Speaker 1: Hello everybody, ladies, gentlemen, brothers, sisters, comrades, friends. We're back
Speaker 1: again with another very special episode of History Impossible, another conversation,
Speaker 1: this time with the host, the pseudonymous host. I should
Speaker 1: say that's a first for me here, as I say
Speaker 1: in this conversation, but with the pseudonymous host of the
Speaker 1: Crackpot History podcast. This is actually Crackpot Histories, if I
Speaker 1: guess I can call him that first interview that he
Speaker 1: has done since starting his podcast earlier on in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. We cover a lot of ground. We cover
Speaker 1: some potentially controversial ground where we talk about his critiques
Speaker 1: of Darryl Cooper's first series for the Martyr Made podcast,
Speaker 1: Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem. We also discuss
Speaker 1: his current project working on a critique of Scott Horton's
Speaker 1: book Provoked, in which Horton tries to make the case
Speaker 1: that NATO expansion and just generally speaking, Western influence is
Speaker 1: what caused or provoked the Russi Ukrainian War. So we
Speaker 1: cover a lot of ground in this. We also talk
Speaker 1: about the deeper issues at play involving being a history
Speaker 1: content creator, or really any kind of content creator that
Speaker 1: purports to be giving accurate information, and how important it
Speaker 1: is to do that, make it accurate, make it transparent,
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. Quick note, we actually recorded
Speaker 1: this conversation back in January of twenty twenty six, so
Speaker 1: any references to world events at that point that might
Speaker 1: seem a little dated or feel a little jarring, that
Speaker 1: explains it. So that's what you have in store for
Speaker 1: you today. I want to thank everybody for listening and
Speaker 1: for supporting the show, like my very kind and generous
Speaker 1: supporters of History Impossible at the executive producer level, John
Speaker 1: Andre Sather and Mike Mayleban, who have been with me
Speaker 1: four years now, and I cannot tell you enough how
Speaker 1: much I appreciate them. And I encourage all of you,
Speaker 1: who you know have a couple bucks to throw my
Speaker 1: way every month, to please do so. If you feel
Speaker 1: so inclined, If you like what I'm doing and you
Speaker 1: want to support it, head over to Patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash History Impossible or just History impossible dot com and
Speaker 1: become a paid subscriber today. I hope you enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation that I had with Crackpot History as much as
Speaker 1: I enjoyed having it with him, So please sit back
Speaker 1: and relax and let's get into some impossible history.
Speaker 2: Well, let me to tell you what you would have
Speaker 2: seen and heard.
Speaker 3: I will not be pleasant listening if you were at lunch,
Speaker 3: or if you have no appetite.
Speaker 4: Knowledge A good time to switch author radio.
Speaker 3: An ancestor of mine maintain that if you eliminate the impossible,
Speaker 3: whatever remains, however improbable. BANDI you don't know that. I
Speaker 3: wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace in.
Speaker 4: I don't feel the anocking dream. I feel a mocking light.
Speaker 3: If we share for issues to kill, if we share
Speaker 3: for hue to kill. Some say the world.
Speaker 2: Will end empire. Some say an I, from what.
Speaker 3: I've tasted of desire, I hold those of favor fire.
Speaker 2: But if it had to perish twice, I think I
Speaker 2: know enough of hate.
Speaker 4: To say that the destruction ice is also great and
Speaker 4: look sufficed.
Speaker 3: This is history or possible.
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, I am here, and I'm really happy to
Speaker 1: be joined by my first anonymous subject, that is Crackpot History.
Speaker 2: The host of Crackpot History, who I think at this one.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say, hey, man, hey dude, because
Speaker 1: I I want to keep its anonymous here. So I
Speaker 1: want to just first of all, say thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me on History Possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here. Didn't
Speaker 3: know I was the first.
Speaker 2: For of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's appropriate too because of not just the stuff
Speaker 1: that I, you know, have been covering lately and sort
Speaker 1: of what I see as being an interesting sort of
Speaker 1: thing that I want, a theme that I've been sort
Speaker 1: of focused on lately that we'll be getting into with
Speaker 1: this episode. But I do think that there is something
Speaker 1: to be said about crackpots in history.
Speaker 2: These days and the use of history.
Speaker 1: And I guess we'll say a weaponized way, which is
Speaker 1: partly what you're going after. But you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to define your show for you. I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to start out by asking you to just sort
Speaker 1: of just just sort of explain what is crackpot history,
Speaker 1: what's your mission with this broadly speaking, and what And
Speaker 1: I'm actually curious, like, what is the sort of story,
Speaker 1: if there is one, of how you got into this
Speaker 1: and what made you decide to make this or project
Speaker 1: in the history content creation space.
Speaker 2: I guess we could call it. Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy to provide some additional color. So crackpot History,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of in the tagline of the
Speaker 3: show is all about separating history from hysteria. And so
Speaker 3: I think when you look at at the landscape today,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of what I would call pop influencers
Speaker 3: or pop historians or faux historians that are that are
Speaker 3: basically looking at history and applying a narrative driven lens
Speaker 3: to it. And I think that there's a few different
Speaker 3: reasons why people might do that. Right. One could be
Speaker 3: maybe you have a bias or an animus toward a
Speaker 3: particular subject. Right. One could be maybe you want to
Speaker 3: win hearts and minds for causes that you believe in.
Speaker 3: Another could be maybe there are state based geopolitical bad
Speaker 3: actors that are supporting you and want you to push
Speaker 3: your particular narrative. And so think I think that there's
Speaker 3: all of these different elements to this, And when you
Speaker 3: throw in the virality of social media of the internet,
Speaker 3: you know, those beliefs and that pop history can spread
Speaker 3: very quickly and influence the real world and influence geopolitical
Speaker 3: hotspots and influence policy. And so I think, more than
Speaker 3: anything else, the reason why I chose to name crackpot
Speaker 3: History is because there's a lot of crackpots out there,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of people that kind of need
Speaker 3: to be fact checked, and so the podcast is all
Speaker 3: about really looking at their claims, not making it but
Speaker 3: personal attacks or mud slinging or anything like that, but
Speaker 3: looking at their claims and going claim by claim and saying,
Speaker 3: you know, is this true, what is the evidence for this?
Speaker 3: You know, what are the sources say, what do they
Speaker 3: say about it? Going into their footnotes and really trying
Speaker 3: to dive deep into the claims and invalidate them or not.
Speaker 1: And in the case of some you know people, have
Speaker 1: to where you have to actually try to discern what
Speaker 1: their you know, so to speak, footnotes are when they
Speaker 1: don't provide them. I mean, that's in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways the one of the biggest challenges I think of critiquing.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll say, we'll just call it online history.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't think of any other way
Speaker 1: to put it. Because some creators out there, I do
Speaker 1: really appreciate this, I see this on YouTube especially, will
Speaker 1: provide their list of sources in their notes. I actually, will,
Speaker 1: you know, be the first admit I don't put my
Speaker 1: sources in my episode notes, and maybe I should, but
Speaker 1: I do try to post a blog posts, you know,
Speaker 1: periodically saying here's the list of sources I use for
Speaker 1: this particular episode. I haven't done that in a bit so,
Speaker 1: and I just released the big episode of the Muslim
Speaker 1: Nazis about the handshar, so I probably should put together
Speaker 1: a nice comprehensive list of the sources I used, of course,
Speaker 1: But point being is that that's really hard to do
Speaker 1: when those are not provided. So I think that that's
Speaker 1: like in I would imagine, and maybe you can correct
Speaker 1: me on this, that's the hardest part of what you've
Speaker 1: been doing is trying to figure out what sources are
Speaker 1: being used.
Speaker 2: Or not being used. Am I on the right track there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean some of the folks that I've covered. So
Speaker 3: I'm in the middle of my second series right now.
Speaker 3: My first series was on Darryl Cooper, covering his fear
Speaker 3: and loathing in the New Jerusalem History of the Israeli
Speaker 3: Palestinian Conflict, currently covering Scott Horton's book Provoked in the
Speaker 3: History of the Russo Ukrainian War. So I've only done
Speaker 3: two series in the middle of my second But yeah,
Speaker 3: in some cases, the sources in you know, in Horton's case,
Speaker 3: I'm using the ebook and there are sources in the footnotes,
Speaker 3: but a lot of those are websites, and some of
Speaker 3: those links are dead because they're from old sources. Right
Speaker 3: in Cooper's case, there really aren't sources in some cases,
Speaker 3: and then you have to go kind of on this
Speaker 3: scavenger hunt looking for them and trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 3: where did he pull this quote from? And in some
Speaker 3: cases I've been successful and been able to find sources
Speaker 3: that he doesn't name. I also, by the way, I'm
Speaker 3: guilty of this. I don't actually list the sources that
Speaker 3: I refer to in my episodes, but when I'm quoting
Speaker 3: from them, I do say who is I'm quoting from,
Speaker 3: and typically what the title of the work is?
Speaker 2: Oh? Same same here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, that's honestly the at least in
Speaker 1: the case of you know, long form, you know, narrative
Speaker 1: history podcasters. But I think in your case too, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that that's a tradition laid down by Dan
Speaker 1: Carlin years ago at this point, I mean twenty years
Speaker 1: ago actually, now that I think about it. It's a
Speaker 1: I think it's a twentieth anniversary of hardcore history, and
Speaker 1: he's always been really good at that. But I think
Speaker 1: Carlin has kind of turned into more of a historiographical storyteller,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, where he's very dedicated to the
Speaker 1: to the sourcing, and he very rarely makes any assertion
Speaker 1: of his own at least I mean, he'll say if
Speaker 1: it's his opinion, and I think that's a really good
Speaker 1: model to follow. But yeah, so I think the scavenger
Speaker 1: hunt of sources, on the one hand, is actually kind
Speaker 1: of fun. I think if you're a certain level of autistic,
Speaker 1: like I think I am, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: speak for you, but it maybe you are.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: It's like a scavenger hunt, like you said, and that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of satisfying. But but yeah, like trying to
Speaker 1: figure that out, I would imagine, like I said, is
Speaker 1: the hardest part. But at the same time, it can
Speaker 1: be really rewarding because then you can find new information
Speaker 1: you might not have otherwise found, you know, So in
Speaker 1: a sense there's you know, some value in that as well.
Speaker 1: But excuse me, I guess we should probably get into it.
Speaker 1: I'd be remiss not to mention or to repeat the
Speaker 1: fact that your very first subject was, you know, of
Speaker 1: Daryl Cooper, somebody who I have collaborated with and spoken
Speaker 1: highly of and increasingly more critically of. And you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't think the critiques are going to stop anytime
Speaker 1: soon at this point, for various reasons, especially given the
Speaker 1: waters he's decided to wade into when it comes to
Speaker 1: World War II history, which, funny enough, I don't think
Speaker 1: is really much we can say about that, at least
Speaker 1: right now, because, like you said, your focus was on
Speaker 1: Fear and Loathing in The New Jerusalem, his first series, which,
Speaker 1: as I'll just say that, I after listening to your
Speaker 1: series on that, I can see a lot of issues
Speaker 1: with what he did with that series. Now, I still
Speaker 1: think it's a very good series as far as storytelling goes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that you yourself have said, whatever
Speaker 1: one thinks of him, his politics or his you know,
Speaker 1: his quality of his analysis, he's a very good storyteller.
Speaker 1: He's good at what he does, and I think that
Speaker 1: that's always something we need to acknowledge. But he plays
Speaker 1: a little fast and loose, and you made that very
Speaker 1: clear with this first series of yours, which, if I
Speaker 1: remember right, you called Manufactured Martyr. I believe is what
Speaker 1: you titled that series. Yeah, it's a good title, and
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say it's probably his most
Speaker 1: well known series. You know, I will say that I
Speaker 1: was one of those people for a while, and I
Speaker 1: you know that I that really loved that series, and
Speaker 1: I did defer to his judgment with that series a
Speaker 1: fair bit longer than I think I should have. I
Speaker 1: think he did play fast and loose in a lot
Speaker 1: of in a lot of cases. And my only sense
Speaker 1: is that as I did my own parallel research as
Speaker 1: part of my own series on the Muslim Nazis that
Speaker 1: touched on the same subject. My criticism of him, and
Speaker 1: we talked about this before we're recording, was really how
Speaker 1: he treated the character of the Mufti of hajaminaw Husseini,
Speaker 1: which I thought was, like i'll characterize it now as
Speaker 1: far to kid gloves, I guess maybe hands off i'd
Speaker 1: be a better word to. And there's probably various reasons
Speaker 1: for that, but I always felt that he was a
Speaker 1: little too credulous with that character, and I think that
Speaker 1: that might have been, like, you know that that was
Speaker 1: a good instinct for me to follow, because if I
Speaker 1: think I had followed it further, I probably would have
Speaker 1: found a lot of what you found in this. So
Speaker 1: I guess like it always bothered me how he didn't
Speaker 1: really give the Mufty his due, and like I.
Speaker 2: Said, there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: So when your series came along, I mean, honestly, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call what your series was it was a scalpel.
Speaker 2: Of fear and loathing in the New Jerusalem, but it
Speaker 2: was a.
Speaker 1: Full set of surgical tools, like That's why I would
Speaker 1: characterize it. And so I figured we'd just start with
Speaker 1: that and I can let you describe in broad strokes
Speaker 1: what you came away with when talking about that series.
Speaker 2: You already kind of started to talk about it a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: So I want to let you, you know, go through
Speaker 1: what you found with the with the with your Manufactured
Speaker 1: Martyr series, and maybe you can linger on whatever details
Speaker 1: that you found particularly significant with that.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I can. We can definitely start there. So
Speaker 3: I think you know, at the beginning of Fear and
Speaker 3: Loathing in the New Jerusalem, it's in the first episode,
Speaker 3: at the very opening in the introduction, you know, Cooper
Speaker 3: tells the audience that he's not going to tell us
Speaker 3: who's right from wrong. He's just going to tell us
Speaker 3: the history. And I'm this is verbati, this is I'm
Speaker 3: paraphrasing here, basically what he said. And when you hear that,
Speaker 3: as a member of the audience, you're basically kind of
Speaker 3: priming yourself and saying, Okay, this is going to be
Speaker 3: a telling of the history. There's no bias, there's no animis.
Speaker 3: He's just going to ping pong back and forth between
Speaker 3: what was going on with the Jews, what was going
Speaker 3: on with the Arabs, the Palestinians, and we're going we're
Speaker 3: going to get a forth right telling. And I think
Speaker 3: that as you go through the series, there are these moments,
Speaker 3: these kind of inflection points where you say, well, that
Speaker 3: sounds like there's some animis there, right, And then there
Speaker 3: are things that are just flat out a historical incorrect
Speaker 3: Pinprick remarks that he makes really just punching down on
Speaker 3: the Jews in Israel as it relates to this conflict.
Speaker 3: Things that go far beyond the scope I think of,
Speaker 3: you know, this is just the history of the Israeli
Speaker 3: Palestinian conflict. You know, there's this one. There's this one
Speaker 3: comment that he makes that he stands out and I
Speaker 3: go comment by comment, you know, point by point, where
Speaker 3: he says something to the effect of it was, it
Speaker 3: was a wonder that Jews were allowed to live and
Speaker 3: persist in Europe at all, given that they, you know,
Speaker 3: had fought against the Christians in Spain, given that they
Speaker 3: had been responsible for all of these crimes, historical crimes
Speaker 3: decide I believe he refers to in terms of, you know,
Speaker 3: the killing of Jesus. Just all of these pieces that
Speaker 3: are very ahistorical or kind of leaning on clear animates
Speaker 3: when it comes to the Jews specifically, and go, I
Speaker 3: go point by point and kind of correct the record
Speaker 3: as to why those things aren't the case. Right there
Speaker 3: are there are many, many, many historians that study these
Speaker 3: things and publish on them. And so that's just you know,
Speaker 3: one example. But another one that I think is even
Speaker 3: that really stands out and really grinded my gears at
Speaker 3: the time, and I mentioned this to you previously, was
Speaker 3: that there are just things that are factually wrong, regardless
Speaker 3: of whether you have a favorite or pick a side
Speaker 3: in the sports game, as people kind of think of
Speaker 3: this conflict these days as things that are just wrong.
Speaker 3: You know. He says that the Hashermites liberated Jerusalem in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventeen. No, that was the British and Allen be
Speaker 3: actually right. And so there are just things that are
Speaker 3: really basic that when I'm going through my episodes and
Speaker 3: I'm fact checking and I'm making sure that I'm holding
Speaker 3: myself accountable. If you're going to position yourself as a historian,
Speaker 3: which I believe he now does. You know, there's always
Speaker 3: there was this whole debate as to you know, does
Speaker 3: he consider himself a historian? Do these guys doing pop
Speaker 3: history label themselves as a historian. If you're going to
Speaker 3: embrace that label, then you really need to get it right.
Speaker 3: And I think that there's just a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: and animus in this series. And then when you combine
Speaker 3: that with his current tweets on the subject on the conflict,
Speaker 3: I think you bring those two pieces together. I think
Speaker 3: it's very clear where he stands and whether he was
Speaker 3: being truthful in the introduction of his series as to
Speaker 3: whether he was going to be giving us a forthright,
Speaker 3: unbiased telling of the history.
Speaker 2: M hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting you bring up his tweets too, because
Speaker 1: I feel like what you kind of showed is very
Speaker 1: interesting because a common thing that a lot of people
Speaker 1: always said to me, and I always deflected, how do
Speaker 1: you reconcile this guy's ability to tell such a careful story,
Speaker 1: like a nuanced story. The word nuance came up a
Speaker 1: lot when people would say this and the person he
Speaker 1: is on Twitter, and I always said because it was
Speaker 1: what he said and what he and I talked about.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was one time I told him my
Speaker 1: method of not tweeting from the hips, so to speak
Speaker 1: for me at the time, it was more Facebook posting.
Speaker 2: Now I do more Twitter, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The point is what I always what I told him
Speaker 1: was like the method that I've always used to keep
Speaker 1: me from getting in trouble is write what I want
Speaker 1: to say in the heat of the moment, but then
Speaker 1: don't post it, and then like wait an hour, and
Speaker 1: then if you still feel that way, then post it,
Speaker 1: and nine times out of ten you're not going to
Speaker 1: want to post it.
Speaker 2: And he thought it was a good idea. Obviously he
Speaker 2: never stuck to that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what I thought was really interesting though, is
Speaker 1: that people always said, including people who really like him
Speaker 1: like personally too, like he's just two different people on
Speaker 1: Twitter and on his podcast or on Twitter and when
Speaker 1: you talk to him in person. And I would also
Speaker 1: agree with that, but I think what you kind of
Speaker 1: showed with your show, especially I think in light of
Speaker 1: how he's been increasingly more defensive after his blow up
Speaker 1: and fame from his Tucker Carlson appearance in late twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, I think you're kind of showing that there's
Speaker 1: less daylight between the Twitter persona and the podcast. And
Speaker 1: that was I think what was so striking to me
Speaker 1: as somebody who vaguely knows Daryl and has known him
Speaker 1: for a while and has supported his work and in
Speaker 1: a weird way still kind of do because I we
Speaker 1: can get We'll circle back to that if you want
Speaker 1: about the about why I think it's fine to have
Speaker 1: people like that saying what they're saying on the internet.
Speaker 2: It's just that you need to have people there to
Speaker 2: challenge them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess what I'm saying is I think
Speaker 1: that that disconnect was kind of connected with what you
Speaker 1: did in your series, and I think that that's important
Speaker 1: to notice.
Speaker 2: And I guess, yeah, Like that's.
Speaker 1: The thing that I don't want to gloss over too much,
Speaker 1: is for somehow if there's anyone listening who has not
Speaker 1: also listened to Darryl series about Israel and Palestine, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned how he kind of glossed over Hajamin al
Speaker 1: Husseini's role, and I, you know, because it's, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of my hobby horse. I was thinking we can
Speaker 1: maybe hone in on that a little bit. And I'm
Speaker 1: working off memory that's much more distant than yours, because
Speaker 1: you looked at the Haja mean aspect of the story
Speaker 1: much more recently than I did. But we talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit before recording, Like I was saying
Speaker 1: that he kind of just ends the story of Hajajamin
Speaker 1: al Husseini in the Israeli Palestinian conflict at around the
Speaker 1: Arab revolt. He doesn't really even touch on the McDonald
Speaker 1: white paper Shenanigans. He doesn't talk about the far Hood
Speaker 1: at all in Iraq. He doesn't really even talk about
Speaker 1: Haja Mean in like teaming up with the Access. He
Speaker 1: gives it like one throwaway mention if memory serves, and
Speaker 1: he basically dismisses the Mufty as having just gone insane
Speaker 1: instead of looking at him more seriously like he has
Speaker 1: been throughout the previous part of the series and a
Speaker 1: lot of other figures. Because that's the thing is that
Speaker 1: omission is what I thought was so weird, is because
Speaker 1: if you're going to tell the story of this conflict,
Speaker 1: you have to give agency to people like hajaminaw who's
Speaker 1: saying that they don't just go insane and stop mattering.
Speaker 2: They have significance. And so yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: That that lack of I guess you could say, you
Speaker 1: could call it too much credulity or lack of credulity,
Speaker 1: depending on what you're talking about. But his lack of
Speaker 1: coverage of Hajamen always bothered me in that sense because
Speaker 1: it felt like he was not giving him or his
Speaker 1: side of the conflict they're real due. He was kind
Speaker 1: of treating them, like I said, with kid gloves and
Speaker 1: not giving them the responsibility that they might otherwise have
Speaker 1: while putting all the responsibility on the Zionis side of
Speaker 1: the conflict.
Speaker 2: And that, like I said, that always bothered me.
Speaker 1: I felt like that kind of helped crystallize why I
Speaker 1: thought your series was so effective.
Speaker 2: So do do you have any thoughts in that regard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that there is I think
Speaker 3: that there is a misallocation of agency when it comes
Speaker 3: to when it comes to Husseini specifically, I think that
Speaker 3: he is portrayed as being a and this is you know,
Speaker 3: this is Horton's I'm paraphrasing Horton here, but he's basically
Speaker 3: portrayed as a moderating force in the series that was
Speaker 3: trying to quell the violence, trying to work with the British,
Speaker 3: trying to make sure that peace was possible between the
Speaker 3: competing national movements that were urging in the Mandate of
Speaker 3: Palestine in at the time. And I think that that
Speaker 3: is just simply incorrect and ahistorical when you actually dive
Speaker 3: into things, and specifically, I think one of the most
Speaker 3: egregious moments in Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem
Speaker 3: is surrounding the as you know, the Pogrim of nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine, which was in Hebron and is labeled Hebron Pogrim,
Speaker 3: but also was in other areas of the Mandate, and
Speaker 3: Husseini and his acolytes were the ones that kind of
Speaker 3: fanned the flames of this transpiring. So they handed out
Speaker 3: materials that were said things to the effect of, you know,
Speaker 3: the Jews are coming to seize Alaxa, right and things
Speaker 3: along those lines, which are just completely incorrect, and just
Speaker 3: that wasn't part of the plan. And so there's this
Speaker 3: kind of deferral of agency where oh he was there,
Speaker 3: he was trying to make sure that a lid was
Speaker 3: kept on on the tempers and the potential for chaos,
Speaker 3: while he was actually behind the scenes wanting to instigate
Speaker 3: the violence. And that piece just isn't portrayed at all.
Speaker 3: The other piece that I think is really missing is
Speaker 3: the Husseinis, the more extremist elements of Palestinian Arab society
Speaker 3: in the Mandate at the time. They weren't just operating unopposed, right,
Speaker 3: there was a counterbalancing force in the form of the
Speaker 3: Nashashibies and the Nashashibi family, who were much more moderate,
Speaker 3: who wanted to work with the British, who wanted to
Speaker 3: find a diplomatic solution with the Zionists, with the Jews
Speaker 3: in the Mandate at the time, and I personally believe
Speaker 3: that if they were given enough support this conflict, the
Speaker 3: one hundred plus years of it could have gone in
Speaker 3: a very different way, but they were attacked and killed
Speaker 3: by Husseini and his acolytes and lost their prestigion influence
Speaker 3: because of it. Cooper doesn't really that at all. So
Speaker 3: the mini Palestinian Civil War that happened, and the fact
Speaker 3: that these people were killed and butchered in the sake
Speaker 3: of for the sake of a maximalist outcome that Hussein
Speaker 3: he wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's something that I am also kind of
Speaker 1: bristle at too with his coverage because he doesn't recognize
Speaker 1: or I don't want to. I don't want to necessarily
Speaker 1: impuge motive, at least not yet, because I kind of wanted.
Speaker 2: To get into that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: But I don't like how he minimized Haja means anti
Speaker 1: Semitism or Jew hatred might be a better way of
Speaker 1: putting it, just so we're not we don't get stuck
Speaker 1: in that hole splitting of hairs like, oh, well they're
Speaker 1: all Semis that kind of thing. But uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: bristle at his inability to recognize that haja means motivation
Speaker 1: was what it was, like you said, he really did
Speaker 1: portray him as a moderating force, and I am somewhat
Speaker 1: guilt of following in his footsteps earlier on in my
Speaker 1: own Muscle Nazi series when talking about that, I saw
Speaker 1: his motivation less innocently, but I did try to I
Speaker 1: did try to present him as somebody who didn't want
Speaker 1: violence to get out of control because he was trying
Speaker 1: to maintain power. I didn't have all the sources available
Speaker 1: to me at the time. I didn't even know about
Speaker 1: the pamphlets that you were talking about just then, So
Speaker 1: there is some correction needed there on my part, for sure.
Speaker 1: But with that said, I still think that he was
Speaker 1: much more interested in growing and maintaining his influence and power.
Speaker 1: That was one motivating plank for Haja mean that I
Speaker 1: don't really get the sense Daryl appreciated or noted, and
Speaker 1: his Jew hatred was more framed, if it was framed
Speaker 1: at all, And maybe you can correct me on this,
Speaker 1: because again your memory is fresher on this than mine.
Speaker 1: He more saw it as a reaction, and that does
Speaker 1: seem to be kind of Daryl's view on anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: is that it's always a reaction to something that Jews
Speaker 1: do or that like particularly annoying or quote unquote bad
Speaker 1: Jews do, and I think that's also kind of how
Speaker 1: he sees how racism operates. But the difference between I'll
Speaker 1: just say that maybe that's true sometimes. But the thing
Speaker 1: about anti Semitism Jew hatred is that it's a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory before it's a bigotry. So there's always something preemptive
Speaker 1: about it. And I think that when you don't appreciate that,
Speaker 1: and you're going to underrate it as a motivator. And
Speaker 1: as we talked about before recording, there is very good,
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence that Hajamin al Husseini was very aware and
Speaker 1: very familiar with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Speaker 1: by at least nineteen twenty, if not before. He was multilingual,
Speaker 1: so he could have read other editions of it even
Speaker 1: before that the point. And also he was you know,
Speaker 1: he supposedly had it memorized later in life, so clearly
Speaker 1: he was familiar with it. And you also spoke about
Speaker 1: this with me a little bit before we were recording,
Speaker 1: about the sort of historical confluence of factors there. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can and highlight that a little bit for listeners,
Speaker 1: but I guess what that's what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: I feel like underrating these internal motivations in favor of
Speaker 1: these grand historical forces. What that ultimately does is takes
Speaker 1: responsibility and agency away from Haja mean, especially for events
Speaker 1: like the nineteen twenty nine riots. But you could even
Speaker 1: go back and say the Nabi Musa riots perhaps as well.
Speaker 1: Though the sense I got is that that was a
Speaker 1: little more I think that that was definitely a situation
Speaker 1: where things got a little out of control. They weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily meant to be that crazy. But maybe maybe I'm
Speaker 1: wrong on that too, Maybe I need to update my
Speaker 1: understanding of all those events too. But anyway, I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you respond to the idea of these confounding
Speaker 1: motivations that Daryl just left out, or at least seem
Speaker 1: to leave out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that any telling of the
Speaker 3: history needs to look at both sides, right and so
Speaker 3: on the one side, on the one hand, if if
Speaker 3: you're Cooper and you're going to talk about some of
Speaker 3: the some of the actions of the Irgun in the
Speaker 3: lay hey right, which you know especially right, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: if you're going to cover those in granular detail, and
Speaker 3: then you're not going to account for, you know, what
Speaker 3: precipitated the violence and what brought about those organizations. Right,
Speaker 3: So you mentioned Nebi Musa in nineteen twenty, the Jaffa
Speaker 3: riots in nineteen twenty one, you know, the battle at
Speaker 3: Tel High around the same period, and then obviously culminating
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty nine. There's this decade that the Anglo
Speaker 3: American Committee of Inquiry actually refers to where the Jews
Speaker 3: kind of sat on their hands and really didn't do
Speaker 3: much until the thirties and things started really kind of
Speaker 3: coming around and they said, well, you know, we want
Speaker 3: to find some kind of a diplomatic resolution here. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't really seem like we have another side of
Speaker 3: the aisle that's kind of willing to meet us halfway.
Speaker 3: And that whole story isn't really portrayed, right, Like Cooper
Speaker 3: might touch on elements of the Nebu Musa riots and
Speaker 3: the jaff riots and all that stuff, but the fifty
Speaker 3: thousand foot narrative isn't really given. And I think that's
Speaker 3: important because these organizations, the Huguanah that you're gun the
Speaker 3: lay He. You know, if you want to talk with
Speaker 3: their actions, we can talk with their actions, certainly, but
Speaker 3: what brought them into existence? Right would they have existed
Speaker 3: if there wasn't this decade of the of the nineteen
Speaker 3: twenties that really kind of shifted Jewish thinking and brought
Speaker 3: about the radicals, as some people would call them today,
Speaker 3: like the Jabbatinskis of the world, et cetera. With his
Speaker 3: Iron Wall essay saying, we want to make peace with
Speaker 3: the Arabs, but in the short term, we need this
Speaker 3: iron wall of force to get us to a point
Speaker 3: where a compromise can be reached, which is how he
Speaker 3: concludes his essay, which most people don't actually speak to.
Speaker 3: But that whole story isn't really being told there, and
Speaker 3: so you know, you have to question at some point
Speaker 3: when you're diving into the negative aspects of one side
Speaker 3: of the conflict but not really giving the same amount
Speaker 3: of detail or omitting some of the agency and the
Speaker 3: animus on the other side, it kind of makes you question,
Speaker 3: what is the motivating force behind that decision?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean you can also
Speaker 1: ask that question about like why, what's the motivating force
Speaker 1: behind the decision not to include certain things or include
Speaker 1: certain things, or if that's what you mean, is that
Speaker 1: what you meant, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: get back to that in a little bit, uh, because
Speaker 1: I have some questions about that too, But I do
Speaker 1: have a more meta question, I guess, like, how credible
Speaker 1: do you find Darryl's claims of having read hundreds of
Speaker 1: books at over a thousand academic papers and the subject
Speaker 1: of Israel Palestine. I mean I was always skeptical, Like
Speaker 1: I think I told you earlier. I think that led
Speaker 1: to him being a little miffed at me, which you know,
Speaker 1: in which case I think has ultimately led to me
Speaker 1: getting blocked by him.
Speaker 3: But I've always well, welcome to the club, by the way, welcome.
Speaker 1: To the exactly Yeah, which makes me a little sad,
Speaker 1: because you know, I did consider him like something of
Speaker 1: a friend for a while. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just you know, Internet debate politics for you, I guess.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I've always been skeptical of his claims
Speaker 1: of having read that much. But yeah, what do you
Speaker 1: make of his of his claims of having read that much?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I think that I when I'm looking at
Speaker 3: a series, when I'm looking at Cooper or Horton or
Speaker 3: you know, Dave Smith, Tucker, Carlson, et ceter o. Insert
Speaker 3: name here, Right, I'm kind of just focusing on what
Speaker 3: the claims are, and so from the claims you can
Speaker 3: kind of you can draw your own conclusions, right. I
Speaker 3: mentioned I think I mentioned to you that, you know,
Speaker 3: when he said that the Hashermites liberated Jerusalem in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 3: that raises some eyebrows, right, Like, that's a very that's
Speaker 3: a very basic claim. That's a part of the story
Speaker 3: as to how the British controlled the area, you know,
Speaker 3: how we got to the Balfour Declaration, how the conflict
Speaker 3: really started, right, that is a These are very basic
Speaker 3: fundamental facts, if.
Speaker 2: You don't mind me jumping in.
Speaker 1: Sorry, where do you think the claim that the Hashemites
Speaker 1: liberated it came from?
Speaker 3: I think it might be a geography issue, maybe a
Speaker 3: little bit of confusion. You know, there's there's obviously the
Speaker 3: Hashemites liberated Akaba with lawns of Arabia, and then they
Speaker 3: moved north on the east side of the Jordan River.
Speaker 3: But crossing into Palestine as a force, you know, with
Speaker 3: with political leadership to liberate Jerusalem, I mean certainly didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Neither were Hashemite forces fighting. I believe he also says
Speaker 3: that they that they fought in the Sinai and there
Speaker 3: might have been, you know, some troops, that it might
Speaker 3: have crossed the Jordan, but there wasn't a collective effort.
Speaker 3: There's nothing that really substantively documents that or as evidence
Speaker 3: to that fact that there was a concerted Hashemite effort
Speaker 3: in conjunction with Allen b and the British to liberate
Speaker 3: the entirety of Palestine and Jerusalem. Of course. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: you want to make an argument about them securing the
Speaker 3: flanks with Akaba and moving up north into trans Jordan,
Speaker 3: you can have that claim, but that's not what is
Speaker 3: said in the podcast in his series.
Speaker 1: Gotcha Okay, So it's just more of like he made
Speaker 1: a fast and loose comment that he didn't really like
Speaker 1: linger on. So I guess it sounds that sounds more
Speaker 1: like an innocent mistake than anything else.
Speaker 3: I mean, it certainly could be right, But then I
Speaker 3: think you when you go through the series and you
Speaker 3: listen to the number of quote, you know, innocent mistakes
Speaker 3: that are made, I think you really have to take
Speaker 3: a step back and say, you know, is there something
Speaker 3: at play here? You know, is there animus? Is there bias?
Speaker 3: Why isn't this full story being told? Why is the
Speaker 3: context missing? And I just I think that there's just
Speaker 3: a lot of smoke there, which is why I made
Speaker 3: the decision to start with this series, because as I
Speaker 3: started listening to it, I started pointing out and recognizing
Speaker 3: there were a lot of things that needed some additional
Speaker 3: context in color.
Speaker 1: Right, and yeah, actually we should linger on the I
Speaker 1: remember the thing that really the thing that actually caused
Speaker 1: you to be in the club that I now also
Speaker 1: occupy of being blocked by him, it was what was
Speaker 1: the sourcing issue with that? It was he took issue
Speaker 1: with you saying that you could not find it rearticular
Speaker 1: source for his claim of what what was that?
Speaker 2: Do you recall?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the claim was and there was a big
Speaker 3: Twitter blow up back and forth about this, and so
Speaker 3: the claim what it gained.
Speaker 2: You like five thousand followers if I remember, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's funny I started. I started the account
Speaker 3: in April of now last year, twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 3: is today I think I'm sitting close to fifty five
Speaker 3: hundred followers or something, And people say, oh, do you
Speaker 3: know how did you get that many? If you must
Speaker 3: be with Masad or something crazy with that.
Speaker 2: We got the seven thousand dollars check.
Speaker 3: Seven seven thousand dollars. Yeah, seven thousand dollars check.
Speaker 1: Per post or Massad is listening, I will take seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. I would love seven thousand dollars. I'm in
Speaker 1: debt for grad school guys.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 3: So the whole thing was there's this conversation that he
Speaker 3: refers to that is a conversation between Usishkin, who was
Speaker 3: a Jewish leader, and Ronald Stores, who was the British
Speaker 3: military of ji Islam at the time. And at the
Speaker 3: end of the conversation, the way that it's framed by
Speaker 3: Cooper is that Usishkin basically threatened Ronald Stores by saying,
Speaker 3: and I believe this was in correct me if I'm mistaken,
Speaker 3: I believe this was in the context of the aftermath
Speaker 3: of the nineteen twenty nine program, where they were basically
Speaker 3: Usishkin was saying, this is a program. You know, the
Speaker 3: British bear responsibility for this. I know what a program
Speaker 3: looks like. I've experienced or seen them myself, or you know,
Speaker 3: read enough material on them. Given what happened in Tsarist Russia?
Speaker 3: This was a program. And then at the end of
Speaker 3: the conversation, Cooper basically says that Usishkin threatened stores by
Speaker 3: saying something of the effect of you saw what happened
Speaker 3: to the Tsar, you know, watch your back, basically something
Speaker 3: to that effect. And so there was a whole there
Speaker 3: was a hole back and forth. But you know, is
Speaker 3: that what happened in the quote or was that? Is
Speaker 3: that an accurate quote? Is that an you're telling of
Speaker 3: the story, and when you dive into the sources that
Speaker 3: refer to it, that part of the quote isn't mentioned.
Speaker 3: And then somebody actually on X and I was going
Speaker 3: to do this myself, somebody actually dove into the archives
Speaker 3: in Israel and posted a telling in the archives that
Speaker 3: are the basis for this conversation being referred to in
Speaker 3: various historical works, and that isn't there. And so that
Speaker 3: was kind of the end of the back and forth
Speaker 3: when I highlighted that, and some some very well read
Speaker 3: follower on X pulled that up and that was that
Speaker 3: was basically the end of.
Speaker 1: It, right, Yeah, And I remember somebody also pulled a
Speaker 1: the origin of that quote. If I remember right, it
Speaker 1: was a I am blanking on the name of the website,
Speaker 1: but they did find a version of that. But I
Speaker 1: think if I remember right, it was just a scanned
Speaker 1: page of another secondary source. But it was on a
Speaker 1: site that is that like has a reputable sounding name
Speaker 1: something about it.
Speaker 3: There was there was like a site there was like
Speaker 3: a Jewish encyclopedia site or something that's it that, yeah,
Speaker 3: And so that came up and they had they also
Speaker 3: don't have a source for it. And so the basis
Speaker 3: the basis of this conversation, and I think I don't
Speaker 3: want to, you know, be misattributing here, but I believe
Speaker 3: that Cooper pulls this from Tom Segev's book One Palestine Complete. Yes,
Speaker 3: it was a history, yes, which is a history of
Speaker 3: man of the Mandate. And so when you go in there,
Speaker 3: Segev doesn't refer to that ending part of the conversation, right,
Speaker 3: And that's what I highlight in my critique of Cooper here.
Speaker 3: And then again, you know, the Twitter follower kind of
Speaker 3: beat me to it and pulled up the archive in
Speaker 3: Israel that refers to the conversation that I believe Segev
Speaker 3: refers to. And it also isn't there. And so that
Speaker 3: was the basis of the of the back and forth
Speaker 3: and what ultimately I think got me blocked by Cooper
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and that's just kind of his his MO
Speaker 1: has been liberal with the block button, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's something that I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: like come to do, especially when they have high follower
Speaker 1: accounts and are, yeah, getting questioned, especially when.
Speaker 3: You know, my rule for that is my rule for
Speaker 3: that is, if you're gonna like personally insult me, you're
Speaker 3: probably gonna get blocked. But if you're if you're focusing
Speaker 3: on the claims or the arguments or having a back
Speaker 3: and forth, like it doesn't make sense, you're not you're
Speaker 3: not getting you're not getting blocked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and and again, I mean this gets into
Speaker 1: sort of more broadly like what you you know, what
Speaker 1: you're doing essentially and well again another thing to come
Speaker 1: back to, but you're engaging in critique. So and what
Speaker 1: is essentially a peer review. And the thing about peer
Speaker 1: review and critique is that the peer review and the
Speaker 1: critique can be critiqued and reviewed and then you review
Speaker 1: the review with I mean, it's like it's and that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't understand the value
Speaker 1: of that, because like the value of being wrong, I guess,
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: I resent.
Speaker 1: Actually this is something I get to pat myself on
Speaker 1: the back here, so I'm I'm going to But somebody,
Speaker 1: a very nice Polish listener, pointed out to me that
Speaker 1: in my most recent episode I made a booboo in
Speaker 1: the sense that I interchangeably used the term Warsaw ghetto
Speaker 1: uprising and Warsaw uprising. Those are two distinct events, and
Speaker 1: I conflated them, at least in passing. And I didn't
Speaker 1: get the dates wrong or anything like that with what
Speaker 1: I was talking about, but I did make a conflation,
Speaker 1: and that is an error. That's you know, it's even
Speaker 1: a major error, especially for you know, someone to make
Speaker 1: who is trying to be authoritative on a particular subject,
Speaker 1: as you know, I am trying to do, at least
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, as Darrel's trying to do, as
Speaker 1: as you're trying to do. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: a valuable impulse, is to correct yourself. And I will
Speaker 1: be fair to Daryl, especially after his initial defensive thread
Speaker 1: about making Churchill the villain of World War Two. He
Speaker 1: did correct himself a couple times. Credit where it to do.
Speaker 1: But I think that self correction is a very vital skill,
Speaker 1: and blocking is the opposite of self correction. It's a
Speaker 1: way of saying I have nothing to correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean so, you know, Dave Smith, I think once
Speaker 3: he either quote tweeted me or quote tweeted Cooper referring
Speaker 3: to me and say something of the effect of, you know,
Speaker 3: look at all the people ganging up on Cooper. There's
Speaker 3: a reason they're coming after his claims, or something that effect.
Speaker 3: And I replied to Dave and I basically said, you know,
Speaker 3: you're clearly not familiar with this study of history, because
Speaker 3: if you were, peer review is an intrinsic part of this, right,
Speaker 3: and it's not something that people shirk from or are
Speaker 3: scared of. You know, you need to be open to critique,
Speaker 3: you know. And I think they would probably say, oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't this isn't peer review, this is really bad faith, right,
Speaker 3: because you're disagreeing with the narrative that they believe in.
Speaker 3: From a geopolitical standpoint. That furthers there. I think some
Speaker 3: would say political objectives, which is as I said earlier.
Speaker 3: You know, I think a lot of this is if
Speaker 3: you can influence the past and impact the past and
Speaker 3: change people's beliefs and win hearts and minds, and you
Speaker 3: can impact the press and in the future, and I
Speaker 3: think that there might be a little bit of that
Speaker 3: at play here as well, when it comes to the
Speaker 3: telling of the history here. But all that is to say,
Speaker 3: peer review is intrinsically a part of the study of history,
Speaker 3: and so if you're going to accept the label of historian,
Speaker 3: you're going to allow people to refer to you to that.
Speaker 3: Just because you're not writing an academic paper doesn't mean
Speaker 3: you should or want to escape critique.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, And again, this is something I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about more towards the end of the conversation,
Speaker 1: but this is a good preview for it, because I
Speaker 1: think that we're both aligned on that idea. You reminded
Speaker 1: me also of I think the first thing that made
Speaker 1: me a little put off by Darrel's reaction to your
Speaker 1: existence really, which.
Speaker 2: He also, by the way, I thought was very funny.
Speaker 1: He thought that it was a podcast just dedicated to him,
Speaker 1: which it's not. Yes, you've made that very clear already.
Speaker 1: Though technically I don't know if you knew this. The
Speaker 1: book Provoked was originally going to be co written by
Speaker 1: Daryl and Scott Horton. I don't know what happened with that,
Speaker 1: but that was the original plan. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: I guess you are making a show just about him.
Speaker 3: Interesting. I actually I wasn't aware of that. Actually, I
Speaker 3: didn't know that it was going to be jointly authored
Speaker 3: by the both of them.
Speaker 1: It was just like an initial coll I don't think
Speaker 1: that lasted very long, honestly.
Speaker 2: I mean, though.
Speaker 1: Maybe honestly, given that Scott Horton has eight thousand footnotes
Speaker 1: he loves to brag about, Daryl might be in those
Speaker 1: footnotes somewhere.
Speaker 2: I have no idea, but there are.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of footnotes in Provoked, many many footnotes.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, cool, yeah, no, we'll jump back to that though.
Speaker 1: But the thing that really put me off was when
Speaker 1: Darrel was getting mad at you for that, and he
Speaker 1: saw that I was, you know, praising your you know,
Speaker 1: your work, and you know, being skeptical of the amount
Speaker 1: of sources he'd read. He used words as something to
Speaker 1: the effect of, I can't believe you don't see what's
Speaker 1: going on here, which is to imply that I'm falling
Speaker 1: for some kind of grand conspiracy theory, which that was
Speaker 1: when I was like, what is this? What am I
Speaker 1: falling for here? I'm falling for critique or am I
Speaker 1: falling for somebody daring to question you? Because that seems
Speaker 1: the latter seems to be really what the issue is,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing wrong with being critiqued.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with having your.
Speaker 1: Work subject to criticism, even harsh criticism. Is there a
Speaker 1: level of bad faith, it doesn't matter if the criticism
Speaker 1: is sound, that's all that matters. You know, bad faith
Speaker 1: does matter at a certain point, but you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes down to it, if there's things that you
Speaker 1: can't account for in your own work, that means you
Speaker 1: made a mistake and that needs to be accounted for.
Speaker 1: In his case, and anyway, I didn't want to make
Speaker 1: this too much about internet drama, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: unavoidable because a lot of this kind of stuff happens
Speaker 1: in social media, and as much as I don't like
Speaker 1: to admit it, I think that we need to do
Speaker 1: away with the idea that social media is not real
Speaker 1: life when it comes to things like politics, history and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: It is real life. It's been real life for a
Speaker 2: lot longer. I think that we want to add.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I look, I think that that's first of all,
Speaker 3: the world revolves around internet drama, so it don't worry,
Speaker 3: It's fine. But I think I think you're one hundred
Speaker 3: percent right, Like I think that we need to be
Speaker 3: open to feedback and critique, right, and again, it really
Speaker 3: comes down to labels, right, So I mean it should
Speaker 3: the bar be higher for somebody like a Darryl Cooper
Speaker 3: or Scott Horton versus a Dave Smith. Yes, absolutely. I
Speaker 3: mean if you accept the label of historian, if you're
Speaker 3: going to publish works with sources and footnotes, and you're
Speaker 3: going to position yourself in that way, then you need
Speaker 3: to be open and receptive to the fact that people
Speaker 3: are going to critique your work. I think that part
Speaker 3: of this issue is that we're in this and I
Speaker 3: speak to this in the very in the first episode
Speaker 3: of Crack About Histor, which is actually episode zero, where
Speaker 3: I talk about the justification for the show, where you know,
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of these people are kind
Speaker 3: of living in these bubbles where they're surrounded by people
Speaker 3: that think like them, because this is the popular thing
Speaker 3: right now. Right, you have revisionists, contrarian history. You spoke
Speaker 3: to this yourself before. You know Churchill, it was the
Speaker 3: chief villain of World War two, you know, as an example, right,
Speaker 3: Hodjaminal Husseini was a moderating influence things like this, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of the popular shiny thing right now. And
Speaker 3: so I think that a lot of these people that
Speaker 3: are kind of telling these historical narratives maybe surround themselves
Speaker 3: with people that think similarly, right, and maybe they don't
Speaker 3: encounter pushback. You know. My whole thing, and I speak
Speaker 3: to this again in episode zero, is that it needs
Speaker 3: to be long form. The pushback needs to be substantive,
Speaker 3: because what you see on x or Twitter, whatever you
Speaker 3: want to call it, is a lot of people kind
Speaker 3: of reacting to the claim saying, oh, they're ridiculous. And
Speaker 3: it's a bit of a handwave right when you say, oh,
Speaker 3: of Churchill was a villain of World War two. Okay,
Speaker 3: this guy's clearly off his rocker. But where's the follow up? Right,
Speaker 3: where is the substance? Because his followers, you know, Horton,
Speaker 3: the Coopers of the World, et cetera, their followers always say,
Speaker 3: stop attacking him, address the claims, and so that's kind
Speaker 3: of underpinning the entirety of Cracklawn history. Okay, we're not
Speaker 3: attacking him, we're only addressing the claims. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: was gonna say the other I wonder if he's a listener.
Speaker 3: The only person I've seen, really like high profile person
Speaker 3: I've seen really try to do that so far as
Speaker 3: Coleman Hughes with his what was it seventeen hour conversation
Speaker 3: with Dave Smith, whatever it was, it was very good
Speaker 3: and he was very they were respectful to each other.
Speaker 3: And I haven't even finished listening to it, honestly, but
Speaker 3: just listening to the first hour of it, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it got tedious, Like I heard a lot of people
Speaker 3: critique it, but that's the point, Like you have to
Speaker 3: be tedious, especially with people who are going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, making claims like that. Yeah, Oh, I wanted
Speaker 3: to ask before I forget you said that Daryl has
Speaker 3: no longer at least stopped people from referring to him
Speaker 3: as a historian, or is he started calling himself a historian.
Speaker 3: I have not seen him do that, but I also
Speaker 3: haven't really been looking into him and his statements for
Speaker 3: a while. So, first of all, very much big fan
Speaker 3: of Coleman, Hugh. I thought the conversation with Dave Smith
Speaker 3: was phenomenal. I watched the whole thing, and I thought
Speaker 3: it was just a Coleman did in that episode what
Speaker 3: I think I'm trying to do via podcast and Crackpot
Speaker 3: History Live, and probably much more eloquently and more skillfully
Speaker 3: than I could do in the same setting.
Speaker 2: So very much to be in his position, yeah, that
Speaker 2: would be yeah.
Speaker 3: Very much, very much respect what Coleman is doing and
Speaker 3: is trying to do. So the historian reference. In I
Speaker 3: think the most recent Tucker Carlson interview, Carlson refers to
Speaker 3: to Darryl as the most august historian and he does that,
Speaker 3: I believe, in front of him, and there's no there's
Speaker 3: no pushback there. So my take on that is the
Speaker 3: label has now been accepted, and the amount of pushback
Speaker 3: that is commensurate with accept that label by way of
Speaker 3: you now labeling yourself or accepting others labeling you as
Speaker 3: a historian, should be commensurate, right that should it should
Speaker 3: There should be an appropriate level of pushback to accepting
Speaker 3: that label and then making making claims that I think
Speaker 3: are deserving of that pushback.
Speaker 1: And without like you know, just leaving it open so
Speaker 1: that you can later say I never called myself a historian,
Speaker 1: for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, now, not to jump the gun with your future plans,
Speaker 1: but just because we've been talking about Daryl's work, are
Speaker 1: you planning on approaching Daryl's other series, including his as
Speaker 1: Best I Can Tell, Superior and better research follow up
Speaker 1: series God's Socialist.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I mean, a lot of people
Speaker 3: really liked my coverage. If you're and loathing in the
Speaker 3: New Jerusalem, you know there's a lot of content to
Speaker 3: cover with uh provoked in Scott Wharton's current book, and
Speaker 3: so I just released part two. There's a number of
Speaker 3: chapters leading up to the present day. So I'm kind
Speaker 3: of I'm kind of just focused on that. Will I
Speaker 3: will I go back to Cooper I think at some point, certainly,
Speaker 3: But I think there's a lot of claims being made
Speaker 3: by a lot of influencers, a lot of pop historians
Speaker 3: that are deserving of attention. So there's just to say
Speaker 3: there's not a lack of content that deserves coverage.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, And I'll just say, just to put my
Speaker 1: opinion out there, I have seen criticism that with God's
Speaker 1: Socialist at least, that Darro was just pulling from a
Speaker 1: handful of books and stretched it out into, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a forty hour series or something, And that would probably
Speaker 1: align with my skepticism of his having read literally hundreds
Speaker 1: of books about Israel, Zion as a mara of nationalism
Speaker 1: and all that. But generally what I already knew and
Speaker 1: what I've come to know about the People's Temple and
Speaker 1: the radical meltdowns of the seventies that aligns with most
Speaker 1: of what he said and reported in that series. So
Speaker 1: I can, I mean, just based on my memory and
Speaker 1: just based on you know, what I know, I can
Speaker 1: speak to the quality of that series for the most part.
Speaker 1: And I would actually say the same goes for his
Speaker 1: one offs, like that one he did called The Anti Humans,
Speaker 1: which I still think is a very powerful episode. Though
Speaker 1: that did have a couple of moments that made arch
Speaker 1: and eyebrow, particularly when he started referencing things about Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: which has kind of been my wheelhouse as well for
Speaker 1: a while. And I'll just mention on one in that episode,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've listened to it.
Speaker 2: He just kind of.
Speaker 1: Omitted consciously or otherwise of just who the Ustasia and
Speaker 1: wartime Croatia were, that the Partisans were killing at the
Speaker 1: end of the war, like he made it sound like
Speaker 1: they were just innocent nationalists getting victimized by communists, and
Speaker 1: I remember just wrinkling my nose of that and being like,
Speaker 1: I don't think and I saw it at the time,
Speaker 1: and maybe I still do. I don't really have any
Speaker 1: reason to see otherwise, but at the time I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't think you know much about
Speaker 1: the Ustasia if you're talking about them as innocent victims regardless.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I'll broaden my question a little bit here,
Speaker 1: because after seeing all these problems with his Fear and
Speaker 1: Loathing series that you highlighted, and not to mention his
Speaker 1: extremely reckless and low quality errors with his current World
Speaker 1: War II series, which I'm sure you've been following that
Speaker 1: a fair bit too, at least online, I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm wondering is, how are we supposed to trust anything
Speaker 1: that he says, even though I do think that his
Speaker 1: God's Socialist series stacks up. I'm now much more skeptical
Speaker 1: because of what you highlighted in fear and loathing, And
Speaker 1: I guess, putting aside the motive for now, even if
Speaker 1: it's all accidental, let's just say that demonstrates at best
Speaker 1: in competence, right. I mean, I guess the broad question
Speaker 1: is for me here where do we.
Speaker 2: Draw the line? Where do we draw the.
Speaker 1: Line where incompetence meets calculation or where incompetence becomes calculation?
Speaker 1: I mean, does it depend from person to person or
Speaker 1: is there just a certain point where that just doesn't
Speaker 1: matter anymore? So that's what I mean by a broader question.
Speaker 1: I guess it's more philosophical in that sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is a broad question. And I think
Speaker 3: to zoom out fifty thousand foot view here. So I
Speaker 3: know I've referred to this previously, but I speak to
Speaker 3: this in episode zero of Crackpot History. The motivation behind
Speaker 3: the show, and the motivation behind the show. The thing
Speaker 3: that kind of lit a light bulb for me was
Speaker 3: and you probably saw this, Do you remember this the
Speaker 3: episode of Joe Rogan between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith,
Speaker 3: that whole debate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the debate that no one won. We all lost.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's it kind will kind of set
Speaker 3: the Internet on fire, right, and it fried everybody's brains.
Speaker 3: But I think it was asking a really good question.
Speaker 3: And even though Murray was kind of being t V
Speaker 3: one there, it was this question of who can you trust? Right,
Speaker 3: and it was the experts versus the influencers. And that's
Speaker 3: my language, I'm kind of paraphrasing, but that's kind of
Speaker 3: the gist of it, right, And I think that I
Speaker 3: think that we live in this period where to a degree,
Speaker 3: there's a large segment of people that look at the
Speaker 3: experts on a variety of different subjects that typically revolves
Speaker 3: around politics, or history or generally the humanities. Right, these
Speaker 3: these softer, less quantitative subjects compared to you know, civil
Speaker 3: engineering or being a pilot or something like that, where
Speaker 3: you either land the plane or you don't, and the
Speaker 3: bridge either stands or the bridge collapses. But these softer
Speaker 3: subjects that are more narrative driven or open to interpretation,
Speaker 3: where people have a lack of trust for what, you know,
Speaker 3: the quote unquote experts. And I think that that's for
Speaker 3: a variety of different reasons. You know, some of them political,
Speaker 3: some of them social, some of them given recent events,
Speaker 3: and that results in a large segment of people looking
Speaker 3: at the experts and saying, I don't trust the experts.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't trust the typical historical narrative. I
Speaker 3: trust that guy because you know, he's telling me that
Speaker 3: the esoteric undercover history that nobody's really told me before
Speaker 3: because it's been censored from me. And I'm actually now
Speaker 3: a part of this special little in group audience, and
Speaker 3: I actually feel very important because I'm a part of this,
Speaker 3: and now it's on me to share this esoteric knowledge
Speaker 3: with other people so that I can feel special disseminating it.
Speaker 3: It's this, it's this whole psychological I think flywheel of
Speaker 3: audiences and influencers, and this isn't really just about about
Speaker 3: uh Cooper here, right, This is about more people that
Speaker 3: do this, and I think there's a there's a there's
Speaker 3: a motivating force behind it that's really kind of insular,
Speaker 3: and it's all about them saying, you know, if you
Speaker 3: come to me, I will tell you the truth. I
Speaker 3: will distill this hidden knowledge for you. I will make
Speaker 3: you feel special. I will tell you what's been hidden
Speaker 3: from you for decades. If you just listen to me.
Speaker 3: And I think that there's something psychologically triggering there for
Speaker 3: a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a cult leader.
Speaker 3: That's your that's your language, not mine. But I definitely
Speaker 3: think that. Look, I think I think that there's I
Speaker 3: think that there is an aspect to this, right, and
Speaker 3: when you when you really dive deep into it and
Speaker 3: you you ask people, you know, what is it about
Speaker 3: what is it about Horton or Cooper or these these
Speaker 3: different narratives that you that are that are really just
Speaker 3: in some cases out there that that interests you. And
Speaker 3: people say, well, you know, I just don't trust the experts,
Speaker 3: or it's been it's been hidden from me, it's been censored,
Speaker 3: and they come up with a way to kind of
Speaker 3: justify listening to these alternative versions of history. And it starts,
Speaker 3: maybe a little bit innocently, and then you end it,
Speaker 3: well Churchill, you ended a place where you say, well
Speaker 3: Churchill was the chief villain of World War two, and
Speaker 3: that has alongside, yeah, all that stuff, but on the
Speaker 3: wrong side, deconstructing the foundation midst of the modern West, right,
Speaker 3: and that has the potential to have real impact in
Speaker 3: the present day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and yeah, obviously I'm being a little facetious.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if you listen to God's Socialist,
Speaker 1: there's a point where Cooper does a very good job
Speaker 1: explaining the cult leader psychology.
Speaker 2: Let's just put it that way. I'm giving him shit.
Speaker 1: But but uh yeah, I do think that you're you're
Speaker 1: definitely speaking to something, and I think that really, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't talk too much about it, obvious because you're
Speaker 1: you only released a second episode, but with your second
Speaker 1: series Fields of Gold, Fields of Red, that that does
Speaker 1: seem to be really what you're getting at with Horton's
Speaker 1: work is that he's.
Speaker 2: Really getting at this idea that.
Speaker 1: Russia was, as the title suggests, provoked into committing an
Speaker 1: act of flagrant territorial imperialism and annexation and shocking violence
Speaker 1: on the European continent. More shocking than anything that's happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to overstate it, but probably
Speaker 1: since World War Two in terms of scale, because as
Speaker 1: bad as it was with the crackup of Yugoslavia in
Speaker 1: the nineties, I mean, the scale was nothing like this.
Speaker 1: So the point being is, I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is there's only two episodes of this series you're working on.
Speaker 1: But what are your takeaways from that project so far.
Speaker 1: Let's pivot towards Horton a little bit here, because you've
Speaker 1: mentioned him a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there is you know, I found
Speaker 3: in the first two chapters. I'm going chapter by chapter,
Speaker 3: and the way that Horton breaks up the book is
Speaker 3: by presidency. So he starts with Bush Senior and then
Speaker 3: he goes basically from and So what I found is,
Speaker 3: and I say this in the series, I think that
Speaker 3: starting in the eighties is problematic because you're basically missing
Speaker 3: hundreds of years of context that basically takes you to
Speaker 3: the collapse of the Soviet Union. And you know, I
Speaker 3: in his defense, there might be a very valid reason
Speaker 3: for doing that, Right, you can only fill so many
Speaker 3: pages of a book you have to publish at some point,
Speaker 3: and maybe you know, he wanted to focus on the
Speaker 3: role of US foreign policy. But when you actually dive
Speaker 3: into the history of the region, right, hundreds of years
Speaker 3: of trying to quash Ukrainian nationalism and it just popping
Speaker 3: back up, you're missing a lot of that, right, And
Speaker 3: there's this moment in the book and I speak to
Speaker 3: this where Horton actually does this deep dive. He really
Speaker 3: focuses on the Yugoslav Wars because that's used as basically
Speaker 3: a poster child to basically point, in his opinion to
Speaker 3: the malpractice of the West in provoking Russia. So a lot,
Speaker 3: there's a big deep dive on Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars,
Speaker 3: and he does this whole oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Oh. I was just gonna say, he's following the lead of.
Speaker 1: What I used to consider sort of the quote unquote
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street position on that. And I say that
Speaker 1: specifically because I remember when the Occupy website cited the
Speaker 1: Bosnian War as like another example of rapacious US intervention
Speaker 1: in imperialism, where supposedly the genocide of Bosnian Muslims by
Speaker 1: Bostian Serbs only happened because of NATO bombing. And the
Speaker 1: more you look into that, they it's obviously not true,
Speaker 1: first of all, but second of all, their logic is, well,
Speaker 1: they only started killing them after the bombing happened and
Speaker 1: forced them closer into closer proximity with the Muslims. And
Speaker 1: if all it takes is a cursory look at some
Speaker 1: of the shit that Melosovich and his underlings were saying
Speaker 1: about the Bossian Muslims, to say nothing of the regional
Speaker 1: tensions that had existed at that point for going on
Speaker 1: fifty years, you know, well more than that really, just
Speaker 1: since the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Like those
Speaker 1: ethnic tensions, they weren't ancient. That's another canard from that era,
Speaker 1: from the nineties. They weren't ancient hatreds, but they were old,
Speaker 1: they were multi generational, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: unfinished business that it started in the nineteen twenties. So
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that's like that was like the sort of
Speaker 1: trajectory he was taking was like, oh, well, none of
Speaker 1: that stuff matters. It was only because America involved itself
Speaker 1: or NATO involved itself. Am I remembering that correctly?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think that's that's directionally correct, right. But there's
Speaker 3: just there's all these at a fifty thousand foot view,
Speaker 3: they just is that if the US can be wrong,
Speaker 3: it's wrong, right, And if Russia, if Russia was aggrieved,
Speaker 3: Russia was aggrieved. That's that's kind of my takeaway having
Speaker 3: been two chapters through this. But there's just there's a
Speaker 3: number of claims that are incredibly problematic. Right, There's there's
Speaker 3: genocide denial or minimalism as it relates to as it
Speaker 3: relates to Srebenitza. There's uh, there's.
Speaker 2: Claim the lead of he's found the lead of Noam Chomsky.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, Noam Chomsky who famously, by the way, and
Speaker 3: his and is published on the record on this denying
Speaker 3: the genocide in Cambodia and the killing fields as well
Speaker 3: at the time while it was happening.
Speaker 1: And even though people don't really care about that stuff,
Speaker 1: that stuff as much, it's worth mentioning. Also pals with
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein, and it looks like so.
Speaker 3: There's there's a there's a there's just a lot of these.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of these minimalism, there's a lot of minimalism,
Speaker 3: a lot of denialism has related to this stuff. There's
Speaker 3: the claim that that the US support for the for
Speaker 3: the Bosnians or or he makes his sorry, he makes
Speaker 3: his claim basically saying that the actions of the US
Speaker 3: in Yugoslavia and then in Czechshniya uh and attacks against
Speaker 3: Saddam were basically the basis of bin Laden's grievances against
Speaker 3: the United States, and that the United States in a
Speaker 3: way then provoked nine to eleven, as opposed to it
Speaker 3: just being a flagrant act of unprovoked terrorism. And I
Speaker 3: go in part in a part two of Fields of Gold,
Speaker 3: Fields of Red, I dive into what bin Laden actually said,
Speaker 3: and his claim was that you know US forces in Iraq,
Speaker 3: he puts it, you know the land of the of
Speaker 3: the two Holy Mosques. He basically saw them as crusaders, right,
Speaker 3: and for that reason uses that as justification to leap
Speaker 3: frog to jihad, to leap frog to nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: when in reality, the Saudis invited the US there, right,
Speaker 3: I mean right, like the US army was there at
Speaker 3: the invitation of King Fod and Saddam actually briefly in
Speaker 3: January of ninety one, beginning of end of January, beginning
Speaker 3: of February invaded Saudi Arabia for a hot second. He
Speaker 3: actually took They took the city of Kafji, occupied it
Speaker 3: and then were pushed out by coalition forces. And so
Speaker 3: all of this context, similar to you know, my critique
Speaker 3: of Cooper, there's a lot of context there behind these
Speaker 3: stories that's missing. And again you have to ask the
Speaker 3: question why.
Speaker 2: Which we will get to in a second.
Speaker 1: But there is something that we've kind of we've referenced
Speaker 1: it a couple times. The issue of citations in Horton's
Speaker 1: case seems to be the opposite of Cooper's issues and
Speaker 1: with citation, because.
Speaker 2: Again, he loves to bring it up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember I've seen him, on two separate
Speaker 1: occasions bring up the fact that his book has over
Speaker 1: eight thousand citations. And you pointed out earlier that many
Speaker 1: of these citations are things that don't always stand up
Speaker 1: to scrutiny because in some cases they don't even seem
Speaker 1: to exist anymore because they're broken links or whatever. So
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, That's what I'm wondering is, how would
Speaker 1: you characterize the overuse of sources or citations in contrast
Speaker 1: to the misuser outright neglective sources and citations in works
Speaker 1: like this?
Speaker 2: And to what extent are all those methods of a.
Speaker 1: Piece in your opinion ext I personally, I see it
Speaker 1: as all kind of like different methodology towards the same end,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I would say that, you know, and again
Speaker 3: this is only my second series, but I would say
Speaker 3: that Cooper Cooper sometimes sources sometimes doesn't, which then puts
Speaker 3: you on that scavenger hunt chase that I was kind
Speaker 3: of referring to earlier. Horton does use a lot of sources,
Speaker 3: and to you know, to his credit, a lot of
Speaker 3: them are are fine. Right. There's there's references to you
Speaker 3: know NSA archive documents, you know, unclassified documentation, academic papers,
Speaker 3: or you know, thought pieces from historians or regional experts.
Speaker 3: There's there's a lot in there that is perfectly fine.
Speaker 3: There's also some stuff in there, like esoteric blogs from
Speaker 3: people that are kind of engaging in you know, apology
Speaker 3: of Melosovich and stuff like that. Websites that haven't been
Speaker 3: updated since the nineties. Those are few and far between,
Speaker 3: but they're in there. And then, as I said, you know,
Speaker 3: there are there are some articles that are just deadlinks
Speaker 3: that you can't really fact check because the source doesn't
Speaker 3: exist and you can't really see it on wayback Machine
Speaker 3: or Internet arts or anything like that. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't really take issue as much with his sourcing,
Speaker 3: although as again, as I said, some of them are
Speaker 3: a little bit out there. But I do think that
Speaker 3: the way that he interprets those sources is what's really
Speaker 3: an issue.
Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: So so it's more on him in this particular case
Speaker 1: than on the use of sources because sometimes when I
Speaker 1: because you know, obviously I'm biased in this direction because
Speaker 1: I've been stuck reading academic books for so long, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, they don't really go overboard with footnotes. With
Speaker 1: a large number of footnotes and sources, I mean, each
Speaker 1: chapter usually has anywhere from of like a you know,
Speaker 1: like an academic history book, each chapter has anywhere from
Speaker 1: around seventy to two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2: Sources, which is a lot, for sure.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, when you're seeing a non
Speaker 1: academic book be flush with hundreds thousands of sources, like
Speaker 1: more than you usually see in an academic book or
Speaker 1: a non academic book, it feels like some game of
Speaker 1: obfuscation is going on. That's just my suspicion. I have
Speaker 1: not even looked at Horton's book. I have way less
Speaker 1: of a dog in that fight, obviously. I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is when I see too many or too
Speaker 1: few sources, I tend to have the same reaction of
Speaker 1: something's not right here.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm maybe I'm just asking for some reassurance here,
Speaker 1: am I like, am I seeing something that isn't there?
Speaker 1: When I see that kind of thing?
Speaker 3: So look, there are hundreds of footnotes per chapter, and
Speaker 3: I say this in the series, right, that isn't necessarily
Speaker 3: a bad thing. If he wants to lean on over sourcing.
Speaker 3: It's definitely more than I'm used to, which I think
Speaker 3: you've pointed out, which is correct given the more academic
Speaker 3: history books that one would read. I don't necessarily I
Speaker 3: tried to go into this and I'm going into each
Speaker 3: chapter with an open mind as to the sourcing. But
Speaker 3: there was one instance that actually Horton Horton tweeted at
Speaker 3: me or quote tweeted me again we have some kind
Speaker 3: of interaction on on X with this. It was it
Speaker 3: was very funny because there's a reference at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the book to I think he's talking about something
Speaker 3: in relation to the Middle East. He within the first
Speaker 3: five seconds of the book, he talks he talks a
Speaker 3: little bit about US foreign policy in the Middle East in
Speaker 3: likud or something which is clearly relevant to you know,
Speaker 3: the history of the Russo Ukrainian War. And the footnote
Speaker 3: for the claim is he wrote a book on the
Speaker 3: Middle East. I think it's called Enough already, and he
Speaker 3: refers to it in the footnote, and then there's an
Speaker 3: there's a link in the footnote to Amazon for the book,
Speaker 3: which I thought was incredible. And I actually called this
Speaker 3: out in the episode and on Twitter, and Horton clapped
Speaker 3: back and said, it's not there, and he took a
Speaker 3: picture of a hard copy of the book where the
Speaker 3: link isn't there. I'm using a digital version which does
Speaker 3: have it. And I posted a screenshot of it which
Speaker 3: which does have it. And I didn't get a response,
Speaker 3: but I found that to be definitely a highlight.
Speaker 1: It's well, I mean, yeah, that's an interesting thing too,
Speaker 1: because the idea of I always kind of smile when
Speaker 1: I see a historian site themselves like their previous work.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with doing that, of course, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with advertising your own work either. But when
Speaker 1: you when you put a link in there to the
Speaker 1: Amazon page, that does feel kind of funny. That feels
Speaker 1: like something you would do more in like a like
Speaker 1: an opinion piece. You know, when you put hyperlinks in
Speaker 1: an opinion piece, that that always happens, you know, it
Speaker 1: just it does have kind of like a weird vibe
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: It was great. I was laughing a little bit when
Speaker 3: I when I stumbled across that. But that's a part
Speaker 3: of it, right. You got to you gotta look at
Speaker 3: the footnotes. You gotta see what are the sources that
Speaker 3: are being referred to here? And you know, are they
Speaker 3: do they really pass the smell test?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I actually think I have it in my head
Speaker 1: a little bit of why. I think it's off putting
Speaker 1: when someone over uses in my opinion, it's just my opinion,
Speaker 1: but when I feel like sources are being overused, it's
Speaker 1: something that I had very strongly drilled into my head
Speaker 1: by my first professor my first semester.
Speaker 2: She was very harsh. She said, you're outsourcing your argument.
Speaker 2: Don't do that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, okay, And that basically means
Speaker 1: make your argument and stand by it, use evidence of
Speaker 1: course to support it, but don't outsource it. And I
Speaker 1: think in a sense what I'm picking up on and
Speaker 1: maybe it's unfair. Again, I have not read provoked, but
Speaker 1: it reminds me of what Tucker Carlson has been doing lately,
Speaker 1: where he's essentially outsourcing his own arguments to weird radicals
Speaker 1: of all stripes. He can therefore say, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this, that's my terrible Tucker Carlson impression. But it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this, but these people seem to think this,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, well you are saying it though,
Speaker 1: because you're not pushing back, you're getting them to say something.
Speaker 2: That you won't yourself say or assert. Though.
Speaker 1: I think he's becoming a little looser with what he's
Speaker 1: willing to assert at this point. But the point being
Speaker 1: is that that's sort of what I feel when I
Speaker 1: see someone oversight. I feel like what they're trying to
Speaker 1: do is saying is say without saying I'm not saying this.
Speaker 1: All these experts are saying this, this appeal to authority,
Speaker 1: which I noted. I remember you you noted that it's
Speaker 1: like appealing to authority in order to make it clear that.
Speaker 2: You're not the one just saying this. These people are
Speaker 2: saying this thing that I'm just suggesting. Do you see
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at here?
Speaker 3: It's kind of a week I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think I think that that might certainly be I
Speaker 3: think I think that that certainly might be a part
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, it's also a question of, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna if you're going to have all of
Speaker 3: those citations, you know, does anybody actually have the time
Speaker 3: to read thousands and thousands of pages of material to
Speaker 3: back up the justification for those footnotes. So let me
Speaker 3: let me give you an example. In part two of
Speaker 3: Fields of Gold, Fields of Red, Horton refers to this
Speaker 3: OSCE report on on Kosovo. And I actually pulled up
Speaker 3: the report. It's nearly seven hundred and fifty pages. And
Speaker 3: in the context of that report, Horton mentions it briefly
Speaker 3: and he says, the OSSE report said that there wasn't
Speaker 3: a finding of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And so I
Speaker 3: went into the report and you know, command after control,
Speaker 3: a f depending on you have my macro windows, whatever
Speaker 3: ethnic cleansing, and lo and behold, it's certainly in the report,
Speaker 3: in the section on sexual violence, ethnic cleansing did occur, right,
Speaker 3: And so I say that in the episode, I say,
Speaker 3: you know, did Horton read this report?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: He's saying something that is just clearly incorrect if you
Speaker 3: actually take the time to review the report. That he's
Speaker 3: referring to. And that goes for any of these people,
Speaker 3: you know, Horton or otherwise that are referencing or over
Speaker 3: referencing as you would put it, or just using academic
Speaker 3: sources that are clearly fine, but maybe their reading of
Speaker 3: it is a little bit slanted because maybe they haven't
Speaker 3: really given it the time of day that they actually
Speaker 3: need to to really inform the points or the arguments
Speaker 3: that they're making in their work or their output.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's something I know we didn't
Speaker 1: really touch on too much, but that's something that Daryl
Speaker 1: was doing a lot and fear and loath than in
Speaker 1: the New Jerusalem, where he was like taking stuff from
Speaker 1: perfectly find great sources like tom segives one palaestin complete anymore.
Speaker 2: As his righteous victims.
Speaker 1: Those are the only two secondary sources I can remember
Speaker 1: that he actually openly cited.
Speaker 2: But again it's been a while.
Speaker 1: But he would like take quotes, but he would leave
Speaker 1: out certain parts of them or skip certain parts of
Speaker 1: them to get to another point in a way that
Speaker 1: changes the meaning of what the actual quote does. And
Speaker 1: in a sense, that's actually another thing that I'll say
Speaker 1: for Darryl.
Speaker 2: He's very good at that. That's a very hard thing
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been judicious with the quotes that you
Speaker 1: use when you're doing this kind of long form podcasting.
Speaker 1: I struggle with that all the time because sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a big block quote and it doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: say the whole thing. So I want to cut stuff,
Speaker 1: and I do. I cut stuff out sometimes, but I
Speaker 1: have to be very careful that what I'm cutting out
Speaker 1: is not cutting out crucial context, because sometimes somebody is
Speaker 1: talking about something very specific, or they make a very
Speaker 1: specific reference, but what they're talking about is very broad,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, And I think if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get to the gist of what the subject is saying,
Speaker 1: you don't want to cut out the specific example that
Speaker 1: they might give if that example is really what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. But you know, making that judgment is is
Speaker 1: very hard, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it that does make sense. But you know, there
Speaker 3: and there are many examples of in some of the
Speaker 3: work that I've done covering the series of you know,
Speaker 3: maybe context missing or quotes being truncated or not not
Speaker 3: necessarily referred to accurately. And I think that's certainly a
Speaker 3: part of it. You know, there's this one example, and
Speaker 3: we again you know, talked about chasing down sources, where
Speaker 3: Cooper refers to this Nazi racial scientist. He doesn't say
Speaker 3: where the quote's from or who it is, and it's
Speaker 3: it's Hans Gunther, who is as basically this Nazi genesis
Speaker 3: that you may be familiar with, and he's he basically
Speaker 3: refers to him. He and you know, Cooper does this
Speaker 3: throughout the series where he basically he always refers to
Speaker 3: Zionism adjacent to other, as he puts it, other radical
Speaker 3: ideologies like Bolshevism and Nazism to basically infer or imply
Speaker 3: guilt by association. He does this repeatedly throughout the series.
Speaker 3: But he basically says, well, you know, even Nazi racial scientists,
Speaker 3: and again I'm paraphrasing here, we're fond of or thought
Speaker 3: thought that Zionism had some kind of legitimacy because it
Speaker 3: basically separated the Jews from from Europe, from the from
Speaker 3: the Reich. And he refers to a quote from Hans
Speaker 3: Gunther where if you actually read the full quote, it's
Speaker 3: clear that Gunther isn't endorsing Zionism. If anything, it's very
Speaker 3: clear that the Nazis saw the ones that commented on
Speaker 3: this saw Zionism as a means to an end of
Speaker 3: step one, get the Jews out of Europe. Step two,
Speaker 3: have them congregate in a single place, and then step
Speaker 3: three when we get there, which we will after we
Speaker 3: defeat the British in North Africa, kill them once they're congregated,
Speaker 3: and it makes our job much easier in the end.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of evidence for that, right. There
Speaker 3: was the formation of the Early Stages einzot Scrup in
Speaker 3: Egypt that was going to basically go into the Middle
Speaker 3: East to kill all the Jews in Palestine in the
Speaker 3: Mandate if they made it.
Speaker 1: There, right, And that was also a very weird, underbaked
Speaker 1: scheme that Hajja Mein al Husseini had his fingerprints on,
Speaker 1: and it just turned into like a very small commando
Speaker 1: unit and they didn't do very much ultimately. But again,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone
Speaker 1: who hasn't listened to it yet, and I wouldn't blame
Speaker 1: you because it's six hours and eighteen minutes long. But
Speaker 1: I found some very compelling, circumstantial evidence that Haja Means
Speaker 1: ambitions for the Hanshar division was to get them to
Speaker 1: go to Palestine, to the Mandate after they were done
Speaker 1: in Bosnia, because there was a memo that gutt Lauburger
Speaker 1: submitted that or I think was submitted to Guttlaberger, the
Speaker 1: second in command of the SS of Offen SS, in
Speaker 1: which what Haja Mean was proposing was reported on, and
Speaker 1: what he was proposing was pacifying the Bossian region and
Speaker 1: then afterward other actions. What the hell else could he
Speaker 1: possibly have had in mind? Is how I put it
Speaker 1: in my episode for the Handshar a waffen SS division,
Speaker 1: very well trained, very well equipped at that point, early
Speaker 1: on twenty three thousand strong.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we can.
Speaker 1: I don't think we really need to do too much
Speaker 1: dot connecting, as you like to say.
Speaker 2: There's smoke there. There's a lot of smoke there.
Speaker 3: I think. Well, I mean, people don't really know this,
Speaker 3: but I mean the first and second battles of l
Speaker 3: Alamane were months apart in nineteen forty two, and in
Speaker 3: Palestine there was panic, right, I mean, the Germans were
Speaker 3: in Egypt right for a brief period of time, and
Speaker 3: that panicked people in Palestine. Because you know, they knew
Speaker 3: what was happening in Europe obviously. And I mean again,
Speaker 3: you know, the formation of this as you put it,
Speaker 3: this very early stages Einzat's commando group for Egypt, which
Speaker 3: obviously never really came to be in full in full
Speaker 3: bore because they didn't take over Palestine or Egypt for
Speaker 3: that matter, is I think indicative of what what the
Speaker 3: plans were.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And that's something that Matthias Kunsel I believe
Speaker 1: really helped demonstrate in his most recent book. Again, that's
Speaker 1: something that unless you're really deep into this subject or
Speaker 1: as autistic as you and I you're, people are probably
Speaker 1: not going to be reading that stuff. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's important to talk about it, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: and it's a complete context as well. And and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what you brought up to with Daryl citation
Speaker 1: of this guy, I'm sorry if I derailed you there.
Speaker 1: I just but you know, this is my wheelhouse when
Speaker 1: it comes to Haja means, so I tend to just
Speaker 1: like jump in whenever there's a reason to bring him up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like it rings also of how people love
Speaker 1: to bring up the Havita agreement to describe how, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the Nazis were actually Zionists. Well, they, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's a means to an end. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: if you look at anything said by people I think
Speaker 1: up to Adolf Hitler himself, maybe you can correct me
Speaker 1: on that they saw Zionism as an existential threat to
Speaker 1: be dealt with because a Jewish state was the last
Speaker 1: thing that they wanted. They just didn't want Jews in
Speaker 1: their country. Sure, but they didn't want Jews to have
Speaker 1: a country at all. They just didn't want them to
Speaker 1: be So, yeah, if you had anything else to say
Speaker 1: on that subject, on Daryl citation of that eugenicist and
Speaker 1: add to what I just said there, please do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the Havara Agreement is something I mean,
Speaker 3: you see this in the Twitter sphere, low level discourse
Speaker 3: back and forth. I mean, it's.
Speaker 2: Always yesterday, I saw it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always an it's always an order of operations question.
Speaker 3: It's right, It's like, okay, So thevar agreements existed, and
Speaker 3: you know, I think a couple tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: Jews escaped, and then what happened, right? What happened after that?
Speaker 3: What happened after the you know, the Nazis invaded Poland
Speaker 3: and you know, Britain and France declared war on them,
Speaker 3: and then millions of Jews were killed. That piece is
Speaker 3: never kind of a part of the equation, which I
Speaker 3: find very interesting to say.
Speaker 1: The least or all you got to even just point
Speaker 1: out too, is what did those tens of thousands? Will say,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the actual number was of Jews
Speaker 1: who escaped Germany and got to Palestine. What did they
Speaker 1: have to do in return? What did they come to
Speaker 1: Palestine with? Oh, they clothes on their backs. They gave
Speaker 1: up everything. That's that's not exactly a fair trade to get.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if if all it was about was
Speaker 1: getting rid of them and giving them a home, then
Speaker 1: I would suspect they'd let them have some money.
Speaker 2: But no, it's not about that.
Speaker 1: Like that, I don't trust the people who bring up
Speaker 1: the Havre agreement unless it's out of just general historical interests.
Speaker 1: I just I rarely have time for them. I actually
Speaker 1: get really annoyed.
Speaker 2: At that part.
Speaker 3: Well, the other one, the other one that gets brought
Speaker 3: up is the Jewish embargo or you know, uh, what
Speaker 3: is it? The U, the boycott, the boycott of Nazi
Speaker 3: Germany in the aftermath, I believe of Crystal Knocht at
Speaker 3: the you know, the beginning stages of the Holocaust, as
Speaker 3: if you know, oh, look, the Jews deserved it because
Speaker 3: they refused to buy German products, and it was this
Speaker 3: Hodgepodge boycott that really didn't have a huge impact. I
Speaker 3: mean this, Remember, this is an industrializing Germany, building the Autobahn,
Speaker 3: ramping up wartime production, and and you know, eventually suffering
Speaker 3: economically for it, because there really wasn't any foundation upon
Speaker 3: which for them to be to be doing this. But
Speaker 3: you know, as if, as if some Jews in Brooklyn
Speaker 3: not purchasing you know, German strudel is going to have
Speaker 3: a serious impact on on Hitler's Third Reich rearming and reindustrializing. Right,
Speaker 3: It's just there's just so many holes in the story,
Speaker 3: and it just it really is just Swiss cheese at
Speaker 3: the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Well, and this is why it turns into denial or
Speaker 1: outright skepticism, because then when you make that point, they'll
Speaker 1: you can you know, they'll say well, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you can say, well, also, yeah, because of course
Speaker 1: those Polish and Soviet shteadl Jews.
Speaker 2: Oh all that.
Speaker 1: You know, that boycott really impacted them. They were really
Speaker 1: instrumental in that boycott while they were trying to streak together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people people with no people, no functioning toilets, boycotting
Speaker 3: the German economy. Yeah, in in Bello, in Bella Rossa
Speaker 3: is really gonna have an impact there for sure.
Speaker 1: And because that is a very obvious and fair point
Speaker 1: that the vast majority of Jews that were killed by
Speaker 1: the Germans had little to i'd say zero power, negative
Speaker 1: power in anything when it came to world affairs. That's
Speaker 1: when denial starts to creep in, because that's all they
Speaker 1: have left when they make that argument, right exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so so I I And you know, honestly, we
Speaker 1: kind of that was just a really fun tangent there
Speaker 1: because I just I love nitpicking like that against deniers there.
Speaker 1: But I would be remiss if I didn't do my
Speaker 1: best to give your critics and and the ardent defenders
Speaker 1: of people like Darryl and Hort and just that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: I guess we can call him the paleoconservative or visionist
Speaker 1: camp that they inhabit they're due, so just to put
Speaker 1: words in their mouths. Is it not possible that you
Speaker 1: are simply giving their arguments, like Darryl's, Horton's, et cetera,
Speaker 1: the least charitable read And if not, why not?
Speaker 3: It's a good question. And I think that I think
Speaker 3: that there comes a point where volume is substantive in
Speaker 3: and of itself. So if you know, if you're going
Speaker 3: to look at a claim in isolation, right as an example,
Speaker 3: you know, we were referring to Horton's reference to this
Speaker 3: revenita not being a genocide or genocide, denialism or minimalism, whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to label it, and you look at
Speaker 3: that in isolation, and he would to present a series
Speaker 3: of points and say, well, you know, here's why the
Speaker 3: tribunals were wrong and all of that stuff. And you
Speaker 3: can say, well, you know, I think he's a little
Speaker 3: bit off of his rocker here, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: a claim in isolation. But when you look at these
Speaker 3: series in the case of Cooper or books in the
Speaker 3: case of Horton, and you see these claims that are
Speaker 3: just again frankly, just revisionist, contrarian claims that really fly
Speaker 3: in the face of the well established evidentiary record all
Speaker 3: of the serious historians agree on. Again, you have to
Speaker 3: ask the question, why is this a trend, Where is
Speaker 3: this coming from? What is the motivation? Is it really
Speaker 3: that they believe that the evidence points in the contrary
Speaker 3: or in a contrary direction, or is the starting is
Speaker 3: the starting place for the Hortons and the Coopers of
Speaker 3: the world. The West is actually the bad guy, you know, imperialism,
Speaker 3: Western imperialism is the original sin, and it's from there
Speaker 3: that the narrative is then told. Right, And I think
Speaker 3: that there's a case to be made if you actually
Speaker 3: really pay attention to these series or these books, and
Speaker 3: you read them, and you look at the sources, and
Speaker 3: you do the research like you and I do, I
Speaker 3: think that there's a case to be made that that
Speaker 3: might be the starting point here, and then the rest
Speaker 3: is just a logical conclusion that naturally follows.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, that seems like a decent enough explanation, I
Speaker 1: would say. And I guess then at that point, if
Speaker 1: someone isn't convinced by that, that that's fine because they they're.
Speaker 2: Interpreting it differently.
Speaker 1: I mean, you or I can disagree with that, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a fair assessment on your part,
Speaker 1: And now this might be a little less fair for
Speaker 1: us to do or for you to do. I'm outsourcing
Speaker 1: this for you with my questions here, but I actually
Speaker 1: wrote this down. I called this a neo Buchananite universe.
Speaker 1: It seems to orbit around Tucker Carlson. That's what I
Speaker 1: like to sort of characterize this as. But I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering here is what is the motivation? What
Speaker 1: are we talking about here? Like, to what extent do
Speaker 1: you think that these projects are informed by sincere ideological
Speaker 1: priors or do you think it's calculated and part of
Speaker 1: a far greater far right agit prop activist kind of project,
Speaker 1: or do you think it's just conspiracy theory, brain mental illness.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess those are all possibilities in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. But I guess really what those questions
Speaker 1: are leading to is a bigger question of what, like, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what end does this all serve? What does this unofficial
Speaker 1: crew of people hope to eventually achieve with all this,
Speaker 1: Because I don't think it's money, at least not in
Speaker 1: the case of Tucker Carlson. You know, air to the
Speaker 1: Swanson fortune and multimillionaire many times over from his independent
Speaker 1: work and work with Fox. I mean, so I don't
Speaker 1: think it's money. So I guess what I'm hoping for
Speaker 1: with all the possibility throughout there is could you maybe
Speaker 1: give a Steelman perspective on their efforts and then contrast
Speaker 1: that with maybe the least charitable interpretation, and then sort
Speaker 1: of way which one you see as the most likely.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the million dollar question. I think. I
Speaker 3: think that's the really big question behind a lot of
Speaker 3: the claims that are made. And this really isn't just
Speaker 3: a Horton or Cooper question. I think it's a broader
Speaker 3: question when it comes to, you know, pop history revisionist claims.
Speaker 3: And I speak to this in episode zero a little bit.
Speaker 3: And I think that the motivations vary. Frankly, I think that,
Speaker 3: as you said, some people are probably motivated by clicks
Speaker 3: and eyeballs and ears and making a name for themselves
Speaker 3: because at the end of the day, you know, to
Speaker 3: keep the dopamine hit going, you need to keep ratching
Speaker 3: up the craziness and the claims, and that typically means,
Speaker 3: in the context of our conversation, more a historicity, more
Speaker 3: outlandish claims to really keep that audience flywheel going. So
Speaker 3: one could certainly be financial, absolutely. I think another could
Speaker 3: be that maybe people, as I said, want to shift
Speaker 3: and win hearts and minds, and obviously there's a financial
Speaker 3: overlap to that if you're able to build and retain
Speaker 3: an audience. But I think that if you're really looking
Speaker 3: at the present day and you're looking at these geopolitical
Speaker 3: flash points, the Ukrainees, the Israels, the Taiwan's of the world,
Speaker 3: I guess as of today Venezuela as well, we're recording
Speaker 3: this on January third, So I think that I think
Speaker 3: that if you can shift people's opinions on the past
Speaker 3: and you know, in the case of Ukraine, portray Russia
Speaker 3: as aggrieved in the case of you know, Israel Palestine,
Speaker 3: make that conflict seem very one sided in terms of
Speaker 3: who the aggrieved party is. In the case of Taiwan,
Speaker 3: you know, talk about one China, one China policy, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 3: you can basically justify actions that are taken in the
Speaker 3: present or in the future as it relates to those
Speaker 3: flash points, and then you can impact policy by convincing
Speaker 3: people to vote for individuals who believe the same things
Speaker 3: that you do as it relates to foreign policy or
Speaker 3: geopolitical flashpoints, if you can kind of shift and move
Speaker 3: the needle on what the history is. And so I
Speaker 3: think that's part of it too. And the third part
Speaker 3: that I speak to is there is absolutely a bad
Speaker 3: actor part to this, right, There are bad actors in
Speaker 3: the world today, nation states or organizations that are adjacent
Speaker 3: to nation states, that have financial resources to support influencers
Speaker 3: or historians. And you know, I don't point fingers at
Speaker 3: who this is or who might be doing that, because
Speaker 3: I certainly I don't have any evidence to say that
Speaker 3: that's happening. But I mean last or not last year. Now,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, there was that whole issue with
Speaker 3: Tenant media where the Russians were kind of caught, you know,
Speaker 3: funneling to this influencer network. And so that was one
Speaker 3: instance in which that was caught, right, But think about
Speaker 3: all the instances in which you know that hasn't been caught, right,
Speaker 3: and it certainly is happening elsewhere, and you know, these
Speaker 3: nation state actors or adjacent actors certainly have the means
Speaker 3: to influence thought on a variety of these subjects because
Speaker 3: it's in their geopolitical interest to do so. And I
Speaker 3: think that's certainly a part of it. And there's kind
Speaker 3: of an overlap here between the pop historian influencer worlds
Speaker 3: and those those state actors as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when stuff like that happens, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: as we saw with the Tenet media case. If I
Speaker 1: remember right, it wasn't just this. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: about as direct as it could get, but it's still
Speaker 1: relatively indirect. And most of these influencers didn't even think
Speaker 1: about where the money was coming from.
Speaker 2: They just took it.
Speaker 1: And you know, on that from a human perspective, I
Speaker 1: don't blame them. I mean, if you're being offered, you know,
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars a week, you're not going to
Speaker 1: say no unless you are staking credibility on things, and
Speaker 1: you have to actually really start thinking about that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that that has entered my mind as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, I and.
Speaker 1: Honestly, all those like possibilities I put out there, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, outsourcing my argument, you know, they could
Speaker 1: they all can be true at once.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I for example, when I when I
Speaker 1: said mental illness, obviously, I think everybody probably thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. At least you probably did. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Candice Owens mostly, but that's pretty obvious. But like, she's
Speaker 1: also very much an opportunistic person. She's very much in
Speaker 1: it for the money, in it for the influence. And
Speaker 1: I think that there's just like there is a psychological
Speaker 1: aspect to a cognitive bias aspect. I mean, I this
Speaker 1: doesn't explain the motive, but I've been using this diagnosis
Speaker 1: to describe people like, you know, like those in this
Speaker 1: Neol Buchanan, I Tucker Carlson Orbit for a while. And
Speaker 1: this thing I've been calling a masochistic chauvinism, where at
Speaker 1: least in this case, an American can feel and develop
Speaker 1: a deep, meaningful sense of moral pride about themselves and
Speaker 1: you know, our place in the world by centering the
Speaker 1: United States the same way a typical chauvinus does, but
Speaker 1: by framing us as the worst in the world rather
Speaker 1: than the best. And that recognition basically implies a high minded,
Speaker 1: self critical honesty and sophistication, and therefore heightened ability to
Speaker 1: recognize evil compared to those who look abroad for such forces,
Speaker 1: you know, those those neo cons they might say, they
Speaker 1: are wont to say these days. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that there is like it's fulfilling a need. I think
Speaker 1: at a certain level too, that's like the most sincere part.
Speaker 2: Of it, I would wager. I don't know what you
Speaker 2: think about that.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think, you know, in Canice's case,
Speaker 3: and there's I mean, you see this all over the
Speaker 3: Twitter sphere I get, or the ex sphere I always
Speaker 3: I don't I don't even know what to call it
Speaker 3: these days, honestly, yea, yeah, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 3: just Israel Israel brain right, Like that's just like the
Speaker 3: the Israelis are the Charlie Kirk got shot. You know,
Speaker 3: the Israelis are behind it, right, like Israel's basically you know,
Speaker 3: you you wake up with a hangover, it's it's Israel's fault,
Speaker 3: right Like, that's kind of like a So I think
Speaker 3: it's I think that that's kind of taken to a
Speaker 3: certain extent, that's just totally insane. But I but I
Speaker 3: also think that they're you know, and again I'm not
Speaker 3: saying this is Candice, but I certainly think there are
Speaker 3: some people that are probably working with other folks who
Speaker 3: have a geopolitical incentive to trash talk the Israelis at
Speaker 3: every given turn, right. And you know, again, I don't
Speaker 3: know who those people are. You don't know who those
Speaker 3: people are, but I think just given what we saw
Speaker 3: with the Tenet media issue, there's there's probably there's probably
Speaker 3: more of that happening. And you know, you have certain
Speaker 3: individuals who, you know, you like Tucker as an example,
Speaker 3: who say, you know, I don't want to talk about
Speaker 3: Israel on my podcast, and then every episode it's it's
Speaker 3: basically an Israel episode, right, And so I think it's
Speaker 3: just it's just there's that, there's that there's that critique
Speaker 3: of Israel that is perfectly legitimate, as one would do
Speaker 3: of any nation state if you disagree with policy, or
Speaker 3: disagree with conduct in war, whatever. But then you have
Speaker 3: like this obsessive level aspect to it that some of
Speaker 3: these influencers or podcasters or whatever engage in. And it's
Speaker 3: it's just every single day, day in, day out, and
Speaker 3: you have to ask yourself, you know, like where is
Speaker 3: that coming from?
Speaker 1: And the thing is it's it's also nothing new. I mean,
Speaker 1: we saw you know, I my my concept that I
Speaker 1: just listed of the masochistic chauvinism. I I'm deriving that
Speaker 1: from a Swedish sociologist named Orin Adamson who talked about
Speaker 1: something about six or seven years ago that he called
Speaker 1: masochistic nationalism, where he was talking about it from the
Speaker 1: European perspective in the context of the migrant crisis, where
Speaker 1: I think like the thing that probably set him off
Speaker 1: was when I somebody in the Swedish government said something
Speaker 1: I think it was almost verbatim. It was to the
Speaker 1: effect of there's no such thing as Swedish culture, as
Speaker 1: if that was a point of pride, and and so
Speaker 1: he like really you know, went off on that saying
Speaker 1: like there's this psychological need being met by people who
Speaker 1: say such absurd things. But his point, and he cited
Speaker 1: or well or Well describe this notion and this phenomenon
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. Back during the lead up and
Speaker 1: into the Second World War, when he talked about negative
Speaker 1: and transferred nationalism, he was very keenly aware of how
Speaker 1: there were people who got excited when Germany, you know,
Speaker 1: like struck against Britain's allies because they.
Speaker 2: Didn't like what Britain was doing now.
Speaker 1: In Orwell's case, perhaps some of these people were Soviet sympathizers,
Speaker 1: because most communists and socialists were at that time. I
Speaker 1: don't think everyone was fully aware of what was going
Speaker 1: on yet. But the point is is that I think
Speaker 1: that there is this There is this trend at least
Speaker 1: within Western countries, at least i'll confine it to where
Speaker 1: I know it's within British and American history. There does
Speaker 1: seem to be this idea that we can do no
Speaker 1: right instead of we could do no wrong. And I
Speaker 1: think that that motivates a lot of people because it
Speaker 1: lets them feel good about themselves and allows them to
Speaker 1: make a name for themselves, because it makes them stand
Speaker 1: out and be interesting and unique in comparison to the
Speaker 1: typical you know, nationalists and chauvinists in the in the crowd,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: But it's gone to the point there where it's not
Speaker 3: even unique, right, There's just there's this whole ecosystem that's
Speaker 3: kind of orbiting around this stuff. This you know, anti
Speaker 3: anti Western historical revisionism, where the US and the West
Speaker 3: more generally with the capital W is is again the
Speaker 3: original sin for all of these geopolitical flash points, and
Speaker 3: it's just well, it's just it's just so it's so boring, now, right,
Speaker 3: you have this, you have this, It's it's day and
Speaker 3: day out, like I said, from Tucker, from Candace, from
Speaker 3: Dave Smith, from Horton, from Cooper, it's just from Meerscheimer
Speaker 3: from Sachs, right like, it's it's just yeah, pinschafter pin
Speaker 3: schafter punch, and you know, Goebbels always said if you're
Speaker 3: Peter Lie, often enough people start to believe it. And
Speaker 3: and there's there's probably now aspect of that to this,
Speaker 3: but it's not even this unique angle anymore. It's just this,
Speaker 3: it's just basically this often repeated trope at this point
Speaker 3: that everybody's jumped on the bandwagon for. And again, I
Speaker 3: think that there's a lot of people that have a
Speaker 3: vested interest in that being the telling of the history.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, I mean, and it's funny you say that
Speaker 1: it's like old at this point. I mean, what like
Speaker 1: tell to some I mean, you know, coming from someone
Speaker 1: myself who is very exposed to like you know, leftist
Speaker 1: spaces and has a lot of leftist friends, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really old. I mean I've been hearing these arguments
Speaker 1: for decades at this point. I mean, we brought Chomsky earlier,
Speaker 1: he's kind of him and Howard Zinn and all these
Speaker 1: types that were popular in the seventies making a name
Speaker 1: for themselves then by basically saying West bad like yes,
Speaker 1: that's where all this stuff comes from. It's it's tiresome.
Speaker 1: But I do like to point out though, and I
Speaker 1: and I know you saw because we were talking about
Speaker 1: this at one point, I have been very taken with
Speaker 1: this seemingly what I'm the green Brown alliance that seems
Speaker 1: to be forming, however unofficially, because it really matches the
Speaker 1: sort of tenor and in a way motivation of how
Speaker 1: the Nazis, especially the more esoteric minded ones like Heinrich Himler,
Speaker 1: were so taken with Muslims and with Islam. They were
Speaker 1: orientalists in that regard, and it seems to be this
Speaker 1: kind of thing that comes up with much more radical reactionaries.
Speaker 1: They are searching for something they have nothing left to
Speaker 1: grab onto in their own culture, so they reach abroad
Speaker 1: and look for things that they really find fascinating and
Speaker 1: compelling that also might share their values because they can't
Speaker 1: find any support at home. At least for something so
Speaker 1: regressive as say theocracy, or cutting off people's hands or
Speaker 1: you know, veiling women and keeping them at home, things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, it's a Lawrence of Arabia
Speaker 3: level orientalism when it comes to this sometimes, right, it's
Speaker 3: falling in love with that which you surrounded yourself, which
Speaker 3: which is foreign. Because it goes back to what I
Speaker 3: was saying earlier. You know this, when it comes to
Speaker 3: the influencers and the pop historians, the esoteric being more
Speaker 3: alluring than the mundane. Right, It's about find in the
Speaker 3: case of Lawrence, finding yourself in the desert, right and
Speaker 3: falling in love with what you see there. And I
Speaker 3: think that's I think you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 3: I think that's a very big part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll see where it goes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I obviously I take a quite a bit
Speaker 1: of delight and you know, calling out this green brown
Speaker 1: alliance as I call it, just because it falls so
Speaker 1: directly in my wheelhouse. And I'm being very opportunistic in
Speaker 1: myself in this particular case. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I do think it's very it's an interesting psychological phenomenon
Speaker 1: to a certain degree.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I guess I kind.
Speaker 1: Of wanted to, like, before we I wanted to wrap
Speaker 1: this all up where we talk about sort of the
Speaker 1: broad strokes of what you're doing and sort of what
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: and we've touched on a little bit with the idea
Speaker 1: of peer review and fact checking and so forth. I
Speaker 1: guess like this is kind of a leading question because
Speaker 1: I think I know how you feel about it, but
Speaker 1: I think people should hear it.
Speaker 2: How much of a problem is a lack.
Speaker 1: Of peer review in this content creation space when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like history, philosophy, the humanities as you
Speaker 1: called it earlier. To what extent does it depend on
Speaker 1: the field itself, and to what extent does it depend
Speaker 1: on the claims being made as another distinction.
Speaker 2: I was curious if you had any thoughts on.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I think that I think that
Speaker 3: part of the problem stems from the medium. Right, So
Speaker 3: when somebody publishes a paper, as an example, right, it's
Speaker 3: published in a journal and then peers take a look
Speaker 3: at it, and there are rebuttals or fact checks or corrections,
Speaker 3: And I think that what you see now is I
Speaker 3: mean the average person doesn't read a historical journal, right,
Speaker 3: But when you see how this information is disseminated through
Speaker 3: podcasting apps or through the internet or from whatever, a
Speaker 3: lot of people tune in and listen to that stuff.
Speaker 3: And there isn't a There isn't an academic corollary basically
Speaker 3: to the fact check in these different mediums, right, Horton,
Speaker 3: You could say it's a little bit different because he
Speaker 3: writes a book, but you know, in the case of
Speaker 3: Cooper is an example via podcast, there just isn't anything
Speaker 3: analogous to that. It just doesn't exist, right, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think can't.
Speaker 1: Get someone's live debate, then at that point all you
Speaker 1: can do is really just do another podcast.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly right, And so I think that's that's the
Speaker 3: part of it. So I think that's a big part
Speaker 3: of it. And that's why I'm so I'm so adamant
Speaker 3: about the fact that you have to meet them where
Speaker 3: they're at in a medium that lends itself to digestibility
Speaker 3: from the audience's standpoint. So that's again, you know, long
Speaker 3: form podcast and taking it, breaking it down and providing quotes.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I say and I've said
Speaker 3: this on on Twitter, you know, and in some of
Speaker 3: my episodes. I don't want to tell anybody how to
Speaker 3: think about a conflict. I want them to take what
Speaker 3: I have to say, Take what Horton or Cooper or
Speaker 3: any other you know, influence or historian, et cetera, whatever
Speaker 3: label you want to say, Take what I say, take
Speaker 3: what they say, and make up your own mind. I'm
Speaker 3: just giving you information that I think is missing and
Speaker 3: context that should be there that isn't to better inform
Speaker 3: you to make up a decision on how you should
Speaker 3: feel about a conflict. And I think that's what it
Speaker 3: really comes down to. It's just giving people additional context
Speaker 3: and information that should be presented that unfortunately oftentimes isn't.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: So in the sense then it's it doesn't really depend
Speaker 1: on the field necessarily. I mean, I guess if you're well, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it does in the sense that if somebody is
Speaker 1: like making medical claims like that, it might be a
Speaker 1: little more urgent to refute those things.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's I think it goes back to
Speaker 3: the binary aspect of the of the of the nature
Speaker 3: of what's being done right Like so in the case
Speaker 3: of meta in the surgery is successful, and the patient
Speaker 3: survives or isn't and it fails and maybe they die.
Speaker 3: Right in the case of a civil engineer, the bridge
Speaker 3: is built and it either stands or collapses, and again
Speaker 3: people probably die. But when it comes to this stuff,
Speaker 3: it's much more interpretive, narrative, rich.
Speaker 2: No immediate stakes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, And I think the thing that I tend to
Speaker 2: it's funny.
Speaker 1: I tend to really butt heads, at least in my
Speaker 1: own head, I should say, because I have never spoken
Speaker 1: to him. But with people like Douglas Murray and people
Speaker 1: who I generally agree with in a lot of things,
Speaker 1: especially in this context, I do take issue when I
Speaker 1: hear them say this stuff is dangerous. And that's more
Speaker 1: because of my own political bias when it comes to
Speaker 1: things like free speech. I mean, I give Murray the
Speaker 1: benefit of being British, so he doesn't appreciate free speech
Speaker 1: in the same way I think as Ey as I
Speaker 1: do as a rock ribbed American.
Speaker 2: But I really do. I have such a strong.
Speaker 1: Aversion into the idea that any kind of speech is
Speaker 1: dangerous unless it's directly telling people to go hurt someone.
Speaker 1: I mean, I follow the Brandon burg standard in that sense,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's to a point of it being absurdly literal,
Speaker 1: but I just I feel like if we're not going
Speaker 1: to be doing that, then we should be just throwing
Speaker 1: in the towel and saying, fine, we don't actually have
Speaker 1: you know, we don't live up to the values that
Speaker 1: are implied, if not outright stated, by the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: Again that's my political bias, but I think what that
Speaker 1: means for me and for people who feel the same
Speaker 1: way as I do, is that we can't just rest
Speaker 1: on our laurels when someone makes a claim that we know,
Speaker 1: or at the very least believe to be untrue. Like
Speaker 1: this kind of gets us into something that I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. Another sort of challenge that I never
Speaker 1: really considered was what you're doing with your work seems
Speaker 1: to be refuting something that I always really loved that
Speaker 1: Christopher Hitchins said, where he said that what can be
Speaker 1: asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and that's
Speaker 1: always a this is such a witty bond maw, which
Speaker 1: is like what he's known for even to this day.
Speaker 1: But I also am starting to think that that's very
Speaker 1: rooted in dated twentieth century thinking. And granted he was
Speaker 1: also talking about religion something very specific, but he made
Speaker 1: it sound general.
Speaker 2: So there's that. But but I think.
Speaker 1: Now, especially you know, more than a quarter century in
Speaker 1: to this new century, information has become so democratized and
Speaker 1: stands to become even more individualized as technology improves. I
Speaker 1: just don't think that that viewpoint really works anymore, especially
Speaker 1: if you value.
Speaker 2: Free expression and free speech.
Speaker 1: So it also seems to be a problem for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who find conspiratorial thinking so corrosive as
Speaker 1: I think you and I do. And I think what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about is that there's actual experts being challenged
Speaker 1: or even dismissed, that these these people are not addressing
Speaker 1: the challenges to their expertise because they like they don't
Speaker 1: have to. We kind of talked about this a little
Speaker 1: bit before with we reference Coleman Hughes's conversation with Dave Smith,
Speaker 1: And obviously we're talking about what you've been doing for
Speaker 1: a while now, which I think is what you're doing,
Speaker 1: is you're challenging what has happened, and what's happened, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, is that we are seeing the creation of
Speaker 1: parallel worlds of reality, maybe not even parallel, just multiple
Speaker 1: worlds of reality. The multiverse theory, I guess, but apply
Speaker 1: to information. And I think when we start to speak
Speaker 1: to these contrary viewpoints on the contrarian's terms, that's the
Speaker 1: only thing we can do to bring these two realities
Speaker 1: or these multiple realities back together into one. It's incumbent
Speaker 1: upon the people who are the quote unquote defenders of
Speaker 1: the establishment, or just people who don't agree with the
Speaker 1: anti establishment narratives in particular that are coming out. So
Speaker 1: I guess I'm wondering what you think of that as
Speaker 1: like a sort of methodology for.
Speaker 2: Bringing things together, and.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just ask you, is that what you
Speaker 1: think you're doing, and to what extent do you think
Speaker 1: that that's a successful method or do you think there's
Speaker 1: another way that we can do that, And what challenges
Speaker 1: I think do we face as we try to force
Speaker 1: more reality into the conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's again a very good question. I think that
Speaker 3: you know it's this probably sounds a little bit trite,
Speaker 3: but I think it's it's always easier to destroy than
Speaker 3: to create. And I think when it comes to established
Speaker 3: historical narratives based and evidence as you said, anybody can
Speaker 3: flippantly say anything, right, Churchill was the chief villain of
Speaker 3: World War Two as an example, Right, And then it's
Speaker 3: it's then incumbent on the fact checker to say, well,
Speaker 3: actually you're wrong, and here's all the reasons why, here's
Speaker 3: the sources, here's the evidence that takes. That's a much
Speaker 3: more extensive exercise than just tweeting out Churchill was the
Speaker 3: chief villain of World War Two or saying it or
Speaker 3: you know whatever. And so I think that it's inherently
Speaker 3: the fact checkers or the peer reviewers are always going
Speaker 3: to be behind the eight ball because they are reactive
Speaker 3: to the comments that are being made that are a
Speaker 3: revisionist in nature. So I think that's that's an important
Speaker 3: thing to understand that you're operating from from behind the
Speaker 3: eight ball. Basically from the get go. My objective and
Speaker 3: again this is just me. This is my personal take
Speaker 3: on what I think I'm doing and how I'm approaching it.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to give people ammunition. Right. The best, the
Speaker 3: happiest that I am is when I'm you know, doing
Speaker 3: my thing and during the day I see somebody on
Speaker 3: X that's kind of getting into a back and forth
Speaker 3: with somebody about one of the subjects that I've already covered,
Speaker 3: and they'll say, well, actually, that claim isn't correct. You know,
Speaker 3: you should check out this episode of Crackpot History because
Speaker 3: he actually kind of deconstructs that claim. And so my fundamentally,
Speaker 3: it's it's all about giving people the ammunition both to
Speaker 3: better understand the context that I said, as I said before,
Speaker 3: is missing from a lot of the claims that are
Speaker 3: made in the content that I cover, but also being
Speaker 3: able to kind of use that as as something that
Speaker 3: they can spread themselves as a sword and a shield
Speaker 3: when it comes to confronting these claims directly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that too, because I was going to
Speaker 1: point out that there are there's a lot of objections
Speaker 1: that I've heard people who you know, and to their credit,
Speaker 1: do not get involved in this stuff, are not as
Speaker 1: terminally online as you or I saying like, well, what's
Speaker 1: the point.
Speaker 2: Of debating these people?
Speaker 1: They're crazy or they'll you'll never convince them, or you'll
Speaker 1: never convince their followers.
Speaker 2: And I've gotten to the point where.
Speaker 1: I've I've kind of tried to make a concise rebuttal
Speaker 1: of that where I say it's not about convincing their followers.
Speaker 1: It's not about convincing them because you're never going to
Speaker 1: convince somebody that their belief is wrong. That's anybody who
Speaker 1: thought they were a pugnacious Christopher Hitchins want to be
Speaker 1: anti theist in their early twenties, realized that very quickly
Speaker 1: at Thanksgiving, you know what I mean, like with their
Speaker 1: religious family. But the point being is that what you're
Speaker 1: doing when you're doing when you when you're debunking this
Speaker 1: stuff is giving ammunition to those who are interacting with
Speaker 1: someone in that audience or just putting it out there
Speaker 1: so it's available as a counter narrative for someone to
Speaker 1: pick up and use later. It's it's just about like
Speaker 1: it's about not letting something go unchallenged. And then I
Speaker 1: hear people say, well, there's not there's more people in
Speaker 1: the believing camp than the non believing camp. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but that that's always been the case. Like it doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, Like having the stuff there is what
Speaker 1: matters in and of itself. And again it lives up
Speaker 1: to you know, like what I was saying before about
Speaker 1: the spirit of free expression. I I do think that
Speaker 1: there's something to be said for debating Holocaust deniers if
Speaker 1: you have the ability to do so, if you know enough.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't agree.
Speaker 1: With you know, Deborah Lipstadt or any of these people
Speaker 1: who say that this shouldn't be adjudicated.
Speaker 2: It should be adjudicated.
Speaker 1: I agree that it probably should not have been adjudicated
Speaker 1: in a courtroom in terms of the principle when she
Speaker 1: went to trial with David Irving. But I'm not unhappy
Speaker 1: that it did, because it roundly and appropriately discredited him
Speaker 1: and revealed him to be the fraud that he was,
Speaker 1: and that in turn revealed him to be, you know
Speaker 1: that he was as a someone motivated by a deep
Speaker 1: seated hatred of Jews, so and love of the Nazis. So,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is I think just having
Speaker 1: it out there is the end and of itself. It's
Speaker 1: not about convincing already convinced followers, or disabusing people, or
Speaker 1: most condescendingly, deprogramming them.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean From a principled standpoint, I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what I believe, right, I think that. Look, I
Speaker 3: I just hit a thousand subs on YouTube, right, Darryl
Speaker 3: Cooper Scott Horton. I mean, these guys have hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2: Of following Mine might be millions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably right, substack all that stuff, right, millions and
Speaker 3: millions of followers. But from a principled position, I agree
Speaker 3: with you, right, I'm doing this. I don't make money
Speaker 3: doing this. I do this because I think it needs
Speaker 3: to be done by somebody. You know, I have the
Speaker 3: I think, the knowledge, the understanding, the expertise to do it,
Speaker 3: and I think it just needs to exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and honestly I might contradict myself a little bit too,
Speaker 1: but I mean it makes me think of, oh, what
Speaker 1: is that Hannah or Rent quote where she said that
Speaker 1: the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced
Speaker 1: Nazi or dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction
Speaker 1: between fact and fiction no longer exists. I think when
Speaker 1: you take that at face value, you can then see
Speaker 1: that there might be a little higher stakes involved in
Speaker 1: making sure that there is these punctures in the in
Speaker 1: widespread contrarian information that might not hold up to scrutiny,
Speaker 1: because if people don't know what's true, they're just going
Speaker 1: to give up. That's the argument, at least that a
Speaker 1: rent would make and And on the one hand, I
Speaker 1: think that there's I've read enough of funny enough of
Speaker 1: Czechoslovak history, especially during the rule of the Communists after
Speaker 1: the prog Spring, that the idea that they didn't know
Speaker 1: what was true in false is not true. There is
Speaker 1: actually a lot of descent inside there. Not just from
Speaker 1: you know, Charter seventy seven and all those people, but
Speaker 1: but just people were regular people, were fully aware that
Speaker 1: they're being lied to a lot of the time. So
Speaker 1: I think that we shouldn't overrate the individual's capacity to
Speaker 1: smell out bullshit. But at the same time, giving them
Speaker 1: tools to help them smell out that bullshit is a
Speaker 1: net positive for everybody, and it minimizes the amount of
Speaker 1: work they have to do that they might not otherwise do.
Speaker 3: Yes, So you know, I'm not I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 3: not going to reveal any names here, but I okay,
Speaker 3: I had a couple. I had a couple fairly well
Speaker 3: known influencers that I respect their work, that have fairly
Speaker 3: large followings, that you would probably know by name, that
Speaker 3: reached out to me privately and just said, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: really really respect what you're doing, thank you for saving
Speaker 3: me the hour of needven needing to listen to to
Speaker 3: all that stuff. You really summarized it and kind of
Speaker 3: condensed it and made it more digestible for me, and
Speaker 3: I really appreciated it. And so that's kind of what
Speaker 3: the what the end objective for me is if I
Speaker 3: can take something that is rough around the edges, smooth
Speaker 3: it out, provide additional commentary, historical context and input, and
Speaker 3: provide more color so that the fuller picture is told.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm putting it out into the universe. How
Speaker 3: people use it or react to that or even believe it,
Speaker 3: you know, that's kind of that's kind of up to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I yeah, And that does really feel good to
Speaker 1: like be reminded by people, especially people of some prominence,
Speaker 1: that that what you're doing is helpful in that sense too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've gotten well, I've gotten plenty of a
Speaker 1: feed back on my own work from various perspectives and
Speaker 1: including more critical ones.
Speaker 2: Because of the praise I've given Daryl Cooper in the.
Speaker 1: Past, I started to get the dreaded how could you
Speaker 1: possibly be friends with or recommend this quote unquote neo Nazi,
Speaker 1: which I don't think he is one for the record,
Speaker 1: I just yeah, what I think of him does not
Speaker 1: really matter. The point is is, you know, I've gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of feedback from that and from all of that,
Speaker 1: and I do think that that can be very affirming
Speaker 1: and enlightening a lot of ways too, because it can
Speaker 1: let you believe, let you realize, like like what your
Speaker 1: impact actually is going to be, at least on a
Speaker 1: small scale. And that small scale is usually enough, whether
Speaker 1: it's positive or negative, to make you either keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing or maybe change what you're doing a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Like in my case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean, our our footprints are, as I said,
Speaker 3: much smaller compared to some of the folks that we're
Speaker 3: referring to here. So I'm my pro today is if
Speaker 3: I can better inform one person, if I can you know,
Speaker 3: better educate or provide additional context or color for one person,
Speaker 3: then I think that's a job well done, right. I
Speaker 3: just I'm trying to just be appreciative of the fact
Speaker 3: that people listen and people like what I'm putting out
Speaker 3: into the universe. And you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: creators out there that don't even have that right. They
Speaker 3: don't have a thousand followers. They don't have, you know,
Speaker 3: as many listens as I have on my podcast apps,
Speaker 3: and everything is contextual. And you know, as I said
Speaker 3: on Twitter when I thanked everybody for the thousand subs,
Speaker 3: I said, brick by brick, And that's really how I
Speaker 3: approach this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and yeah, somebody who's been doing
Speaker 1: this now for going on seven years, I can tell
Speaker 1: you that the only way to look at content creation
Speaker 1: in general is brick by brick. I think that there
Speaker 1: are people who think when someone blows up overnight, that
Speaker 1: that's going to be good, you know, for their product
Speaker 1: or for them. I you know, I have a bridge
Speaker 1: to sell them, you know what I mean. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's good to like to suddenly blow up overnight.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying anything about anyone in particular, no
Speaker 1: one that we've been talking about for a fair bit
Speaker 1: of this episode. But I'm just saying that that kind
Speaker 1: of thing can warp what you're doing, I guess, is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It can warp the purpose, It.
Speaker 1: Can mess with the incentives, and I think that's the
Speaker 1: big thing, And it can leave you open and vulnerable
Speaker 1: to people who want to exploit your talents for certain ends.
Speaker 1: And that's all I'll say about that. But because again
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's all speculation, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to be called it to famer. So anyway, I think
Speaker 1: the sort of big question I had for you that
Speaker 1: actually was the one I was the very first one
Speaker 1: I thought of. But I was like, there needs to
Speaker 1: be a lot more scaffolding before I ask him this.
Speaker 1: Where do we go from here when it comes to
Speaker 1: making the information space better? And I mean this in
Speaker 1: a more logistical sense because I like what we're saying.
Speaker 1: We're saying a lot of good stuff about the principle
Speaker 1: of peer review of fact checking. I would add that
Speaker 1: even though this is one weakness that actually I mentioned
Speaker 1: my partner Molly, who I've actually had on my show
Speaker 1: multiple times. We do a sub series of my show
Speaker 1: about weird little stories in history. But she and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this and I was saying, well, I
Speaker 1: would love it if crackpod History took my show on,
Speaker 1: you know, looked at what I'm doing, even though he
Speaker 1: and I align on a lot of stuff, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he's doing good work. You know,
Speaker 1: real peer review is on people you like as well
Speaker 1: as you don't like. But then she made a really
Speaker 1: good point, and this is to me a fair point,
Speaker 1: and this might speak to the problem with the medium.
Speaker 1: As you were saying before, that's not content.
Speaker 2: People like. People don't want to hear you critique.
Speaker 1: Something that you might think is good. Now I'm being
Speaker 1: presumptuous by saying you think my work is good. I'm
Speaker 1: just making the point that because I'm having you on
Speaker 1: my show, we're obviously compasetic to a degree.
Speaker 2: But I'm just saying the.
Speaker 1: Idea of like you reviewing stuff that you think more
Speaker 1: positively of than negatively of. People don't really like that
Speaker 1: as far as content goes. They want drama. As you said,
Speaker 1: the world turns an Internet drama. That's where I think
Speaker 1: that there is an issue that I can't possibly imagine
Speaker 1: how we overcome it, because the thing about the Internet
Speaker 1: is you got to give the people what they want
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, otherwise they'll find it somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So how do we get over or let me first
Speaker 1: ask do you agree with that way of looking at
Speaker 1: things or disagree with it?
Speaker 2: Or and or how do you think we overcome something
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 3: I think it's a good again, I keep saying, all
Speaker 3: these questions are good questions. I'm blowing too much sunshine
Speaker 3: and rainbows your ways an interviewer here, It's no, it's
Speaker 3: a fair point, right. But I think that when I
Speaker 3: look at who I'm covering, I think about maximizing impact, right,
Speaker 3: And so typically that's folks that have big followings, make
Speaker 3: very big and outlandish claims and trying to confront them
Speaker 3: directly because I know that the larger the following, the
Speaker 3: larger the potential impact. Right. And there is and you
Speaker 3: said this yourself, there is a drama aspect to this, right,
Speaker 3: People like people like drama. And the reality is that,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're fact checking somebody, even if it's
Speaker 3: a little bit more academic, which I think I would
Speaker 3: consider some of my stuff to be, the reality is
Speaker 3: that you're confronting them and that gets people going. Right.
Speaker 3: They kind of like it. They like the history, but
Speaker 3: they also like the fact that you're confronting somebody that
Speaker 3: they take issue with because of the historical claims that
Speaker 3: they're making. And I think that those two pieces when combined,
Speaker 3: not making it, you know, podcast brow slop level content,
Speaker 3: really making it about the history and doing the history
Speaker 3: and doing the legwork to tell good history, combining that
Speaker 3: with the drama aspect. I think that that is a
Speaker 3: powerful combination, frankly, and I think it's a bit it's
Speaker 3: it's you know, maybe I'm giving away too much of
Speaker 3: the secret sauce here, but I think that's part of
Speaker 3: the reason that. You know, when I speak to people
Speaker 3: and they say, hey, I really like the show, that's
Speaker 3: that's part of the reason that I hear. And then
Speaker 3: the broader question that you highlight is to you know,
Speaker 3: where we go from here. Again, you know, maybe this
Speaker 3: would be to my own disadvantage, but I think that
Speaker 3: I've seen a little bit more of my type of content,
Speaker 3: not the same, not identical, different format, different substantively in
Speaker 3: terms of how it's presented. But I've seen a little
Speaker 3: bit more of it since I've spoken to some of
Speaker 3: the noteworthier folks that have reached out to me, and
Speaker 3: they've kind of taken a slightly different approach to their model,
Speaker 3: but also adopted it into some of their content or
Speaker 3: some of the shows that they've launched or recently announced.
Speaker 3: And so I think that that's great, right, Like I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not doing this for ego. Right, So the
Speaker 3: more the more that I see these claims being confronted
Speaker 3: or addressed or you know, as as I like to say,
Speaker 3: as I said before, more context being provided where it's needed.
Speaker 3: I think that's a net positive thing, right. I think
Speaker 3: that people want to hear good history, and when they
Speaker 3: there's there's a segment of people, as you as you
Speaker 3: said earlier, that hear this stuff and believe it and
Speaker 3: love it, and there's a segment of people that hear
Speaker 3: this stuff and think this is ridiculous. I wish somebody
Speaker 3: would confront this. And so I think it's a volume
Speaker 3: game because as I said before, this is the new thing.
Speaker 3: There's so many people doing this anti West, anti US,
Speaker 3: you know, Western imperialism is the original sin. Volume is
Speaker 3: a quality in and of itself. And I'm one person,
Speaker 3: I'm one show. I have a certain threshold in terms
Speaker 3: of capacity, so you know, I welcome other people doing
Speaker 3: the same thing in their own way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and that's sort of what I was like thinking,
Speaker 1: because obviously, like a more systemic approach is a more
Speaker 1: effective approach when it comes to things like this.
Speaker 2: But obviously I would not want the state to have
Speaker 2: anything to do with this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, that misses the point entirely,
Speaker 1: and it's probably even more dangerous as I think we
Speaker 1: kind of learned during COVID in various ways that the
Speaker 1: state should just not be involved in certain things when
Speaker 1: it comes to how information spreads.
Speaker 2: I mean, again again that's more of my political slant.
Speaker 1: That's my that's my again rock ribbed American view is
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't be you know, outsourcing our you know,
Speaker 1: credibility to state bodies. So and you know, Hollywood has
Speaker 1: been doing it for decades now, you know, to various
Speaker 1: degrees of success. But self policing, you know, of content
Speaker 1: is really I think the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: And I think if more people are adopting an approach
Speaker 1: that you're helping pioneer, that's good enough for me. I
Speaker 1: mean I've always thought like, okay, well there's there could
Speaker 1: always be like something that people submit their own like
Speaker 1: creators submit their own work to not before they release it.
Speaker 1: They can release it, but then they essentially say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm also making this podcast episode I'm doing eligible for
Speaker 1: review on the just call it the Crackpot History review Board.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but something along those lines where people
Speaker 1: can like basically show that they are willing to have
Speaker 1: their work checked and that and of itself could be
Speaker 1: a way to, you know, at least foster some sense
Speaker 1: of credibility. Now, that could also become very easily corrupted,
Speaker 1: like anything does, especially when it involves self policing. But
Speaker 1: I just I feel like things like that are are
Speaker 1: just possible, like little things that can be done to
Speaker 1: help with the credibility. Because that was ultimately what prompted
Speaker 1: me at least to put out a very lengthy critique
Speaker 1: of Dare Girl's initial appearance on Tucker and his follow
Speaker 1: up responses for Mary and West. And it was a
Speaker 1: long essay. I wrote it in the span of about
Speaker 1: forty eight hours. I wrote it very quickly, but it
Speaker 1: was long and very detailed, and it's probably what I'm
Speaker 1: most proud of that I've ever written, because it was
Speaker 1: going through the receipts, so to speak, and it allowed
Speaker 1: me to, in my mind, maintain my own credibility to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I do recommend this guy. I do like this guy,
Speaker 1: but I think he is flagrantly wrong on this particular issue.
Speaker 1: And I've intensified that criticism a fair bit over the
Speaker 1: last year or so. But I really do think that
Speaker 1: maintaining credibility is something that I think is very important
Speaker 1: for individual creators because of the splash damage other creators
Speaker 1: can create.
Speaker 3: Well, you use the phrase crackpot history review boards. So
Speaker 3: if you can clone me or get me a team
Speaker 3: to do my editing for me, maybe one day. But
Speaker 3: my pipeline is absolutely full. But I love the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and and that's something that I honestly just.
Speaker 2: Came up with the idea. Now, so you can trademarket though,
Speaker 2: if you want to give you permission. But I think
Speaker 2: unless you have anything else you want to add, I
Speaker 2: think that's.
Speaker 1: Really all we have. I do think that we have.
Speaker 1: We've covered a lot of good ground here. I've made
Speaker 1: enough implications so my soul feels satisfied. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: you have anything else you want to add to what
Speaker 1: we've been discussing and also direct people to where your
Speaker 1: stuff is, where your where your Twitter presence is all
Speaker 1: that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, yeah, thanks so much for having me. This
Speaker 3: has been a great conversation. If you want to find
Speaker 3: me online, you can find me on Twitter x crackpot
Speaker 3: hissed his t or just search for Crackpot History, I
Speaker 3: should come up and the series are available on my
Speaker 3: YouTube channel or wherever else you listen to your podcast Spotify,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts or anywhere else as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you again so much, man, it was good talking
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks again for having me. If you get away
Speaker 3: with it, go get away with it. Why you can't
Speaker 3: shut up?
Speaker 1: Shoot?
Speaker 4: The modest, militant monatier and then may.
Speaker 1: Should all of them want you to follow them to
Speaker 1: the promised Land, Promised land.
Speaker 3: But do you know what the biggest rob problem is. Shoot?
Speaker 4: The problem is hellbody, nobody enough, not even bod e En.
Speaker 4: We all made our believe.
Speaker 2: Some of.
Speaker 3: Some true.
Speaker 4: None of them belong to you. So if you pa
Speaker 4: yourself in a long play, Shoot, I thank him about.
Speaker 1: Well, so there we have it. Thank you again for
Speaker 1: listening to this long conversation that I had with the
Speaker 1: host of Crackpot History, who I basically am just calling
Speaker 1: crackpot History because he does deign to stay anonymous, and
Speaker 1: I gotta respect him for that because it does put
Speaker 1: his work first. But thank you again for listening everybody.
Speaker 1: I hope you did enjoy that conversation, wide ranging as
Speaker 1: it was before we go. I want to give some
Speaker 1: shout outs to the people who have been supporting History
Speaker 1: Impossible at the Comrades and Friends level or above on Patreon,
Speaker 1: as well as the higher levels of support over on
Speaker 1: History Impossible dot Com where they are subscribers. These people
Speaker 1: include Bob Downing, Sam Graham, Greg Hunter, Brian Joy, So, Skip, Achaco,
Speaker 1: Molly Pan, John Pisano, Ana R PJ. Raider, Matthew m Rice,
Speaker 1: Philip Rice, Emily Schmidt, Pierre Vopuni, and as always Fu So.
Speaker 1: Thank you again everybody for supporting History Impossible or just
Speaker 1: for listening. Honestly, if you don't have it in your
Speaker 1: budget to support the show right now, just spreading the
Speaker 1: word about the show is enough to help. But if
Speaker 1: you do have the money, you want to throw my
Speaker 1: way show some love. That way help me deal with
Speaker 1: the ever increasing student debt on accumulating becoming a quote
Speaker 1: unquote real historian, that would help immensely as well. In
Speaker 1: terms of what we have coming up next, well, we
Speaker 1: don't really have anything scheduled yet, but we have some
Speaker 1: things cooking. And please subscribe to Historyimpossible dot com or
Speaker 1: to the History Impossible Patreon at any level to stay
Speaker 1: up to date on what comes next. A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff tends to get written before it gets turned into
Speaker 1: a podcast, but it's also where you get any updates
Speaker 1: that might be coming your way. So yes, thank you
Speaker 1: again for listening, and please stay tuned for the next
Speaker 1: episode of History Impossible.