For Fun and Profit: Poking and Provoking ‘The System’
Two Kids with a Microphone
US right-wing podcast host and social media influencer Darryl Cooper probably personifies all that can go wrong when a little bit of knowledge merges with scepticism unbound in a mind wrecked by paranoia and hell-bent on causing disruption.
In his own words, Mr Cooper likes to post “provocative shit” to see how close he can “step up” to various lines without crossing them. It turns out that the lines are fluid or even non-existent in Mr Cooper’s lucrative business model: he merrily keeps pushing the limits regardless the absurdity he steps into and onto.
A guest on The Tucker Carlson Show early last week, Mr Cooper immediately found his groove in a welcoming environment. He excitedly embarked on a tirade against British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) whom he promptly made into the ‘greatest villain’ of world history.
Mr Cooper boldly stated that Adolf Hitler repeatedly tried to avoid a European war but had his peace plans time and again torpedoed by Sir Winston who, he said, was a “psychopath” intend on war as a way of personal “redemption” presumably for his failures in the Great War (Dardanelles Campaign).
A Little Knowledge…
This is where the danger of insufficient historical knowledge seeps through. It is true that Nazi Germany cultivated links to the British establishment in the hope that its earls, viscounts, dukes, and barons could prevail on the government to keep their country out of the war.
The reasoning for these overtures was straightforward. The British royal family belonged to the House of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, rulers of the Ernestinische Herzogtümer, a motley collection of duchies in Thuringia. However, to obscure this inconvenient provenance the family rapidly changed its name to Windsor at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
British high society, not known for racial tolerance, was openly enamoured of the Nazis and the order they ruthlessly imposed on society. After his abdication in 1936, King Edward VIII and his lover (future wife) Wallis Simpson (unrelated to Homer) went to Germany and were fêted effusively by Mr Hitler who received the couple for tea at his Berchtesgaden villa on the Obersalzberg.
However, Mr Hitler’s efforts to woo British aristocracy were not meant to secure peace but represented a rather brazen attempt to allow Germany a free rein on the continent. Mr Cooper’s performance on The Tucker Carlson Show was not so much a crack at whitewashing Nazi Germany as it was an attack directed at the liberal postwar world order Mr Churchill helped establish.
To prove his point, Mr Cooper emphasised that only those parts of Europe that have been exposed to Western indoctrination are ‘rotten’. The other parts, exposed to, and subjugated by, the Soviet Union remained untouched by Western decadence and preserved their (ethnic?) purity.
Martyr Made
Mr Cooper, host of the Martyr Made podcast, considers violence an acceptable means in the pursuit of a political goal. That is why he refused to condemn, or comment on, the ethnic violence that swept the UK last month. Using World War II as their branding exercise, Messrs Carlson and Cooper meandered the surface to conclude that all of Europe, save for its eastern bits, was ‘ruined’ by Winston Churchill – and by extension could have been spared such an ordeal by Adolf Hitler.
As both presented their rather convoluted case it became clear that what they really wanted to accomplish was to upset today’s ‘culture warriors’ – the woke establishment, including the ruling classes and their ‘mindless’ hangers-on. The real heroes are those that dare to say the ‘unsayable’ and, by doing so, affirm the suspicions of others who entertain lingering doubts about the turns government and society have taken.
During the show, Mr Cooper noted that he resents the notion that “certain questions” are not to be asked. Mr Carlson of course agreed wholeheartedly: “like, it’s a crime to ask questions?” The show’s host called Mr Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the US, and the most courageous one for trying to understand World War Two.”
With its vast volumes of documentation, amounting to many millions of pages, World War II offers fertile ground for anyone in pursuit of a clever reading rather than a truthful one. Entire multipart pseudo-documentaries have been produced based on the often wildly exaggerated interpretation of a few of the Nazis’ more esoteric projects such as their quest to find the holy grail; their efforts to locate the roots of the German ‘volk’ in the High Himalayas; or their love affair with the occult.
Little Children
As all parents know, anything forbidden (or designated ‘dangerous’) instantly turns irresistibly interesting and worth exploring to small children. Both ‘history boys’ exhibit a similar behaviour and insist on venturing into areas and topics off-limits whilst watching carefully how the grownups react and hoping to be chastised for their ‘bravery’ and thus gain bragging rights amongst their peers.
Mr Carlson, perhaps not the brightest light of the Christmas tree but nonetheless in possession of a keen sense of how to shock people into admiring his exploits, was fired from Fox News for insisting that rigged voting machines cost Donald Trump the 2020 presidential election.
Worse still, emails entered as evidence in the defamation suit brought by the machines’ manufacturer, showed that, at the time, Mr Carlson was fully aware of the falsehood of his allegations. Fox settled the case out of court for a reported $787 million and later fired Mr Carlson.
He next made waves by travelling to Russia for an interview with president Vladimir Putin. Touted as a ‘scoop’, Mr Carlson afterwards gathered more than 14 million views on YouTube and 185 million on Twitter, now X.
With cringeworthy sycophancy, Mr Carlson meekly accepted the Russian president’s severely distorted reading of history and his twisting of verifiable fact, all the while deferentially nodding in agreement and proving himself the exemplary ‘useful idiot’. The phrase is usually, but erroneously, attributed to Lenin. A useful idiot is someone naive or unsuspecting who is being manipulated into pleading or fighting for a cause without comprehending the consequences of their actions.
Going Rogue
As certified and veteran ‘skeptics of the system’ Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper promote the ‘Real America’, branding those who oppose their whacky ideas as “race hucksters and oppression mongers” all the while cosying up to assorted conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and RINOs – Republicans in Name Only.
Those last ones are considered the worst of the lot and traitors to the cause with especial vituperation reserved for the likes of former defence secretary Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney who both publicly stated their intention to vote for Democratic candidate, ‘comrade’ Kamal Harris – ‘the communist’. Former vice-present Mike Pence is another favourite mark for his refusal to stop the certification of the 2020 election outcome during a joint session of Congress whilst the Capitol was under attack from maniacal Trump supporters.
By now, Mr Carlson is well on his way to going full-on rogue. By inviting a Nazi apologist/propagandist onto his show and letting him rip freely into Winston Churchill he has declared war, as it were, on the Republican establishment where the British statesman is universally revered and on par with Ronald Reagan as the guiding light of conservatism and freedom. But GOP conservatism is, of course, old fashioned, part of the swamp, and mainstream – all that cannot be.
Mr Carlson does not hide the fact that he wants to cajole the Republican Party further to the right and have it break with convention and political correctness, aka ‘wokeness’. He considers Mr Trump both a weakling and a useful idiot who may yet be swayed to adopt the more radical Carlson brand of conservatism, especially if opinion polls continue to move against the Republican candidate. Just a perilously thin line separates the more militant streams of conservatism from outright fascism.
And, for an encore, here’s then another question that we are perhaps also not quite allowed to ask: “You walk like one; talk like one; and act like one: Tucker Carlson do you identify as a fascist or do you not know what that means?”
Cover photo: Tucker Carlson in Moscow interviewing Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.
© 2024 Photo by the press office of the president of Russia
