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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.
I guess I'm finally no longer able to see both of the"two movies on one screen." That doesn't seem unhinged to me at all. Slighty provocative (only slightly because "nazi" has been abused so much that it stings about as much as "commie") but to me fairly obviously true. Jew-hunting was likely transitory and once the exigencies of war vanished would very likely have disappeared*, while the near complete destruction of the family and basic relations the sexes is something that it's not clear a society can ever come from. So Jesse's outraged pearl clutching to me reads as "it's okay for a a country's native culture to be completely corrupted as long as no Jews die." I'm no white nationalist or jew hater, but come on.
*I guess this can be argued, but I just can't see a sustained long term appetite for murder of Jews after the war. I'd guess they'd reach some sort of emancipation agreement with the governments of the German puppet states and probably would have been encouraged to move to Israel. Not very nice I guess, but that still seems less terrible than the complete degradation of a nation and its identity to me. I wonder if Jesse would have preferred Israel to adopt strong Laicité and import tons of Arabs rather than fight to keep its national character by hook or by crook
.. I'm not sure how unprecedented that was. Absolute monarchs were common in Europe until mid 19th century. Hitler was essentially that, no?
Entire Europe had a wave of revolutionary violence in the 19th century. There was a surely a number of coups. At the very least Serbia had a pretty nasty coup in which the monarch was killed, his wife too and the killers kept her severed breast, later dried, as a souvenir. Those nice guys who did the coup later were a proximate cause to WW1..
Napoleon was an absolute ruler and also almost united Europe.
Greeks believed it's natural for democracies to decay into dictatorships, and when considering the fate of western liberal democracies - none are actually much democratic anymore insofar as voting doesn't help. (no one voted for immigration, no one voted for more war, Macron lost elections yet he gave the premiership to a party that got 39 seats, down 22 from their last result. Not to the victors - the left coalition, not to his party or to nationalist. The guys who came in fourth, somehow. How's that supposed to even work ? I guess they must have parliament unable to declare no confidence in the cabinet.
Considering the trend of the last hundred years, I'd call it 'normal'.
Democracy means less and less, people can vote on things but not on the things that matter.
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