Serious historians are weighing in on the hateful drivel served up by Tucker Carlson along with his latest controversial guest Darryl Cooper, whom Carlson billed as “the best and most honest popular historian working in the United States today.” By revealing the so-called hidden truth of history, he frames Cooper, podcaster and substacker, not only as worthy but somehow courageous, because he swims against the norms of the post-World War II Western order. As if the belief that Churchill was a hero of the Second World War is a neo-Marxist postmodern narrative perpetrated to deny the true events of 1933-1945.
The irony that postmodern ultra-critical thinking is now being employed by the Right to scuttle some of our most sacred historic truths should not be lost, as this has been largely a project of the Left up until now. The problem at hand is not the malicious anti-history presented. Nor is it the rise of the Barbarian Right, as conservative commentator and author Sohrab Ahmari has called it, or even the Holocaust denial and fake history served up as “revealing the truth” hidden by those unnamed and dark forces controlling the matrix.
The problem is that anti-history is now weaponized by Carlson and others to attack expert historians and history itself, in order to undermine our faith in the fundamental beliefs of our society. This is not intellectual pursuit to further truth or better our society, but the exact opposite. It is an attack on Western democracy.
It’s a form of reactionary Right wokeness designed to unhinge the West and influence millions of people to be cynical about democracy itself. It is no less poisonous than the radical-left ideology designed to deconstruct society or its own poisonous antisemitism with its seeming embrace of the jihadist Hamas terrorists. It should be a surprise to nobody of all these wokeists meet and converge on Jews, antisemitism, and the Shoah. Decent society is under attack from multiple directions.
It doesn’t really matter if serious professors like Niall Ferguson, Victor Hanson or a hundred other historians and experts on 20th-century history, World War II or the Holocaust write how utterly terrible Cooper and Carlson’s so-called history is, unpicking with ease their charlatan claims. The arc of their influence and impact is minuscule in real time compared to Carlson. Versus the network of influencers, podcasters, and social media hate-mongers (protected by the right-woke free-speech absolutists) they are virtually powerless. This interview has been watched and listened to by tens of millions of people.
In the case of Carlson, in addition to his online influence, his ecosystem and influence is turbo-charged by his standing within presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inner circle. Carlson was a prominent speaker at the Republican National Convention, was seated next to Trump during the conference, and is reported to have been among the most influential figures on Trump as he picked JD Vance as running mate, who will cohost him as part of Carlson’s own national tour. Trump likes Carlson for the influence and reach he brings him, and Carlson receives influence and normalization from his closeness with the former president.
WHEN POPULIST, often extreme politics, uses lies and disinformation to ferment more political hate we have a serious and immediate threat. Consider Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson in the aftermath of the Southport murders and how their super-spreading of lies about the identity of the murderer helped to spark mass violence across the United Kingdom. This was followed by Elon Musk’s intervention challenging the UK government’s response. Musk is the great defender of this online barbarism in the name of absolute free speech, a critical cornerstone of the right-sided wokeness. Tate has been a recent guest of Carlson and Robinson was recently interviewed by conservative star Jordan Peterson.
Axis of global chaos agents
Putin and the axis of global chaos agents are rubbing their hands in glee. Commenting on the latest criminal Russian influence scheme in the US, Senator Marco Rubio simply brushed it off. The US Department of Justice has indicted a US media company for being paid by Putin proxies to distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging. The media company employed very popular conservative social media influencers on its platform. Rubio responded that it’s not that important as the Russians were only amplifying existing political opinions.
This, of course, is to completely misunderstand the strategy of Russia and China. Senior writer for the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, recently pointed out that they don’t invent any of these extreme opinions, “all they do is amplify existing people and movements – whether anti-LGBT, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Ukrainian, or above all, anti-democratic.” The Russians don’t really need to spend that much money, because Carlson et al. are happy enough to rip down society for free on their behalf or in their own self-interests.
The tragedy of it all
The Western way of life is under threat. Liberal democracy is threatened by the undermining of trust in its institutions and its history. It is incumbent upon us to put up a defense.
Part of the solution must be provided at a state level, given that we face state-sponsored influence schemes to amplify cynicism towards democracy and liberal ideas and the fanning of illiberal tropes. This means that if the social media moguls in charge of X, Meta, TikTok, and Telegram cannot take responsibility, then a more aggressive set of regulations is required to restrict the pernicious elements abusing those platforms.
More importantly, we need a much more informed and educated public that does not get lost in the sink hole of woke ideas, whether they denigrate Churchill because he was a racist colonialist, or whether they denigrate they claim he was a greater villain than Hitler. Critical thinking should serve society to better itself, not to ratchet up the group psychosis into which we are heading. Teaching history and politics successfully and without overly politicized messages is critical for the health of free society.
In the words of Wall Street Journal columnist and professor Walter Russell Mead – “You can only fight bad history with good history.”
The writer, a founding partner of Goldrock Capital, is the founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research. He is a former chair of Gesher, World Bnei Akiva, and the Coalition for Haredi Employment.