Darryl Cooper is the name of the American Nazi apologist who markets himself in podcasts and interviews as a supposedly objective and neutral amateur historian. His thesis: It was not Adolf Hitler, but the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who was the real villain of the Second World War. While the rational Hitler sought peace with Great Britain in order to find an “acceptable solution to the Jewish question” together, according to Cooper, Churchill relentlessly drove Europe into war against Germany.
30 million people watch the pseudo-historian’s interview on X
With such historical revisionist theses, Cooper has so far reached a niche audience – until he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson two days ago. Carlson, the former star of the conservative US television channel Fox, has been running a video podcast on X since he was fired from Fox due to his own extreme views. He has found a home on Musk’s platform – alongside Cooper, who trivializes the Holocaust, and numerous other figures from the alt-right scene and other politically extreme currents. In addition to the interview with Carlson, which has been viewed almost 30 million times, Cooper published his historical revisionist theses in written form on X.
Not the first scandal since Musk’s Twitter takeover
The uproar is part of a long series of controversies that have plagued X since Musk took over. Many advertisers have now turned their backs on the platform, not least because of the controversial statements made by Musk himself, who repeatedly spreads conspiracy theories and false statements about Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
X loses advertising revenue – and sues
While Musk initially publicly flirted with the idea that the company was not dependent on advertisers and publicly insulted representatives of the largest American advertising industry association, X now seems to be having financial worries. At the beginning of August, the company filed an antitrust lawsuit against a number of advertising companies in an American federal court.
Can the platform curb propaganda?
The calculation that openness to the Tucker Carlsons and Darryl Coopers of this world would be a lucrative business does not seem to have worked so far. In addition, there are new revelations that call into question how effectively the platform is combating state-organized disinformation campaigns from autocratic countries such as Russia or China. Yesterday, the US Department of Justice made public investigations into a company that apparently paid numerous controversial influencers to spread Russian propaganda with millions of dollars from Russian state sources.
“Community Notes” give hope
Under Musk, the platform has eliminated a large part of the teams that were responsible for content moderation. The control and moderation of problematic content has now been outsourced to the platform’s users themselves. Using the “Community Notes” system, any user can suggest fact checks and context panels for posts on X. These are then rated by other users – and if they receive enough votes, they are then displayed prominently under the corresponding posts.
In fact, this swarm intelligence feature works quite reliably and is very popular. In many cases, corrections appear under misleading or false posts after a short time. This is also the case with Darryl Cooper’s supposed “historical analysis” – under every second statement in the thread there are notice boards that meticulously document where the pseudo-historian twists facts, shortens quotes or uses rhetorical tricks to weave his false narrative.
