Tucker Carson guest - Holocaust unintentional

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Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson used the latest episode of his online talk show to interview a self-proclaimed “historian” who promoted falsehoods about the Holocaust.

The episode of Carlson’s eponymous show on the social network X earned plaudits from the site’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who wrote in a since-deleted post that it was “Very interesting. Worth watching.”

In the interview, Darryl Cooper, author of a Substack with around 112,000 subscribers, told Carlson that the Nazis were simply in over their heads.

“In 1941, they launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners,” he said during the 138-minute conversation. Cooper then suggested that the murder of millions in the camps was an unintended consequence of Hitler’s unpreparedness for war, contradicting documented historical fact that it was the explicit goal of the Nazi regime’s Final Solution and carried out through a vast system of mass murder that included extermination camps, gas chambers, military units dedicated to mass executions and firing squads.

They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there,” Cooper told Carlson on the episode, which was posted on Monday. It was part of a larger argument Cooper made that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, rather than Hitler, was the “chief villain” of World War II because “he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.”

Later, Cooper suggested that Britain’s entry into the war was motivated ”by people, the financiers, by a media complex, that wanted to make sure [Churchill] was the guy who was representing Britain in that conflict for a reason.” He also postulated that Churchill’s embrace of Zionism benefited him financially: “You read stories about Churchill going bankrupt and needing money, getting bailed out by people who shared his interests in terms of Zionism,” he said.

Cooper has a long history of promoting a skewed perspective on Hitler and World War II that has the effect of minimizing Nazi atrocities, including a since-deleted tweet where he said an image of Hitler arriving in Nazi-occupied Paris was “infinitely preferable in every way” to an image from the recent Paris Olympics opening ceremony of drag queens reenacting the Last Supper.

His interview with Carlson — whose X account has more than 13.7 million followers, compared to around 251,000 for Cooper’s own account, Martyr Made — gave his views a massive platform. Carlson did not push back on Cooper’s Holocaust claims and praised him repeatedly, telling him, “I think you are the most important popular historian working in the United States today.”

Later, he endorsed Cooper’s claims. “People can certainly take issue with any factual claims you’re making. I assume they’re all right,” Carlson said. “They’re consistent with what I think I know to be true.”

It was also the latest in the former Fox News host’s record of echoing antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric. Examples include his platforming of the “Great Replacement” idea, which often places Jews at the center of a conspiracy to replace white voters with brown-skinned immigrants, and aligning with right-wing pundit Candace Owens, who has increasingly spread antisemitic ideas.

On another recent episode of his show Carlson welcomed country music star John Rich, who shared conspiracy theories during the interview about the wealthy Jewish banking family the Rothschilds. Carlson has also hosted Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer who has been indicted for rape and sex trafficking, and has posted antisemitic rhetoric online.

Carlson continues to exert considerable influence on the right even after being fired from Fox News last year. He had a prime speaking role at the Republican National Convention this summer, and will be hosting several live shows prior to the election, including one with Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and another with Donald Trump Jr. Other guests include Alex Jones and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — both of whom have spread antisemitic rhetoric.

On Carlson’s show, Cooper also claimed he has received praise from Jews and Israelis over his own published interpretation of the history of Zionism and the founding of Israel, which he said he tackled after reading “six books on the topic.” Carlson is a leading critic on the right of Israel and its post-Oct. 7 military campaign in Gaza, arguing that it has unfairly targeted Palestinian Christians

The episode was lambasted by many others on the platform, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who called it “pro-Nazi propaganda.” But Musk, whose platform Carlson chose to mount his own show after he was fired from Fox, saw the conversation as a good thing.

Along with the deleted post calling the episode “worth watching,” Musk cited it as a successful example of his stated desire to promote “free speech” on the platform. Responding to a user who called Cooper a “charlatan” and “unbelievably misinformed,” and who promised to debunk him more fully at a later date, Musk wrote, “What’s great about this platform is that you can.”

Musk has come under fire for frequently engaging with neo-Nazis and white supremacists on X since his 2022 purchase of the site, even as he has sought to ally himself with pro-Israel causes and had a prominent seat behind rescued hostages at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent address to Congress.

In most other civilized countries, hate speech is a criminal offense, and in Germany, Holocaust denial is a felony.

If he were in DE, Carlson would be in prison.

The reason we don't have similar laws here, as we should, is that many on the right think it would be a cover for "silencing conservatives or Christians".

Evangelicals consider not being allowed to cite Leviticus 18, or to say that "there are only two genders", to be "persecution" of Christians.

Probably so but if you are a minority you need to be cautious because the majority decides what is hate speech. If you do not want a cure for autism one day the government might say you are advocating that millions of people will never have a relationship, and be a burden. You are triggering families and individuals that are dealing with this horrible plague. Hate speech. It can go the other way also. One day under hate speech laws advocating for a cure might be seen as calling for the elimination of autistics. Hate speech.

There is an old expression "price of freedom". The price of America's free speech almost absolutism is hearing about nauseating speech like the subject of this thread and worse people acting on it. It's a tradeoff and frankly hard to say if the price is worth the cost, every situation is different. Europe with all its hate speech laws has just as big if not a bigger latter date Nazi problem than we do.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance had nothing critical to say Friday about Tucker Carlson, with whom he recently taped a podcast interview, amid roiling controversy over the former Fox News host and his decision to platform the Holocaust revisionist and apologist Darryl Cooper earlier this week.

In a statement to The Jewish Insider, a Vance campaign official said that the Ohio Senator does not hold Carlson responsible for Cooper’s whitewashing of the Nazis’ genocide—despite the fact that Carlson called him possibly “the best and most honest popular historian” in the entire country.

“Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson,” the statement read. “There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”

Vance may not agree with Cooper, but he does currently follow him on X (as of Friday evening)—and has been since at least Wednesday morning.

When asked directly about the controversy while near the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, Vance argued that the solution to “solve” bad ideas is not to “censor” them.

“We believe in free speech and debate,” he claimed of Republicans, before pivoting into attack mode. “This whole idea that has taken hold in the far left of this country, that if you see a bad idea, the way to solve it is to censor it—I think it’s ridiculous.”

No clips or transcripts have emerged from Vance’s interview with Carlson. However, the pair’s sit-down, in light of the criticism Carlson has received for giving a platform to someone who believes that Jews in concentration camps just “ended up dead” and that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II, is apparently a problem for the Trump-Vance ticket.

“'Not ideal timing. But it is what it is,” a Trump campaign official admitted, according to The Bulwark.

Not only did Vance tape the interview on Thursday—well after Cooper’s appearance was released—but he is scheduled to appear with the conspiracy-promoting former Dancing With the Stars contestant at an event later this month in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Doesn't a certain former and future hopeful president keep a copy of Mein Kampf in his bedroom drawer? No wonder Vance doesn't see a problem.

The reason we don't have similar laws here, as we should, is that many on the right think it would be a cover for "silencing conservatives or Christians".

It should be noted that Deborah Lipstadt, one of the leading scholars on Holocaust denial, generally opposes hate-speech laws and was critical of the imprisonment of David Irving in Austria for his views on the Holocaust. It wasn't because she's in any way a fan of Irving, who once dragged her through a years-long defamation lawsuit in British courts for criticizing his views. It's because she believes those laws do more harm than good. You're entitled to disagree of course, but it's simply inaccurate to suggest the only thing standing in the way of such laws in the US is the right.

In a more perfect or at least saner world, we could afford to ignore Tucker Carlson. The former [i[Fox[/i] News host’s ties to former President Donald Trump make his recent foray into crackpot lunacy with a program about Holocaust denial—on his show that appears on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter and owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk—something that must be addressed, especially by conservatives.

In such a world, we might also not have to worry whether Xwhich is, more than ever, the principal venue for free political discourse, might come under attack from the government. The goal of X’s critics is to return to the situation that existed before Musk bought it in 2022 when it was a place where, at the behest of the federal government, dissent from current liberal orthodoxy could be censored.

But that is not the world we live in. The dilemma of what to do about Carlson’s descent from mainstream conservative pundit to full-blown extremist crank is separate from the issue of threats to shut down or in some way prevent X from being a place where discourse, whether good or bad, can remain relatively free. Yet Musk’s since deleted endorsement of Carlson’s Holocaust-denial show, came amid a torrent of attacks on the ability of X to operate. Challenges by the European Union, its banning by Brazil, and threats from liberal pundits and the resurfacing of comments made in 2019 by Vice President Kamala Harris in which she shows her comfort with censoring political opponents on the platform, have put its future into question.

The imperative to marginalize Jew-haters
The immediate issue facing Republicans is whether they are willing to countenance the continued presence of someone who is no longer hiding their antisemitic views in their presidential candidate’s inner circle on the eve of a crucial election. If they can’t summon the will to banish him to the fever swamps of American political life, then they will not only be giving a crucial boost to otherwise marginal antisemites on the right but essentially conceding the election to the Democrats

In this context, the questions to ask about Carlson are not confined to the justified outrage about his fawning, two-hour-long interview with faux podcast “historian” Daryl Cooper, during which Nazi motivations and culpability for the Holocaust were falsely downplayed and Winston Churchill, rather than Adolf Hitler, was depicted as the true villain of World War II.

It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure. Call it cancel culture, if you like, but the notion that someone who thinks it is acceptable or legitimate to question the truth about the Holocaust ought not to have access to a potential president, as Carlson appears to have with Trump, is entirely reasonable. That remains true even if Trump’s pro-Israel policies are the opposite of those of the former Fox News host.

During his seven-year run on Fox, Carlson built an enormous following. It might well be said that during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, he became the tribune of contemporary conservatism with his articulate critique of the moral panic that swept the nation in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the “mostly peaceful” riots that ensued. Though his soft spot for tinfoil-hat controversies was no secret, such as his fascination with UFO conspiracy theories, his main focus was on the issues that most conservatives and many centrists cared about, such as illegal immigration, critical race theory indoctrination and corrupt liberal elites that seek to squelch opposition to their continued hold on power.

The one indication of a problem with Jews was his steadfast avoidance of any discussion of Israel. During his time on Fox, Israel was the one word that was almost never mentioned between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Though his animus towards the Jewish state was not exactly a secret, in this way he avoided clashing with the sensibilities of the Republican (especially conservative Christian) electorate that made his show the most popular on cable TV news.

Tucker without guardrails
Yet once he was fired last year in the wake of revelations from lawsuits against the network about their reporting about the 2020 election results in which his texts slamming his employers (and Trump) were revealed, the guardrails on his commentary were discarded. He began a weekly show that appeared on X—whose view totals look impressive but are nothing remotely close to the actual viewers who tuned into his Fox show—in which it soon became clear that he now felt liberated to tell his fans what he really thought.

That included his open contempt for American Jews who cared about the fate of Israel after Oct. 7 and the worst mass murder of their brethren since the Holocaust.

His recent show with Cooper, however, crossed a different line. As such, it ought to provoke the sort of reaction that would seriously impinge on his ability to maintain his grasp on influence with people who matter, such as the Trump family and mainstream politicians.

Although he pretends that he is “just asking questions” and looking into a topic that has never been adequately explored, the discussion with Cooper about the cause of World War II and the Holocaust is familiar territory. Much like other “historians,” such as the disgraced David Irving, Cooper is doing nothing more than recycling Nazi propaganda from the 1930s and ’40s about Hitler’s peaceful intentions and Churchill being a warmonger. His claim that the Jews murdered in death factories were merely prisoners of war or people rounded up who eventually died because the Nazis were unprepared to deal with so many captives is contradicted by the historical record and the testimonies of countless survivors and the murderers themselves.

Cooper’s ideas are simply lies whose antisemitic intent is easily discerned. They have as much validity as a theory of history worthy of debate as those who claim that the earth is flat. The fact that Carlson would not only feature such a person on his show but fall over himself to claim that a crackpot podcaster is the most important popular historian of our time speaks volumes about his own mindset.

That such a program would get over (as I write this) 19 million views is troubling, even though an X view just means a click on the post and not that so many people watched even a few minutes of the show. The 15 thousand reposts and 51 thousand likes are a better indication of the size of Carlson’s current fan base.

Vance’s dilemma
What makes Carlson dangerous isn’t the fact that this many people take his spreading of hate speech seriously; it’s that he remains firmly embedded as a friend of the Trump family. He is frequently seen socializing with Donald Trump Jr., as well as the former president, at events like professional wrestling shows. That status earned him an evening speaking slot at the recent Republican National Convention. This month, he will be doing a national tour of live events in which he is paired with a variety of more mainstream celebrities such as journalist Megyn Kelly, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as more marginal figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), musician Kid Rock, actress Roseanne Barr and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

But the names that stand out on the list of those who will be appearing with him are those of Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).

It’s one thing to be what has sometimes appeared to be the court jester at Mar-a-Lago. It’s quite another for someone who promotes Holocaust denial to be making joint appearances with the son and chief surrogate for the Republican candidate for president and the vice-presidential candidate.

Will any of his stage partners challenge him? I can imagine Kelly doing that, but it’s doubtful that any of the others will dispute Carlson’s claim that his critics are trying to cancel him for merely airing a debate about “history.”

Unlike the controversy over the former president’s dinner with Kanye (“Ye”) West, which could, unconvincingly, be dismissed as an insubstantial kerfuffle, Carlson’s standing in Trump’s inner circle is a real problem for the GOP as well as a disgrace.

Carlson is a longtime admirer of Vance, and reportedly was, along with Donald Jr., a strong advocate for the decision to tap him for the vice-presidential nomination. Despite the partisan attacks on him as “weird,” Vance is a formidable intellectual force on Capitol Hill and a powerful advocate for the national “common good” conservative school of thought that is integral to the current political realignment. And like Trump, he’s also a strong friend of Israel and opponent of antisemitism. But the idea that someone on a national presidential ticket would appear with a Holocaust denier weeks before the election is both inconceivable and disqualifying. Vance must withdraw from the event. The younger Trump should do the same.

What’s behind these actions
Why did Carlson choose this crucial moment only two months before the election to air such a show? One theory comes from my JNS colleague Caroline Glick. She wrote on X that Carlson is deliberately trying to sabotage Trump because a Kamala Harris presidency would enhance his standing as an opposition voice; therefore, inciting a Republican civil war right now is in his interest and gives a boost to antisemites on the right. I don’t know for sure that this is his intention, but the practical effect of what he’s done could be exactly what she describes.

One other aspect of this disturbing story is that Musk actually endorsed Carlson’s show with Cooper, writing that it was “Very interesting. Worth watching.” That foolish post reflects the mercurial nature of the billionaire as well as his bad judgment. Still, whatever we think of him, the idea that this should be another reason to shut down or hinder X is as dangerous as Holocaust denial.

That’s a battle for a different day. For now, the relevant question is what Republicans, and more pointedly Trump, are going to do about Carlson. Moreover, he can count on being asked about this in next week’s debate.

The Buckley precedent
The precedent here is the effort made by the late William F. Buckley to rid the modern conservative movement that he helped found in the 1950s of right-wing nuts and antisemites. In the 1960s, he effectively canceled members of the John Birch Society, a lunatic fringe group with a large following. He did the same 30 years later by making it clear that conservatives who dabble in antisemitism like Joseph Sobran and Pat Buchanan must be refuted and marginalized.

It is hard to think of anyone less like Buckley, an urbane, patrician intellectual, than Trump. But the former president is presented now with the same opportunity to make clear in no uncertain terms that he will have nothing to do with Holocaust denial and antisemitism. Failing to do so would be similar to the way President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have refused to unreservedly condemn the pro-Hamas and antisemitic mobs demonstrating against Israel since Oct. 7.

Everything we know about Trump tells us that he will always refuse to do what conventional wisdom tells him he must because he will be falsely condemned as an extremist and antisemite, no matter what he says or does. Nevertheless, he needs to make an exception in this case.

Rebuking Carlson and making it clear that he is no longer welcome to tag along at his events is something that will be difficult for him and might upset some of his voters. But this is not some made-up controversy contrived by the left to trip Trump up. Carlson’s actions and statements are a direct threat to his campaign and a frightening effort to mainstream the hatred of Jews. He must be put in his place, and condemned by Trump and Vance, if the Republicans are to defeat Harris and have a chance to make good on their promise to rid the government of the toxic disease of woke ideology that is empowering antisemitism on the left.

If they don’t, the consequences for the Republicans and the hopes to roll back the tide of antisemitism that has been surging on the left and now apparently on the far right, are, too, frightening to contemplate.