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When, if ever, is it appropriate to provide an apologetic defense of Nazi Germany?
Darryl Cooper, host of the widely acclaimed Martyr Made podcast, recently did a 2+ hour interview with Tucker Carlson. Darryl Cooper is known for two things. One: being meticulously empathetic with regards to the plight of the disaffected groups that are the subject of his 30-hour long history podcasts, bringing out the vivid details that form the background milieu for poorly-understood events like Jonestown. And two: his unhinged Twitter takes.
As one can imagine, jimmies were rustled. The most common line of attack was “Tucker Carlson platforms Nazi apologetics.” In a literal sense this is true. Cooper gives the German perspective on Winston Churchill. One might make the obvious point that Germany started the war by invading Poland, but the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. Yet the Western allies did not declare war on Stalin. This AskHistorians thread (no haven for Nazi apologetics!) is enlightening. What masqueraded as a mutual defense treaty was actually an anti-German treaty. Britain really was out to get them.
Once we dig deep enough, the real reason World War II started was to preserve Anglo hegemony over Europe, the exact same reason that Britain joined World War I. Post-hoc rationalizations are just that, post-hoc. It certainly isn’t irrelevant when studying World War II that the holocaust happened, but that isn’t part of the causal chain of events the way many seem to believe.
I want to emphasize that I personally like Anglo-American hegemony. Churchill’s aggressive stance towards Germany is good for me and for the vast majority of the people reading this, but in order to understand history (or current events for that matter) one has to understand the people who do not like Anglo-American hegemony. I do not know where on the doll Anglo imperialism touched him, but I do not believe that Darryl Cooper says the things that he does out of hate for his fellow man.
The initial post-war assessment that Germany shared 100% of the war blame for WWI was supplanted by historical revisionism relatively quickly (as well as propaganda-claims that the Germans operated Corpse Factories where they made soap and fertilizer out of corpses, a claim which also becomes prominent in the WWII Holocaust). It makes sense- tensions cool and you are able to have a more sober-minded view of hindsight. WWII is long overdue for the same treatment, and Cooper and Tucker are indeed telltale signs that we are going to see it happen.
As a Holocaust Denier, I actually agree with the assessment that Cooper was engaging implicitly in Holocaust denial by relating the large death toll in the camps to logistical failures, mostly in the final days of the war as Germany was being destroyed on all sides. This is what Revisionists say, and I don't think Cooper mentioned the story of homicidal gas chambers disguised as shower rooms at all in the discussion. Talking about WWII without paying alms to the Holocaust mythos is indeed a soft form of Denial, which people are correct to pick up on.
Cooper can appeal to plausible deniability- his point is that the Holocaust is a post-hoc justification for the war, but you can't just talk about war guilt for WWII and not make the gas chambers central to a moral outrage towards the Nazis.
The fact is, WWII revisionism hasn't yet happened, and people are now so scandalized by its emergence, precisely because of the gas chamber mythos. Like any other religious mythos, it has a deep psychological impact on intended audiences. The Gas Chamber story is the only thing that has held the post-hoc rationalization for WWII and its outcomes together. Without it, the entire Nuremberg-established moral order collapses. And Cooper does directly criticize Nuremberg in the discussion, which is another argument Revisionists make.
Cooper criticizes Nuremberg and doesn't fall over himself denouncing the Nazi's alleged gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. It is implicit denial, because the denial argument is correct.
I wish there were more shades of difference between the binary of "Holocaust Denier" and "Holocaust Believer(?)". I don't think I'm a "Denier," I believe that some holocausting surely did happen, I don't know/care what the exact numbers are, because 6,000,000 or 300,000 is still an incredible tragedy either way. But I've come to care much less about it because AFAICT Holocaust remembrance is almost exclusively used as a heavy rhetorical cudgel for character assassination and silencing dissent, and it really seems to lend credence to the idea that a lot of Jews are Jewish first and second. I don't even necessarily think that's a terrible thing, I'd say I'm Catholic first and American second (sorry pre-JFK Catholics). But more people realizing/admitting that would prevent Jews from having their political cake and eating it too.
I guess I'm "Holocaust Indifferent" in the same way that I'm indifferent to the Armenian Genocide. I weakly hope a second Armenian Genocide never happens again, because genociding people is bad. But I'm not Armenian, so I don't think I'd be willing to spend much of my country's blood and treasure to prevent it (sorry). And if someone tried to tar an author or political opponent as an "Armenian Genocide Denier" or "Anti-Armenian" I would probably find that mildly interesting but it wouldn't stop me from voting for that person or buying their books. I wonder how manynother millennials feel this way. It really seems like it's mostly the boomers who are completely steeped in the Holocaust mythos.
Like I said in another comment, I'm not a mind killed Jew hater so I'm open to hearing other perspectives.
Simply put after years of a certain sort "just asking questions" people are quite correctly suspicious.
This may be unfortunate for the occasional sincere autist only interested in truth-seeking that gets caught in the crossfire but it is healthier for society at large.
How? I just don’t see why putting barbed wire and guard dogs around a certain fact makes people better off.
First of all, it tends to elevate one event and one set of victims above all others. There are lots of genocides in history. I’ll recommend reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Our policy in the USA denied native Americans rights, forced them onto reservations and underfed them. Armenian genocide was a very deliberate decision. The Cathars were slaughtered with the explicit approval of the Pope. Even African slavery in the new world was pretty bad. But there’s only one genocide that we must not question and must never belittle. Which puts that people above in some sense. I can call the Trail of Tears an exaggeration all day long. I can say slavery wasn’t that bad. But touch the Grand Mythos and I’m a bad person.
Second, I believe, as I said earlier, that such a cartoon version of history with a cartoon villain making comically evil angry sounding speeches, crowd shouting slogans, Hugo Boss uniforms and red and black flags give people a very skewed idea of what authoritarian regimes look like. It’s become a visual shortcut for evil and if you want to make a bad guy regime for your movies, tapping into the aesthetic of Nazi Germany is the way to do it. But if someone else comes along and wants to use the state to silence and arrest enemies, as long as they can avoid looking like those people and don’t talk like the Nazis talked, and don’t want to go after that one ethnic group, it’s fine.
Third, I think it undercut any sober analysis of whether or not our own democratic system works. Neoliberalism has faults as well, but it’s hard to get people to think about it because of the free world propaganda which the Grand Mythos and the idea the human rights are the best way to secure human flourishing. It’s actually been used quite effectively to justify going to war with our political enemies. All that needs to be said is that a country is violating human rights and we are ready to bomb those countries, destroy their infrastructure, kill people, or maybe if they’re lucky we’ll just kill their economy with sanctions.
Its not about "facts" its about topics and certain topics are just massive red-flags.
Maybe this is uncharitable of me but if it were up to me I would not allow anyone with strong opinions on how age of consent laws are unjust anywhere near children unattended. It's the same principal.
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