There are discussions that until recently were limited to the hidden corners of the internet, the forums of 4chan and Reddit, or obscure blogs, where pseudo-science and muscles are discussed in equal measure: could it be that Winston Churchill is the true culprit for the Second World War? For the millions of victims? For the death camps? Wouldn’t Adolf Hitler have stopped at Poland if Churchill, this bellicose character, hadn’t declared war on Germany?
For some time now, these ideas have a completely different resonance in the United States, writes „Le Monde.”
Now, they are being espoused, for example, by Joe Rogan, the host of the world's most listened-to podcast, "Joe Rogan Experience," or by Tucker Carlson, a former journalist for the conservative Fox News network, a pillar of the MAGA movement ("Make America Great Again"), and host of another very popular show, "The Tucker Carlson Show," broadcast on the internet.
In September 2024, Tucker Carlson welcomed the "amateur historian," Darryl Cooper, the creator of a podcast called "Martyr Made."
The day before the broadcast, Tucker Carlson hailed the arrival of "the best and most honest popular historian working today in the United States." He added: "His latest project is the most banned of all: an attempt to understand the Second World War." Carlson could have specified to understand it from the German perspective, as this is the "forbidden" nature of Darryl Cooper's project, as if research had never been interested in this subject.
This is the creed of pseudo-history: to attack an all-powerful orthodoxy, the "myths" of the Second World War that everyone swallows without thinking, writes Le Monde.
In front of Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper could assert, without opposition from the moderator, that Churchill was the "true villain of the Second World War," thus stealing Hitler's role, and that the death camps were not the result of a genocide project, but of a logistical incident: the inability to anticipate the excessive number of prisoners of war captured by the Wehrmacht.
And to complete his profession of denial, the one who presents himself as a "historian" says that Germany "was absolutely unprepared to handle millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners. It intervened without any plan and simply threw these people into camps, where millions ended up dying."
Regarding the so-called victors, anyone traveling a bit in Western Europe can see that they have nothing of the aura of "winners," agreed the moderator and his guest.
"If Churchill is a 'hero,' seriously asked Tucker Carlson, mimicking quotes cautiously, how come (today) girls beg in London to buy drugs?" Darryl Cooper had an answer to this improbable question: "People who consider Churchill a hero appreciate London as it has become."
JD Vance, subscriber to revisionist delirium
Aired on a podcast followed by millions of listeners, this interview sparked controversy. From the Yad Vashem memorial (Jerusalem) to the White House (occupied at the time by Joe Biden), the outraged reactions were numerous. Even within the Trumpist movement, voices were heard denouncing this interview.
At Hillsdale College, a private university in Michigan, the Churchill Project, dedicated to "propagating a correct understanding of Churchill's journey," dismantled point by point the smoky theories advanced by Darryl Cooper. Starting with the one that makes Churchill responsible for the conflict: when Britain declared war on Germany, two days after the invasion of Poland, Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister.
But it doesn't matter. The interview and controversy caused the number of subscribers to the "Martyr Made" podcast to increase by over a quarter of a million and propelled it to the top of the charts.
Among the 350,000 subscribers on X is the American vice president, JD Vance.
Churchill, a favorite target of revisionists
These revisionist delusions are as old as those from the Second World War. Back then, the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, already accused Churchill, portrayed as a warmonger, of rejecting all of Germany's peace offers.
80 years later, Churchill remains a favorite target, for several reasons.
"It is the ritual sacrifice of an icon of the old Republican Party," comments the German historian Thomas Weber. Embodies leadership, resistance to tyranny, peace imposed by force, and the need for allies with common values, the British prime minister was a "sacred figure for a generation of Republicans, precisely those whom Cooper and Carlson despise."
The neoconservatives of the early 21st century indeed greatly valued him. George W. Bush, president between 2001 and 2009, installed a bronze bust with Churchill's effigy in the Oval Office of the White House.
In the face of these neoconservatives eager to identify with the legacy of the one who saved Europe, Pat Buchanan, a paleoconservative journalist - a line of conservatism focused on traditionalism and isolationism - wrote a book in 2008 about Churchill's bellicosity. His essay, "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War," argues that the United Kingdom's decision to engage in war against Germany in the two world conflicts was a strategic and catastrophic mistake, with global consequences. Like Pat Buchanan, whose heir he is in many respects, Tucker Carlson defends a radical isolationism, whether it's about Ukraine or Iran.
But for many, beyond Churchill himself, the founding mythology of the post-war world is what needs to be attacked. These discourses are gaining momentum again within what American conservative journalist Sohrab Ahmari has dubbed the "barbaric right": a nebulous mix of pseudo-scientific racism, cult of strength, and apologia for Nazism.
This right "hates the reasonable conservatism that has settled in the post-war period and made peace with civil rights" and is "ready to do anything to delegitimize the existing American order," writes the journalist on The Free Press news website.
Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, the spearheads of revisionism
Another figure of this "barbaric right," supremacist and masculinist influencer Andrew Tate also regrets that World War II shaped our conceptions of good and evil: "If I ask you to name the worst person in history, you will probably say Hitler. You won't say Stalin, who killed more, because he was on our side," he says.
These challenges are like "symbolic obscene gestures" addressed to the establishment, the "deep state," universities, and Democrats, comments Thomas Weber. "The ideas propagated in these shows far exceed those expressed by Donald Trump," he acknowledges. But they proliferate in this hotbed of inculture that is Trump's America, where, in the face of history, no importance is given to respect or accuracy.
The American president cultivates a relationship more than nonchalant with history in general and with it in particular. Since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has brought into his entourage and administration people who have spread anti-Semitic ideas and play with supremacist messages and symbols. His vice president, JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his main campaign financier, Elon Musk, have supported Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the first nationalist, xenophobic, and revisionist German party to massively enter the Bundestag since the end of World War II.
On March 27, the American president signed a decree entitled "Restoring Truth and Reason in American History," which targets any ideology considered "anti-American."
History is being rewritten by today's victors, concludes Le Monde.