0:00 The big tech companies censor our content. I hate to tell you that it's still going on in 2024, but you know what? They can't censor live events. That's why we are hitting the road on a fall tour for the entire month of September. Coast to coast will be in cities across the United States. We'll be in Phenix with Russell Brand Anaheim California with Jake Ramaswamy, Colorado Springs with Tulsi Gabbard, Salt Lake City with Glenn Beck, Tulsa, Oklahoma, with Dan Bongino, Kansas City with Megan Kelly, Wichita with Charlie Kirk, Milwaukee, with Larry Elder Rosenberg, Texas, with Jesse Kelly, Grand Rapids, with kid Rock, Hershey, Pennsylvania, with JD Vance. Redding, Pennsylvania, with Alex Jones. Fort Worth, Texas, with Roseanne Barr, Greenville, South
0:45 Carolina, with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sunrise, Florida, with John Rich. Jacksonville, Florida, with Donald Trump Junior. You can get tickets at TuckerCarlson.com. Hope to see you there. So sometimes I think to myself, you know, why are current events so unclear to so many people? And I always go back to the question of history. You can't really understand what's
1:31 happening right now unless you understand what has happened before. You certainly can't plan a coherent future unless you understand that, I think, well, why do people know so much, so little about history? Partly because it's not taught. And then the extent that it is taught in, say, airport bookstores. You know, our popular historians are people like Jon Meacham and Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin and Anne Applebaum. You know, not only sort of the dumbest people in the country would say, I know most of them. But also completely dishonest political actors. And so I think I just want to I can tell you here compliments, but I just want to say I think you are the most important popular historian working in the United States today. You work in a different medium on Substack X podcasts. But I'm a fan of yours because
2:17 of the way you treat history, which is with relentless curiosity and honesty. And I'm sure you have all kinds of political beliefs, religious beliefs, or whatever, but I feel like you get to what you think is true based on really intense research. So I just for those people who aren't familiar with who you are. I want people to know who you are. And I want you to be, widely recognized as the most important historian in the United States, because I think that you are. So that's my last compliment for our time together. I know it was excruciating. Tell us some of, the stories we call them. Stories, but historical events that you have taken a really close look at recently. So I decided to start with an easy one. I did a 26 hour. Series on the early history of
3:02 Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether that was. Naivete or hubris, it turned. Out pretty well. Yes. You know, and the reason it turned out. Well, I think, and I've had time to really. Think about it over the years. I started it in 2015. Took me a few years to complete. But I've received. Hundreds of emails from Israelis, from. Jews around the world who are, you know, boosters of Israel, as well as. Palestinians and people around the Middle East and people who were. Critical of Israel, who all of them on. All sides have kind of told me that it opened up. At least opened up their perspective to the way the other side saw the world, which is what I was. Going for, you know. In all of my series, something that
3:48 I didn't. Really I think that the series that you did on the formation of Israel, I think, is regarded by honest people as the most honest, most nonaligned look. No axis were being ground maybe ever done. Can you just tell people who aren't familiar with it? What did it take to produce that you said took a few years, but what did you do in preparation for it? Well, you know, it's funny actually, because. When I first started it, I didn't really know. What went into making a podcast like that, right? So I had this experience where. I started working on it after I had read maybe like six books, because I only the series only goes up to 1948. I did some follow up work on the more modern period, but. This is up to. The foundation of the State of Israel in the lead up to that. Right. That's the I only covered that part. And so I didn't know if this was
4:34 going to be a one episode thing, a two episode thing. I start working on it after I've read about six. Books on that pre 1948. Period. And I'm working on it for maybe, you know, quite a while taking my time because I was working. For the Department of Defense at the time. So it was, you know, a side gig and wasn't even a gig. I didn't make any money from it. But. And after a while, when I started to. Approach the end of that episode, this is months and months and months later. By now I've read 20 books, 30. Books about that pre 1948 period and a lot of the tangential topics and issues that that, help. Better help. You better understand it. And I went back and I started going. Over what I'd created for that first episode, and it was so embarrassingly. Terrible where
5:20 you look at it and you're like, this is not even that phrase, not even wrong. It's like, this is not even. It was a nightmare to read and you realize, and I realized something at that point I was like, I've read, I started this. I'd read six books on this topic. Six books is a lot, you know, on a single historical topic. There's countless topics that I've read a book or two on. And if you give me like an energy drink and let me go, I'll start pontificating for hours about it, you know? Oh, I know the feeling. I read a book on the Federal Reserve once. And so eventually I got to the point. I counted them all up one time. People keep asking me to put. Together a list. I can't put together a complete one because. I just didn't keep. Is going to track as I should, but I read over 80. Whole books. Parts of another.
6:06 100 at least. And. About when I counted them up, I, I could remember about like 12, 1300 academic papers in journal. I read everything I could find. So only people in prison read 80 books. Yeah, well, or people who work for the Department of. Defense and their, job entails spending 8 to 10 months a year going overseas by yourself, often with nothing to do in a country that nobody speaks your language. So. You know, I would I would go over to, work with one of our foreign. Allies, usually on, the weapons systems that I specialized in. We'd go over there and we'd work during the day. Most of the Ministry of Defense people. It doesn't matter what country you go to, you can go to Israel. You can go to,
6:52 Norway, you can go to Japan. Korea. All they want to talk about is American gun culture. It's everybody know it is. And it's at an interest of yours. Is that are you knowledgeable on that topic? I wouldn't say I'm necessarily like technically knowledgeable, like my gun nut friends are. But yeah, in terms of, you know, I'm a hunter and, gun owner, educated gun owner, you know, but I. Have friends who are real gun nuts that. That were totally fair, right? It's all specs. And I say that with all affection when, you know, it's. And so, you know, I would go overseas and spend my day, work day working with them, training them, helping them with, you know, whatever was broken or needed, upgrading whatever we were doing over there. And sometimes I would, like I said, 8 to 10 months a year overseas.
7:37 I would be doing this by myself most of the time. And so after the workday was done, it's just me in my hotel with nothing really to do. And, you know, I grew up when I was growing up. I counted these. Up one time and it was. Between kindergarten and 12th grade. I went to like. 35 different schools, like I was changing school sometimes. Every few months. Not a good sign. Sorry. Yeah, well, you know, one of the good habits I picked up from it was reading because it, you know, books were what gave me a sense of. Continuity from environment to environment to environment. Right? I'm in the middle of a book and I moved to another school, and I have to adjust to that. But I'm still reading this. Book and it sort of patches me over. And that became sort of. The background reality of my life. As you know, I sort of moved
8:24 around in this unpredictable. Way, like for most of my early years, I still have this, this thread that was coherent that I was following, you know, consistently. And so it definitely helped with a sense of stability like that. And this implanted this idea that, you know, like I take refuge in books. Yeah. It's it, you know, they, they if I'm anxious, a lot of people if they're anxious, they can't sit down and read a book because they can't sit still. Books make they make my anxiety go away. It's what they do for me. And so, you know, I'm just a nerd, is what I'm saying. Basically, write a nerd. And, I had a lot of time to read books. And once I started really getting obsessed with the podcast, you know, it got to the point where I was waking up three hours early so that I could read and write and
9:11 work on the podcast. If I was in a meeting and we were waiting for the next speaker to come in, I was working on the podcast launch. I was working on the podcast evening, I was working on the podcast. And I mean became like a real obsession, partly, partly because, I mean, left to my own devices, I would read books and talk to people about them. That's, you know, if I had $1 trillion and nothing to do with myself, I would want a whole library and a bunch of interesting people that talk to you about these books. That's what I do anyway. Right? And so it was never really work. But yeah, that's the way you do it. You know, people who want to do. So a lot of people I know who started doing history podcasts or other maybe not history, but,
9:57 not sort of conversational, just, back and forth discussion podcasts where they do research and they want to make a presentation. Right. And a lot of these guys who started. Back when I started, you know, 2015, 2016. And, you know, my success up to this point, it's been kind of unique in the space. Now everybody wants to. Listen to a seven hour podcast on Jim Jones. And by the way, that's. Only the fifth out of. Seven episodes on the topic. Right? So that's not for everybody. And, you know, they they ask me sometimes like, how do I how could I do this as well as you do it? And other people who are like aspiring. Podcasters have asked me that. And like you said, I don't like compliments. And so I get shy when people ask me things like that. But I tell them, and you're going to object to this because you're a nice fellow.
10:43 And everything, but like. I'm not that smart. I'm not. That's it's nothing like that. I work on this. You have to like if you want to do something like this, you have to be willing to get up a little early to use your lunch hour to. You got to spend time in books. You got to read and read. And then when you think you've read enough, you got to read some more. And because there's just there's so much out there, like I said, I had experience after I had read six books on just the pre 1948 period of, you know, the Zionist Israeli-Palestinian conflict story. And I knew nothing, Tucker. I knew nothing like embarrassingly, nothing worse than nothing because like, at least before I read, was the. Illusion of knowledge. Yeah. At least before I had read the books, I would just be repeating to you whatever I had
11:28 heard, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu say, or somebody or whatever, somebody like on TV, I at least would have just been repeating that this was worse. This was like the full Midwest kind of in, you know, in production where where you know, enough to really embarrass yourself. And I'm glad that I sort of recognized that at the time. And I went back and, like, scrapped the whole thing, didn't start it for another year after that, probably because I just realized that, you know, I got to get deeper into this. And as I have moved through, different topics over the years, because I don't do an Israel Palestine podcast, I do a history podcast and I choose topics based on. What I want to read about. You know, that's all it is.
12:13 Like, usually while I'm working on one, something as I'm sort of getting into the second half, finishing it up, I can see the finish line on the thing I'm working on now. It'll get harder and harder to discipline myself to stay on that topic, because there's something that's pulling me away, too. I know the feeling. Yeah. And so it's like a feeling of relief where like, I finish it and now I can I already know the next topic because it just emerged kind of naturally. And I move on to that. And sometimes they're very, very different. I've done, like I said, a, you know, 32 hour series on the Jonestown cult, which turned into you say, how do you do 32 hours on that? I told the the story of, you know, the 32 hours. Yeah. Well, the reason for that and I didn't know this going in. I never know exactly how this is going to unfold when I'm going in,
12:59 unless it's like sometimes I'll do a single. Episode and I kind of know the story. But when I start a long series, it's going to take me a year and a half to put out every episode. I don't necessarily know how it's going to turn out. And, you know, when you look at something like the Jonestown cult and for people who don't know, in 1978, everybody's heard the phrase, don't drink the Kool-Aid. Right? And that's what people know about Jonestown, basically, is that Christianity sometimes goes off the rails. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. Thousand people, you know, 916 people committed mass suicide in the jungles of Guyana, right at the direction of this of this preacher, Jim Jones. That's the most people know about it. When you open any book about it, even mainstream books about it, which, you know, again, most people don't get to that point.
13:45 This won't be in any of the documentaries. For the most part, that you see. We open to like page 1 or 2 of any book about it. And the first thing you see is that 75% of the people that died out there were African Americans. Yeah. Black women from Oakland. From Oakland. But if they were over 40 or 50 years old, there weren't really any black people in Oakland until the Second World War. So these were migrants who had come from the South as part of the Great Migration. Right. And you'd think like, if 75% of the people that died out there were Mexican immigrants, first generation Mexican, that that that wouldn't be a part of the story. That would be like this story, like what is going on here, right? Not just how did this religious cult get out of control? And like, like you really need to
14:30 understand that I never knew that. I always knew about Jonestown on the surface level, but I saw that I'm like, I have to understand this better. And so, you know, it drew me like deep into the history of African American, life in America, post post-slavery and really, really deep into the. Great. Migration and the forces that drove it and the experiences that African Americans encountered when they got to the cities of the North and West when they left the rural South. And you know, when I get emotional, when I think about the Jonestown story, I worked on that for a long time. I read literally every single book or thing that's been written about it, and there's a. Lot of docu, I think it was. UCSB had an interview here. I mean, there's just a lot out
15:15 there. That not only that, the FBI sees 1000 hours of tapes from Jonestown after the suicide, and they're all available online. I've listened to all of it, and most of it twice, like for months. I had this guy's sermons in my head. I had there like backroom midnight meetings where they're all going through struggle sessions, screaming at each other, beating each other up. All of their recordings of these late night torchlight sessions that they would have, out in Guyana in the jungle. You know, if you watch most documentaries about Jonestown, it's all about the craziness of the last year, which is when they were all actually in Jonestown in Guyana. These people have been together for 20 years. You know, he started his first church in the 1950s. And this is a guy. Jim Jones, who,
16:02 you know, in 1953, in Indianapolis, which was a KKK stronghold at the time, you know, because the of the. Second KKK was not really a. Southern anti-black movement, it was more of a midwest and northern urban, anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish. And so, Indianapolis was one of the strongholds. And he lived. That's where he lived at the time. He's like a 23 year old guy. He was born 39, maybe 24 years old, starting his first little Methodist church in this storefront with folding chairs, you know, and he and his congregation are going out and boycotting stores in 1950, three years before anybody heard of a bus boycott or anything like that, you know, with Martin Luther King, he's going out there and doing that, getting death threats from KKK leaders, getting death threats from
16:48 the American Nazi Party, trying to integrate these businesses. Right. And so this is a true believer, like when it comes, is he his family? He adopted, the first African. He was the first white family to adopt an African American child in the history of the state of Indiana. And this was back in the 50s. And he was, you know, if Jim Jones had been hit by a bus in 1962, they moved out to, they moved out. To the Bay area in 1965. He would be remembered today as one of the early. Pioneers of the American civil rights. Movement. And like, revered for it, he really would be right. And so I started to read about this stuff, and I and I realized that there was this theme that was starting to emerge. In all of my podcast, for the most part. The Israel Palestine one, in this
17:33 one, which is here's this guy who really is an idealist. And I'm not saying he didn't have pathologies, you know, that were already inherent in there, although I'm very suspicious of accounts when, you know, whenever I'm reading a book about in all of the Jones, Jim Jones. Biographies are like this, and you have to learn how to. Like, read past it. But you're reading a book about Stalin, and the author went and found and interviewed somebody who was in sixth grade with him or something, and they're like, you know, he got tripped on the playground one time and stood up and said, I'll get revenge on all of you one day. And that's when I knew. I'm I just I'm very suspicious of all those stories, you know? And so you have this guy who's a true idealist, and he could be, you know, whether or not his, his, his politics were correct
18:20 or whether his, you know, was misguided. That's a separate question. He was an idealist. Like, you really believe these things. He really did treat people in a way that in 1953, in America was uncommon, you know, and. And so you have this idealist, just like with the, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning, you read all the early accounts of the early Zionists, and it's all about it's just it's soaring rhetoric about returning to the Holy Land, and it's people who have really grand, idealistic visions of what it's going to be like when they get down there. And then people run into the rocks of reality. And how we respond to that? Pressure, you know, really defines the,
19:07 the destiny of a movement and the people in it. And there are always there are always going to be people and sometimes entire movements, that the. Pressure ends. Up, you know, turning them off the road a completely, you know, going into a ravine. That's kind of what happens. So if you look at, like, the Jonestown story, the reason it turned into a 32 hour series. Is. Like I said, they started in the 1950s doing stuff that you would recognize as just early civil rights stuff. You know, boycotting a local business to get them to integrate. Right around the time a few years before. But like the Martin Luther King was going to start that kind of thing. And then so you have Greensboro, you have these things and their trajectory as an organization, the People's Temple. I realized, I mean, they that that trajectory
19:54 from about 53 to 1978, when everything came to an end, that 25 year trajectory follows almost to the month. I mean, it is uncanny, like how perfectly it follows. It makes perfect sense because of how plugged into it they were. It follows the trajectory of the civil rights and protest movement in America through its rise. Its peak, its radicalization, and then its decline in the late 60s and then into the 70s, into insanity and death. I mean, and it is. I mean, it's almost a. You can tell the story of Jonestown and give a month by month account of that process of those protest movements being radicalized and. Turning to violence and insanity in the 60s and. 70s.
20:40 And so it became a vehicle for that. And that's what that's what really the story is about. It's about that period of American history from the mid 50s up until about 1980. So how'd you like to cut your cell phone bill in half? Every single month is probably pretty high. Have you checked out recently? Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile want you to believe that you have to have something called unlimited data, and maybe you're in the small percentage that do need unlimited data, whatever that is. But for most people, you do not need unlimited data, and you certainly shouldn't be forced to pay for it. That's for pure talk comes in pure talk only charges you for the data that you want. How about that? If you walked into an ice cream parlor and they said you can only buy 11 cones, and you said, I just want one, you probably wouldn't go back, would you? No. You go to the place.
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22:13 and you will save an additional 50% off your first month. That's pure talk. One word.com/tucker. Switch your cell phone service to a company you can be proud of. Do business with. Only buy what you need. The number of true, well known Democratic politicians who were patrons of the People's Temple is quite amazing. Willie Brown was one of them. Oh yeah. But I mean, every mayor of San Francisco. I have specific contempt for all of those people. Just because. You know, it wasn't just that when Jim Jones was a power broker in San. Francisco, that they would go give a speech at the church because they're trying to bring out votes or. Something. You know, you had Angela Davis, you had Huey Newton, you had a lot of
22:59 these other people who when these people were in Jonestown. And I mean, you got to remember a lot of the first of all 300 of those thousand or so. People were kids. Another 300 to 400 were people. Over, like, 60 years old. Okay. So you I mean, that's who's out there. Two, third, fully two thirds of the people who committed suicide out there were kids or. Senior citizens, right? And as they're approaching this point of just maximum paranoia, maximum group psychosis down there, you know, when you listen to the recordings that they've that they left for us and they're just getting increasingly deranged, they're certain that the CIA is going to come and kidnap their children and put them through brainwashing. This is not just Jim Jones in his charisma telling these people this,
23:45 this, these people understood themselves as a revolutionary movement. And they were true believers like they were true believers. These people, a lot of people like to say that at the end, it was basically murder. These people were forced to do this. These people were, at least for the vast majority of them, were not forced to do it. They believed in what they were doing, and they they. Jim Jones by that point was almost like a figurehead of the movement, to be honest with you. He was just sort of the titular leader. But, the movement, the organization was running itself, and you had a bunch of true believers who were out there trying to start a revolution and start a new society in the jungle. And in the last few months when they're approaching just maximum. Psychosis and paranoia. You've got, like Angela Davis,
24:31 Huey Newton, Harvey Milk, like a lot of these. I think you might, you know, you got killed shortly after, who are literally calling in to Jonestown and being put on the speaker for everybody to listen, saying, we know that, like, you know, the government is after you. And we just want you to know that we have your back and, you know, there's just the whole world is coming after you, but we're there for you. We're on your side. This is a bunch of people who are, like, approaching a crisis. Point of paranoia and psychosis is going to lead to their mass death within a few months. And that's what these people. Are doing, calling in, just. Feeding into it. And, you know, it makes me sick because you have people. And I know this wasn't maybe supposed to be just a Jonestown thing, but this topic, again, like it's it affected me a lot. Right. Like there's this one woman,
25:16 she was the lead singer of the Jonestown band. And the night before they all committed suicide. Leo Ryan, the congressman was there and his entourage was there, and they put on a performance and there's a video. Jackie Speer became a member of Congress yourself. Yep. And there's a video of, that night, you know, it was, in the in they show a musical performance. And this woman, who's the lead singer and band conductor is up there, and she's this, you know, this African American woman, beautiful, great voice up there. Like, really, like. Confidently commanding the stage and like. In really in her element. Right. Well, her back story was back in Indianapolis, Jim Jones, when his family had lived there. Knew her when she was a little girl.
26:02 Just a little bit of her mom came to the church some. Something like that. And after Jim Jones and his people left. You know, she got abandoned by her mother. She ended up. But being pimped out by her drug dealer boyfriend when she was 1516 years old, and she's living her life on the streets, being beat up by this guy who's forcing her to go out and, in. Prostitute for him, you know. And that's her life. And now she's about 20. She committed suicide 3 or 4 times at this point. And now she's 20. And the Jonestown people make a trip back to. Indianapolis because they would go around the country and their busses and, you know, speak at churches and hold events and. Stuff. And so they go back there.
26:48 And she just kind of knew who the Jones family was, she said. They treated her with kindness and her mother with kindness when she was a little girl. And she's in a in the depth of suicidal depression, drug addiction, you know, it's the close to the end right? And. Man, even in the podcast when I was recording, it makes me emotional because they got out there. She, she went there to the event when the, when the Jonestown people came in because she just remembered that like, these people had been kind to her 15 years ago. You know, when she was a little girl. And so she came out to see and Jim Jones sees her and immediately recognizes her and starts talking to her, just, you know, friendly everything. The people start talking to her and she starts telling them kind of
27:34 about how her life's gone since that time. And he said, oh, well, great, like you said, not great. But he said, oh, well, come with us. Hop on the bus. Let's go. Like we've got houses. We got a whole community out here like, you know, you know, we can find a job for you until you do something. Whatever. Yeah, come on out. And so she did. She did. And she went out there and they cleaned her up. They got her off drugs. They took this broken, destroyed, abused woman. And put her in an environment where it. And again, you have to understand that even this, this psychotic movement, you know, the way it turned out, this part was genuine. They put her into an environment where, she felt like she belonged, and it really was. The people cared about her, and she cared about the people there, you
28:20 know? And so she ends up being the bandleader. She's like a super talented magician, musician. And she's writing the song. She's leading the the practices for the band. She's a lead singer in everything. And. You know, and she died out there with all the rest of them. You know, with all the rest of those old people and kids. And everybody. Else. She, she committed suicide with everybody else the night after. You see that video? That's amazing that you watch that video. I mean, I don't think I'd want to see something like that. I had to. Yeah, well, of course, you know, I had to. I have a rule. And I've broken this rule once, and and it's a probably an episode. I'm just, like, least proud of. Maybe. Although it's a lot of. People's favorite episode.
29:08 Like, I have a rule that I don't start a podcast until I feel like I can at least understand where everybody in. This story is coming from. I didn't start the Israel Palestine Podcast until I felt like I could see how the Zionists saw things, how the Arabs saw things, how the British saw things, and how their behavior toward each other made sense. To them in the context of of. Their own world. And I did the same thing with Jonestown, which was a challenge because, I mean. Talking about, you know, a psychotic cult leader who. Yes. Who dragged his people to their deaths, you know, in the jungle there meaningless deaths. There were literally people, Tucker. Who? Many hundreds of people, parents who were injecting cyanide into their babies mouths,
29:53 and watching them froth and twitch until they were sure they were dead. And then they could take the suicide, drink themselves. Because. They had done that. This is almost 1000 people. It was one woman who, was in the Capitol. She wasn't. She was at their office in the Capitol. She wasn't out at the, at the actual compound. And when she got the call, like, it's time we're doing it. She slashed her kids throats and then stabbed herself in the heart. I mean, this is. And yet. These people loved each other. These people actually did believe, like in equality. They believed in like human brotherhood and all these things. And she slashed her kids throats. And you, if you're going to tell a story like that, you can't do what all of the biographies
30:40 of Jim Jones do. You know, they all talk about, like, these weird things about him as a kid and something where it was all there at the beginning, and it was just the the gradual, you know, the gradual flowering. And unfolding of this psychosis that had always been in there. And all these other people just got sucked into it. It's just this total nonsense. You really have to understand how people could get to a place like that from where they were. You know, everybody doesn't matter who you're talking about. Uday Hussein. There was a time. And I always try to keep this in mind because. I mean, it's like it's one of the governing thoughts as I go through any of these stories. Uday Hussein, Joseph Stalin I don't care who you're talking about. There was a time where that was a little three year old kid. That's right.
31:25 And they weren't evil. They weren't, who they became. And so how did they become what they ended up being? You know. So I think you're approaching this, which is why I am so impressed by what you do and want more people to experience it. You're approaching this from the most honest possible perspective and allowing readers, viewers, listeners to come to their conclusions with them with the maximum amount of information. Which you're not doing is using history as a weapon, a cudgel, or as a kind of propaganda tool to make policy. So in that, you almost stand alone. I would say right now,
32:12 I'm really interested in the project that you're working on now. I'm a little bit baffled by it, so I'm just going to answer my own questions that you are working on, World War two, which has to be even more than the Kennedy assassination, the most written about event in human history. I can't think of one that has occasion more book. So, why World War two? Well, you know, I was giving a talk to. A in on, a graduate history class at the University of Vienna a while back online, giving him a talk. And. One of the things. That I said to them, and I was curious how this was going to go over in Austria. But it seemed to go overall. Right. And as I told them over the next few decades, like, look.
32:58 Any time you have a historical event for us in. The United States, it's a civil rights movement. It's World War two. And to a certain degree, it's still the Civil War. Everything in between and before those things. You can do whatever you want. Doesn't matter. You think that the Russians were to blame for World War One and not the Germans? You think it was all British conspiracy? You can do whatever you want. It's fine, because that's not part of the founding mythology of the order that we're. All living in at this time, right? Those other things are. And whenever you have a historical event that is mythologized. And when I say that, I don't mean myth. Like it's a myth, that's a lie. It's not what I mean. I mean that. It's it's a formative part of how we all. Understand the world we're in, or at least officially like the official world like.
33:43 The structures we live. Structures we live in. It's the justification. For a lot of those structures, right? Whenever you have those things, you're going to have taboos. You're going to have certain ways that certain topics have to be talked about that are going. To guarantee that that that that topic is just profoundly misunderstood. And I told the students. At the University of Vienna, I said, over the next couple decades. Like, we're going to get to a point where the interwar period. And the Second World War are far enough away that people can actually start taking a more honest look at everything that went on. And it is going to be the most fruitful place that any aspiring historian can. Dive into, because we spent the last 70 years, I mean, in Europe's case, like literally throwing people in
34:29 jail for looking. Into the wrong corners, right? So there's so and even even. Particularly in Austria. Right, right. And so even in the united was invaded country. So I'm not exactly sure why it's so important. Yeah. Well I mean that's a big topic, but I mean, even the United States where, where, where you're not. Going to go to jail necessarily for, for doing that, you might have your life ruined and lose your job. You might absolutely go to jail in this country nowadays. You might. Yeah. But, you know, if you could write a book, you could take any. Angle on any one. You're not going to ever get a job or have a publisher want to publish anything, but. You could do it. You can go out on. The street corner and stand on a box and say whatever it is you think. But even even still. You know, that event is really it's it's it's it's such a core part
35:16 of. The state religion that there are emotional triggers built in to people since childhood that almost prevent them. From, from taking an. Approach that would, that would that might lead. Them. To information or to conclusions. That are not part of the state religion version of that event, you know? And and again, you're going to find that I'm sure the Peloponnesian Wars were like that for the ancient Greeks. Well, by the way, the American Revolution, which is now totally irrelevant, to modern America unfortunately was like that. The life of Lincoln was like that. Lincoln was a very complicated guy. It's not an endorsement of slavery. Well, speaking for myself, I think slavery is disgusting. It's the worst thing. If what you're saying is absolutely right, it's not just the Second World War that is sort of uniquely
36:03 censored or, protected the mythology around it. It's it's every event that's central to a nation's understanding of itself. And then that changes over time. So do you think that we are far enough away 80 years from that war, where you can try to take as an objective look as you can, and that will be allowed? No, I don't I think we've got a little, little ways to go on that. But. I hope I can kind of start to break the ice a little bit, you know, because. Like. Here's the problem with doing something like that, and this is something I'm very aware of, is I research it and start to work on the project, is that when. You have a mythologized. Historical event that is told, there is I mean, again, you go to
36:49 a lot of places in Europe. It's a legal, requirement over here. It's not quite that, but it almost might as well be, where that. This event is going to be described from a certain perspective. You're going to approach it a certain way, you're there, there's certain things you're not allowed to question. You have to like. Literally, it's a crime to ask questions. Yes. Then whenever that's the case, when you try to add. Any type of balance to that account, when you try to tell the story in a way that brings other approaches and other perspectives into it, it's going to look like you're trying to justify those other things. That's just how. It's going to seem to people who are very locked into this side. And so if you start talking about the interwar period and how Weimar, the Weimar culture, you know, after the First World War led
37:34 to something like, the rise of the National Socialists and why the people who embraced that movement did embrace it. In a way that's not. Just, you know, was because they were, you know, you had this country, Germany, a sophisticated. Cultural, you know, super. Power. That was fine. And then they all turned into demons for a few years, and now they're fine again. Like, that's sort of the official story. And I think deep down, we all know that makes no sense. Everything has a cause, you know, again, to go back like Uday Hussein got to be Uday Hussein from that three year old little kid. Jim Jones got to be Jim Jones from being that guy who was just in earnest. Local. Indianapolis civil rights activist. They all got to be those people that led to the chaos
38:19 that they eventually invited into the world and onto themselves and their. People through their experiences in the world and through a series of decisions, decision points that at the time. If you can. If you can bring yourself to step into the shoes of those people. And it's not a comfortable thing to do. I mean, when I, I literally listened to probably 2000. Hours of Jim Jones's sermons and him screaming at his people and just going insane. To the point where I was dreaming about this guy for months. I would have my headphones in as I was working listening to Jim Jones. It's really hard. Yeah, I know. You the only guy in the office doing that. I think I'm probably the only person in the world that's done that. And so, like, I got to the point where I felt like I knew this guy.
39:05 I, I could notice from tape to tape, I would hear. Changes in his tone of voice. And I knew. Whether he was. High on amphetamines that day or if he had taken his barbiturates already. And now he's. You could just. I felt like I knew this guy. And their tapes, by the way, they're not all from, like, one year. They're from like 15, 20 years. Right. So you can you can watch this process of, of, of a descent into madness as it's happening and. You know, to get to a point where you can bring yourself to step into the shoes of. Any other human being and understand that as much as. You know, as much as it makes. You uncomfortable, it is just a human being. And at the very, very like base level, their motivations are the same as yours. Their needs are the
39:51 same as yours. But that we're very we're multivariate species that can go. A lot of different directions. Right. And, and to be able to do that and force yourself to. Do it is the key. And so when you do something. Like that with. I mean, again, like a historical event like World War two, where. I mean, the. One rule is that you. Shall not do that. You shall not look at. This topic and try to understand how the Germans saw the world. Like how? The whole thing from the First World War on up to the very end of the war. How these people might have genuinely felt like they were the ones under attack. That they were the ones being victimized. By their neighbors and by all these. By the Allied powers.
40:37 You know, and you can you can handle that. With a sentence, you know, you can wave it off and say, well, you know, they're justifying themselves, their rationalizing, their evil or whatever you want to say. But again, that's it. I think we're getting to the point where. That's very unsatisfying for. People. Most of us. Well, actually, all of us go through our daily lives using all sorts of quote free technology without paying attention to why it's, quote free. Who's paying for this and how? Think about it for a minute. Think about your free email account, the free messenger system you used to chat with your friends, the free weather, weather app or game app you open up and never think about it. It's all free, buddy. Is it? No, it's not free. These companies are developing expensive products and just giving
41:23 him to you because they love you. They're doing it because their programs take all your information. They hoover up your data, private personal data, and sell it to data brokers and the government and all of those people who are not your friends are very interested in manipulating you and your personal, political and financial decisions. It's scary as hell. And it's happening out in the open without anybody saying anything about it. This is a huge problem, and we've been talking about this problem to our friend Erik Prince for years. Someone needs to fix this. And he and his partners have. And now we're partners with them. And their company is called unplugged. It's not a software company, it's a hardware company. They actually make a phone. The phone is called unplugged.
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42:55 that shuts off the power. It actually disconnects your battery and ensures that your microphone and your camera are turned off completely when you want them to be, so they're not spying on you and say your bedroom, which your iPhone is. That's a fact. So it is a great way, one of the few ways to actually protect yourself from big tech and big government to reclaim your personal privacy. Without privacy. There is no freedom. The unplug phone. You can get a $25 discount when you use the code Tucker at the checkout, so go to unplugged.com/tucker to get yours today. Highly recommend it. It's. More than unsatisfying. I mean, it's childish and shallow. Of course. Hold on. Let me. Sorry to interrupt, but that's true. But every society
43:41 has founding myth 100%. And. And you need them. You know, like, I don't think that we're necessarily. Better off now that people are. Now that people are able to just freely tear down a statue of George Washington because he was a slave owner. Right. And so, like, there are sacred symbols. And national myths. That any group of. People are going to need to hold themselves together. And there's also peril in knowing the truth about things. I mean, if when we finally find out how President Kennedy was murdered in 1962, when we finally find out what all these weird lights in the sky or at night, we really get to the truth of that. Will we be better off or not? I mean, don't you know those are fair questions? I don't know the answer. But but let me just say what
44:26 I completely agree with you in particular. Any unifying myth you know is important. I'm just highly distressed by the uses to which the myths about World War Two have been put in the context of modern foreign policy, particularly the war in Ukraine. And, but but not just the war in Ukraine. So many others. You know, Churchill's the good guy. Neville Chamberlain is the bad guy. You know, it's just it's two Pat. It's obviously wipe it all. But it also was justified, like the killing of millions of people since the end of the Second World War. And so I do think it's fair to ask, like what what really was going on. So one for example. And I'm American. I'm not English. So I don't have any
45:13 weird motive in asking this, but how would you assess Winston Churchill? I got in trouble with my podcast partner, Jocko Willink one time because he's a New England Dutchman who's his family. It's near and dear to their Dutch, but. Very near and dear to their heart that Winston Churchill is a hero. Well, everyone, everyone thinks that. He really. Thinks. That. And I told him that. I think, and maybe I'm being a little a little hyperbolic. Maybe. But I told him maybe. Trying to provoke him a little bit, that I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War. Now, he didn't kill the most people. He didn't. Commit the most atrocities. But I believe and I don't really think, I think when you really get into it and tell the story. Right. And don't leave anything out.
45:59 You see that he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland. Or just, I mean it every step of the way, like people are very often, I find, surprised to learn there's there's a. Two step process. But why don't you make the case make the case for that. Okay. So you've made your statement. A lot of people are thinking, well, wait a second. You said Churchill, my childhood hero, the guy with the cigar. Yeah. Well, in the next thought. That comes into their head, he's saying, is that. Oh, you're saying Churchill was the chief villain, therefore his enemies, you know, Adolf Hitler and so forth, were. Stalin. Protagonists right? They're the good guys. If you think he's a villain, that's not the case. That's not what I'm saying. You know. Germany. Look, they they put themselves into a. Into a position in Adolf.
46:45 Hitler's chiefly responsible for this. But it's all regime is responsible for it, that when they went into the East. In 1941. They launched a war where. They were completely unprepared. To deal with the. Millions and millions of. Prisoners of war, of local political prisoners and so forth that they were going to have to handle. They went in with no plan for that. And they just threw these. People into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there. You know, you have, you have like, letters. As early as July, August 1941. From commandants of these makeshift camps that they're setting up for these millions of people who were surrendering or people that are rounding up and. They're. So it's two months after a month or two after
47:30 Barbarossa was launched, and they're writing. Back to the high command in Berlin, saying. We can't feed these people, we don't have the food to. Feed these people. And one of them actually says. Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn't it be more. Humane to just finish them off quickly now? And so this is like. Two months into the invasion, right? And like my view on this, you know, I argue with my Zionist. Interlocutors about this all the time with regard to the current war in Gaza. But man like maybe you as the, you know, the Germans, you felt like. You had to invade to the east. Maybe you thought that Stalin was such a threat. Or that if he launched a. Surprise attack and seize. The oil fields in Romania, that you
48:15 would now not have the fuel to actually respond and you'd be crippled and all of Europe would be under threat, and whatever it was, whatever it was like, maybe you thought you had to. Do that, but at the end of the day, you launched that war with no plan to care for the millions and millions of civilians and prisoners of war that were going to come under your control. And millions of people died because of that, right? You know, you can look at it and say like. You know it. Well, yeah. So get back to your like your main question about Churchill. You know, if you go to. 1939, when the Germans and the Soviet Union invade Poland. As soon as. That war's wrapped up on the German side, Hitler starts firing off peace proposals to
49:01 Britain. France? Because they had already declared war. He was. He didn't expect them to. Declare war, actually. I think there's, you know, a famous scene where he kind of throws a fit when he finds out that they actually did. Did they did do that? And so he doesn't. Want to fight France. He doesn't want to fight Britain. He feels that's going to weaken Europe. When we've got this huge threat to the east, the communist threat over there. And he starts firing off peace. Proposals, says, let's not do this like we can't do this. And of course, you know, year goes by. 1940 comes around and they're still at war. And so he launches his invasion to the West, takes over France, takes over. Western and northern Europe. Once that's done, the British have. You know, escaped at Dunkirk. There's no British force left on the continent. There's no opposing force
49:47 left on the continent. In other words, the war is over and the Germans won. Okay. But by. But by what point? Fall of 1940. Right. So there's just there's literally no opposing force on the on the continent and throughout that summer. You know, if Hitler is firing off radio broadcasts. Giving speeches, literally sending planes. Over to drop leaflets over. London and other British cities, trying to get the message to these people that Germany does not want. To fight you, like we don't want to fight you offering peace proposals that, you know, said, you keep all your overseas colonies. We don't want any of that. We want Britain to be strong. The world. Needs Britain to be strong, you know, especially as we face this communist threat and so. Forth. Like this.
50:32 This is what's going on. And I think that if there were people in Britain who, who if they hadn't put. It this way, if they hadn't been so successful at delegitimizing, the peace approach by demonizing Neville Chamberlain and so forth and holding him responsible for the invasion of Poland. That people would have been they would have understood, like we don't need. Another. Repeat of the First World War. You know. We don't, you know, which is not what ended up. Happening. But that's what everybody thought. Was going to happen. And so Churchill, I mean, you have a guy who once he Churchill wanted a war, he wanted to fight Germany. And the reason that I, I don't begrudge him that, you know, people can national leaders, you can fight whoever you want. If, you know, if you feel like your long term,
51:19 the long term interests of the British Empire, threatened by the rise of a powerful continental power like Germany. And you need to check that those are great power games, and you play them the way you feel like you. Need to play them. That's fine. The reason I resent Churchill so much for it. Is that he kept this war going when he had no way, he had no way to go back and fight this war. All he had were bombers. He was literally, by 1940, sending firebomb fleets. Sending bomber fleets. To go firebomb. The Black Forest. Just to. Burn down sections of the Black. Forest. Just just rank terrorism, you know. Going through and, starting to. You know, what eventually became just the carpet bombing, the saturation bombing of civilian neighborhoods, you know. To kill is the purpose of which was to kill as many civilians as possible. And all the men were out in the
52:04 field. All the fighting age men were out in the field. And so this is old people. It's women. And children. And they knew that. And they were. Wiping these places out as gigantic scale terrorist. Attacks, the greatest. You know, scale of terrorist attacks you've ever seen in world history. Why would he do that? Because it was the only means that they had to continue fighting. At the time. You know, they didn't have the ability. To re invade Europe. And so he needed to keep this war going until he accomplished what, you know, what would you hope to accomplish? We know now there's actually a really great series of books. It's it's one of the best I recommend to everybody. But it's really expensive now. And, it's six long volumes called History of British Special Operations in the Second World War. And one of. The books gets into the level of, just.
52:50 The extent. Of media. Operations, propaganda operations, everything that they were running in the United States to eventually drag us into that war. And that was his whole plan. His whole plan was we don't we don't have a way to fight this war ourselves. This war is over. We need either the Soviet Union or the United States to do it for us. And that was the plan, and. Kept the war going long. Enough for that plan to come to fruition. And to me, that's just it's a craven ugly way to to fight a war. And, what was the motive? Well, you know, Churchill's got a long. And complicated history. I mean, he's, you know, he's somebody who. That was the driest smile I think I've ever seen. Yeah.
53:35 Well look. I think on one level, there was a sense that Churchill was sort. Of humiliated by his performance in the First. World War. As the head of the Admiralty, and he was out in the cold for a long time. I mean, Gallipoli. Yeah. And which, you know, was. That was his operation, you know, and. So he was. Rightly held responsible for that and seen as responsible for one of the great disasters that the British suffered during that. War. And so I think part of it is probably kind of personal. You know, he wanted redemption. He wanted to go out there and like, prove that he's the the warlord, that they can go out there in and fight this big war. Probably I think part of it I like I read. About Churchill and he strikes me as a psychopath.
54:21 But he's also. A sort of. I mean, he was a drunk. He was very childish and strange ways people would talk about how as an adult, like at, you know, as prime minister, they'd find him in his room and he's like playing with action figures like war toys and army men and stuff, and would get mad when people would, would interrupt him, you know, when he was just. This is a strange, strange fellow, you know. His all those things. But then you get into, you know, why was why was Winston Churchill such a such a. Dedicated booster of Zionism from early on in his life? Right. And there's. Ideological reasons. One, you know. Like in. 1920. He wrote a kind of infamous now article called Zionism Versus Bolshevism. And he basically.
55:06 Makes the case that. Which was which was true to a large extent that all. Of Eastern Europe, the Pale of Settlement, which is where the vast majority of Jews lived other than the United States, which is where a lot of them had had traveled to. That. That area. Had been had become so engulfed by a revolutionary spirit. That all of the young Ashkenazi. Jews who were over there were getting swept up into it. It was. The 60s here on. Steroids right? And in a much more serious it ended up being destructive way. And this is 1920. So as you shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. Basically. The point of his paper. Is he says, these people who over there. They're all going one. Direction or the other. They're going to be Bolsheviks. They're going to be Zionists. We want them to be.
55:52 Zionists, you know? And so we need to support this. And so that was early on. There was an ideological component of it. But then as time goes on, you know, you read stories about Churchill going bankrupt and needing money. Getting bailed out by people who shared his interests, you know, in terms of Zionism, but also, his hostility. Just, just. You know, I think his hostility, to put it this way, I think his hostility to Germany was real. I don't think. That he necessarily had to be bribed to have that feeling. But, you know, I think he was, to an extent, put in place by by people, the financiers, by a media complex. That wanted to make sure that he was
56:38 the guy who, you know, who is who was representing. Britain in. That conflict for, for the, for a reason. And. You know, Churchill's a. Again, it's so hard. Because like, you know, especially in a short interview like this where. You have this guy. Who? I mean, he's a he's an Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Martin Luther King like type figure in the in the sort of Western consciousness right? Yes. And so people have so many. Assumptions in built in triggers, like when it comes to this guy, that it's hard. To talk about it because you're always thinking about. The triggers that you're setting off and your listeners. And I don't say that in a way of like, I don't want to offend
57:23 anybody. No, no, I understand it's that it's, you know, you know, that things are. Going to be misunderstood. And so this is why I do 30, our podcast. Well, it's just it's interesting because I, you know, as a follower of your work, I don't see you as hostile to the West. I see you actually as a product of the West and as a defender, really of the West for its values. You know, in your approach, in your open mindedness, rigor, you know, belief in accuracy and honesty and those are Western notions. And yet Churchill has been positioned and has been and really is accepted as like the defender of the West over the last 100 years. Yeah. And so maybe that's and I wonder why that is. I don't I mean, people can certainly take issue with any factual
58:09 claims you're making. I assume they're all right. They're consistent with what I think I know to be true. But why do you think Churchill has been presented in a way, in the way that he has? You know. Well, it's it has to do. With what you said earlier, right? Neville Chamberlain versus Churchill has been the binary model that has served as the chief rhetorical device for every conflict we've wanted to get into since then. Yes. You know, the entire Cold War. And then even after the Cold War, in the global war on terror is if you appease them, you're Neville Chamberlain. Hitler's the, rather, Churchill's the one who saw all along. Where this was headed and was trying to warn people this, you know, Cassandra. And finally, because
58:54 nobody listened to him, the war ended up breaking out and we were forced to, like, go stamp out this threat. And now it's a. Much bigger threat. Than it ever would have been if we just. Put a listing, say, if we had strangled it in its. Crib and it's justified every. Conflict. You know. Really, since the Second World War, everybody's the new Hitler, right? It's it's. And so that it's a it's. Very valuable in that sense, but then also. You know, it really did become the. The founding myth of the of the global order that we're all living in now. Right? Because when you think about it, if you go back to think. About like, in Machiavelli's The Prince, right? And he's, he starts that book out kind of talking about why he's writing this book. And one of the things that he says
59:39 in there is, you know, Italy is a bunch of broken up little principalities and states and stuff. And he's looking over to the west, in the north and seeing countries like Spain, countries like France and England. Who like these are these are. Countries that are now starting to operate on a totally different scale, like on a national. Scale, First Nation states. And we have got to get it. Get it, get our act together and start learning how to act on that, on that level as well. And so that's why I'm writing this book. It's an instruction manual on like a call to action kind of. Well. As it goes on in the nation state starts to put itself together in the modern era. You know, you you. Get to World. War One and you think about what the nation state is, right? Like history and to a large extent
1:00:25 global like sort of global event style. History is governed to, to to a great degree by the military technology that's prevalent at a given time. Right? So I, I don't think it's a it's an accident, for example. That. The ancient Greeks had like in a, a feeling of like citizen equality. That was unprecedented the world at the time. And they had the, their chief combat system was the phalanx unit. Right. That. Required every man to stand by his, you know, his fellow citizen as a unit. And they. That's what their. Position in the world depended on people being able to do that. I don't think that's a mistake. Right? I don't think it's a mistake. When you look at other societies where. Charioteers, you know, really
1:01:10 expensive branch chariots or, when, when you get to, like, the high Middle Ages where the heavy horse cavalry is just totally dominant on the battlefield, but, you know, so only the people who can afford that kind of a weapon system, they're the ones who are going to rule on the people who don't like it. They really don't have any means to to, you know, sort of express. Their own, political will. And so. As a nation state starts to get put together, you start to. Have. You start to have military, conflicts and just military buildups on a scale that nobody's ever heard of before. I mean, you're talking you get to this, the First World
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