NEW YORK — Tucker Carlson used the latest episode of his online talk show on X to interview, Darryl Cooper, author of a Substack with around 112,000 subscribers.
Cooper is a Holocaust denier.
He said in the interview that the Nazi murder of millions in the camps was an unintended consequence of Hitler’s unpreparedness for war, not an explicit goal of the Nazi regime’s Final Solution.
“They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there,” Cooper told Carlson on the episode, which was posted on Sept. 2.
Cooper made no mention of the vast system of mechanized mass murder that included extermination camps, gas chambers, crematoria, military firing squads dedicated to mass executions, ghettoization, mass starvation and the mass shipment of human cargo in cattle cars to extermination camps.
Cooper said that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, rather than Hitler, was the “chief villain” of WW II because “he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.”
Cooper made no mention of Hitler’s invasion of the USSR.
Cooper suggested that Britain’s entry into the war was motivated “by people, the financiers, by a media complex, that wanted to make sure [Churchill] was the guy who was representing Britain in that conflict for a reason.”
He postulated that Churchill’s embrace of Zionism benefited him financially:
“You read stories about Churchill going bankrupt and needing money, getting bailed out by people who shared his interests in terms of Zionism,” he said.
His interview with Carlson — whose X account has more than 13.7 million followers, compared to around 251,000 for Cooper’s own account, Martyr Made — gave his views a massive platform.
Carlson did not push back on Cooper’s Holocaust claims and praised him repeatedly, telling him, “I think you are the most important popular historian working in the US today.”
Carlson endorsed Cooper’s claims. “People can certainly take issue with any factual claims you’re making. I assume they’re all right. They’re consistent with what I think I know to be true.”
Carlson continues to exert considerable influence even after being fired from Fox News last year. He had a prime speaking role at the Republican National Convention this summer, and is planning to host live shows prior to the election, including one with Republican vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance and another with Donald Trump Jr.
On Carlson’s show, Cooper also claimed he has received praise from Jews and Israelis over his own published interpretation of the history of Zionism and the founding of Israel, which he said he tackled after reading “six books on the topic.”
But Jewish groups were hardly singing Cooper’s praises after his appearance. In a post on X, the ADL called him a “Nazi apologist” and said Carlson’s praise of him “is an insult to the memory of the 6,000,000 Jews who were murdered by Hitler’s Nazi regime.”
On Israeli television network i24, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called Carlson “an extremely problematic individual who’s been peddling anti-Semitism along with other forms of racism and bigotry for many years, so it’s not surprising that he platformed this Holocaust denier.”
“Although the Nazi party, the Third Reich, might not have had plans for everything, the one thing they did have was a plan for the Jews,” Greenblatt continued. “It was called the Final Solution.”
The episode was lambasted by many others, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who called it “pro-Nazi propaganda.”
Elon Musk, whose platform Carlson chose to mount his own show after he was fired from Fox, called the Cooper episode “worth watching,” though he later deleted that post.
Musk cited Carlson’s Cooper interview a successful example of his stated desire to promote “free speech” on the platform.
Responding to a user who called Cooper a “charlatan” and “unbelievably misinformed,” and who promised to debunk him more fully at a later date, Musk wrote, “What’s great about this platform is that you can.”
“It is very hard to intuit what Elon is thinking,” Greenblatt said on i24 last week.
“I’m glad that he took down the tweet, but it’s wrong, I believe, to platform not just people like Darryl Cooper saying such disgusting, vile anti-Semitism, but amplifying people like Tucker Carlson.”
