Revisiting World War II

The Controversy over Churchill, Immigration and the End of the West

Tucker Carlson recently interviewed a well-known and now controversial history podcaster named Darryl Cooper, touching on a wide range of subjects. One particular topic centered around World War II and Cooper’s opinion that Winston Churchill, universally praised among traditional conservatives for saving Western Civilization from Nazi tyranny, actually ruined Europe. 

Darryl Cooper, who is currently developing a multi-part series on World War II for his “Martyr Made” podcast, stated—while admitting he was being “a little hyperbolic”—that he views Churchill as “the chief villain” of the Second World War. 

As Cooper explained, “Now, [Churchill] didn't kill the most people. He didn't commit the most atrocities. But I believe when you really get into it and tell the story right, and don't leave anything out, you see that he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.” 

Of course, heads exploded at this assertion. Media outlets across the political spectrum pounced on the opportunity to attack Cooper for his historical revisionism as well as Tucker Carlson for his “bigotry” and for “platforming” a “Nazi Apologist.”

First off, anyone who has listened to Cooper’s incredibly sympathetic and emotional podcast series on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which he describes the heartwrenching plight of Jews fleeing horrific persecution across Europe would understand that Cooper is no Nazi-sympathizer. Cooper also expanded upon his thoughts, which can be heard here. 

All that said, Churchill and the British government are certainly not beyond reproach for their decision-making leading up to World War II, or during World War I for that matter. Nor are the Allies absolved for propping up an equally horrific regime in Stalin’s Soviet Union, thereby subjugating all of Eastern Europe under a Communist iron curtain for decades.

The reality is, for better and for worse, we are still living with the repercussions of World War II. 

And to that point, lost in the Churchill controversy was Cooper and Tucker’s discussion about mass migration and the crime of native population replacement within Western European nations, precisely due to policies that can be traced back to that very post-war consensus. 

It was at this moment in history, in 1945, that “right-wing” politics and values, such as patriotism, nationalism, hierarchy, and tradition, were cast aside. The West then embarked on a new trajectory with the help of a philosopher named Karl Popper, whose monumental two-volume work, "The Open Society and Its Enemies," provided a blueprint for the future. 

Popper argued that humanity's tendency to live in "closed" societies—marked by hierarchy, authority, and collective values—contributed to the catastrophes of both World Wars and the Holocaust. He believed civilization faced a critical choice: remain in these closed societies or embrace an "open society" that prioritizes individual freedom over inherited obligations. To Popper, true social progress required the West to shed its traditional religious, cultural, and moral foundations. 

In essence, the West needed to deconstruct itself. 

On the economic front, Popper’s friend, economist Friedrich Hayek, sought to combat the return of fascism not through the critique of Western philosophy but through economics. According to Hayek in his book, “The Road to Serfdom,” the “free market” would be the bulwark against the collectivism that gave rise to totalitarianism. 

In Hayek’s mind, economic freedom was the foundation of an “open society” as the more the unplanned and uncontrolled market forces ruled over society, the safer the world would be from authoritarianism. 

Numerous academic elites in the West aligned with Popper and Hayek's viewpoints, believing that, to avoid another World War, the West's destiny hinged on embracing "openness" in cultural and economic realms.  

As such, this religious belief in “openness” made its way into the immigration policy of Western nations, where taking in vast amounts of immigrants, refugees, or “asylum seekers” now goes hand in hand with the left’s desire to promote multiculturalism—all at the expense of a nation's people and the destruction of their national host culture. 

In contrast, those who believe in the shared values of patriotism and national identity are demonized as racist or “far-right,” as evidenced by the unrest over immigration in the United Kingdom as well as in other once-great European nations such as Germany and France. Citizens are rightfully angry at their elected leadership for allowing their culture to erode while their nations are sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism. 

As Cooper accurately stated, “The post-war generation decided they had no responsibility to any of the people who came before them, or who are coming after them.” 

The post-war consensus fostered this tumultuous state of affairs, and the cultural erasure currently experienced across the West is part of its lasting legacy. That is why it is essential to analyze the period leading up to World War II, the decisions made during the war, and the policies that were set into motion afterward, as Daryll Cooper bravely does. 

To that end, if we are to save what is left of the West, many of the ideas that emerged from the post-war consensus deserve not just debate and analysis but significant pushback.