Darryl Cooper, a right-wing podcast host, went viral on X on this week for an interview and mega-thread about his views on World War 2. In them, he says that Nazi Germany Dictator Adolf Hitler was not the “chief villain” of the conflict, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was.
Cooper’s statements—which included using the antisemitic phrase “the Jewish problem”—have received immense backlash. Amid discussion of the thread, some noticed that Cooper is followed on X by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate.
In his thread, which comes in the wake of an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s X show where he made similar points, Cooper argued that because Hitler called for peace multiple times before fighting broke out in World War 2, Churchill is to blame for the destruction that the war caused.
“I know that sounds like hyperbole. Churchill didn’t order the most deaths, oversee the most atrocities, or commit the worst crimes,” Cooper tweeted. “But most of those crimes could not have been committed if the war had not happened, and Churchill was the leader most intent on making it happen.”
Later in his thread, Cooper also says that Hitler attempted to “call for peace” in order to “reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.”
The phrase “the Jewish problem,” or “the Jewish question” involves early 20th-century, antisemitic schools of thought that claim that Jewish people needed to abandon their religious and cultural customs to assimilate, or needed to be eliminated altogether.
Hitler and Nazi Germany’s “final solution” to “the Jewish problem” was to put millions of Jewish people into concentration camps and mass murder them. In Cooper’s telling, Churchill was wrong for not ceding that ground.
“Hitler tried again, going on the radio to broadcast a call for peace directly to the British people,” Cooper tweeted. “He would give back the parts of Poland that were not majority German, and would work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem. He was ignored.”
Though Cooper ended his thread by saying he didn’t mean to “defend the actions of the Third Reich or any of its leaders,” many replied to his statements saying that his use of the phrase “the Jewish problem” was antisemitic and seemed to align with the values of Nazi Germany.
The sentiment, and Cooper, blew up thanks to Elon Musk sharing and then deleting the Carlson clip, which he initially called “very interesting.”
“I knew automatically you were intrinsically evil or criminally naive when you used the term ‘Jewish problem.’ Only the most evil human beings, or the most gullible, would use that term,” an X user responded to Cooper. “Jews are humans. You’re referring to a human ‘problem.’ That causes holocausts. Don’t.”
“If you ever write the words ‘acceptable solution to the Jewish problem’, just delete your account and erase your internet presence,” another X user replied.
Many noted that Cooper is followed by Vance on two separate accounts: His official X profile, @JDVance, and the profile of his press office, @SenVancePress.
Cooper also congratulated his “longtime mutual,” Vance, on being selected as Trump’s running mate.
When Trump announced Vance as his running mate, Vance’s 2016 comments where he called Trump “America’s Hitler” resurfaced, angering some Trump supporters. But eight years later, Vance is now a fervent Trump defender and loyalist.
Vance’s radicalization into a Trump supporter and his following of Cooper—and other, niche right-wing accounts—are examples of his newfound, but resolute status in the extremely online New Right.
In his own words, he’s “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures.” And that just so happens to include lots of antisemitism lurking throughout.
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