Darryl Cooper
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What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. Very excited for today's episode. Quick reminder for those of you guys listening live, there's, or I should say, when the episode first comes out, I am in Oklahoma City and Tulsa this week with Robbie the Fire Bernstein, ComicDaveSmith.com for those tickets. All right.

I have with me for this episode, Daryl Cooper, the host of the Martyr Made podcast, who is somebody who I have been talking about for definitely for the last year. I've been telling anyone who will listen that you got to check out the Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem series that he did on the Martyr Made podcast. It's just incredible. However, over the last few days, Daryl has gone from being the guy that I'm

talking about to being the guy that literally everybody is talking about after following what I thought was a really fantastic interview with Tucker Carlson. So, Daryl, how has it been? You have set the internet on fire.

Yeah. You know, we've been talking about getting together on the podcast for a while now and, um, you know, would that it were under happier circumstances, but, uh, I don't think it could be under, uh, any, any more interesting ones though. It's been very surreal. I mean, you know, uh,

as strange as it sounds, given the fact that I do a podcast, a public facing podcast and everything, like I'm not the type of personality that like seeks attention or really wants attention. I don't even like doing interviews. I do this because I love you. And like, uh,

So for somebody like me, who's as introverted as I am, having all this go on, honestly, it almost feels far away. Like occasionally I'll be reading a story and I'm like, wow, this guy sounds like a real piece of shit. Oh wait, that's me. - Well, it's one of the things that's funny to me

is that, so I've had these, I've never had anything like what you've had over these last couple of weeks. I've, I've done some of the bigger shows where I, you know, I was like, oh, this is going to stir up some controversy or that, you know, I kind of anticipated it. But then I had this one thing last year. I don't know if you, you saw this, but I had Tucker on my show and

And if you had at the end of this show, if you had asked me to pick the five most controversial things, I never would have picked this. But I just said that Bill Buckley was a villain. And then Tucker agreed with me. And then this went...

became like a big controversy nothing compared to what what your show did but i will tell you i watched the like uh the way i experienced it was i was like like i knew you and tucker were friends and then i just saw on twitter that you were on tucker's show and i went yes i'm gonna love this because i love everything tucker does i love everything daryl does i'm gonna love this this uh this interview i watched it i was like wow that sure was great

And there wasn't even a part of me that was like, this is going to set the world on fire. So it was kind of interesting to be like, oh, wow, they really... The circles I float in, it wasn't that crazy of a thing to say. It's like, yeah, we all know Churchill is the villain. I thought that was common knowledge. But when you left Tucker's, did you anticipate it was going to be anything like this? No, of course not. I mean, Tucker told me...

and he reinforced it and said he's not exaggerating in 30 years in media and being at the center of a million controversy. He's never seen anything like this. So no, I definitely didn't anticipate that. I didn't even know we were gonna talk about World War II is the funny thing. If I did, I would have been more prepared and probably made my case a little bit more clearly. But if anything, I would have thought that our conversation about the ongoing population replacement of European countries

And how, you know, any monarch in the past that would even imagine that he could do something like that would end up with their heads cut off. I would have thought that might have generated a little more controversy. But I mean, it's worth, you know, it really is worth asking, like, why?

this particular thing did, you know, because that really got to the heart of what Tucker and I were talking about. You know, my comments about Churchill were, as I said in the interview, like kind of hyperbolic and provocative. I was repeating something I had said to my buddy Jocko, and I told him I did it to provoke him, be hyperbolic, right? But, you know, the real thrust of the conversation was why is it that this particular issue, World War II,

is, I mean, as we saw this last week, I mean, it is the third rail. It is the untouchable, absolute landmine that you have to stay away from, you know? And I think that that's gotten more intense, not less, as the internet has opened up discourse, you know? And as the narrative has started to kind of splinter and, you know, the few sources that are used to being able to control it have begun to lose control of it. They're throwing kind of ever more intense tantrums, you know?

Because, like, let's be honest, like, 10 years ago, even, 20 years ago, they would have just been able to snap their fingers and destroy my life. And they can't do that now, you know? And to the credit of, like, Substack, for example, and, you know, which is one of the income streams I have, they got a hold of me right away and let me know that I don't have anything to worry about, you know?

that they're proud of where I'm at right now. They didn't say anything about agreeing with my Churchill take or whatever, but they let me know that they had my back. And as long as you've got a few ways like that, a few places like that, you've got an Elon-owned Twitter where you can at least speak. And if you're not being violently inflammatory or engaging in criminal behavior, you can do it.

A few of those is all you really need. And then all of that power kind of slips away. Yeah, there's so much that is so fascinating about this moment that you had on Tucker. And...

Almost before we even get to the substance of what you were saying on Tucker. So like that right there is one of the things I've been thinking about since this happened. Not only it's not only like that just a few years ago, they would have been able to say like shut a guy like you down just a few years ago. You never even have this conversation because they already shut Tucker down.

Like when they fire him from Fox News, that's it. You're done. You're out of the game now. Like Bill O'Reilly, like the guy who was in the same position as Tucker, the number one show at 8 p.m., they decided he's fired over some Me Too allegations or whatever. And that's it. Bill O'Reilly, no, he's got a show on the Internet, but he's removed from the national conversation. Whereas Tucker goes and he's bigger than ever. And then...

because he's not even dealing with a corporate machine anymore. He can have whoever he wants to have on. And so, and then now when you get this reaction, the most fascinating thing about it is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much

pierce morgan or anybody else it like hyperventilates about it your show was like the number one show in the world i know on itunes on spotify all over the place so just objectively your message is reaching way more people because of like that's the end result of all of it so that right

away is just so fascinating. It's like, wow, there is, we're, we're living in a whole different information economy with different rules and different, you know, uh, where old tactics don't work anymore. And then of course the, the thing that's, I think proved your point was it is, as you just alluded to, it's amazing. It's, it's amazing how much outrage having, um,

an unorthodox opinion about World War II would have. And again, you know, I was thinking about this because for whatever reason, I don't know why this is what came to my mind, but I imagine, have you ever read Democracy, the God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. Whether you agree or not with the central thesis of the book, it's a

a really like a, it's a great thought experiment and it makes you think it's a really brilliant book. But so Hoppe disclaims in this book

15 times, maybe that essentially the core thesis of the book is that he's he's a libertarian who thinks the preferable order legal order is a libertarian order. But he thinks monarchy is preferable to democracy. And he makes this very, very clear throughout the book. And I cannot tell you how many people have just told me like, well, Hoppe is a monarchist.

He said it in Democracy, the God that Failed. And you're like, did you miss the 15 disclaimers in the book? And it is so funny that even as you, in the

In the clip, the clip that Piers Morgan is playing me to get you, I'm like, but what about that part in the clip where he just said, I'm being hyperbolic or I'm not. Oh, you'd assume if I'm criticizing Churchill, that means I must be supporting Hitler. But of course, I'm not supporting Hitler. And they go, this guy's supporting Hitler. And you're like, did you?

Is everybody just so hysterical that they're incapable of listening to what was actually said, even when they're playing the clip on their show? It's just really wild. Well, you know, if you think about like what a symbol is, right? Like an...

like Adolf Hitler was a person. He was a leader of Germany, you know, in the thirties and forties. To us, what he is, is he's a symbol, right? The Holocaust is a symbol, you know, just like the cross and God and the devil, whatever their external reality and grounding in the, in the real world to us, they're symbols. Like that's how they, you know, how they activate for us. And so like, like, what does that mean? Like a symbol is,

like an image that is implanted deep in our subconscious by the culture at a very early age that is attached to and meant to activate like a whole constellation of feelings and emotions and reactions and responses, you know? And every society, this is how societies bind themselves together. They use symbols to do it, right? Like when you see

people get super, super angry and worked up over somebody desecrating the flag. Part of that is because that symbol's lodged in there and, you know, all of those hostile responses are sort of, that's what's meant to be evoked by something like that. But also it's because on some ground level, like people have some idea, even if they're not thinking about it consciously, that if we start

that if everybody starts kind of moving to a place where we don't care that the flag is being desecrated, that we're going to come apart in certain ways. Certain things are going to come apart that we all sort of rely on, even if that's not like really elucidated, you know, clearly in people's minds. And I think that when you look at World War II, I mean, it's very much like that. Like people have this,

I mean, from a very, very early age, you know, literally elementary school, like it is put in your head that this is different. This is not really a historical event. This is a this is a sort of world historical mythological event. And I don't say myth to mean that it's false or a lie, but in the symbolic sense, right, that it plays in the culture.

Like it's like I told Tom yesterday, like it's a it's a load bearing story. Right. There's a lot that rests on this particular story being just in this way. And even if people, you know, don't have even if they're not sort of breaking this down to themselves consciously in their minds, like they have an idea that if we start to.

question this particular story, if we start to pick it apart and look at it critically, because symbols never hold up to endless critical analysis. I mean, that's one of the problems that we run into in postmodernity, right? You can do that with everything. And so I'm not saying these things are bad, they're necessary. But you have to look at the functions that they're actually serving. And if you look at the functions that the World War II myth has at least

has come to serve um surely some things you know um are solid it it definitely ingrained in the western world like in people from a very early age in a way that was probably never possible before a sort of visceral reaction against uh group hatred based on you know race and things like that you know is i mean when you really think about like people

Today, and people, if you just go back anytime in human history, 300 years ago, like the level of just innate tolerance in your average American, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's truly unbelievable that that transformation didn't happen over centuries. It happened really over the course of a generation or two. And the World War II story being so central to, you know, the order we're living in is a big part of it, you know. And so that's good. That's great.

But then also, you know, World War II has been used to essentially justify the U.S. global order, the U.S. empire, if you want to call it that. It's been used to sort of justify the special status and privileges that are according to the state of Israel that sort of place it above.

uh the the the you know the the critical um evaluation and standards that we would expect above western democratic nations things like that um and even you mentioned democracy like uh hans herman hoppe you know democracy is one of those symbols too and that's why people got triggered when they read that book is that symbol was triggered in a cascade of emotions and everything else just overwhelmed the fact that he was you know everything else he said

And democracy is one of those things like you can't even question. I mean, questioning democracy is like that's a that's a big project. I think you've got to be very careful with that, because whenever you overthrow the entire order of a society that can go in unpredictable and dangerous ways. And, you know, the people who maybe have great reasons for wanting it overthrown don't always get their way. In fact, they usually don't. And so we have to be very careful with like the larger idea.

But you really like it's not something that's even questionable. Democracy is a religious precept, you know. And so and so so much really rests on that story in a way that it doesn't with World War One or the Korean War, the Vietnam War or anything like that. All those other wars, they had this like ramp up.

of emotional attachment where, you know, you better not be against the Iraq war in 2003, you know, or else you're just an unpatriotic American. And, you know, David Frum's going to write you out of the conservative movement and everything else. Right. But then it kind of passes and it, you know, that power, that cultural power kind of fades away. And that's how all the other conflicts work. World War II has been with us for 80 years.

And it's really still at that peak, you know? All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is ProtonVPN. Proton created ProtonVPN to further protect the journalists, activists, and everyday citizens who use ProtonMail. ProtonVPN breaks down the barriers of internet censorship.

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To check out an exclusive and limited time offer, go to protonvpn.com slash Dave Smith. Again, this is a limited time offer, so go check it out today. Protonvpn.com slash Dave Smith. All right, let's get back into the show. It's such a good way to put it, because really what it is, just like as you say that, it's like, yes, Iraq War II was...

It was a myth, but it wasn't a load-bearing myth. There wasn't that much on top of it. So you could take that away, and essentially you still have the same narrative about the fundamentals of who we are, of what our systems are. The only other one really, right, and of course it's the only other war that could generate this type of controversy, would be the Civil War, if you were on the South Side. Like if you... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

I was going to say, I would also add the civil rights movement. And it's interesting because the way, especially the left, but really everybody kind of talks and thinks about it, is that the Civil War, World War II and the civil rights movement, it's really all one long war. Like that's how they see it. You know what I mean? It's been like the forces of tolerance and good and democracy against the forces of oppression and intolerance and racism and so forth on the other side. And they really do look at it like that.

you know, that it's all been one long war in this sort of binary monarchy in a sense.

No, that's right. You know, there was one of your episodes that I really loved was on the history of tensions between blacks and Jews. And one of the points you made there, and kind of, I think this is such a useful way to understand things as these like myths, again, to your point, not saying that they didn't really happen, just saying how they become myths in our lives and what purpose that serves. But you pointed out how really the 60s meant

more so than, you know, 1776 or 1865 or anything. Like the 60s are really the center of the modern, like,

origin story. And the example you just used was you said, go desecrate a statue of George Washington and then go desecrate a statue of Martin Luther King and tell me which one gets you more problems. Tell me which one gets more of a hysterical outrage. And obviously, we all know what the answer is to that. But it's very interesting because if you look at

those three, which as you point out, are all kind of seen as one. But if you look at the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement, and you realize that those really are the load-bearing myths. Those are the ones that you're still not allowed to question or people get very outraged. And then you kind of understand that

And look, to give the devil is due. I will say that, as you kind of said, too, I do think like, hey, listen, if the regime, the U.S. empire has anything it can brag about, it's that whether you agree with the means by which they did it or whether you want to question who did it.

everybody was, you know, not a perfect angel. But okay, like, there used to be slavery. There isn't anymore. There used to be a belief in the Deep South that Black people were essentially animals who didn't deserve rights. That doesn't exist anymore. And as you pointed out, the kind of just...

accepted idea that you could very harshly judge another group based on immutable characteristics is at an all-time low. Or maybe it's backtracked a little in the last 10 years, but it's close to an all-time low. But then you think about the fact that everyone in the regime, whenever somebody is an enemy of the regime, they're always some form of racist or Nazi.

And you recognize that you're like, oh, yeah, that's really see that's that's the only thing the regime can really brag about is that we beat the racists and the Nazis. They haven't put up a W since then. And so now every villain has to be one of those two things. You're either a racist or a Nazi. It's all kind of perfectly works out.

Yeah, I mean, and those are the prime evils of this regime, right? And again, to point that out is not to say that they're not evils. It's just, you know, in our society, you know, people, and I'm sorry you had to answer for this on Piers Morgan, but I put out a tweet right after the Paris Olympic ceremony at the, you know, the Last Supper thing,

where I posted a picture of Hitler and his boys walking in front of the Eiffel Tower. And I posted a picture of that last supper desecration. And I, you know, I said that the outcome of the picture on the right was preferable to the one on the left or something like that, which, you know, I took down after a few people who I trust to tell me when I'm out of bounds, like, you know, let me know that they thought I was, but

I told them the reason that I did that is I was outraged by what I was watching at the Paris Olympics. And I was reaching for the most extreme example possible to express my outrage about this. And in our society, it's not the devil. If I would have posted a picture of Satan looming over the Eiffel Tower and said that this is better than that,

Nobody would even got it. You know, it just it wouldn't have landed at all because Hitler's the devil and the Nazis are the legions of hell. And, you know, in Germany, that's it. Every society has a heaven and hell.

Every society has a God and a devil and you know, and and they don't have to think of it that way They don't necessarily like it may be in totally totally different terms and maybe in secular terms it may be in mythological terms that Divide up God into many and devil, you know the devil into many evil spirit whatever it is, but we've all got those I get just you know, it's a basic structure of the human mind and in our society

You know, that's like, it's one of the reasons I'm, you know, I'm really convinced that like, you know, there, there, there's always been just, just as there's a,

you know like an extreme focus and fascination with uh with that with world war ii and the holocaust on the side of you know you you have to treat it as this sacred thing and treat it differently from everything else and and don't be critical about it um there's also you know on the other side there's always just been this like undercurrent somewhere even if it's just you know uh

a punk rock thing or today it's like an online thing or whatever of positive fascination with Hitler and the Nazis. My way of looking at that is every generation has its devil worshippers.

You know, and not all of them are serious, like the people who would say that, you know, I'm a I'm a Satanist. A lot of times they're just trolls or whatever. But the devil is always going to attract a certain amount of attention from both directions, you know. And and so when you when you take a historical event like an elevated to that level and make it a myth, you're always going to have like two sides of that, you know, two extreme reactions to, you know, to doing that.

Yeah, it's such a funny thing. Like, there's also something just to the culture of political correctness and, you know, whatever that's transformed into like wokeism or whatever exactly it is now. But I also there's something really funny, like when they I was thinking this when Pierce Morgan or it wasn't Pierce, it was it was somebody else who was on the show with me. But when he was bringing up that that tweet and

And, you know, when you're in this like environment where people are being like, well, how about this tweet he said? And it's very hard to just go, well, I mean, he's clearly fucking with you on that one. You know, like, OK, well, he's clearly like this is this is clearly like being provocative or something like that. Whereas, you know, again, it was it was such a weird environment, by the way, being on that Piers Morgan show, because and I enjoy doing Pierce's show. I appreciate that he's had me on so many times, but he did.

It was not at all explained to me that this was going to be a three-on-one debate all about you, you know? And I certainly didn't realize, like, someone from the House of Lords was going to be there to fact-check me as I'm having this debate. It's such a bizarre experience to be in. But then I'm...

You know, I was actually kind of pleased because the reaction that I've gotten to it was very positive. And so one of the things that I thought was just it's obviously I'm not going to win a World War Two debate against like some world renowned historian. But that wasn't really what the debate was even over. And I'm sitting there and I'm like the only one who's ever listened to your stuff.

Nobody else has. And so we're having, it's almost like we're all gonna get in an argument about a book that nobody's read except me. And then they're all gonna go around and tell me how appalled they are about this book. And then I'm just like, hey guys, remember in chapter three when he dealt with all the stuff that you guys are talking about? And I mean, for anybody who hasn't, and I'm sure there's some people who haven't checked it out yet, but I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who have. Oh, I'm sorry.

I mean, forget even any of your stuff with World War II. All you really have to do is listen to the first 15 minutes of fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem before you're like, yeah, clearly that's not who this guy is, right? Like you're not somebody who's like, oh, come on. Like, you know, the persecution of Jews has been greatly exaggerated and it really wasn't that big of a deal. And in fact, in all of your work, one of the things that I,

I think really drew me to loving your stuff so much was just that you're one kind of guiding rule through all of your projects that I've listened to. Certainly fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem, maybe not so much with the Epstein stuff, but certainly with fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem is that you're like kind of demanding that your listener really appreciate,

how brutal it would have been to be in this situation or this situation. And you kind of insist that you put yourselves in those shoes, which is a...

It's emotionally an experience to actually really try to do that. I think far too many of us, even people who are interested in history, kind of just read it almost like checking off a list of things that you know or trying to understand this. I want to know this so I can win an argument or I want to know this to know this. But to really sit there and be like, no, no, no, no, that's not this guy's wife. That's my wife.

That's my wife right now getting beaten in front of me. That's my kid watching me watch my wife getting beaten. And so anyway, I guess it's just interesting to see that the thing for everybody who's a fan of yours that is kind of your calling card, which we all appreciate so much about you, is that you really do work so hard to make sure that people really have an appreciation for the suffering in whatever period of time you're covering. And then for that

To go from that to the caricature of like the accusation essentially was that you're downplaying, you're downplaying the suffering. It's just like, I don't know why it just bothered me so much that it's like, now, if you know this guy, say whatever you will about him. You've got that all wrong. That's not who Daryl Cooper is.

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is MyPatriotSupply. I love this company. As you know, life is precious and things can be taken away from you in an instant. And we've all lived through some pretty, let's say, unstable years. That's why I keep four-week emergency food kits from MyPatriotSupply in my home.

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Get your four week emergency food kits now at preparewithsmith.com. That's preparewithsmith.com. All right, let's get back into the show. One of the things I told Tucker is really my guiding philosophy when I make the podcast and the ones like, I really only feel like I failed to do it one time, which with the anti-humans episode, but, and I think it's one of my worst, even though a lot of people think it's my best, but yeah,

Is that everybody in my story, everybody, Jim Jones, psychotic, suicidal cult leader, uh,

This Zionist terrorist, this British commander that is butchering the Arabs during the Arab revolt in the 30s. This Arab terrorist who just massacred a bunch of people in Jerusalem. Everybody in my... I did one on the My Lai Massacre. Lieutenant Calley. Everybody in all my stories at one point was a three-year-old kid. And they were not evil. And their encounter... And look, you have people who...

There are just, you know, and maybe this isn't even true. I don't know. I'd have to think about it. But like, you know, maybe Jeffrey Dahmer's are out there and they're just sort of, you know, something happens so earlier. They're born a certain way that, you know, that they don't count. But the exception proves the rule. Right.

All of these were three-year-old kids. In one of the Fear and Loathing episodes, I talk about Uday Hussain. Monster. I mean, just an absolute sadistic monster, right? Like not just somebody who's willing to be ruthless and brutal. He was a sadistic, evil human being. And you look at it and you, you know, you look at it though and you say that like,

That dude didn't, he wasn't like in the waiting room, you know, to be born. And he said, oh, I'll pick Saddam's son. That's who I want to be. I want to be Saddam's son. He was dressed into that, into that world.

And it's our encounter with the world that, like, to a large extent, shapes who we become, you know. And I want to try to understand that about people. And the thing is, whenever I say this, everybody's like, yeah, awesome. That's a noble way of approaching things. That's great. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not them.

Everybody knows they're different. They're just evil. And like, you know, the blow up last week was obviously over, you know, the Germans in the World War Two period. But, you know, my wife's Armenian and they have, you know, if you like, for example, if you are over here in the United States or any Western country and you're in elementary school,

They made me watch Schindler's List when I was like I remember watching it in fifth or sixth grade, which I think is kind of crazy. Like to be like that's a little much for like a, you know, for like a 10 year old to be handling, you know. But anyway, like if you if it comes up as a topic in class in middle school or something in America, any Western country and you raise your hand, say, yeah, I don't think that happened.

Not only are you going to be corrected, you're going to be punished for that, most likely, like in some way, whether it's, you know, anyway. But if you're talking about World War One and somebody brings up the Armenian genocide and you raise your hand and say, I don't think it happened that way. You might get corrected, but you're not going to be punished like in any way whatsoever. It's fine.

Now, if you were in school over in Armenia and you raised your hand, said, yeah, I don't think the Turks actually did any of that. Like, I think this is all made up. Then you're going to get punished. Right. That over there, it has that cultural power. And because because over there, it does that. That is a load bearing story. You know, there is a lot of just like sort of Armenian self-understanding, like at this point in history and stuff that that does sort of rest on on that.

And over here, it doesn't have that kind of power. It doesn't have that power in Europe. But the Holocaust and World War II, you know, it does have that power. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, and...

I guess I really do think this is one of the reasons why I just love your, your style so much. And I really enjoy, I mean, obviously a part of it is because I just, you're incredibly well-read. I've learned a lot from, from your different series. But there is something like I literally, my, my origin story of being really interested in politics was the Ron Paul Giuliani moment. And I just thought that was like the most fascinating thing ever, because as, as we've both pointed out, this, this,

ultimately ended up not being such a load-bearing story as we were able to get rid of it. But at the time, it kind of was. And at the time, it still felt like, oh, this is what's justifying the entire Bush administration, the war on terrorism, all of this stuff. And Ron Paul just makes this point, which really the essence of the point was just like, well, listen, they don't hate us because they're just monsters that aren't people. They hate us for reasons. And the reasons are this.

And you could kind of be like, yeah, all right, I understand that. It actually doesn't take that much work to understand why maybe you would want to become a terrorist if you were living, you know, in...

Egypt, and you have sympathies toward the Palestinian people and sympathy toward the Iraqi people, and that you don't particularly like the dictator that's been propped up in your country. It doesn't take that long before you'd go like, oh, you kind of hate America for that. It's like, okay, that's really not that hard. It's actually very, very easy. And I mean this

aside from some of the, the like understanding all the details, my five-year-old can get that. Like my, my five-year-old is capable of four-year-old. It might be a little bit tough for, but like by five, if they're healthy, they should be able to get that. Like, how would you feel if someone did this to you? That would make me feel bad. Like that. And there's something about your work that just, it gives you permission to do that. Even with, even with evil people that you could still kind of understand. And so I guess,

You know, you mentioned earlier something about, I forget exactly how you said it, but something about being, you know, you have to be a little bit careful before you tear down some of these load-bearing stories because they, you know, and I've grown to appreciate that more the older I get. Like, I'm a radical, you know, politically speaking, but I do, as I get older, go like, okay, but...

Like, even if I had full control and we could tear things down, you're like, let's tear them down very carefully. Let's make sure we're not just destructive for no reason because chaos is very bad. At the same time, as a historian, I think you know that, like, it's important to understand what actually happened here. And so with the stuff with World War II, you know, okay, sorry, I'm rambling a little bit. But one of the points you made in your 30-minute piece. You're in good company.

Yes. Well, one of the points that you made in this 30 minutes kind of response to the controversy that you put out on your on your feed there, which I posted on my Twitter, if anyone wants to go find it.

Is that you were like, look, like, and this is what I always felt like with the Ron Paul stuff is you're like, look, if I'm just going to get up here and you get on a giant show like Tucker Carlson show and you were to say, hey, in case you didn't know this, the Nazis were really bad. Adolf Hitler was not a good guy. And and let me tell you, their treatment of Jews was unacceptable. Yeah.

Like, what have you added to the conversation? Yeah, like, what have you added to the conversation if you say that? That would be the equivalent of Ron Paul getting on the debate stage in 2007 and saying, hey, Osama bin Laden's a bad guy, and all the people responsible for 9-11 should be brought to justice. Now, Ron Paul believes that, but it's not adding anything to say that. And so...

What what do you think if you could sum up obviously real quick? It's a ritual I mean that's a ritual you know it's a sort of army. It's almost like you know like Muslims before they do certain religious Activities, they'll like ritually Wash themselves in a very specific way you know you're sort of cleansing yourself now You can like go do this thing and it's kind of similar like people expect you to say you know give a big disclaimer and

you know, state the religious incantation that now gives you permission to maybe criticize, you know, Churchill or something. Right, right, right. So it's almost like they're upset that you're not performing the ritual. You're not paying proper respect to something that really is like a sacred symbol to them, you know? That's the way they see it.

Well, what do you think? Obviously, you have the as you mentioned on Tucker, you have your next thing is going to be a big piece on World War Two. If you could, obviously, you're not going to give it justice. But what do you what is kind of the important other side of the story here? Like, what is it you think that people today need to understand about World War Two that you're not going to get from the caricature version of?

of kind of like, well, the only thing you need to know is that it's the greatest thing that ever happened. The Nazis are the devils and we'd all be speaking German if we hadn't have fought this thing. What do you think is the most important thing to understand about it? Yeah. So, you know, this isn't going to be like a historical analysis or anything simply because what I'm about to say, I mean, not the podcast, it will be, but

Just because like my process is when I pick a topic, whatever, you know, Jim Jones and Jonestown, World War Two, whatever. I basically take, you know, in the case of World War Two, it's impossible to read everything that's been written on it. But Jonestown, I think I did read every single thing that was ever written on it. But this it's impossible. And so, you know, I take like the.

15 or 20 books that are sort of the best and most regarded sort of general surveys of the war, some key biographies that are sort of the mainstream biographies of some of the key figures. And I read those and read them over and over sometimes until, okay, the timeline is now firmly entrenched in my head, like all the timeline of events, the important people, the day, all that kind of stuff is just in there. So now I can go out and actually

read other things and think and branch out and think about this. And I have that scaffolding to hang anything that I find onto. Right. And so then I start with one with one like this, you know, once I've done that and I have done that, I actually kind of completed that part of it maybe twice.

six or eight months ago. For the last six or eight months, I've been focusing on the first episode, which is sort of a general history of the position of the German people in Europe that's going, you know, and Prussia and just the sort of the forging of that Prussian militarist culture, the wars of national revolution and ideological currents that led to them in the 19th century.

Up to World War I and then the immediate aftermath. And so that's all I've been thinking about and reading about. And so I wouldn't, like, you know, come and say, like, you know, here's, like, the three points about the war in general. Because honestly, like, I don't know what those are going to be. Like, I don't, you know, a lot of times I don't know where my series are going until I get there, you know. And but so my answer is going to be more general. And it's that, you know,

you know, the Germans were human beings, you know, and I don't say that in like a sort of bleeding heart way, like, therefore, you should feel sorry for them when they got bombed or what I mean, talking about talking about, they were human beings with built in impulses and motivations and fears and prejudice, just all of the same things as you. And they're

The history that they were thrust into led to this outcome. And that's what we really want to try to understand, you know, and like the having gone through so deeply into the Jonestown story. I'm actually it's one of the things that made me want to really want to do this one. First of all, simply because. And again, like there's going to be a lot of just sort of.

people like people who will jump to conclusions about what i mean here but there's a lot of parallels between jim jones and adolf hitler i mean personality wise um just the the the effect that they had on people close to them that is like really like hard to understand from the outside um you know you read the way like goebbels talks about hitler and it's almost like

there's almost like a homoerotic element to it. He loves him, you know, just like the people love Jim Jones. And so, you know, they both obviously spent their last years completely hopped up on amphetamines and suffered the, you know, the paranoia and general decline that comes with that. They both ended up in this siege situation where they felt like the whole world was trying to destroy them. And they essentially had a bunch of hostages who,

that they were going to take with them if the enemy ever, ever closed in. And like, there's just, there's a, there's a lot of parallels. I don't want to take it too far because what people hear when I say that is like, Oh, Hitler was just crazy. Jim Jones or something. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about like in a much more fundamental way. But the going through the Jim Jones story, the thing that you learn is like that, you know, the, the, the, the mainstream story that there was this guy who was so charismatic and

So almost had a mind control power that he was just that he just overwhelmed these people with his charisma and his presence and pulled them in and turned it into a cult of personality and drag them along to their tragic deaths. Right.

That that's just not true. You know, that that's just not what happened, that this was something that involved like all of the people, you know, in People's Temple in Jonestown, that this was not something that it was just reducible to one guy. And one of the reasons we have that, you know, we sort of have that idea of it is because the people who.

led Jonestown, like at the end, almost all of whom were, you know, leaders who would help build this whole thing and then jumped out of the car at the last minute while it was headed toward a cliff on fire. You know, people who had been responsible for terrible things, you know, in building this man up and this organization up, deceiving the people who would end up dying. I had a lot of responsibility for what happened out there.

came out and obviously had a very strong interest in portraying themselves as helpless victims. It was just Jim Jones. We, he just, you know, we were just pulled along, we got caught. And that's where it's from those people that we get our, uh, idea of what happened out there. And that's not to like, again, downplay Jones personality power or anything else himself, but you know, nothing like that can ever be reduced to just one guy. And we've done the exact same thing with world war two and Hitler, you know? Um,

Hitler is like the only player in the war that

If you see my reaction specifically to my to my criticisms of Churchill, Hitler's the only player in the story that is assumed to have like any agency at all. The entire world is just dragged along by this one man. And that's it. And so that doesn't leave any room for asking questions like, is there anything that our side could have done differently that might have averted? And, you know, you did such a great job the other day, Dr.

stating really the central point, which is,

you can come up with counterfactuals and alternative scenarios, and there's always problems with that. But it's pretty safe to say that the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world was probably the worst outcome of the choices we made, right? And maybe we could have done things differently and it would have been 7 million Jews instead of 6 million or whatever. But I mean, pretty much the worst possible outcome is the one we got, right?

When you reduce it to this one guy who has all the agency dragging everybody else along, it eliminates any room for questioning what anybody else could have changed.

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You know, one of the things that's just crazy to me is that even by and again, it's better to understand it from your perspective than it all makes sense. These are just rituals. But even by like if you try to take it as a logical foundation, even by the standard mainstream approach, and it's kind of all about the Holocaust, you know, like the

The other tens of millions of civilians who died don't quite rise up to that level for whatever reason. But even if you take it to that, it's like for the Jews, it was the worst outcome. I mean, even like, you know, like, right. Like you said, like, it could have been seven million. I mean, I don't know if there was another million even to be found. But the whole thing, one of the things that's really fascinating to me, which nobody really seems to.

to ever focus on about World War II is that even from the perspective of the Jews, is that you had like whatever, you know, I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but Jews were a small percentage of Germany and the Jews in Germany, you know, got it pretty bad and progressively worse as Hitler, you know, as the years after the Nazis came to power. But it's not until he starts going into the East that

That he starts controlling territory where there's like real numbers of Jews, where they're like, oh, there's like millions of them in Poland and Ukraine and all these areas. And yet you're still not allowed to even, you know what I mean? Like even question like, oh, well, maybe something could have been done where the Nazis didn't end up taking control of all of these territories or something like that. Like even by the official...

story's own parameters, you'd think we'd be able to ask a lot more questions about like what could have been done. It would have been much better to work out a deal where he didn't invade Poland. I mean, I get, I don't know, maybe that wouldn't have worked, but was anyone even attempting that? It seems like, no, they were trying to attempt to get him to go West and then go East and then leave the Jews with no place to flee to.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I don't think they were thinking of it that way. But, you know, I think they were just, they were thinking it in terms of imperial politics in Britain and everything else, you know. But, yeah.

You know, the example I gave in that response was, you know, if you're you got a bunch of police outside a house and inside there's a messed up father holding a gun on his wife and children threatening to kill everybody inside and the police outside, you know, like if that situation ends in a murder suicide, which World War Two did in Germany, essentially, you know,

There's always going to be, well, once that happens, the person who says, "Well, we should have maybe been a little nicer to that guy. Maybe we shouldn't have blasted loud music at him all night so that he couldn't sleep and got more deranged as time went on. Maybe we shouldn't have threatened him and told him if he doesn't come out of there. Maybe we should have taken a more conciliatory approach."

Once it ends in disaster, nobody's going to want to hear that shit. You know what I mean? And I get that. The only story anybody's going to want to hear is the cop that said, I told you all along we should have sent the SWAT team in at the very first minute. None of this would have happened. Partly because that guy might be right. Might be right. But also just because anything else you do seems like you're blaming somebody other than the dude who just shot his kids. You know what I mean? And

You would you would you would hope. And I think this is, again, what happens with most conflicts, most historical events in general, is that some time passes and you are able to step and really look at it that way and ask what the police could have done differently.

And, you know, because if you're the grandmother of your daughter's now dead and your grandkids are dead, you know, and you find out later, like people got really upset when I pointed out that Hitler made several peace overtures after the invasion of Poland, after he was in complete control of France. You know, he was making several peace overtures telling, you know, the British that this is going to destroy your empire. This is going to be a total disaster. We should not do this.

It's going to weaken us with the Soviet Union looming over here. We shouldn't do this to the point where he's flying...

you know, as, as Churchill is sending bombers and just, and just bombing civilian neighborhoods in the early days of the strategic air war for months and months, Hitler is not, he's, he's refusing to allow any German bombers to go hit civilian areas in Britain. In fact, he's sending planes over to drop leaflets, trying to get directly to the British people. Cause he knows that the, just like in Germany, the, the press is, is censored. I'm trying to get the message directly to them. We don't want to fight you, you know?

And that's just a fact. And now, of course, people can say that, and this is what everybody does say, is that those were totally insincere. He was trying to buy time. He just wanted to like get a moment to breathe so that he could get on his next conquest. All of which may be true. No matter what the cops did, that guy inside might have killed his family anyway. Right. That's 100% true. Right.

But if you are the grandparents of the girl who's dead and the grandkids who were dead,

And you find out afterwards that that guy was saying, all right, I'll come out if you do X, Y, and Z. And maybe the first one was a little bit ridiculous. And he says, okay, how about just X and Y? And it's a little less ridiculous. And it gets to the point where maybe even the final offer that he gives before the disaster is still something that nobody in their right mind could really accept. But you find out that the cops didn't even talk to him about it.

In fact, they threw him back in his face and said, we're not even having this discussion. This ends with you dead. That's where this ends. If you found that out, you would be very upset. And I feel like that is... That's the point I was trying to get across in the Tucker interview. And I think that's a major theme of the lead up to the war. Not that that guy inside the house was not dangerous or crazy, but because he...

I don't think Hitler started out crazy. I think he went crazy, right, as time went on. But not that that guy's not dangerous and you're in an explosive situation, but because you're in that situation...

you have an obligation to treat it with a certain amount of delicacy and try to recognize the fact that of the two parties here, we're the responsible parties. We're the ones who are really responsible for figuring out a way to make sure that woman and those kids get out alive. That's our responsibility. It's not his responsibility. He's in there messed up with a gun pointed at him. That's just

And it doesn't mean he's not responsible for their murders if it happens. It just means that the responsibility, you know, falls on us to figure out a way to get them out of there.

Yeah, well, particularly and this is such a good point. And this is something that I've kind of I found myself kind of bringing up this in a lot of the Israel Palestine debates that I've done where it'll kind of be like the starting point is that, well, we're supposed to be on Israel's side because they're an advanced first world Western country just like us.

And then it's kind of like, well, all right. But if you want to claim that status, then I there's an onus on you that there isn't on Hamas. Like you don't get to fight the way Hamas fights. No, I'm not saying Israel fights exactly like Hamas fights, but like there is a different expectation. Like, again, you know, to your example, like or if you make it more like what Israel does, that the police come and instead of negotiating, they just bomb the building.

and blow it up and kill all the innocent people inside. They kill the family themselves, but they took out that militant while they did it. It's like, well, no. No, you don't get to do that because the whole thing is that, like, you're paid by my tax dollars because you say you're the civilized one. Then I... My only...

My only available response to that is that then I hold you to a much higher standard and that you have to conduct yourself in a way like a civilized fighting force, not to say, well, hey, it's it's Hamas. So we get to do whatever we want to. That's just it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I mean, think about when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke.

And if somebody would have come to you, everybody like with the Gaza situation, if you criticize the behavior of the IDF in Gaza, the first way, why aren't you criticizing Hamas? Imagine after the Abu Ghraib prison scandals broke and you're criticizing the behavior of U.S. soldiers in there. People are saying, why aren't you criticizing Al Qaeda in Iraq? What about what they're doing? It's like.

I don't think they're listening to me. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think what I say really has a huge bearing on what they do. And, you know, that's just to me, that's just pretty obvious, you know. And I think it's pretty obvious, honestly, when you state it like that to most people until, again, you run up against one of these load bearing myths.

Yep. Well, you know, I was thinking about this one because, uh, like as you, you been talking and, and because it's, we're recording today on nine 11. And so of course I, I opened up Twitter before we were recording and it's just, uh,

everybody with the worst 9-11 conspiracies that I just, you know, and it's a lot of people I like, so I'm not trying to trash them. And I don't even want to like post against them today. Cause I like, I don't even want to hear it, but it's like some of these, some of the conspiracy theories that just should have died a long time ago that are almost as bad as the response to 9-11 was like, guys, no, like,

Anyway, there are good, by the way, there are good 9/11 conspiracies and good questions that aren't answered. But then there's also some really bad ones that just like, you know, like, no, a missile didn't hit the Pentagon. But anyway. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs.

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but so there was this one and i haven't read about this in years so forgive me audience if i'm like butchering this a little bit but the point i'm making is that this is this is the danger in kind of the um mythologizing of these things or or that when people like have this kind of religious like uh devotion to it so to your example where like once it goes really bad no one wants to hear about how it was kind of the cop's fault

Uh, once nine 11 happened and I was in New York city at the time, that's where I was born and raised. Uh, it's everybody there is kind of traumatized. They're kind of in shell shock. And immediately they decide that Rudy Giuliani is a hero because Rudy

You know, he was there. Like, literally, there was no... There was never even a shred of logic attached to why Rudy Giuliani is a hero. He came down there, and he was there. And he was the mayor, you know? And he said, we're going to be tough. But...

But I don't know if you were you familiar with this, Daryl? So there was this real scandal where Rudy Giuliani had insisted that like the command control center be. I can't remember if it was in building seven or it was in one of the other surrounding buildings there. And a bunch of his people thought about it. And they were like, don't put this here because as much as.

People may not remember this. It was kind of known that the World Trade Center was like the most likely terrorist target in the world. They had already hit it in 93 and almost toppled the thing. And so Giuliani insisted on putting the like command control center there. And then the day of 9-11,

It's completely off limits because no one can get into it. And this is the reason why there was this terrible communication on 9-11. This is why not a lot of cops died on 9-11, but a ton of firefighters died. And it's because the firefighters didn't get the word that you're supposed to pull out right now. And so they don't get the word till late. And so they're also, while they're trying to put out fires...

They're also obstructing the way to get out of the building. And like, I don't know exactly what the numbers of people who like didn't get out because they were there, but there's certainly a lot of firefighters who died who didn't need to die on 9-11. But we will never have that conversation.

ever. Because as soon as you made it into this religion for you to come out, like, like, even if you're not saying the bad guy in the actual thing that led to nine 11 was Giuliani. If you're just saying, Hey, there is this scandal where a lot of people died who maybe didn't have to die because of this decision. You're like, well, sorry, we've already made that guy a saint.

And so we're not having this conversation, at least for another decade. You're never going to get to have this conversation. And so this is this is a way where that kind of religious spirit really directly prevents us from understanding something and correcting it, you know, like potentially like not making that same mistake again. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's, you know, that process is meant to reinforce and protect the emotional, the emotive power that, you know, a symbol like that has for us so that, you know, it can serve as a sort of like an activating, like binding agent, you know, that can pull us together for certain purposes or at certain times when it's activated. And so, yeah.

yeah i don't you know i'll be honest with you like one of the side effects of just being a a nerd who's always buried in some history book is um there's a lot of stuff like the 911 stuff i'm like

I pretty much just outsource all of my thinking about that to Scott Horton. And like, like I sort of just trust him to tell me the best version of events. And like, I really don't know a whole lot about the, like the conspiracies or any of the stuff about it, to be honest with you. I know Scott's done the research and he'd tell me if, if something was bullshit. So. Yeah. Well, it's not a bad person to outsource your thoughts too. I've been, I've been guilty a time or two myself with Scott and you. Oh,

I'm not guilty, though. Look, we have to do that, right? Yes, of course. There's only so many hours in the day.

Yes. No, even in the, even in the stuff that you know about, there's always still, well, maybe not you with Jim Jones, but like in every other scenario, there's always another book you should read on it. There's another thing you should learn about it. So, and that's in the areas of stuff that we do know. One of, um, one of the things that I think is really interesting, and I'll, I'm curious to get your, your kind of thoughts on this, but

You know, you mentioned earlier in the show where like, look, there are risks to tearing down some of these load-bearing stories. And for better or for worse, the time we're living in seems to be a time where like they're all being torn down, or at least they're all much more damaged than they've ever been before. And it seems to me that there is a fairly obvious risk

positive and negative aspect to this. I tend to think the positive outweighs the negative. But when you see kind of like, you know, as you mentioned before, like the people who are kind of pulled into the Satan worshipping, whatever that may be, do you think...

Is it overall, is it better now that so much, so many of the lies and the propaganda and the exploitation of events used by the current regime are kind of all being destroyed? So they can't get away with a lot of their corruption that they used to be able to, or at least they can't get away with it and people not be aware of it.

However, the flip side to that, I guess, would be that we probably have never been at a point where there is less that is binding us together in terms of like commonly shared mythology. Do you think this is a positive or a negative or or is it both? And does one outweigh the other? What do you think? Oh, I would just say it's some.

I wouldn't say it's positive or negative, but I would say it's dangerous. And that sounds negative. I don't mean it that way. I just mean that when you have a situation like that, we had something sort of similar when the printing press was invented and people started putting out vernacular Bibles. And all of a sudden, you had just local people, whether it's the peasant who's learning to read or just the local person who did learn to read in the village or something, reading it to everybody else.

starting to read the Bible themselves and starting to form different interpretations and opinions of what it meant at a time when, I mean, that was, you know, the Bible and the Christian story, you know, was it was the American flag, the Holocaust, Abraham linkage, everything wrapped into one like that was the.

You know, the formation that determined the shape of society and the way people related to each other in terms of class and just everything. I mean, it was everything. And so you start questioning that.

And maybe from today we can look back on that and say, well, you know, look, people's minds were like freed up. And it's great that, you know, people are able to to question things now. And we have all the benefits of it. We didn't go through the centuries of religious war that resulted from it, you know. And so.

I mean, look, like here's a maybe I shouldn't even go down this road. But but it's just a thought experiment. Although I know they'll leave that part out of the Piers Morgan clip. Of course, it's that if you go like, let's say if Israel is a thriving country 500 years from now, it is entirely, entirely with I would even say it's I would maybe even say it's probable.

that the historians, Israeli historians, 500 years from now will look back at the Holocaust with some amount of positive feeling in the sense that they look at

the persecution by the Egyptians. It's obviously, it's a bad thing, but it's what brought us together. It's what like formed our, our, our, our reinforced our, our, our self-identity and our understanding and our sense of purpose in the world, you know? And so like, that's entirely possible, you know, 500, maybe it's a thousand years from now or something, but that's a kind of a, that's kind of a crazy thought, but I'm, you know, I do think that that's true. And so that's worth thinking about.

Well, right, because if we're talking 500 years in the future, they would say we never would have had a state of Israel without that. That is essentially the origin story, right? Yeah. No, it's an interesting way to put it. All right, listen, we do have to wrap up. I just I cannot recommend Daryl Cooper's work highly.

highly enough. If people, if you haven't checked out the Martyr Made podcast, I just, I can't encourage you strongly enough to go do it. If you were, Daryl, what would you say if someone, and obviously this might depend on your interest a little bit, but if you were to recommend where to start, if there's someone new who maybe just found you from Tucker or is just hearing you on this interview now, is there any episode of yours that you would be like, here's a good one to go start with? Well, I can tell you my favorite episode is

to create and really the only one i'm one of those people every time i like i'm going to listen back to this interview and think i sound like a moron you know um but the only one i don't fully feel that way about is number 20 the underground spirit which is uh the one i did i really kind of

Veered off the road on that one. I didn't know how people were gonna respond but a lot of people Say it's their favorite as well it's about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and kind of their parallel biographies and and their ideas and It's not as dry as it sounds. It's a great story and I would say that one if you have absolutely no interest in that kind of thing Gosh

Don't want to ask you to commit to one of the really long series. So maybe, maybe the Epstein series, you know, I went pretty deep on that. And, you know, although the original research, you know, was derivative, you know, from people who had done research ahead of me and that I used, there's a, there's a, I think a lot of insight in there and a framing of the situation. That's pretty unique. So. Yeah, absolutely.