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?
