#darryl cooper

If you listen to his other appearances, its clear that Cooper IS a fascist. He even quipped to Dan Carlin in a now deleted retort to Carlin calling him a fascist that he might be a "non-racist fascist." Unless you factor in his seeming desire to make Jews into the most unsympathetic characters in his historical narratives by selectively editing some quotes or uncritically quoting others, except when he seems to really, really get excited by the prospect of fascist Jews.

This episode will not disabuse anyone of that notion. He would no doubt defend himself by saying he was just "getting into character" by using extensive quotes from contemporary German sources to get their perspective right. And I actually agree this has value! Not because we should "sympathize" with them in the sense that we should agree with their conclusions about the nature of existence, but in the sense that these frameworks, bonkers as they may seem to people who flinch at the invocation of duty, tradition, social harmony etc. as dog whistles, are frameworks that a people used as the rational basis for wars of expansion and genocide because they convinced themselves these actions were just, prudent, and essential to their survival as a people. Not unlike ICE supporters now.

There's of course the gratuitous World War 1 suffering porn too. Got to have that. And look, I actually think that stuff has value because if you're going to glorify war, then you better understand how random and futile it so often is for the people at the sharp end. There's actually some good quotes about the dehumanizing aspect of mechanized war wherein artillery barrages are used to kill people the artillerymen will never have to look in the eye and being under sustained bombardment being its own particular kind of torture even if a person isn't wounded by shrapnel, gas etc.

But, Dan Carlin has also been there, done that. If you want the auditory gore, just pay a few bucks to get around the paywall. You're a smart person, I'm sure you can figure out what to do with an MP3 file. And his WW1 series doesn't have nearly as much effort to humanize Hitler.

What worries me as a person who has become rather alarmed at people's media literacy, is that some people's takeaways are going to be "oh, I didn't know Hitler was a dog lover" and not "Being kind to animals is not incompatible with being a mass murderer of human beings." We shouldn't need the constant reminders that this guy will become among history greatest monsters: the historically literate may find such things to be distracting and pedantic, but some people may really need this.

Remember, this entire series is an exercise that started out of Cooper on the Tucker Carlson show regurgitating mid-century Nazi apologists and trying to blame Churchill on the continuation of the war beyond the fall of France.

A couple of positives that do not outweigh the negatives:

This could have an anti-war reading. As I said, the WW1 suffering "porn" is very, very heavy. It is very difficult.

Cooper does talk a bit about German dislocation in the industrial age and the breakdown of "traditional norms." This is meant as the usual conservative claptrap about how we'd all be happier if we just went back to church and abandoned all aspiration to lead self directed lives towards self determined notions of what is good, in favor of letting traditional elites: kings, priests, fathers etc. set our goals and ideals for us.

However, it can also be read as a caution: we are, like the pre-WW1 Germans, experiencing vast societal disruption due to new technologies, physical migrations to chase work and prosperity, and the discrediting of traditional sources of authority. People like Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and Vladimir Putin all seem to very explicitly think a sufficiently big and glorious war that can make everyone feel good about themselves and their nation and re-order society around shared goals: just like Hitler. In this view, I think we can see relationships between the Nazi wars of expansion, the invasion of Ukraine, and the murder of foreign citizens at sea that seem to prelude an attempt at regime change in Venezuela.

There are other motives at play to be sure, but all are probably ex post facto rationalizations for the impulse to seek out war as a way to re-masculinize a "weak and listless" people and seek a kind of glory. Oh, and like the Kaiser, Hitler, and Putin: its a very useful way to claim a state of exception to crack down on alternative sources of authority and meaning: trade unions, dissidents, reformers, and revolutionaries.