Holocaust Denial is key to understanding right-wing plans for America…
There should be little shock to learn that holocaust denialism has found a home within right-wing extremists’ efforts to undermine democracy. Fake journalist and preppy bad boy, Tucker Carlson, is the latest MAGA Republican to entertain an alternative truth that denies facts surrounding the Nazi systematic attempt to wipe out European Jewry in a state-sanctioned pogrom which represents the largest historical example of genocide. The extent of the Nazi efficiency is astonishing. From September 1, 1939, through September 2, 1945, the slaughter of both military personnel and innocents has been unmatched in human history. In 1942 alone it is estimated that 3 million men, women, and children were put to death in German prison camps:
World War II was the largest and most violent military conflict in human history. Official casualty sources estimate battle deaths at nearly 15 million military personnel and civilian deaths at over 38 million.
The six million Jews represented two-thirds of European Jews alive at the war’s outset. The evidence of their deaths is chronicled by eyewitness accounts recorded by the military who freed the camps, by survivors who managed to escape the killing machine devised by Hitler, and by the free press. Proof of the horrific treatment of the Jewish population which was vibrant in all aspects of life in European countries prior to 1933, is the diaspora of the remaining Jews that nearly completed Hitler’s plan:
“ According to the American Jewish Yearbook, the Jewish population of Europe was about 9.5 million in 1933. In 1950, the Jewish population of Europe was about 3.5 million. In 1933, 60 percent of all Jews lived in Europe. In 1950, most Jews (51 percent) lived in the Americas (North and South combined), while only a third of the world’s Jewish population lived in Europe. “
And so when Carlson gives free air time to podcast revisionist historian Darryl Cooper whose schtick is fueled by clicks and research gathered in his mother’s basement, he becomes a perpetrator of the lie . Cooper, a self-taught revisionist without any credentials that would suggest the title of “historian” was promoted by Carlson as a popular historian- a designation that conveys its own preposterousness :
The latest upset is Tucker Carlson’s promotion of a David Irving-style pseudo-intellectual Holocaust denier on his show (or, as Tucker puts it, “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States”.) The Nazis, this guest explains to a fascinated Carlson, didn’t want to kill the Jews. They were merely “ completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners… They just threw these people into camps, and millions of people ended up dead there.”
The casual imposition of the word “just” in Cooper’s apology for Nazi war criminals leaves the impression of unintentional consequence based on Nazi incompetence (“completely unprepared”) to account for the sheer number of captives caught in their ruthless nets. Unexplained are the camps themselves, the systematic abuse of bodies, the presence of showers and ovens, and the accounts of survivors. Credible historians would be required to deal with the factual evidence of genocidal murder that is so abundant in concurrent film and photos taken by liberators. They would finally be forced to dispute the finding of the court at Nuremberg which uncovered testimony by German witnesses that described the plans and details of what became known as a holocaust- a word derived from the Greek meaning a burnt offering. The word has now become synonymous with genocide setting aside the Nazi’s euphemistically inexplicable term Final Solution.
Carlson’s motives for providing Cooper a platform, providing what is left of the credibility he once could claim as a journalist, are now the most obvious take in the wake of the sham interview. Tucker has now cemented his reputation as a troll whose voice has lost not just his authority as a journalist but has traded away a portion of his humanity. His embrace of alt-right and white nationalist agendas has catapulted his fame among the most hateful and least rational audiences willing to tune in. He gives off the unsophisticated freshman roommate vibe. You know, the guy who worships “cool” and thinks he is his own “uber” version each time he trades guffaws with weirdos just for the hell of it. That guy.
Being “Hitler curious” and “Putin mystified” is certain to attract attention where there’s enough bandwidth available for the willfully uninformed. Tucker gladly fills that space. For him, attention is his drug of choice. He is addicted and there is never enough. Carlson sees no distinction between good and bad notice which makes him an avatar for the politically dispossessed.
In an opinion piece this week in the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg nails Carlson’s annoyingly provocative temper tantrums:
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.
- NYTimes, Michelle Goldberg
Carlson’s insight is that true believers are a dime a dozen among podcast followers. His descent from bow-tied liberal wisecracker on CNN and MSNBC, to disgraced and fired FOX News personality, to recidivist bad-boy podcaster is limned in greed. Once the right-wing darling on Fox replacing the previously disgraced Bill O’Reilly, Carlson is a privileged private school scion of “ gonzo reporter” Dick Carlson and his mother Lisa, an artist. Dad was the director of Voice of America, and president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He also served as a U.S. ambassador. Tucker’s Dad’s third wife was an heir to the Swanson’s Food fortune and was a niece of Senator William Fulbright. This would suggest that Tucker enjoyed the fruits of political conformity and the privilege of an upper-class upbringing. So, what is his beef? What drives his manic flings into alt-politics and his endorsement of international thugs like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban?
Carlson has parlayed a privileged upbringing and a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Connecticut into a career impersonating a smartass. Hosting a conversation with a “popular historian” without credentials who suggests that Hitler gets a bad rap and Churchill’s rep is undeserved, Carlson gets to claim he is different from the rest of the commentators in his field. That he has the guts to pretend to believe in unpopular causes. Tucker enjoys upsetting the status quo. He laughs at and feigns great interest in the blasphemies of the wackos and fraudsters who poison his airwaves. Giving life to lies and conspiracies for ratings and a paycheck is one thing, but cozying up to folks like Cooper, Alex Jones, and Putin describes a whole new level of opportunism.
Holocaust denialism is unequaled in the annals of history. Tucker’s public dalliance with antisemitism was revealed earlier when he began to embrace the “great replacement theory” espoused by the white-nationalist rioters in Charlottesville. Any thought that Carlson’s use of the phrase is limited to his view on immigration ignores the racist and antisemitic overtones that ”replacement theory” has attached to it. Charles Blow in a 2021 opinion column explained the not-so-hidden connection between racism, antisemitism, and the not-so-great replacement hogwash:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson caused an uproar by promoting the racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial “white replacement theory.” Also known as the “great replacement theory,” it stands on the premise that nonwhite immigrants are being imported (sometimes the Jewish community is accused of orchestrating this) to replace white people and white voters. The theory is also an inherent chastisement of white women for having a lower birthrate than nonwhite women.
— NYTimes, “Tucker Carlson and White Replacement,” by Charles Blow
Carlson’s rant against the demographic inevitability of a declining “white” voting and ruling class has all the implications of the grievance that erupted in Hitler’s need for racial purity and racial hegemony:
“I know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world. But, they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.”
- Tucker Carlson
The “theory” has always been shorthand for racism. It provides a platform for holocaust denial, Jim Crow laws, unfair immigration policies, and scapegoating. Those who promote it see violence as a solution to gain power and as a weapon to maintain it.
The Jews in Europe were not decimated due to an inconvenient alignment of German will and Nazi incapacity to manage large crowds. The holocaust was not the result of Nazi inefficiency. Only fools could believe such claptrap and only the most contemptible among us would spread it unchallenged. Darryl Cooper is neither a unique voice nor a credible one yet his message is shared by some who see the danger in preserving accurate history and using it as a cultural touchstone- a warning of the potential for human cruelty and a prescription for avoiding it.
In the chilling conclusion of Goldberg’s article she correctly identifies the facile racism inherent in Carlson’s tired act and the evil intent of those who espouse it and plan to apply it in our times:
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.”
- NYTimes, “Tucker Carlson Welcomes a Hitler Apologist to His Show,” by Michelle Goldberg
Maya Angelou wisely warned the naive, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
History, filled with millennia of experience, tells us that when people tell you of their plans, believe that they will do everything in their power to carry them out.
“Forewarned; forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory”
- Miguel de Cervantes
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
