Tucker Carlson and the Hitler apologist

A talk with little Tucker

In today's New York Times, Michelle Goldberg nails Tucker Carlson:

Tucker Carlson Welcomes a Hitler Apologist to His Show

This week Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star who now hosts one of America’s top podcasts, had an apologist for Adolf Hitler on his show. Darryl Cooper, who runs a history podcast (and newsletter) called “Martyr Made,” considers Winston Churchill, not Hitler, the chief villain of World War II.

In a social media post that he’s since deleted, Cooper argued that a Paris occupied by the Nazis was “infinitely preferable in virtually every way” to the city on display during the opening ceremony of the recent Summer Olympics, where a drag queen performance infuriated the right. On his show, Carlson introduced Cooper to listeners as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.”

....Cooper proceeded, in a soft-spoken, faux-reasonable way, to lay out an alternative history in which Hitler tried mightily to avoid war with Western Europe, Churchill was a “psychopath” propped up by Zionist interests, and millions of people in concentration camps “ended up dead” because the overwhelmed Nazis didn’t have the resources to care for them. 

Elon Musk promoted the conversation as “very interesting” on his platform X, though he later deleted the tweet.

Some on the right found Carlson’s turn toward Holocaust skepticism surprising. “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” Erick Erickson, the conservative radio host, wrote on X.

But Carlson’s trajectory was entirely predictable. Nazi sympathy is the natural endpoint of a politics based on glib contrarianism, right-wing transgression and ethnic grievance.

There are few better trolls, after all, than Holocaust deniers, who love to pose as heterodox truth-seekers oppressed by Orwellian elites. (The wildly antisemitic Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust named its journal An Inconvenient History: A Quarterly Journal for Free Historical Inquiry.)

Those who deny or downplay the Holocaust often excel at mimicking the forms and language of legitimate scholarship, using them to undermine rather than explore reality. They blitz their opponents with out-of-context historical detail and bad-faith questions, and they know how to use crude provocation to get attention.

Long before 4Chan existed, the disgraced Holocaust-denying author David Irving urged his followers, in an early 1990s speech, to break through the “appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere” surrounding World War II by being aggressively tasteless. “You’ve got to say things like: ‘More women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz,’” he said.

Until quite recently, American conservatives mostly maintained antibodies against Irving-style disinformation. Right-wing thought leaders generally shared the same broad historical understanding of World War II as the rest of society, felt patriotic pride at America’s role in it and viewed Hitler as metaphysically wicked. Rather than recognizing the way right-wing politics, taken to extremes, could shade into National Socialism, they would hurl Nazi comparisons at the left, as the conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg did in his 2008 book “Liberal Fascism.”

Goldberg’s approach was dishonest, but it was representative of a broad antifascist consensus in American politics. Cooper is, in fact, correct that abhorrence of Nazism has helped structure Western societies. If we could agree on nothing else, we could agree that part of the job of liberal democracy was to erect bulwarks against the emergence of Hitler-like figures.

For parts of the contemporary right, however, the social consensuses undergirding liberalism are artificial and even tyrannical. After all, the “Matrix”-derived metaphor of being “red-pilled” implies a realization that all you’ve been told about the nature of reality is a lie, and thus everything is up for grabs. And once you discard all epistemological and moral guardrails, it’s easy to descend into barbarous nonsense.

Candace Owens, another anti-woke right-wing celebrity who has lately become Hitler-curious, has also come to question received wisdom about the shape of the earth. “I’m not a flat-earther,” she said in July. “I’m not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”

Obviously, not every red-pilled conservative ends up arguing, as Owens did, that Hitler gets a bad rap. But the weakening of the intellectual quarantine around Nazism — and the MAGA right’s fetish for ideas their enemies see as dangerous — makes it easier for influential conservatives to surrender to fascist impulses. When they do, they pay no penalty in political relevance, because there’s no conservative establishment capable of disciplining its ideologues.

Carlson has just embarked on a national tour with special guests at each stop. In addition to Alex Jones, he’s scheduled to appear with the vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr.

Ultimately, Holocaust denial isn’t really about history at all, but about what’s permissible in the present and imaginable in the future. If Hitler is no longer widely understood as the negation of our deepest values, America will be softened up for Donald Trump’s most authoritarian plans, including imprisoning masses of undocumented immigrants in vast detention camps.

Toward the end of their conversation, Carlson and Cooper discussed how the “postwar European order” has enabled mass immigration, which has, in Carlson’s telling, destroyed Western Europe. “So why not have a Nuremberg trial for the people who did that?” asked Carlson. “I don’t understand. I mean, that’s such a crime.”

“Well,” Cooper responded, “we have to win first."

Rob's comment:

"The cult of science"? To most of us, "science" is the idea that you have to have evidence to support your beliefs.

Cleaning the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"

From Hoodline:

San Francisco has recently witnessed the return of two ships that ventured into the heart of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. To clean up the immense accumulation of plastics and other waste, the mission has now reached a pivotal point. 

According to ABC7 News, The Ocean Cleanup, led by its CEO Boyan Slat, has developed the necessary technology to start the cleanup process. However, what stands between this innovation and the daunting reality of the environmental crisis is funding—estimated to oscillate between $4 to $7.5 billion.

Boyan Slat emphasized the situation's urgency, stating, "Once that is secured, we can ramp this up in about two, three years and the clock starts running. We can clear up the patch in potentially just five years," as he told ABC7 News.

The Ocean Cleanup's journey began six years ago, with the organization setting sail with the ambition to develop technology to tackle this feat. They claim that the end of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a massive environmental hazard—could be within grasp within a decade if the efforts are duly funded and applied.

In San Francisco, The Ocean Cleanup showcased the effectiveness of their System 03, which is instrumental in removing trash from the ocean gyres. 

Netting, AI-powered cameras, and computers ensure a selective collection that spares marine life while filtering out the pollutants. The fruits of this labor are seen in products like the glasses scientist Matthias Egger wore during his interview with ABC7 News, representing a circular economy that finds value in what was once considered mere oceanic refuse.

Meanwhile, The Ocean Cleanup's press release underscores a poignant moment of choice—we are now poised to potentially negate this blight on the marine environment. Still, the impetus must come from global collective action. "The removal of the GPGP could be achieved in 5 years at a cost of $4 billion," the organization stated, making a proposition that at once is daunting yet climactically hopeful. "The only missing thing is who will ensure this job gets done", said Boyan Slat.

Boyan Slat remains hopeful: "For humanity to thrive, we need to be able to be optimistic about the future. And I think if we can clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this seemingly insurmountable thing, I think is going to be an inspiration for many people," as he shared his vision in an interview with ABC7 News..