself:
I did NAZI that coming, but I’m not surprised.
(Yes, it’s a cheap pun. Yes, I also already made it in the subheadline. No, I don’t regret it at all.)
@Matt Bernius:
Final open question, especially for those of who don’t like this post:
What’s an affirmative argument for choosing to platform someone, for profit, who is “just asking questions” about topics like the Holocaust?
The whole free speech thing has become a red herring.
A couple years ago there was a phase when these people were talking about the Blank Slate and how leftists all believed in this model of human nature. This was once true in the 60s, when you had people who believed that autism came from cold mothers and mental illness was a creation of capitalism. But very few thinkers believe in this model now. Any actual acquaintance with philosophy from the Chomsky/Foucault debate onwards would tell you this.
But the people talking about leftists being into the Blank State and the audience for this believed that human nature can be reduced to whether women are bad at math and if black people are inferior. They were only interested in that and had no interest in actual theories of human nature. But free speech exists for the sake of the latter, not the former. The idea that we need free speech in order to increase our capacity to be philistines is what philistines believe because they’re philistines. So the answer is not platforming philistines. It’s to do away with them.
@Matt Bernius:
It depends partly on the relevance of the person. As I pointed out earlier, David Duke was a nominee for governor, not just some random pseudo-historian. And even with Duke, there were serious dangers to granting him an interview. He espoused a lot of neo-Nazi propaganda that most reporters weren’t well-equipped to push back on. This problem came up more recently with Kanye West–who is, I’d grant, also a relevant enough figure to be a legitimate interview subject.
We see in this very thread that there’s a fair amount of ignorance about the Holocaust that gives crackpots an opening to make their beliefs plausible-sounding to the average person, sowing doubt where none exist among those with knowledge of the subject.
@Steven L. Taylor: so, i listened to the interview after i read about on mediaite. I didn’t hear either one of them sympathize with nazis. Reading comments from ideologically driven people from both sides is daunting. You both call each other stupid, and claim to be on the side of truth. Paul Simon was so right. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. The horseshoe theory is real, and it is on full display. Both extremists on the right and left have antisemitism in common. Ideologically driven moderates from both center right and center left seem to only notice it in the opposite extreme. It’s hilarious, and a fools errand to point out, because nobody listens to each other anymore, anyway. I wish all you political ideologues would just gather in the streets, shoot it out and get it over with so the rest of the country can get on with their lives.
@Jay: I listened to the interview and agree 100%. There was no “pro-nazi “ statements or anything that could be misconstrued as pro-nazi. I wonder how many of these comments are by bots or generated by bots.
As I listened to the podcast I predicted a good sliming on Drudge Report. Thank you Matt for answering the call. PS- your headline is an absolute lie.
There’s no question that the Germans intended, planned, and prepared to starve not mere millions but tens of millions of Russians and other Soviet nationalities to death. They had a plan literally titled The Hunger Plan that was not some random proposal but was actually endorsed and authorized at the highest levels. They fully anticipated that millions of Soviet POWs would fall into their hands and were not at all surprised by that happening. They may have been surprised that the Red Army was even bigger than they had anticipated, and were surprised that it kept stubbornly fighting after the massive losses in the first weeks of the war rather than simply collapsing, but the Germans fully anticipated a huge number of captives and had already planned to kill them en masse, mostly via neglect. The Germans’ simply parking their captives in open fields surrounded by barbed wire, with little or no shelter or food, was not a desperation measure prompted by unexpected circumstances. Starving millions of Russians etc to death was the plan all along, decided upon months before the attack on the Soviet Union had even begun.
@Steven L. Taylor:
“Asking a commenter a question is a “radical pro-censorship” position?”
No, but asking someone to “explain how normalizing excusing the Holocaust is a good thing.” is a radical pro-censorship position. Your entire argument can be summed up as “Shut up!”, just because you object to seeing another point of view (odious or not) represented. It’s not simply because you don’t want to see or read anything offensive to you, but because you think that *no one else* should be permitted to see or read it either…and that’s the very definition of ‘censorship’, isn’t it?
The fact that these articles going after DC and talking all sorts of shit about him shows he’s clearly right over the target. Been listening to Martyr Made for years, he’s not even close to being some far right person or Nazi, and he is a legitimate historian, probably one of the most skilled researchers in the country right now. The left hates that a large portion of the population doesn’t want to just lay back and put up with their bullshit anymore. The left controls literally every institution in modern civilization and that’s still not enough, they want our lives and children’s lives.
‘authoritarians like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin’
you will pay for these insults
@Modulo Myself: there are some people that I vehemently disagree with that I follow on Threads, because I want to know what kinds of things they are saying. Following someone is very different than liking their posts or positivity reposting them. I don’t doubt that Vance probably agrees with this guy in many ways, but following someone alone isn’t necessarily a reflection of support.
@FLMan:
@Gustopher:
“Oh, the Nazi apologist apologists have arrived!”
Followed closely by the gaslighters, it seems.
“Robert Jones: No one has suggested censoring Misters Tucker and/or Cooper. There were no calls for the government to shut them down.”
Just labelling them Nazis is enough for you, then? Good to know.
“I do think we should be examining whether Musk operated businesses should be government contractors, as military and defense contractors should be apolitical. ”
Ahh…so again, no censorship, right? We should just take anyway their livelihood instead?
(isn’t that kinda fascist of you?)
@FLMan:
The right’s nominee for president tweeted out on 28 June 2020 a video of one his supporters yelling, “White Power!” He refused to take it down, only relenting when Tim Scott went on TV and begged him.
It’s interesting how the same people who get get all huffy about a self-proclaimed “historian” (who lacks actual academic credentials or scholarship) being called a Nazi for (among other things) saying that Hitler conquering Paris was preferable to some weirdos at the Paris Olympic ceremonies..
had howled things for years like, say, government requiring the middle class to buy private-sector health insurance rather than planning to just show up at the ER when sick or injured unable to pay the massive bill is “Stalinism”
@Jack: Way back when, when I was working on discussion boards for some big website that probably didn’t need discussion boards, I came across the Holocaust Minimizers for the first time and was baffled. The “Hitler didn’t kill 9 million, it was probably only 600,000” types.
They’re insidious because they initially look like they are reasonable people and that there is some kind of actual debate about this, but it always comes back to “and the Jews are lying to get your support for their Jewstate Israel because they control you through lies”
They’re Nazis, they’re just aware enough that they are slightly stealthy Nazis. These are people with user names like “Patriot1848” where they slightly mix 1488. Their goal is recruitment, so if you look up their oddly worded claims you end up on their websites where they continue to try to lead people to flat out holocaust denialism.
You don’t give them platforms where they can interact with normies. They are not acting in good faith, they are trying to skirt right up to the line of what might be acceptable if you don’t know better, and invite people to the other side.
@Robert Jones:
This feels like a great example of the point I was trying to make here:
@Matt Bernius:
Steven gave some light pushback and it was immediately noped out. That doesn’t signal an interest in having difficult conversations.
It’s fair to question the “excusing the Holocaust is a good thing” point. But instead of trying to explain how a quote like the one I reproduced above can have a different meaning, you just accuse us of not being open to your position.
@Robert Jones:
We’ve already had Musk threatening to turn off Starlink in Ukraine. He’s trying to set policy, which is a very bad thing for a defense contractor. Is the Deep State ok if it is privatized?
Wait! I’m shooting at nazis?
@TheRyGuy:
No big deal? Really? That’s not what I see being reported and opined upon.
I suppose if you don’t get out much and don’t read various MSM news feeds, like the NYT or Washington Poat, you might not realize that what’s been happening on college campuses since Hamas attacked and murdered over 1,000 Israelis is being WIDELY REPORTED.
@Matt Bernius:
“Ok, so here’s how this goes…
1. Tucker Carlson has a booker who seeks out guests. So Carlson’s booker thought that Cooper would be someone who would appeal to Carlson’s audience.”
Yes, someone *controversial*. That draws viewers, which makes money. Money is profit, which is what businesses are designed to generate.
“Carlson, who again has establishing a track record of being “pro-ethnofascist””
Grow up
” agrees and hosts the person with little to no pushback on “the Holocaust was a humane decision.””
How much ‘pushback’ is enough for you? Are you happy watching CNN and MSNBC do softball interviews with Democrats while they attempt to ambush Trump or Vance with “Gotcha!” moments? Why does every interviewer have to be an advocate or an activist? Can’t you make up you own mind about who is right or wrong?
(or are you another one who thinks that we simply *should not be allowed* to see or read any objectionable material because the Great Unwashed are just like children and people like you are the annointed Arbiters Of All That Is True And Good?)
“So, if you agree that Cooper was wrong and deserves ire, shouldn’t the booker and, ultimately, Carlson bear responsibility for not vetting the guests or questioning their viewpoints?”
NO. Absolutely not. I’m a libertarian and a ‘free speech’ guy.
“2. Then we get to Musk, who has increasingly moved in a rightward fascist,”
…and that’s where I stopped reading, RIGHT THERE. Get serious.
@FLMan:
Other than saying things you agree with, can you explain how you define someone as “a legitimate historian” and what leads you to believe that he’s “one of the most skilled researchers in the country right now”?
I’m asking that as a serious question: what has he done to demonstrate he’s someone worth taking seriously as a historian or a researcher?
@Robert Jones:
No, it is a question about whether it is appropriate to excuse normalizing the Holocaust. Is that a question one is allowed to ask?
Or are you telling me to shut up?
Presenting another point of view is not the same thing as excusing it.
Again, Tucker didn’t just interview the guy, he called him “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
That isn’t just discussing controversy. That is extolling his position.
@Robert Jones:
Are you telling him he can’t say that?
I am trying to understand your position on free speech.
@Robert Jones:
Actually engaging with what is written. For example your response to
was
I’m happy to back up my assertion. One needs only look at the glowing coverage that Carlson has given Putin’s Russia, Oberan in Hungary, and past comments on the decline of Western Culture by non-white folks to see that pattern. And that’s a critique about him that hasn’t come just from the left. There are a lot of folks on the right who have raised that point as well.
You just switched the topic. I’ve written about how bad Vance is with turning softball questions into gotcha moments in the past. As for Trump, asking him to clarify things like… I don’t know… claims that he got into a helicopter crash with Willie Brown where Brown told him how bad Kamala Harris isn’t gotcha.
So then what’s the point of an interview? Why does Carlson or any journalist need to be there.
I’d love to see where I’m making that argument? But you have still yet to make an argument why, other than for profit, it’s good to platform holocaust deniers. Which is a pretty cynical viewpoint.
You’ve skipped a few steps there. Perhaps can you unpack things a bit.
1. Do you think Cooper is wrong?
2. How is putting someone on a commercial program “free speech”?
3. Where does being a libertarian come into play here?
Huh, so I guess the conversation got too uncomfortable for you. Again, I’m happy to back that up. See for example:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his-x-social-media-platform-to-amplify-right-wing-views
Or is that a viewpoint that’s too scary for you to consider. And yet, I’m some type of far leftwing activist for critiquing Cooper.
BTW, for the good of public discourse here’s a great example of the tracking of Musk’s increasingly rightward turn… if you’re mind isn’t to fragile to read it.
@Robert Jones: I don’t understand. We are expressing our opinions. Is that not free speech?
Are we not allowed to say that Tucker Carlson has increasingly cleaved to reactionary right positions that look an awful lot like fascism?
Are we not allowed to say that he uncritically interviewed Putin?
Are we not allowed to say that we find Cooper’s positions to be apologia for Hitler? I will confess to not listening to the interview, but read quite a few things Cooer wrote last night because I wanted to make sure I understood what the uproar was about. Matt is correct, he largely hand-waves away the Holocaust. I find that morally objectionable and historically problematic.
Am I not allowed to use my free speech to say so?
@Steven L. Taylor:
So far it’s I support free speech unlike you, but not enough to do anything but shout at you and make accusations if you say anything I slightly disagree with (though I won’t discuss my views… other than “I support free speech unlike you, but not enough to do anything but shout at you and make accusations if you say anything I slightly disagree with.”)
Also, it seems to me that he also is very concerned about “free speech” in private places. I’d love to hear his position on Elon Musk’s desire to classify “cis gender” as a forbidden word on Xitter.
For the record, as with Tucker platforming Cooper, that can be his choice because Xtter is a private space. But doing that while you’re calling yourself a “free speech absolutist” and trying to suggest we shouldn’t judge that decision isn’t a good or principled look. And neither is beyond moral critique.
@Steven L. Taylor:
To be clear, I did the same thing and I read enough to feel pretty comfortable with my decision to place him in exactly the same “I don’t need to take them seriously” place I filed folks like Richard Hanania. I’m looking forward to the day I can put Chris Rufo back into that box too.
@Matt Bernius: I’ll be honest, it all sounds more like tribal protection of people they feel are part of their in-group, rather than any concerns about speech rights–especially since no one’s speech rights are being threatened.
In fact, the best part of all of this is that we are the ones providing our critics a space for their speech (and even engaging with them!).
What a super-weird thing for “radical pro-censorship types” to do!!
@ANONYMOUS:
BTW, I hope the free speech absolutists would agree that this type of comment isn’t keeping in the spirit of free speech.
Also, I was reliably told that only the left hates the rest of the country. Yet, in all my interactions with folks from the Right and Libertarians (both here and elsewhere) they always seem to be the ones who are angy and telling us that once Trump wins libs like me will “get what’s coming to us.”
On that note:
@Terman Faylor:
Hey, glad to hear you had a great hate read. PS- if the headline is an absolute lie, it should be really easy to explain why it’s a lie. Feel free to take a pass at that.
In the meantime, stay positive, Terman!
BTW, serious question for all the folks who came out of the woodwork on this one:
Do you read the site on the regular and you decided that my “slandering” Carlson and Musk was enough to push you over the edge to comment? Or was this post shared somewhere?
I’m genuinely curious. And I invite you all to stick around and embrace the uncomfortable discussions we try to encourage here.
A golden oldie from a great American: “How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad,” Barack Obama.
I figure it would be hard for nazis to say nazis are bad.
@Modulo Myself: That “functionalist” take is, to put it politely, stinking garbage. A simpler, and more defensible, argument is that the Nazis planned the elimination of the Jews all along. The first death camp in the East was established in 1941, when Deutschland Siegt An Allen Fronten. When the Wehrmacht was clearly losing the war, the urgency of killing the Jews accelerated. While fighting the Allies on multiple fronts, the Nazis diverted resources — soldiers, trains, you name it — to the Final Solution.
Not an improvisation, not a casual notion.
So I’m wondering where these similarly worded posts are coming from. One guy? A directed effort, paid for by the Iranians or the Russians? Maybe some Koch funded effort? AI chat bots aren’t this good yet, are they, Kathy?
@MarkedMan:
You are overthinking it. Chances are this post got linked somewhere or circulated on Xtter into these folks feeds. They are all posting from North American IP addresses (which, yes, can be spoofed, but we’re a pretty low ROI target). Also the associated emails don’t have the hallmarks of junk emails.
The responses are all too custom tailored to be bot responses (unless someone is playing with an LLM model).
And I learned a long time ago that people are very happy online to spend a lot of their time telling me I am wrong.
@Jay: “Reading comments from ideologically driven people from both sides is daunting. ”
Both sides. You mean people who oppose Nazis and people who adore Nazis?
@MarkedMan:
Depends. I don’t make any special effort past trying a few of them, and wind up using Copilot because it’s easier. The button for it is right there on Edge. Then, too, there are apps that rely on LLMs. And if you’re patient and try different prompts and edit and refine the result, you might get a bunch of comments with similar content in maybe half an hour.
@wr:
What I love about that response is it positions him as the only person who is apparently above ideology.
Which is so cute.
@Robert Jones:
Historians have shown, six ways from Sunday, for decades since 1945, that the Final Solution was real, that millions of Jews died (along with other victims of the Nazis), that Holocaust deniers are also real, that they’re mendacious, that they’re trying to revamp the images of Nazi officials (both civilian and military), and that a typical tactic among deniers is to “just ask questions.” There’s no point in playing this game with them, which merely obfuscates historical truth.
It’s also not worth playing the game of saying, with quivering outrage of dubious sincerity, Why don’t you condemn the pro-Hamas protesters, too? The whataboutism of that is obvious. But even if you want us to play along, fine, nobody here is willing to defend people who cheer the October 7th murders and kidnappings. Speaking for myself, I found many of the protesters to be beneath contempt. For example, the person who spray-painted in the Portland State University Library, “Any form of anti-imperial resistance is justified,” is a moral cretin. You can decry anti-Semitism from any and all quarters, all the time.
By the way, “Get serious” and “grow up” are not arguments, just bilious outbursts. You don’t seem willing to entertain the idea that a billionaire might have gone down the fascist and authoritarian rabbit hole, or seen contemporary authoritarians or fascists as convenient allies. Odd, for someone who is willing to apply the “just asking, let people decide for themselves” position on, of all things, the Holocaust.
Also, it just occurred to me: if there was nothing wrong with Cooper’s argument, why did radical free thinker Elon Musk decide to delete his tweet promoting it?
After WWII was won U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was abandoned because he was not a progressive thinker.
Wiki
@Matt Bernius:
Because the feeble deepstatewokemindviruscomunistsocialists scare the crap out of all powerful alpha primate Xlon, who is powerless against it.
@Robert Jones: It seems as though you’re making an argument in support of “alternate facts” being accepted at face value. Is saying that people saying documented as untrue things have to have their lies honored really the best ya got?
@Matt Bernius: “What I love about that response is it positions him as the only person who is apparently above ideology.”
Yes, you little pawns may bicker about whether good is better than evil, but only I am wise enough to rise above those false categories.
@Paul L.: “After WWII was won U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was abandoned because he was not a progressive thinker.”
So the British public wanted a more liberal party in power. Do you have a problem with this? Because it seems to me that the essence of democracy is the voters choosing the people who will lead them. Do you think that only you should have the right to choose for everyone else?
@wr:
I was pointing out that Winston Churchill “amoral backward warmongering mindset” was only appropriate to British public when the UK was at war.
Whataboutism Do you have a problem with Trump being elected in 2016 or GW Bush in 2000/2004?
@Paul L.: @wr: One of the reasons for the 1945 landslide that turned out Churchill was the Tory support for appeasement in the 1930s. Even though Churchill had opposed it, he was an outlier in the party, and Conservative MPs were damaged by it.
@Paul L. et al.:
Look, I let you get one post in about Churchill because it’s tangentially related. But you are again attempting to detail the thread and I am not here for it.
If you really want to make an argument about Churchill with regards to GWB and Trump and solicit responses, do it at your own site. Heck, post a link and encourage people to continue the discussion there.
But, as I am not a free speech absolutist, I am clearly telling you that any posts continuing down that path will get edited out. That goes for anyone else who is feeling like chasing this particular gosh gallop.
Again, in the spirit of free speech, you can complain about any percieved unfairness at your own site.
@Kathy:
Matt: Drudge Report is linking to you right now. That’s why you are suddenly popular.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
It’s an insult to males, too. Nonetheless, we have eyewitness testimony from Stephanie Clifford that El Weirdo is one.
Insult and all, everything is something. I’ve mentioned that among primates, the alpha makes a lot of noise and slings his own feces around. That’s Xlon, El Weirdo, Vance, and lots of others in the late Republican party.
@Sam:
Oh, thank you for the explanation.
Also “Hi! Mom” if you are reading this.
@Sam: Link to the link, please.
@Matt Bernius:
Elon called it a mistake
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1831405270544871681
@Kingdaddy:
Its down now.
Look at the archive.
https://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2024/09/05/20240905_002340.htm
It’s the left column, middle section, middle headline.
@Sam: Wow. Matt Drudge is still a thing?
@Sam:
Thanks for the links and that Musk post. Really appreciate it.
Is Matt Drudge still a thing? Matt, how many new visitors did you get?
(Also, you hit the trifecta of his three current hates: Trump, Elon, and Tucker.)
Hahahahaha…..thanks, Sam! I think my most favorite headline so far is “Picking your nose causes dementia”. 😉
@Paul L.: ” was pointing out that Winston Churchill “amoral backward warmongering mindset” was only appropriate to British public when the UK was at war.”
Really struggling to understand your point here. Yes, Churchill was a great wartime leader, and it’s my understanding that he was beloved by the British people. At the same time, voters really mistrusted the conservative party after the way they ran the country in the 1930s and so they put Labor into power by a landslide. Unless you’re saying that if a leader does a good job for a certain period of time he must be allowed to stay in power forever, then you are making no sense at all.
Also, you have scare quotes around your description of Churchill’s mindset, which makes it look like you’re quoting someone. Are you? If so, who? And if not, why the quotes?
As for the elections you mentioned, I am troubled by the 2000 and 2o16 elections because in both cases the popular vote count was opposite the electoral vote count. I don’t dispute that either was legitimate, since that’s how our country was set up, but I do believe the electoral college should be abolished. 2000 is more problematic than 2016 because of the involvement of a bunch of political actors on the Supreme Court inventing new laws to allow themselves to pick the president they wanted.
As for 2004, Bush won. Wasn’t my preferred candidate, but not being a moron or a troll I am aware that I don’t always get what I want.
@Matt Bernius: “If you really want to make an argument about Churchill with regards to GWB and Trump and solicit responses, do it at your own site. Heck, post a link and encourage people to continue the discussion there.”
Sorry, I only saw this after I responded to Paul L. Never again!
@wr:
No worries. It’s an honest mistake and TBH you covered all of what would have been in my response to that post. In fact, you made more sense of the GWB and Trump election comment than I did (though who knows if that is what he meant).
Again, Paul L., if you want to continue that discussion, feel free to start a thread at your site and link to it below.
Robert Jones, does it hurt your precious feewings that nobody wants to be around right-wing racists? Go cry – because when you get back, you’ll still be wrong.
Content moderation is required if social media platforms want to be profitable so that advertisements don’t stop getting posted. Advertisers remove their ads when those ads get placed next to a right-wing post.. because right-wing posts have been proven to not sell.
The free market….. that thing right-wingers often claim to be defending.. has entirely rejected right-wing views because the people who reject those right wing views all have the freedom to take their money and quit. Unfortunately for right wingers, many more people reject right wing views than subscribe to them. Daily Stormer isn’t swimming in cash.
It’s always fun to see right wingers claim to support free speech and a free market only until the money in that market does the talking. At that point, of course, they suddenly become big fans of government intervention.