The False Martyrdom of Martyr Made
Neutrality in a hypothetical contest between two wrongs doesn’t vindicate the far right, for the idea of neutrality—that it’s always good—is as wrong as the idea that the neutron bomb is poisonous but nondestructive. Nothing about neutrality is good as it pertains to the idea that victory in the Second World War was wrong, or that we were wrong to go to war, that but for Winston Churchill the Soviets wouldn’t have enslaved Central and Eastern Europe, and the Nazis wouldn’t have invaded Western Europe; that all Europe would’ve been free. About the fate of Britain and the cause of freedom, about the rights of Englishmen and the right of the Royal Navy to defend the English Channel, the defenders of neutrality are silent. About the actions of America, the defenders of neutrality believe we were wrong to act. Left unsaid are the costs of inaction or the effects of neutrality on men’s souls. So much is unsaid by design, because the case against the defeat of Nazi Germany is impossible without first minimizing or misrepresenting what the Nazis did. Such is the case of Darryl Cooper (“Martyr Made”), whom Tucker Carlson calls “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.”
Like his interview of Candace Owens, whom he compares to Galileo, Carlson’s interview of Cooper is the gold standard of content on the dangers of inflation. As a primer on the debasement of words and the devaluation of language, the interview’s priceless. As anything else, the interview’s worthless. Not once in this two-hour detour from reality, in which Cooper calls Churchill a psychopath and Carlson calls for Nuremberg trials—for Churchill’s successors—does the truth emerge.
The truth, according to what Cooper says he told students at the University of Vienna, will emerge over the next couple of decades. Only then will people be free to take a more “honest” look at the war. Until then, particularly in Austria, the truth will remain illicit; its pursuit illegal; its propagation an imprisonable offense. As for the great historians of the war, as well as the great historians of war, whether we’ll still read John Lukacs or Ian Kershaw or John Keegan, Cooper doesn’t say. As for what Cooper may not say in Austria, the Prohibition Act of 1947 applies to “whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.”
If Cooper opposes the Act because it criminalizes speech, he has my support. If he opposes the Act because it serves to perpetuate a lie, if he believes the Holocaust isn’t true, he has my contempt. He already has my disdain, because his comparison of Israel’s invasion of Gaza to Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union is obscene. Nothing about Operation Swords of Iron is like Operation Barbarossa, except the Jewishness of Israel and the Jewish victims of the SS.
Perhaps Cooper should acknowledge the 33,771 Jews murdered at Babi Yar on September 29-30, 1941, before he opines on the “Jewish problem.” He should at least say if his “Zionist interlocutors” are Jewish before he asks his followers if he should sue The Jewish Chronicle for libel. Maturity, after all, is a sign of grace and knowledge.
For all his posturing, Cooper is no prophet. He’s no martyr either. He’s certainly not another Galileo, but rather someone—like Candace Owens—who says he’s right because his critics say he is wrong. His “Galileo gambit” is nothing more than an exercise in pity and self-deception. The truth is against him.