Perversions of History: The Platforming of Darryl Cooper and Martyr Made

History denigrating the United States, celebrating dictators and crafting false and misleading narratives used to be the purview of the left.  Now we have it on the right. 

Transcript

Perversions of History: The Platforming of Darryl Cooper and Martyr Made

March 2025

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Carl Sagan

“A historian, like any other researcher, has a vested interest in answering his own questions. His job is at stake, and his reputation, and most important, his self-respect. If he substitutes a declarative for an interrogative statement, then the result is literally a foregone conclusion. The best will in the world won’t suffice to keep him honest.” 

David Hackett Fischer

What is a historian?  

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, historians research, analyze, interpret, and write about the past by studying historical documents and sources. Okay, that’s pretty straightforward stuff, but which historical documents? What sources?  And that “interpret” piece is a pretty big one.  So, I will turn to an outstanding historian for help.  David. Hackett Fischer, in his wonderful Historical Fallacies, goes into much further depth:

“A historian is someone (anyone) who asks an open-ended question about past events and answers it with selected facts arranged in an explanatory paradigm. These questions and answers are fitted to each other by a complex process of mutual adjustment. History does not consist of inexact scientists, who go blundering about their business without a sufficient sense of purpose or procedure.”

Fischer goes on to comment about declarative as opposed to interrogative questions.  In other words, this is a subtle but critical difference.  “Did Adolph Hitler start World War II?” to “Adolph Hitler started World War II.”  The declarative statement follows after the research is done, not before.

Fisher states, 

“The fallacy of declarative questions is confusing an interrogative with a declarative statement. It violates a fundamental rule of empirical question-framing, which requires that a question must have an open end, which will allow a free and honest choice, with minimal bias and maximal flexibility. If a historian goes to his sources with a simple affirmative proposition that “X was the case,” then he is predisposed to prove it. He will probably be able to find “evidence” sufficient to illustrate his expectations, if not actually to sustain them.” 

The use of declarative statements as a historical approach used to be the purview of the left, but I am increasingly seeing it on the right.  

So here is a question.  Who started World War II?  There is a dark subset of thought that suggests that Adolph Hitler (and, to a lesser extent, Tojo of Japan) did not start the war.  Instead, these figures were boxed in, cajoled, and forced into open conflict.  One needs to omit the sticky facts that Hitler, before the beginning of the war, occupied the Rhineland, militarized and Nazified Germany, invaded Austria, took a chunk of Czechoslovakia, vowed not to take any more of that nation, and proceeded to do so in violation of his own vow.  Then he invaded Poland.  

Darryll Cooper, founder of the Martyr Made podcast, has a different opinion. “It was the war in which the United States and our allies conquered the world, and eighty years after Germany’s defeat, the story of the war remains our civilization’s most important load-bearing myth.” Myth?  In September of 2024, Cooper went on Tucker Carlson’s show and made some rather interesting assertions.  

For Cooper, it was Churchill who started World War II.  The argument goes that Hitler, after Czechoslovakia, wanted peace, or after Poland, wanted peace. The true enemy of the West was the Soviet Union.  But Churchill foolishly granted Poland the UK’s protection, leaving little choice for Britain and France to declare war on Germany after Hitler invaded Poland.  It was better, in Cooper’s estimation, to let Hitler have half of Poland and eventually take on the Soviet Union.  This assumed that Hitler would have left the West alone in kind.  

Cooper, it would appear, has never heard of the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact. Or misread Hitler’s ravings about the Versailles Treaty and the need for revenge.  

Therefore, Cooper calls Churchill “the chief villain of the Second World War,” viewing him as “primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.” Such reasoning makes little sense, given the chronology of events.  I did an entire podcast on this called Heroes and Villains of World War II, in which I noted, 

World War II, with combatting Nazism, their genocidal designs, and their leader, was one of the few genuinely moral wars.  Yet, as noted, Cooper and many individuals, more than I had imagined, do not think so.  Instead, Germany was pulled into conflict with Churchill’s action, which perpetuated war and led to the domination of the East by the Soviet Union.  And for good measure, his bombing of German cities was itself, an immoral act.  

Within the podcast I address of these charges.  Or you can look up Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project for the facts of the case. Suffice it to say that Cooper is not just wrong on the interpretation; he is blatantly and horribly wrong on the facts.  

In a recent podcast this March on Joe Rogan’s extremely popular podcast, Cooper wrongly stated that Hitler “grew up in Germany.”  He did not, of course. Hitler was born and raised in Austria.  But, as many screeds online have asked, what was the difference?  Both were Germanic nations, after all!  

The difference is a mile wide.  Hitler’s Austria was a polyglot mixture of dozens of ethnicities. A decaying Habsburg Empire that had more Slavs than Germans.  Hitler also lived a desultory, impoverished life in Vienna up to the age of 24 before moving to Germany in 1913.  In contrast, the fin de siècle Germany of the Hohenzollerns was aggressive, young, and vibrant. Having supplanted France on land it wished to replace Britain on the seas and become the unquestioned, preeminent military state in Europe.  Austria, or Austria-Hungary as it was officially known, just wanted to get through each year without falling to pieces.  Hitler was influenced by this difference and yearned to be German and spur his Habsburgian roots.  It matters. To a real historian, anyway.  

And it was not just around World War II that Cooper’s worldview came into focus.  In one Martyr Made episode, Antisemitism Part 1, Cooper does the usual erroneous comparison of Chinese traders with Jews.  After all, the Chinese were the minority trading class in places such as the Philippines.  And this can be refuted in a single sentence.  There is a China.  If these traders had been persecuted, like Rome in ancient times, Europe in the Middle Ages, Russia in the 1890s, or Germany in the 1940s, the Chinese would have had a place to go.  It is the same with Indian traders in South Africa and across the Indian Ocean.  

Cooper’s point is to say the Jews were just the same as these others to minimize the need for an Israel, or any specialness in terms of Jewish persecution. After all Chinese traders had been persecuted!  In so doing, he inadvertently makes a case for Israel, though his sympathies lie with the Palestinian cause, as is apparent in many podcasts. In terms of who owns the Holy Land, Cooper starts the clock not in 1800 BC, or in 50 AD but instead in 700 AD, after the Arab conquests.    

How many of these types of incorrect and inept statements exist on social media in terms of understanding the history of this region?  As many as there are grains of sand on a beach.  But Cooper and his Martyr Made podcast operate in my patch, history.  As one X poster noted, I only want to discredit Cooper, not look at his views.  This is backwards. I have looked at Cooper’s views and DO wish to discredit him.  

He is not a historian but plays one on podcasts.  Cooper, like Nikole Hannah Jones, when her baleful 1619 Project was disgraced by a bevy of historians, many of them with leftist leanings, retreated to the “but wait, I am not a historian.”  And Cooper has done as much on Joe Rogan’s show.  But his podcast, which has an alarming number of downloads, claims it is “History Made Human.” When Carlson calls him a historian, he does not deny the title.  He wants to be a historian to his listeners, but to those who can easily debunk his narratives, he is just a guy asking questions with a mic who has read some books before bedtime. The reality is that he thinks he is a historian, and what is far worse, so do his listeners.  And he, like Carlson, knows a little holocaust denial is good for traffic.   

As David Harsanyi notes, “If you have little talent, the quickest way to turn things around these days is to go on social media and accuse the Jews of starting the Vietnam war or blame them for seed oil replacing beef tallow. You’ll be on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in no time.”

And not shockingly, Cooper is an apologist for Putin’s Russia: “With Yeltsin’s Russia of the 1990s and the Weimar Republic of the 1930s, the US establishment was “friendly” as long as both countries were prostrate and accommodated the demands of American capital. When Putin took power and got Russia back on its feet as a relevant global actor, the US government turned hostile.” 

Reality. Putin ascended to power through the massacre of his own people in the apartment bombings, which he blamed on the Chechens. A lie.  He invaded Georgia. Later, he invaded Crimea.  And as for American “hostility?”  I wish.  Bill Clinton reached out. George W Bush squired Putin around his ranch. Obama famously told Putin’s stooge Medvedev, on a hot mic no less, that after the 2012 election, he would come to an accommodation. Obama disparaged Mitt Romney for his anti-Russian, anti-Putin views. 

And again, note the connection to the Weimer Republic.  Cooper omits that the Weimer Republican leaders did not massacre fellow Germans, reoccupy the Rhineland, conquer its neighbors so forth and so forth.  And initial hostility in 1933?  Made up.  Many Europeans hoped that Hitler would be a panacea for Weimer.  Indeed, the British Prince of Wales was an admirer.  And where was the hositily in Munich in 1938.  Maybe a little hostility might have curbed Hitler’s ambitions. 

And here is a good old false equivalence, “By the 1939 outbreak of war in Europe, Hitler’s Germany had executed a total of perhaps 9,000-10,000 people - many of whom were traitors, killers, and militant communist revolutionaries - while the Soviet Union had already murdered tens of millions, and enslaved millions more.”  Cooper’s point is FDR liked Stalin and did not like Hitler.  But the real point is both men should have been despised, not that Hitler was somehow a good leader because though he murdered his own people without due process, they were communists, so all to the good.  Stalin being one of the worst historical figures to walk the Earth does not ennoble Hitler.

In another post about his feud with a real historian, Dan Carlin, the founder of the Hardcore History Podcast, one of which I admire, Cooper humble brags about being surprised Carlin knew who he was but also mentioned, at least four times by my count, that Martyr Made is a pretty big deal.  Maybe his collection of leather-bound history books evokes the smell of “rich mahogany.”

I do not think he is a historian, but do others? Certainly, Carlson believes so. Given the titles around his podcast and his self-proclamation of being the “reigning king of history podcasting,” this would suggest some relation to the title. However, whether he is or is not a true “historian” is just one point.  

Howard Zinn would not prevaricate on his title. He was a professor of history at Boston University for 24 years and boasted a PhD. His Peoples History of the United States has done untold damage because it is a terrible work, not because Zinn is a historian, but because it is bad history.  Because Zinn’s historiography is garbage.  This is a tome with a preset belief, the declarative narrative, as Hackett would say: the United States is a horrific place and has been so since, and because of, its founding.  Zinn then cherry-picks or makes up “facts” to fit that narrative. But Zinn and his successors, such as James Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) and Nikole Hannah Jones, were/are extreme leftists.  And Now we have the same from the right.  

The People’s History set the tone for the American awful, socialist world good, narrative.  It was the book that brought not just the concept of America as classist but sexist and racist as well from the colleges into our K12 schools.  Want to know one of the roots of PC, woke, or DEI?  Howard Zinn.  

As bad as the Peoples History and the 1619 Project are, I would not forbid these works, but I will challenge them, denigrate them, and those who promote them. Cooper’s work is the same. 

Okay, we get it, AD; you do not agree with Cooper or, more to the point, do not respect him, even hold out a little bile for his antisemitism.  So what?  Everyone from Jackson Hinkle to Rashid Tlaib hates the Jews, so why a diatribe against Cooper?  Part of it is claim to historical knowledge (see yourself in history) is another claim. The site also notes, “The Martyr Made Podcast tells the stories of real people who made history and the situations that shaped them.” But the other part is the audience size.  Cooper is not wrong in stating that Martyr Made is a success.  But Dan Carlin’s podcast is also commands a large audience, and I do not have an issue with him. There is one guy online who posts nothing but Marcus Aurelius quotes on X and has more followers than I do.  And I genuinely could care less.  And one historian, HW Brands, sells a ton of books and brings clear liberal biases to his work (he loves FDR).  But his work does not suck.  He is a true historian and a good writer.  I would love to debate Brands, but I would not try to discredit him. 

It is not just that Cooper traffics in false history; many on the right believe he is a truth-teller. The Cherry on the Sundae is that Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster today, just platformed him. Between Carlson and Rogan, Cooper is able to put his brand of excremental history in front of millions.  

With so many prominent historians available, the next question is, why platform this guy or slavishly call him, as Carlson did, “the most important historian of our time? I have not so subtly alluded to antisemitism, and that, as noted, is a start, but it is even more than that.  

The answer explains both the success of Martyr Made and why Rogan, who does about 50 podcasts a year, gives the likes of Cooper a platform.  Think about that.  Rogan interviews everyone from the list of celebrities to tech moguls to presidential candidates and offers one of his coveted slots to Cooper.  So, to answer this, here is a brief digression.  

Was Lenny Bruce funny?  “I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like “What I’m Going to Be If I Grow Up.” 

Now, that is good, but he also wrote, “I don’t smoke pot, and I’m glad because then I can champion it without special pleading. The reason I don’t smoke it is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations-and I’ve got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot.”  That is not bad either, but imagine the effect in the pre-Richard Pryor days of saying “shit” when it was forbidden in any public discourse in the early late 1950s.  Bruce also died young, which is good for the legends of comics, actors, kings, and presidents from Massachusetts.  Bruce was funny, but without the profanity and vulgarity (and untimely death), would he have been as famous?  

Richard Pryor and George Carlin were also very funny men, but we do not remember them in the same vein as comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, or today’s Nate Bargatze.  One of the key media figures over the past 40 years, Howard Stern, was proclaimed a Shock Jock.  I always find it incisive that something was lost when Stern moved from public airwaves to Sirius.  He just wasn’t as funny as when contending with the FCC.  In that context, the government was the straight man, not in on the joke and perpetually pursuing Stern.  Is Bugs Bunny funny without Elmer Fudd?  It was as if Stern, unchained to swear and cuss to his heart’s content, lost something vital.  

For all of the Bruces and Sterns, the comedy was good.  Offensive and controversial were great.  But once controversy becomes part of the act.  It cannot be easily omitted because the audience wants what it wants.  Nate Bargatze can go blue and start dropping F-bombs and still be a success.  But imagine if contemporary Bill Burr tried to go clean?  Bargatze can become Burr, Burr cannot become Bargatze.  And to Rogan and especially Carlson, core belief systems within our history are the bad guys, the power that must be challenged.  Thus, Churchill becomes a warmonger, and Putin is misunderstood.  Much more interesting than putting on the umpteenth historian to praise Churchill.  The guy who says the sky is colored green may be a lunatic, but so much more interesting than the other one billion saying it is blue.  

Follow the audience.  When Rush Limbaugh emerged in the 1990s, he did something remarkable.  Conservative philosophy was then dominated by the likes of George Will, Thomas Sowell, and William F Buckley.  All geniuses, to be sure, but the academic speech and the erudite phraseology all seemed very elitist.  No one was a better communicator than Reagan, but much of his popularity was based on his ability to jump-start the economy and restore faith in American values.  If the recession of 1982 had persisted, his Great Communicator status would have been meaningless.  

Limbaugh brought Reagan and conservatism to a mass audience who did not know the National Review from the Nation.  And as I have said many times before, he led, informed, and educated.  Now Limbaugh understood that he was as much entertainer as a conservative philosopher, so ditto heads, femi-nazis, and a rather amusing take on Jesse Jackson’s speech patterns.  But that was not his core, nor the main reason his audience tuned in.  He also threw in endearing comments about how he quit smoking, “formerly nicotine-stained hands,” and all that. 

But by 2015, Limbaugh, then the number one radio personality in America, making tens of millions per year and flying private, was more attuned to keeping his audience rather than the ideas of conservatism.  That year, he famously castigated Trump.  Because so many thought that Trump’s presidential run was another aspect of his 40-year campaign for media attention, they dismissed him.  Well, we know how that turned out. By 2016, Limbaugh, following his audience, went from Trump antagonist to virulent Trump supporter, a phenomenon we have seen ranging from Senators to media personalities across the right.  

And here we come to the core of what Carlson and Rogan are doing.  It is a combination of speaking truth to power, to use a leftist term, with a serving of fan service to a dark sub-set of the right believing in antisemitism. And sorry, but platforming a Hitler apologist and Holocaust denier such as Cooper is the secret, or secret wink, winking in which they are participating.  Both personalities engage in the scurrilous “just asking questions” methodologies to get their points. But they are not asking questions; they are making declarative statements contrary to conventional wisdom and history itself.  Russia is misunderstood.  The South got a raw deal. The West is decadent. White men are oppressed. Israel is the problem. And there is a secret cabal of “those people” controlling God knows what.  

When the website says “Challenge what you think you know” that does not mean anything because it is discipline, rigor and process that are the pillars upon which the challenging occurs.  I can challenge the fact that Americans have self rule and claim that we are secretly being directed by a robot collective.  Yet without facts to back that up, I am trafficking in lunacy, and I would probably still get followers.  The concept of challenging is not in terms of historical knowledge but rather in audience collection. In short, they are making it up to cater to the sensibilities of disaffected groups.    

Carlson once received a check of around $25 million per annum from one of the largest media companies in the world.  Today, he does not have that sort of job security, so he needs subscribers.  And these subscribers do not wish to be informed or educated.  They want to be reassured in their belief systems. They want to feel as if someone is challenging the status quo that they feel is not working for them.   

Rogan once hosted a game show called Fear Factor. He will not cede his high perch easily. These men will do whatever is necessary and host whoever is necessary to maintain their audiences.   

This gets us to my final point. There is fiction, such as Harry Potter and Dune. We know (well, 99% of us) that there are no wand-wielding teenagers or massive spice freighters hovering over the Earth.  

Then there is fiction, such as the spy genre or corporate espionage, things that could happen bu not in the way of the usual depictions. Then there is the fiction that masquerades as history.  So when Darryl Cooper traffics in things like not knowing where Hitler grew up, he is espousing fiction, not history. But that is not how he is presented by either his platformers or himself.   It is vitally important that we know the difference.