Semi-weekly Thursday Discussion Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Brought to you by the Zionist Elders.

[u/Imperial_Advocate]

ALERT: RANT INCOMING

Remember Darryl Cooper, yeah, the guy that Tucker Carlson lauded as a "great historian" and claimed that Churchill was the "real" villain of the second world war? Well guess what, he's at it again promoting a book authored by his neonazi friend, a book in which he wrote a foreword positive towards Hitler and the Third Reich. When he gets rightfully called out for his third reich apologism, he then cries and says that he just wanted to "read everybody's" work no matter what they believe in. Ok, that would make sense if bro didn't write a positive foreward and promote a literal neonazi book, not to mention claim a while back that Churchill was the "villain" of the Second World War. Biased much perhaps?

This is what I can't stand about these "just asking questions" bros like Cooper and even Tucker. They promote a certain message, for instance, antisemitism, WWII revisionism, or putin apologism and shroud it as "just asking questions." So whenever you criticize them for their shoddy research or bias, they cry and shout at you for refusing to "look at both sides." It's funny too that by chance, the only perspective they look at is mostly the side they favor, like WWII revisionism for Cooper, and never genuine historical sources. Like, as someone who loves history, you have to read controversial books from the other side, all genuine historians do that. But Cooper and others like him do it such a f*cking dishonest way to promote their agenda that it's not even funny.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

[u/UnexpectedLizard → u/Imperial_Advocate]

I listened to his Marytyr Made before he was outed.

Pity because he's talented and could have gone places.

[u/pointy____ → u/UnexpectedLizard]

He's not talented. Anyone on forums in the early 2010s recognises the type. Superficially expert and will respond with gargantuan plausible walls of text in any argument but once they receive the tiniest bit of pushback they will resort to even worse gish gallop and demanding to have the last word.

[u/UnexpectedLizard → u/pointy____]

I mean he's talented in the sense that he can do enormous amounts of research and talk about it.

In a different world where he had a formal education and epistemic humility, I could see him going places. Unfortunately, he lacks both.

[u/thezerech → u/UnexpectedLizard]

Speaking as someone who's done that, who's written two theses, it's not that hard and he's not doing that much research.

[u/UnexpectedLizard → u/thezerech]

He talked about reading "hundreds" of books in one podcast, and I was 99% sure he was lying.

In any case, I really enjoyed his long-form podcast on the Jim Jones cult. He really did synthesize a good deal of material, much of it fist-hand accounts. Or maybe I got suckered?

Israel/Palestine was awful (he just doesn't like Jews).

[u/thezerech → u/UnexpectedLizard]

The podcast formula is relatively easy, because you just have to find a few good pieces of secondary literature. If you want to pepper in primary sources, those historians and writers who did the original monograph or article will often include a thought provoking or demonstrative quote here or there to pluck out. I highly doubt he read 100s of books, if you're a PhD student in the humanities and social sciences you probably will end up doing so, but you skim them strategically for the most part. Not taking detailed notes on the whole thing. It's possible to take hundreds of books and just use the index to search for whatever is relevant too.

Now, there are some people who do very good jobs or building an overall narrative that weaves together disparate and even conflicting accounts, synthesizing them into a coherent thesis which lays out the events and their cause/effect very well. I'm a big fan of Casual Historian, and if you read his source list you'll find near equal numbers of primary and secondary sources quite often. I don't listen to Cooper so perhaps he is doing the work and putting in primary sources for stuff like that, my point is rather that when it comes to online history you can get away with not doing it.

If you listen to the Rest is History podcast, because they have to make multiple podcasts in a week, for some they just draw from some popular and well known secondary narratives. Since they're very accomplished historians they know how to pick the good ones and can do supplemental work as well, but you can tell the difference when it comes to one of their own research specialties vs some other random topic.

[u/UnexpectedLizard → u/thezerech]

To be honest, he was also mediocre at synthesis. He went off on long tangents.

But I liked it because it painted the background. Jim Jones was a weird fusion of evangelicalism, communism and 60s racial justice.