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Mike Dilger | 2 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 I listened to Tucker's interview with him. Nothing stood out as crazy.

The only thing that stood out to me was that the death camps were only because they hadn't prepared for war prisoners and then they euthanized them because they didn't have enough food. I'd say that's very incorrect.

One minor point is that Churchill did not specifically pick Dresden, a subordinate did.  So I wouldn't blame Churchill specifically.  But even Churchill called it terrorism:


"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities
    simply for the sake of increasing the TERROR, though under other pretexts, should be
    reviewed."

	- Winston Churchill via the National Archives UK
	[emphasis mine]

	https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20220202033902im_/https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/leaders-and-controversies/g1/images/g1cs3s3a.jpg
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cwilbzz | 2 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 Yeah, for me, the "facts" aside, it was more the reactionary name-calling and credentialism that I found so disappointing.
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Mike Dilger | 2 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 This is what I wrote (and didn't previously publish) about that:

IS DARRYL COOPER A HISTORIAN?

Michael Shermer ASSERTS that Darryl Cooper is a pseudo-historian

	"...with pseudo-historian Darryl Cooper...  even though I'm a PhD historian and I work and write regularly in the profession, I've never heard of Darryl Cooper."
	-Michael Shermer

This actually appears to be quite dishonest to me. Michael Shermer is a science historian. But the area of history where he disagrees with Darryl Cooper is that of World War II, which is not an area of history that Michael Shermer is an expert in.

But more fundamentally, Michael Shermer's apparent definition of a historian is tied up in... you guessed it, institutionalism.  Apparently Darryl Cooper can't be a real historian if he isn't known as such in institutional circles.

I vehemenetly disagree with this approach. A historian is any person who studies history. It does not require somebody to work within societal institutions. Darryl Cooper may or may not be wrong, but because he studied source material and came to a conclusion and wrote about it, and further because he also made that study a core part of his profession (as a podcaster about history), that makes him a bona fide historian, not a pseudo historian.

Darryl Cooper claims he has read 80 books, parts of another 100, and 1200-1300 academic papers and journals on the history of Israel prior to 1948. I can't tell if he is exaggerating, but that is enough to qualify anybody as a real historian. From this he output 26 hours of podcast. It has taken him many years to produce the few podcasts that he has produced. The Martyr Made podcasts are very deeply researched.

He has written no books, but books are simply not his medium.

I conclude that Darryl Cooper is a historian.
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cwilbzz | 2 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 Yeah I agree — the work alone and dedication to the subject matter puts him head and shoulders above “credentialed historians” for me mostly because he works so diligently around the motivations and empathy toward those outside the traditional narrative. 

Wrong or not — I’m here for it