What The Actual Frak?! Tucker Carlson Brings On A World War II Revisionist

Posted • September 4, 2024: Tucker Carlson dropped his latest version of the his occasional ‘show’ on Twitter/X and this guest was a ‘special’ one: (1:20) History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict - The Jonestown Cult - World War Two - How Would You Assess Winston Churchill? - How History Is Rewritten and Propagandized - Mass Immigration in Europe - The Civil Rights Movement and BLM - Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump - Christianity - Hate Blinds You. -- We will readily admit that we didn’t listen to all of it. We used the timeskip feature to jump to World War II and stopped when there were only about a few minutes left in the whole thing, but that was enough to be pretty horrified by what we heard. Besides being a law geek, this author is a history geek and Cooper’s analysis was nothing less than awful.

Now, we aren’t saying he necessarily lied. We didn’t detect specific lies, but sometimes revisionism is nothing more than reinterpreting agreed-upon facts. As we said several about a year ago in a radically different context: Let us give you a historical example of this phenomenon. In 1915, one of the early silent movies had a scene where a white politician told a black man ‘you are the equal of any man here’ in the post-civil-war South. Later in the movie, the same politician ‘delivers his edict that the blacks shall be raised to full equality with the whites.’ You, a modern reader, might think ‘wow, that’s a surprisingly enlightened attitude coming from whoever made this movie.’ Except you’d be wrong. The movie was Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith, easily one of the most racist movies this author has ever heard of, where the Ku Klux Klan are depicted as heroes. This advocate of equal opportunity among the races, Austin Stoneman, is depicted as a villain.

Stoneman is a pretty blatantly fictionalized version of the historical figure Thaddeus Stevens (who is one of [this author’s] ‘constitutional heroes’). Stoneman is depicted as a physically disabled, hard-core advocate of equality of opportunity between the races, who shared a secret love with his black housekeeper. In 2012—nearly a century later—Spielberg’s Lincoln included a non-fictionalized version of Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones (perfect casting). Spielberg (and Jones) depicted Stevens as … a physically disabled, hard-core advocate of equality of opportunity between the races, who shared a secret love with his black housekeeper. Griffith and Spielberg didn’t actually disagree on many of the facts, but rather how their morality processed them. So, Griffith saw Stevens’ advocacy of equality of opportunity as evil; Spielberg saw it as good.

And while historians are not sure Stevens had a romantic relationship with his black housekeeper (both were unmarried), Griffith saw it as a case of a man improperly influenced by his lust, while Spielberg saw it as love that transcended racial barriers and gave fuel to his righteous crusade for equality between the races. They didn’t disagree on the facts very much: They disagreed on how to interpret them, morally. The same can be said with Cooper’s dumb analysis. He’s not lying as far as we are aware of—although we are not as versed in World War II history as we are on other subjects, so we are open to being told that Cooper was factually wrong on some points. But his interpretation of the facts are simply bizarre. We will focus mainly on his condemnation of Winston Churchill. He complains that Churchill wanted to go to war with Hitler. We aren’t 100% sure that is true, but bluntly, if it is true, that’s a good thing.

Hitler needed to be stopped and the real tragedy of World War II is that Hitler wasn’t stopped sooner. He argued that the Germans wanted peace after the invasion of Poland. How do we know this? Well, because they said so, in pamphlets dropped over England. You know, because such pamphlets couldn’t be dishonest propaganda. *eye roll* And Hitler was upset that all those countries declared war on him after he invaded Poland. Of course, on some level Hitler probably wanted a sort of peace, but not a real peace. The best term we have heard for it is the Arabic word hudna which is used to describe a false peace where one seeks a cease fire, so it can rebuild its military capacity and continue the war when it thinks it is strong enough. It’s the kind of peace Hamass is seeking. We aren’t aware of any German word that matches that meaning, but that describes the only kind of peace Hitler ever wanted.

Because the truth Cooper was omitting was that Hitler had expanded over and over again and had been repeatedly warned by multiple countries that if he didn’t stop, it would be war. At Munich, Hitler got everything he wanted in exchange for peace, and he broke the agreement with Neville Chamberlain, anyway. That is what led to multiple countries allying with Poland and threating Hitler with war if he invaded that country. They had had enough and Hitler kept pushing. And when Poland was invaded, it wasn’t Winson Churchill that declared war, but rather Chamberlain. Cooper acts like we should have listened to Chamberlain and kept Britain out of the war, but Chamberlain himself didn’t agree. Of course, a few months later, Parliament said more or less, ‘let’s have a guy in charge who had Hitler’s number earlier’ and made Churchill their Prime Minister, but there was broad agreement on the issue of whether war was necessary. Chamberlain and Churchill agreed on this point.

Also, Cooper seems to think that Chamberlian’s peacemaking approach was discredit by propaganda, but as we just pointed out, Chamberlain’s approach was discredited by reality. Even Chamberlin admitted it was time to go to war, and the British decided that it was time for new leadership. Cooper also attacks Churchill for wanting to have the U.S.S.R. and America join the fight, but Britain was fighting for its life and it was very touch and go for a while between the Battle of Britain (in the skies) and the Battle of the Atlantic (in the seas). No rational person would begrudge anyone for seeking help. For instance, we don’t think Zelenskyy deserves our aid in his war against Russia, but we aren’t mad at him for asking. In any case, America and the U.S.S.R. didn’t get into the war because Churchill asked nicely. They got involved because they were attacked: The U.S.S.R. was attacked by Germany, and we hope every America remembers the attack that got us into World War II. (…)

• More at: Twitchy - What the Actual Frak?! Tucker Carlson Brings on a World War II Revisionist
https://twitchy.com/aaronwalker/2024/09/03/tucker-carlson-brings-on-a-world-war-ii-revisionist-guest-n2400452