…because now Carlson is promoting a “historian” who says that Hitler was just trying to be kind when he tried to wipe out the Slavs and the Jews.
No, I am not exaggerating.
Back in May, I wrote about how despicable it was for Tucker Carlson, whom Ethics Alarms flagged as a self-promoting, unprincipled creep years ago, to interview Alex Jones (who claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax) as if the conspiracy peddler was a legitimate journalist. Ethics Alarms described Carlson as “a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it.” More:
“…since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has. Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power.
Now, I can’t explain exactly how Carlson’s latest example of irresponsible journalism will help him in the power department, but his latest interview subject makes Alex Jones seem like Lowell Thomas. This week Carlson chose to interview Darryl Cooper, and introduced him as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” Best! Most honest! Cooper explained to Carlson’s audience that Winston Churchill was arguably “the chief villain of the Second World War” and “primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did.” After all, Churchill could have made a separate peace with Adolf, who didn’t want to fight Great Britain, and maybe then the war would have peacefully concluded with Hitler taking over the rest of Europe and the U.S. never having to get involved at all!
Believe it or not, that insane analysis was not the worst claim Cooper made during the interview. He also told Carlson, who acted like he was in the presence of brilliance and made no objections at all—such as the mandatory, “What the hell is the matter with you?”—-that Hitler was just trying to be merciful when his troops murdered all of those Slavs and Jews. “We can’t feed these people, we don’t have the food to feed these people,” Cooper imagined the Germans thinking after the fighting on the Eastern Front created more prisoners and refugees than Germany could cope with. “And one of them actually says, ‘Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to just finish them off quickly now?’” As for the Jews, Cooper says that stuff just kind of went sideways in the concentration camps, and exterminating them was never the intention.
Historians have access to the transcript of the infamous meeting of German generals, scholars, judges and intellectuals to plot “the Final Solution.” Cooper’s theories are historical gaslighting. The issue is not so much why Carlson didn’t rebut Cooper’s fever dreams, but why he gave someone like that a platform at all.
There would be no time in the last 80 years when Cooper’s arguments would be responsible to broadcast, but in September of 2024, we are witnessing the worst outbreak of world anti-Semitism since the 1930s. Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to move closer to one-party rule by telling voters that Donald Trump is Hitler incarnate—and here is Tucker Carlson, a prominent Trump supporter, sponsoring a gonzo historian who thinks that history has been unfair to Hitler. Carlson also handed more ammunition to those who want to take down Elon Musk for restoring freedom of speech to Twitter, by abusing the forum Musk gave him after Carlson was kicked off Fox News.
A responsible, trustworthy journalist would have paired Cooper with a historian who could authoritatively rebut his poison. Then again, a responsible, trustworthy journalist wouldn’t interview a Hitler apologist like Cooper at all.
Ethics Alarms 
I think you can interview people like this ethically. They exist and people should be aware that people with ideas like this exist. I think it is actually important to understand people with viewpoints like this, especially since we are heavily funding them in Ukraine currently. However, some pushback should have been given. I don’t think completely shutting them down is ethical. If you brought them on to discuss their opinion, you need to let them explain their opinions. However, digging into the logical conclusion of his beliefs (“So, you think Britain should have forged an independent peace and allowed Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo to take over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and most of East Asia to slug it out with the USSR? How would that world look? What would that have meant for a post-war US and Britain?) should have been done. Repeatedly mentioning the fact that almost everyone disputes those points is valid. It is true, and it is not shutting down his unpopular (possibly the greatest understatement I have ever made) ideas.
I do not think it is wrong to interview people with outrageous and/or offensive ideas. I do think it is wrong to present them in a way that doesn’t make clear that these are generally considered outrageous and/or offensive. Covering up the fact that people like this exist (especially when we are promoting them with our tax dollars) is deceptive.
But where do you draw the line, MR? Does every wacko’s uninformed opinion deserve a national forum? Wherever the line is, it’s well before we get to publicizing this guy as an “honest” historian.
Oh, I wouldn’t characterize him as an ‘honest’ historian. I think my followup reply demonstrates how bad this guy’s history was. However, we are currently supporting and funding a Ukrainian government that thinks much like this. We (the U.S. Government) and most of NATO has declared that this type of thinking typifies the ‘good guy’ in the Ukraine-Russia war and the US public needs to know that.
I would challenge the guy’s choices and characterizations. Luckily, his history and logic are really bad, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Tucker Carlson seems to be too much of a lightweight thinker to do this, however. I wouldn’t ban him, but I would question him to the point that anyone with a brain would realize his ideas don’t make sense.
People like this are obtuse. It’s one thing to legitimately argue that Nazi Germany had no plan to exterminate Jews en masse prior to World War II or even prior to 1941/42. It’s quite another to argue that Germany was being merciful or otherwise had no agency when people died of disease or starvation. I’ve read the arguments that Germany could barely feed its own people, much less concentration camp victims. Well, maybe, then Germany shouldn’t have invaded other countries, destroying infrastructure and stripping them of resources necessary to sustain the citizens. The minute Germany took over, it became responsible for the well-being of everyone who lived there. It would not have been necessary to kill anyone, for their own good or not, if they hadn’t attacked in the first place.
Cooper could have argued that point and he still would have been wrong. The German SS began killing Jews in Poland in 1939…en masse. The “industrial” exterminations with the six death camps didn’t take off until 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. Anyways, killing people – whether by machine gun or Zyklon B pellets (relatively quick deaths) or by starvation in the winter (a slow death) – is never merciful or kind.
I’m glad Carlson interviewed him, because then our host highlighted it, and now I know to avoid buying literature written by Darryl Cooper…or at least to look at it with a very skeptical eye.
Oh, certainly they were killing civilians, especially minorities, prior to Barbarossa. My point was that you could make an argument that there was not a plan to murder all of the Jews prior to that.
I agree…that argument could be made. A plan was definitely committed to in late ’41/early ’42. I can’t remember right off hand when the meeting at Wannsee took place.
I respectfully disagree, Jack. My opinion is that the Darrow quote on Freedom applies to this.The guy sounds like a loon, but unless he is currently advocating to finish the job, he can have, speak, and sell books. The remedy to speech you disagree with is more speech.
yes, Tucker is a hack
(“Liberty” not freedom).
I don’t object to him writing books. What unforgivable is Carlson giving him a platform and using his (undeserved) credibility to promote the idiot’s claims.
The sad thing is how bad a historian this guy is. He could be a lot more convincing. Churchill is the worst person to choose for a British villain. Why not start your propaganda with some truth (always best to set your lie WITHIN a truth).
World War II is the fault of inept British diplomacy. The British wanted to use Hitler’s fascism to counter the Communism of the USSR. Germany was militarily too weak, however. The Treaty of Versailles had stripped them of the equipment to make war. Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, had a lot of military equipment. Hitler and the British government worked together to get the Czech government to allow a German takeover. The German military was not match for that of the Czechs’ at the time, which is why Hitler’s generals threatened to resign when he proposed the plan. Britain told the Czechs to cede some land to Germnay or they (the British) wouldn’t support the Czechs diplomaticaly or militarily. The British got the Czechs to cede more and more, little by little, until the Czechs no longer had the ability to defend themselves. Then, Germany took over. With the Czech tanks, Hitler was now a major military threat. Then, Hitler and the British tried to play the same game on Poland. Poland, however, wasn’t having any of it. The British were getting so duplicitous with Poland, however, the Hitler started to fear that the British might be ready to double-cross HIM instead of the Poles, so he invaded Poland.
From here, you can add the propaganda and spin. Because of this ineptitude on the part of British diplomats (the same type who caused WWI), the German takeover of Poland was a PR disaster and the British people demanded a new government of Churchill because he had opposed the British politicians responsible for messing up the ‘Good Plan’ (in Cooper’s version). This destroyed the ‘Good Plan’ and led to the disaster that was WWII.
See how much better that one was?
I wasn’t aware that the British pressured Czechoslovakia to cede land to Nazi Germany. Why didn’t they pressure the Czechoslovakian government to work with them against the communists instead? It seems simpler. Did they think fascism was that useful of an ideology to counter communism?
Hitler, fresh from the Anschluss, was continuing to push what he could get away with. Using the excuse that ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia were being mistreated by Czechs, Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia turn over the Sudentenland, lest he be forced to intervene militarily on behalf of those beleaguered Germans. Apparently, Czecholovakia was supposed to refuse, and then Hitler would have his excuse to invade. However, there was one thing about the Sudentenland that made assault unadvisable: the Czechs has built their own Maginot line against Germany. The odds of German success if they attacked Czechoslovakia were poor, but Chamberlain, wanting to be seen as the peacemaking hero, flew in person to Prague to convince the Czechs to hand over the land and thus preserve peace. Once the Czechs caved to such international pressure and turned over their primary defense against Germany to Germany, Hitler manufactured a crisis that “forced” him to invade Prague and seize control of the rest of the country.
I’m not sure how much Michael’s spin on using the Nazi’s to foil the Communists is rooted in the truth. I do know that Europe was anxious to avoid another war that would claim another generation of young men, and as long as Hitler’s demands seemed rooted in some amount of legitimacy (We’re just making sure we can defend ourselves! We’re unifying with ethnic Germans who should have been party of Germany after the Great War! We are rushing to the defense of the Danzig!), Europe was willing to cede anything to keep the peace.
I recommend William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, for anyone interested in a decently comprehensive single volume.
“I’m not sure how much Michael’s spin on using the Nazis to foil the Communists is rooted in the truth.”
It played a role, as did the allies’ wish to avoid another general war, but how important it was depended on the person. Certainly, some fascist sympathizers felt that way. Others didn’t see the Nazis for what they were. Still others felt that the Nazis were unpalatable, but that the Soviets were the greater threat.
What everyone should remember is that it had only been about 20 years since the Bolshevik Revolution which had resulted in untold numbers of deaths. At that time, Communism was to be spread by bloody revolution. The Bolsheviks targeted opposing political parties (as all totalitarians do), members of the royal family and the clergy.
As time went on, they targeted others, including landowners in Ukraine (the kulaks) which is one of the many reasons why Ukraine and Russia have a complicated relationship today.
To the early 20th century European nations, Communism meant Soviet-style show trials, forced atheism and no private property. There were those who believed that Nazi Germany, for all its faults, could serve as a buffer in Central Europe against the spread of Communism.
But, the fact of the matter is, that England and France’s governments did not have a stomach for war and wanted to avoid conflict with Hitler at all costs which is why they threw Czechoslovakia under the bus. The Czechs weren’t even invited to the Munich Conference.
And why Churchill was a hero, perhaps the greatest hero of the 20th Century.
There were some diplomatic documents released last year that showed that Britain wanted Hitler for a counter to Stalin and sought to strengthen his military by allowing him to absorb several areas. They also indicated that Hitler became rattled by Britain’s double dealing and decided to just invade all of Poland rather than wait for the British to help him get back the parts taken after WWI. It turns out, the King wasn’t unique in being a fan of Hitler, it was actually fairly pronounced in his government at the time.
The Poland disaster is why Churchill came to power and the King had to leave.
Though that King had to leave anyway. And thank Heaven he did. George aka Bertie is another under-appreciated hero of WW II.
Remember that, after Munich, Chamberlain was riding high. I believe he genuinely thought he could trust Hitler to keep his bargain (supposedly Hitler was disappointed that he won diplomatically and didn’t get to go to war).
It was when the Nazis occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in the following spring (1939) that the scales really fell from their eyes, and the Brits, at least, decided that Hitler had to be stopped at all costs. That was when appeasement became a failed policy and eventually a dirty word.
Prior to Munich, it might well have been possible to stitch together an alliance of Central European nations that could stop Germany, especially with aid from Great Britain and France. Unfortunately, without Czechoslovakia that wasn’t going to work, although Britain and France did try. Chamberlain’s famous ‘guarantee’ of Polish independence was more moral suasion than a practical alliance. Hitler, though, was not suasable. He did understand force.
Without the Soviet Union, there just was not enough force in Central Europe by August, 1939 to stop Germany. Britain did — finally — overcome its innate revulsion to communism to try and secure an alliance, but I am not sure it was a whole hearted effort. The British had had years of railing about the Soviet menace and it took a while to change minds.
I think Stalin compared these weak and ineffectual western democracies to Hitler’s Germany. To him, probably, the choice wasn’t too tough. It might be a scorpion/frog bargain but it bought time (and it wasn’t clear at that point who of them would be the scorpion).
I will say this for Great Britain. As in World War I, they were not attacked by Germany. It was a moral decision — perhaps legitimately an ethical question — in that they came to the aid of a neutral nation (Belgium in WWI, Poland here) and declared war against Germany on that basis. Not out of greed, not in response to an attack on their nation, and they were the only Allied nation who was in the war from beginning to end.
Chamberlain managed to stay in power until May 10, 1940 when Germany invaded the Low Countries. I imagine that, after Poland in September, Denmark and Norway in April, his days were numbered in any event. Fortunately for the world, the only acceptable replacement was Churchill.
Nearly a century prior the statement was made “The man and the hour have met.” This time it was really true.
Ryan,
I second your Shirer book recommendation. It’s a fantastic read!
The Bee is all over this:
https://babylonbee.com/news/9-signs-you-were-the-bad-guy-in-world-war-ii
I’m done with Tucker. Darryl Cooper is a kook too far.
Wasn’t “A Kook Too Far” a WW II movie?
Perhaps, the English translation of a hypothetical German adaptation of Mein Kampf?
Carlson appears to be going through a kind of identity crisis. I’m not sure he’s ever had to really grow up. It would be nice if he matures into someone whose opinion and analysis is more consistently insightful, brave, and profound. There are plenty of contemporary role models to inspire him in that direction. Mature discernment, self-awareness, and being measured are his friends. Tucker could use a friend who is willing to bestow some tough love on him.
He certainly has more potential than he’s currently demonstrating with his unrestrained new platform. So much freedom, so many choices, not all of which need to be on public display.
Who names their son Tucker?
According to Wikipedia, the parents of these “famous” people. Outside of Carlson, I recognized the baseball players.
It’s my understanding Carlson is a Swanson’s Frozen Dinners heir. So, no, he’s never had to grow up. And he’s done an admirable job of not doing so.
It looks like Michael R., A M Golden, and Vitaeus already made many of the points I was going to make.
Sometimes the most effective way to counter an argument, especially one that uses motivated reasoning (i.e. bias towards a specific conclusion) is to show that even if the premises of the argument were somehow true, it would still lead to a far different conclusion from what the proponent wants it to.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak up and remove all doubt.”
By letting people speak, we invite them to remove that doubt about themselves and their opinions. If we give people enough rope to hang themselves with, they’ll defeat their own arguments. The more they try to explain, the more they reveal their stupidity. The trick is to ask the questions that really matter. A bit of rhetorical irony can help, if used with finesse.
Whether the goal is to make the Nazis look more sympathetic, or to undermine the justification behind the maintenance of Israel as a safe place for the Jewish people, the notion that the Nazis imprisoned millions of Jewish people and didn’t intend for them to die but one thing led to another and things got out of hand and oops most of them died doesn’t really help. When people start dying, it doesn’t really matter what the intentions of their captors are. Somehow the phrase “felony murder” doesn’t quite capture how little sympathy that earns, and how much it justifies Jewish people wanting their own self-governed nation-state.
The key phrase we’re evoking here is, “well, when you put it that way, it does sound rather daft, doesn’t it?”
I do think it was irresponsible and unethical of Carlson to not use any of the above techniques to challenge Cooper’s assertions. In my mind, the whole point of letting people hear Cooper is to let people also hear questions and counterpoints that challenge his opinions, and see how he responds to those challenges.
Fair points, but interviewing expertise aside, is Tucker or anyone else really obligated to feature this guy? Or any other wacky kook? Maybe if he’s reached a certain threshold of popularity, but short of that threshold, I think ignoring such people is a better way to keep their falsehoods from spreading. I think people like Cooper, depend largely on shock value for attention, and the likes of Tucker have him on so they too can get attention. Mere attention-seekers aren’t going to respond to reasoned debate, likewise for any followers they have, hence there is no purpose for featuring them aside from merely getting views.
I think I can indulge some pretty crazy ideas, even if only for sake of argument.
Even this makes no sense. In the big picture, you are right, the final solution robs any notion that Hitler was trying to be kind to them.
Even at ground level, the Nazis were only being nice to the Jews within the context that they wanted to wipe out the Jews entirely. So, they wiped them out with less prolonged suffering. If they really wanted to be nice to them, they could have, at least, opened the gates to the camp and let them out to fend for themselves.
-Jut