All of a sudden, everyone was coming for Darryl Cooper.
There were the newspaper columnists, the historians, the Jewish groups: “Repugnant,” said the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, in a statement. Even the Biden White House released a statement, calling him “a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda.”
So it was time for Mr. Cooper, one of the most popular podcasters in the country, to do what he does best: hit record.
In a special episode of his history program, “Martyr Made,” Mr. Cooper addressed the controversy, which had exploded out of his Sept. 2 appearance on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” the podcast started by the former Fox News host. At first, Mr. Cooper — a gifted historical storyteller but not a trained historian — defended the claims he had made on Mr. Carlson’s show: One, that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of the war, not, by implication, Adolf Hitler. And two, that millions had died in Nazi-controlled Eastern Europe because the Nazis had not adequately planned to feed them.
But then he pivoted. He admitted he had been “hyperbolic” about Mr. Churchill and said he had not meant to imply the Holocaust was the result of logistical problems. Then he read harrowing testimony from a survivor of the infamous 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar, at one point becoming so overwhelmed that he had to collect himself.
This emotional ventriloquism is a big part of Mr. Cooper’s approach and appeal.
On TikTok, a fan praised him as “one of the best historians of our time because he tries to go out of his way to understand the perspective of everyone involved in a situation.”
Or, as Joe Rogan put it when he had Mr. Cooper on his show in March: Mr. Cooper’s work inhabits extreme positions in an attempt to understand the psychology behind them. The critics, who Mr. Rogan suggested were “paranoid” Jews, were overreacting, missing the point.
