Conservative media personality Tucker Carlson has been cavorting with Nazis for a while now, so when he released his interview with a Nazi apologist on Monday, no one was surprised.
Well, no one except the rest of the conservative media ecosystem. And you’ll be happy to know that they are shocked and outraged!
On Monday, Carlson posted an interview with Darryl Cooper, saying that he “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.”
And here’s how Cooper, posting under a handle that shares a name with his podcast, understands WWII:
During Carlson’s interview, Cooper called former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II and claimed that Hitler “didn’t want to fight.” He also claimed the Holocaust was merely a logistical mishap, that Germany was overwhelmed by the millions of “people who are surrendering or people they’re rounding up” and that these people just passively “ended up dead” in concentration camps. And then, after ignoring the reason why people were being “rounded up,” he says their mass execution was a mercy killing!
“Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to finish them off quickly now?” Cooper pondered.
Noted antisemite Elon Musk sure was excited:
Musk later deleted the tweet.
But anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Carlson understands his interview with Cooper to be business as usual. As Media Matters for America noted way back in 2017, Carlson has long been “beloved by neo-Nazis and misogynists”:
Carlson has built a strong following among the worst racists, misogynists, and anti-Semites on the Internet.
Those deplorables love Carlson’s cutting interview style, which seeks not to extract information from guests but rather to embarrass them. Many of Carlson’s victims have included the young women, Jews, and “social justice warriors” who constitute the main perceived enemies of the “alt-right.” They believe that Carlson is helping to mainstream their racist, misogynist worldview.
In 2017, Carlson hosted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, on which he espoused the antisemitic “great replacement” conspiracy theory, among other racist lies. But even after the network booted him in 2023, he’s still peddling the same Nazi crap.
But the conservative commentariat has erupted in outrage as if this weren’t who Carlson was all along.
“Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” tweeted conservative radio host Erick Erickson.
“I am trying to believe my ears, because on Tucker Carlson’s respected podcast I just heard these immortal words: ‘I read about Churchill, and he strikes me as a psychopath,’” tweeted Owen Strachan, senior director at the evangelical Dobson Culture Center. “Who *on earth* is Darryl Cooper, and how did he get this platform?”
Anyone who thinks Carlson’s podcast merited respect before this wasn’t paying attention, because here’s what Carlson says about Churchill during the interview:
Sohrab Ahmari, founder of the conservative outlet Compact, was apoplectic. “I can’t get over this. The claims made. The fact that Tucker saw fit to lend this guy an uncritical platform. The fact that Elon recommended the interview,” Ahmari tweeted. “This sector of the right is sinister. I’ll stop saying ‘they’ve lost their minds.’ No, it’s worse than that.”
“Tucker’s guest: The Holocaust was an unfortunate logistical problem. The Nazis ran out of space for prisoners. Nobody wanted to kill all the Jews. Except maybe Churchill, that dastardly terrorist,” tweeted Seth Dillon, owner of the conservative “humor” site Babylon Bee. “Tucker: Finally, an honest historian willing to tell us the truth.”
Jonah Goldberg, formerly of the National Review and currently at The Dispatch, said Carlson has changed.
“I’ve known Tucker for 30+ years,” he tweeted. “For most of that time, if I told him he’d become this guy one day, he’d have laughed, cursed me out, or punched me. This is just sad. It’s pathetic whether he’s doing it sincerely or as a grift.”
Carlson has been this guy since at least the last decade.
It sucks that Carlson and Musk are platforming and amplifying such rank anti-semitism. But if it finally exiles Carlson to the fringes of the far right, far away from polite (bipartisan) company, that’s something. And it’s always helpful for Musk to remind advertisers why they should stay far away from his platform.
