By now everybody knows that Tucker blew up the internet with his shocking interview of podcaster Darryl Cooper. Cooper did two Bad Things: he suggested that Winston Churchill ignored numerous peace offers from Hitler, and that the Holocaust didn’t start right away in WWII. German commanders in Operation Barbarossa were sending messages back home asking what to do with the millions of people captured in the conquered territories.

Darryl Cooper crossed two lines: you are not allowed to doubt that Churchill was a Hero. And you are not allowed to doubt that the Nazis planned the genocide of the Jews all along.

Because I am a Very Bad Person, I really have a problem with this kind of Narrative Fascism.

Conservative websites were in full cry on the heresy of doubting that Churchill saved Britain from the Nazis: here and here. And all over the place at Powerline.

Bari Weiss’s Free Press ran several pieces, mostly attacking the Holocaust Denial, including one by Bari herself: “...illiberal right…” Sohrab Ahmari: “Odious views…” Victor Davis Hanson: “Germany… started the war”, Niall Ferguson: “The Return of anti-History.”

Now, the question is: how to soar above these ankle-biters and show, “because I am so wise” like Nietzsche, that the real issue is something they never thought of.

I say that it’s all the fault of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. You’d expect that, somewhere deep in the weeds, a college president would be to blame for the global disaster.

Mind you, right behind President Wilson are the U.S. Progressives that gave us a central bank and a federal income tax right before Wilson took office.

See, President Wilson was the brilliant guy that got the U.S. into World War I. Imagine if he had cooled his jets, even with the two essential tools on hand to fight a world war: a central bank and an income tax. My guess is that the European powers would have fought to exhaustion, and then would have been forced to negotiate a redo of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 after the Thirty Years War. But I could be wrong.

Instead, the brilliant ex-college president sent our doughboys to France and then presided over the Treaty of Versailles that imposed reparations on Germany. Bad idea. First, the Germans avoided paying reparations with hyperinflation, and then by reneging on international loans from the U.S., again and again. You can read all about Germany and reparations in a book that you have never heard of recommended by Jeffrey A. Tucker: A Bubble that Broke the World by Garet Garrett.

(I wonder what would happen if our liberal friends went ahead with their plan -- heartily endorsed by today’s DEI college presidents -- for reparations to blacks for slavery…)

But whatabout the cavalier treatment of the Holocaust? How shall we trump the ankle-biters on that one?

First of all, let’s list the big-time Genocides of the 20th century, as approved by Wikipedia.

There’s the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s: 1.4 to 3.0 million killed.

There’s The Holocaust in the 1940s: 5.1 to 7 million killed.

Then there’s the Nazi crimes against the Polish nation in the 1940s: 1.8 to 3 million killed.

Then there’s the Soviet Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-33: 3.0 to 5.0 million killed (part of the Soviet Famine of 1930-33: 5.7 to 8.7 million killed).

It’s curious that the 1970s Cambodian killings are categorized as a Genocide, while other Eurasian mass killings are not. Even WaPo tells us

[In Mao’s China] 80 million died unnatural deaths -- most of them in the famine following the Great Leap Forward.

In comparison, Hitler is blamed for 12 million concentration camp deaths and at least 30 million other deaths associated with World War II, while Stalin is believed responsible for between 30 million and 40 million "unnatural deaths," including millions from a famine he created.

Also unmentioned is the Partition of India in 1947. Only about 1 million died, according to Wikipedia, probably because Gandhi went on a fast in January 1948 to protest the bloodshed. But my mother, living in Calcutta at the time, told me that she asked the Hindu servants how they were doing and they told her everything was fine, because they had killed all the Muslim families on their street.

Meanwhile, the top of the list in the Wikipedia Genocide article is the “Gaza Genocide”: 0.04 million to 0.4 million killed.

You could say that we have gone full circle on Genocide. First, experts agreed, genocide was Hitler killing the Jews. Now, experts agree, genocide is Israelis killing the Palestinians.

“Never trust experts,” said Lord Salisbury, about one day before the start of our 20th Century of Experts.

But then there is the question of public intellectuals, of the kind beating up uncredentialed Darryl Cooper. Should we create a new maxim?

“Never believe public intellectuals.”

And don’t believe me either.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Grendelkhan