Elon Musk recommends interview with Hitler fan and Holocaust apologist

Because Cooper is not just any historian. With his extensively researched history podcast “MartyrMade” and the blog of the same name, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people who are interested in his sometimes extremely controversial theories on world history. He also had two of them with him on Tucker Carlson: The real villain of the Second World War was Winston Churchill, Cooper was sure. And the millions of deaths in the Holocaust were more of an accident.

Holocaust relativization and Churchill as villain

The last statement in particular understandably causes outrage. Cooper makes it sound as if the concentration camps were created out of necessity. “In 1941 they started a war that they were not prepared for, with millions of prisoners of war, political prisoners,” he claims about the Nazis in Germany. “They had no plan and threw these people in the camp. And millions of people ultimately died there.” As if the millions of victims of the Holocaust had only died as a result of mismanagement – and were not systematically murdered as a “final solution” in gas chambers and by firing squads, as has been extensively documented.

Adolf Hitler also did not want the war to escalate like this, Cooper claims. Hitler's invasion of Poland only became a world war thanks to the intervention of British Prime Minister Churchill. “He was primarily responsible for making this war what it was.” The conflict was fueled “by the people, the financiers and the media complex” who “had their own reasons for seeing Churchill as the representative of England in this war,” Cooper says. “You read stories about how Churchill went bankrupt and needed money – and was rescued by people who shared his interest in Zionism.”

Elon Musk backs down

Musk apparently only became aware of what he had shared after facing strong backlash. Numerous media outlets viewed his post as approval of the trivialization of Nazi terror, and US investor Mark Cuban responded to the post by calling on Musk to delete his account. “That was my mistake. I only heard part of the interview,” Musk said. The recommended post has since been deleted. In several subsequent comments, it became clear that he saw Hitler and not Churchill as the villain of World War II, even though Churchill's “horrific decisions” had resulted in many unnecessary deaths.

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At the same time, Musk used his apology to advertise features of “Trying to prevent a war – after attacking Poland and France. Interestingly, Musk did not address the statements about the Holocaust.

The fact that Musk recommended the show could have been for purely economic reasons: Since Carlson was fired from his home channel “Fox News”, he has been broadcasting his show on X, among other channels – and is thus contributing to Musk's strategy of establishing the short message service formerly known as Twitter as a counterpoint to the traditional media. Musk's posts could also simply have been advertising for one of his stars – without having looked into it any further. However, observers have noticed a clear increase in right-wing tendencies at X since the tech billionaire took over, and Musk himself has also shifted significantly to the right.

Not Cooper's first outburst

Musk could have noticed that Cooper has questionable opinions about Hitler even before his recommendation – the podcaster is a frequent X user. And he is always noticeable for putting the dictator in a positive light. After the attack on Donald Trump, Cooper tried a cryptic joke about the assassin – and implied that, contrary to popular perception, Hitler probably would not have ended up in hell.

The comparison with Churchill is also not new: “Franklin D. Roosevelt chose the wrong side in World War II,” Cooper claimed in a now-deleted Twitter post last year about the US president, who sided with Churchill against Hitler and his allies.

During the Paris Olympics, Cooper made it clear that this was no slip-up. “It may be harsh for some, but the left picture is infinitely better than the right in absolutely every way,” he wrote alongside a shot of the controversial drag performance at the opening ceremony. The right picture showed the drag show – the left picture showed Hitler's troops under the Eiffel Tower.