I'm just asking questions - Normalizing Nazi talking points
It seems to me that the so called "right wing" community is beginning to lose sight of the north. More and more I see, literal Nazi propaganda being repeated and normalized, making it unavoidable.
Flirting with Fire
Recently Tucker Carlson had a very interesting guest in his podcast. Darryl Cooper, a self proclaimed historian whose hellbent on "correcting the record" on WWII matter.
I have to say, the way these conversation are being had are as astute as they are mischievous. Packed with dog whistles and statements knit with plausible deniability at their core.
Mr. Cooper however, could not resist the temptation of "dunking" for lack of a better term, on the real bad guy, the real villain of WWII: Winston Churchill.
His claim that Churchill plotted as a prime minister to start the war ignoring the fact that he wasn't in power at the time. Seems like Chamberlain is conveniently forgotten for the sake of this twisted narrative.
Germany had to invade, it seems, to protect itself from British imperialistic goals. You know, the border they share has always been complicated in the minds of those conceived with folic acid deficiency.
Facts aside
I'm sure that most people interested in this subject know most of the important details regarding this war. Not only are there countless historical records, but it's also been an obsession for us humans to understand why it happened in the first place. To quote Churchill, the warmonger as Darryl claims, "The unnecessary War".
We have to ask ourselves what sort of macabre plan is at play here. Why are we even toying with the idea that maybe "Hitler wasn't that bad"? Why is that the focus of anyone's mental bandwidth. The truth is that the only possible answers I can come up with paint a very grim picture.
Antisemitism is "cool" again
Some right wing politicians truly thought they could tame the beast, use it, if you will, for the purposes of securing power. In my opinion the cage containing it is showing a lot of rust, and something terrible is bound to happen very soon.
The number of influencers repeating these talking points is all over my twitter feed, and I certainly did not have "Hitler wasn't that bad" on my bingo card for 2025.
But hey, I know. They are going to look at you and me, and ask us why are we so concerned. Tell us how freedom of speech is precious and what have you, all while wearing shirts of hypocrisy.
After all- they'll say:
Unfortunately, this has been growing for awhile. I remember reading a Pat Buchanan book (Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World - link) many years ago. It didn't go so far as to say Hitler was innocent, as many on the Right seem to want to do these days, but it did claim that he had no desire to attack Western Europe and that Churchill (who Buchanan also claimed was responsible for getting Britain into WW1 and thus making it a world war) was the guy who tricked him into it, more or less. So yeah, this idea has been on the fringe for awhile. Scary to see that it is now becoming mainstream.
there's always been fringe opinions out there. I just never thought they would stop being fringe in my lifetime, I guess.
I hear you, buddy. I seem to think the same thing every time I look at US news these days. I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime...
I'm a history person. That's what I chose as a major in 1965 when I started college. I've been a history person ever since.
Rewriting history, bending it to the will...this is as old as the first lie that was ever told.
I don't know a way around it. Keep talking. Keep writing. What other defense do we have?
Disturbing post to read just before I go to bed :))
It is disturbing. I'm sorry. At times I wish I had more positive things to write about, but these things shake the ground we walk on. They are hard to ignore.
It's about erosion of trust across the board. When I believed everything I was told by teachers and the man on the TV it was easy to believe that Hitler was definitely the worst person in the history of the world.
Now for various reasons, I don't trust teachers/academics/politicians, and certainly not the TV; so I have to ask myself what else they've been lying about. Hitler probably was a genocidal maniac, but I never met the guy and every day I trust the people who told me about him, a little less.
I think you are correct Matt. Hence why I worry so much.
I've heard a fair bit from Darryl Cooper. He's no Nazi sympathiser or antisemite. Churchill did a lot which warrants criticism, and the British empire played a major role in setting the stage for WW2 after WW1 with Churchill at the center of it. Criticism of the Israeli government is not equivalent to hatred for Jews. The urge to distill everything down to neo-Nazi ideology just dilutes actual fascism.
I've been very critical of Bibi. My wife being Israeli does not stop me from pointing out that they've screwed the pooch big time. Also, I think AIPAC needs to go.
That being said. Even if Darryl does not mean to do this, lots of real antisemites are repeating his "facts" and using it to justify themselves.
But again, Darryl is just wrong about a lot of stuff. He says, for example, that Hitler began writing antisemitic stuff once he was in power, as a propaganda tool of sorts. There's evidence of Hitler going full antisemite way before that, speeches even.
Also, he says Hitler grew in a small town in Germany. He didn't he moved to Germany when he was 24.
He's just wrong a lot.
Fair enough. IIRC, Hitler was pretty antisemitic through the 20s. But the fact that actual antisemites distort history does not disprove the actual events, and Britain did some abominable shit like maintaining a starvation blockade of Germany to coerce their admission of full guilt for the war started by a Serb assassinating an Austrian. Churchill played a role in that, and Hitler used that as one of his major points of contention to sell his dictatorship to the German public. The best authoritarian lies have a germ of truth, after all.
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