When Did Tucker Carlson’s Brain Fall Out?

There’s an old saying: Never open your mind so much that your brain falls out. Tucker Carlson would be well advised to give it heed. Just as he would have been wise, years ago, to listen to Christopher Hitchens’ advice: stay away from television and stick to writing books. Sadly, he didn’t. If anything, Carlson went even further down the rabbit hole of dumbing-down in his podcasts. One can, after all, be pro-free speech without feeling the need to uncritically platform every kook, loony and fringe conspiracy theorist. Something Joe Rogan equally fails to comprehend.

Especially when it comes to the sort of nutters who are so desperate to dethrone Winston Churchill’s deserved status as one of the towering figures of modern history. That isn’t to say that Churchill was any saint: no human is (Martin Luther King Jr’s private life was hair curling). But, as I wrote recently, some of the ‘revisionist’ calumnies levelled against the great man are not just wrong, they’re vicious libels.

Such as Darryl Cooper’s lunatic claim, given an uncritical airing by Carlson, that Churchill “was the chief villain of World War II”. A claim so ridiculously ignorant and ahistorical that it’s impossible to take seriously. Yet, Carlson apparently does.

Cooper’s first argument was that Churchill “was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, something other than an invasion of Poland.” Yet in the moment that Adolf Hitler invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg at dawn on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was not even prime minister. Unless Mr Cooper is arguing that from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty – the head of Britain’s navy – Churchill was somehow able to force Hitler to unleash Blitzkrieg in the West, his first argument falls to the ground […]

In April 1939, when Churchill was not even in the cabinet, the British government guaranteed Poland’s security, so Hitler had no right to be surprised when Britain went to war with Germany when he flagrantly disregarded that guarantee.

The only people who were responsible for the war were the Nazis. They annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. They baldly stated their intention of claiming ‘Lebensraum’ in the east. Certainly, such hapless figures as Chamberlain and Daladier bear some responsibility for failing so miserably to stand up to the Nazis when doing so would have been a pushover. But the fact remains it was the Nazis who chose to repeatedly violate peace treaties and invade other nations.

The war is entirely on their heads.

As was the invasion of Russia.

Cooper’s next egregious error was to blame Operation Barbarossa on Hitler’s perception of a threat from Stalin, or a Soviet plan to capture Romanian oilfields, completely ignoring the genuine reason, which was the Nazi demand for Lebensraum – “living space” in Eastern Europe, especially in Belarus and Ukraine. One wonders whether Cooper has ever read Mein Kampf, in which Hitler’s ultimate intentions were made plain. Elsewhere in the interview he makes the outlandish claim that Hitler “no longer thought of Russia as an international communist movement,” which contradicts all the evidence of Hitler’s public and private statements prior to unleashing Barbarossa.

Cooper goes on to castigate Churchill for not accepting Hitler’s peace proposals during the Phoney War from October 1939 to May 1940, stating that Hitler “didn’t want to fight France or Britain.”

In other words, Hitler was trying to play the same gambit he’d been getting away with since 1938: seizing territory, pretending it was the end of expansion, then seizing more, banking on the Allies’ reluctance to enter into another world war. Sooner or later, even the most chicken-hearted fool was going to wake up to him.

But not, apparently, Darryl Cooper – who apparently thinks the Allies should have capitulated and let the Nazi regime carry on, unmolested.

Cooper’s wailing that Churchill rejected Hitler’s peace offers also fails to take into account the fact that had Britain made an ignoble peace in 1940, Hitler would have been able to concentrate all his forces on the East in his invasion of Russia in June 1941. Instead, he was forced to keep 30 per cent of the Luftwaffe and considerable land forces in the western part of Europe. It was perhaps Churchill’s greatest act of statesmanship, that of a hero rather than “the chief villain of World War II.”

This isn’t the end of Cooper’s ignorant stupidity. He claims Churchill ‘demonised’ Neville Chamberlain (which would have been entirely within his rights, as history shows) – yet Churchill not only invited Chamberlain into the War Cabinet, but eulogised him in 1940.

Cooper’s nonsense is a Gish gallop too lengthy and too stupid to rebut in every point, but one thing more need be particularly noted. That is, why he is so determined to traduce the man who did more than any other to defeat Nazism. Cooper’s real agenda becomes painfully obvious with this nasty little piece:

Cooper then unleashed an attack on Churchill’s Zionism, saying that he was “bankrupt and needed money and [was] getting bailed out by Zionists. … He didn’t need to be bribed but he was put in place by financiers [and] the media complex that wanted to make sure he was the guy who was representing Britain in that conflict.”

It’s fine to question history, but that doesn’t mean giving credence to obvious lies and pro-Nazi apologetics. Carlson shreds what little credibility he has left by not just giving loons like Cooper an uncritical platform, but actively praising his hateful garbage. Lest anyone try to excuse Carlson, note that he praised Cooper’s “belief in accuracy and honesty”, and lauded a fringe podcaster with zero credentials as “the most important historian in the United States”.

Christopher Hitchens was right. If only Carlson had had the sense to listen.