EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,012 words- 0:00 – 1:27
Technical MMA: Pereira vs. Ankalaev and the psychology of pressure
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- DCDarryl Cooper
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) The guys today, I think they're the highest level fighters of all time. We running? Hey, Darryl, what's going on, man?
- DCDarryl Cooper
How's it going?
- JRJoe Rogan
And we were just talking UFC. Yeah. I think this is the, the h- we were talking about how exciting the Ankalaev and Pereira fight was, even though people didn't, they didn't like it 'cause it wasn't like some crazy result and a giant knockout like you get in most Pereira fights. But, it was so technical and Per- Ankalaev just did a fantastic job of shutting down the scariest guy in the division.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. I just... And the psychological aspect of it, of just, he made him back up and second guess himself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And you know, that's... You can't just do that by being aggressive. You can't, you know, you really gotta get in there and you gotta hurt him a little bit and you just have to put that on him. And it was, it was amazing to watch. I thought it was a great fight.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it was so interesting because the consequences of exchanging with Pereira are so high, but also Ankalaev. Ankalaev has knocked a lot of people out. We always look at Pereira's knockouts, but Ankalaev has knocked out some of the best guys in the division and he only lost one time, and that was... Paul Craig has the nastiest fucking triangle. It's so sneaky-
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and so quick and you don't expect it. He's so high level off his back and he caught him, I think, with like one second to go in the third round-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... a fight that he was losing.
- 1:27 – 3:55
Ground danger and judging: Paul Craig, Oliveira–Tsarukyan, and valuing submissions
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. He, he broke Jamal's arm or-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... dislocated his elbow too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
He's one of those guys like, uh, that... You know, like Ryan Hall.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
It's like, you know, they're on the feet dancing around. It's like, you know, "What are we really watching here?" kind of, but man, as soon as they hit the ground it's next level.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. He's, there's a giant disparity between his standup, which is good, his good standup, you know, and the, the Bo Nickal fight was entirely standup. It was a good fight, you know, he was... He looked good on the feet, but you would never say, you know, this is like an Israel Adesanya type character.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He doesn't have that level of proficiency with striking, but God, when he gets on his back, you're in such danger like nobody else in the division. It's weird 'cause most guys you're on their back, you're not really worried about it. With Paul Craig, it's like everything has to be tight.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Especially guys that size-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... you don't get to see it as often.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, you don't.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Especially in an era when, you know, the off your back jujitsu is kind of, I don't wanna say like, you know, they figured out the game on that yet, but you know, it's not quite to that level. You still have your Craigs and Oliveiras, people like that who, who, uh, really are dangerous off their back, but it's, it's not as common anymore, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's really hard to do.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And also most people don't want to be on their back, so they don't even practice off their back. And the common thought amongst coaches is, when you're on your back, there's two minutes to go, you're probably not gonna pull a submission off. You gotta concentrate on getting back up to your feet, minimizing whatever scoring your opponent has done by taking you down and whatever shots they've landed, mitigate those as much as possible and get to the feet as quickly as possible.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what everybody's trying to do now.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Especially in a three-round fight. I mean, it's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... you let yourself get laid on for three minutes in the first round, nothing really happens, but you lost that round. You better win the second one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well look at like the Armen Tsarukyan, um, fight. If, if you, if, if you think about that fight with, uh, Charles Oliveira. Charles Oliveira caught him multiple times in like deep submissions, which I think should count for a lot. Which I thought if I looked at who won that fight, I would say Oliveira won that fight. Oliveira had him in deep trouble. It was a very... It was kind of a controversial opinion, but I think a tightly locked triangle or a darce choke or anything along those lines should be considered winning. You're, you're doing something very difficult to do. Your opponent doesn't want it to happen. You've dominated a position to the point where you're, you've secured a submission-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then this guy sneaks out with sweat and technique and fucking grit-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but he was in fucking trouble.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Oh, at the very end-
- JRJoe Rogan
Deep, deep trouble.
- 3:55 – 4:21
Armenian pride tangent and pivot to online outrage campaigns
- DCDarryl Cooper
I'm a little biased on this one 'cause I'm an adopted member of the Armenian community, but uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. But, but it was a great fight and I-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm a giant fan of Armenians.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Oh, they're... You know what I love about 'em?
- JRJoe Rogan
There's so many great fighters in the UFC all the way back to Karl Parisyan been Armenian, but just-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I like the style of the people.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, exactly. The thing I love about 'em is Armenians love being Armenian.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes they do.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And it's just-
- JRJoe Rogan
They're very proud of it.
- DCDarryl Cooper
It's great to be around. I love it.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, they're good people.
- JRJoe Rogan
And very friendly people too.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- 4:21 – 9:53
Tucker controversy: Churchill, hyperbole, and getting labeled 'radioactive'
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, so this podcast, like the, there's podcast... I never say who's coming on the podcast. I just like put it out there. Like everybody knew that Trump was coming on and there's been a couple of times where people knew that I was interviewing people. For the most part, I just like to do it, have the conversation and then put it out. But you put it on Twitter that you were coming on and then the campaign began. (laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. Well I put it on my Substack behind the pay wall.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah. (laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
But apparently so of my enemies, uh, you know, pay me five bucks a month to follow my Substack, so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, I saw what happened with you on the Tucker Carlson thing, and I spoke about it almost immediately on the podcast when it, whenever I felt like it came up. I don't remember how many days afterwards, but I've been listening to your podcast for a long time and it's, it's so charitable and comprehensive and so thorough. And so you put so much weight on the real lives and suffering of human beings on all sides of any conflict. The, the regular people that didn't want to be dragged into any war that find themselves on the frontline. The, the stories that you tell and the way you tell 'em is so comprehensive and so, again, charitable. Like you, the humanity of these people is so well expressed that your fans know you. I'm a fan. I know you. I know how you view things. I know how you portray things. I know how honest you are about all aspects of conflict. And again, as charitable as possible the way you lay this out.So when I saw these, uh, attacks on you and when people were calling you an anti-Semite and a Nazi apologist, I was like, "Good Lord. This is not gonna work on people who know him." You know, I've been through that ringer before. I know what that is. But with you, it's like, all anyone needs to do... And I encourage you, if you're like, "I can't believe you have this guy on," listen to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem. Listen to it. Just... You don't even have to listen to the whole thing. Listen to the first hour of it and there's no fucking way the person who made that is anti-Semitic in any way, shape, or form. And that, that's just one of the things that you've done that show that. It's, it's like... The problem is when someone says something and they're trying to be hyperbolic or they're trying to get a reaction or you're, you're, you're, you're shit talking or, or you post a meme online or something like that. Like this bizarre culture we live in that wants to reduce people to the worst possible interpretations of what they said or who they are and to ignore everything else but for one small tweet or one statement made, uh, in, you know, trying to be... W- trying to get a reaction, trying to be, uh, outrageous. Like it's a stupid thing that we do. And as someone who values your show and listens to your show all the time, uh, I f- I find... I, I don't find... It's not just stupid, it's, it's bizarre how many people fall for this kind of stupidity. And I, I know how this whole thing works. I guarantee you probably gained a bunch of fans and you probably gained a bunch of people who listened because most of the time when someone gets discredited in the media or someone gets shamed, a lot of people will immediately hop on board, but a lot of other people will go, "Well, what is this guy saying?" Like, "What is this about?" Like, "What, what, what's their content like?" And they... If they listen to your show, they will realize like, it's one of the very best long-form history podcast that's available online. It's fantastic. It's really good. So, it's so unfortunate that there is, there's these attack vectors that they could use to try to change perception of who you are. But the fortunate aspect is there's so much of your work out there that anyone could just comb through and y- you know, you're not hearing that side of it from any of these people, any of these detractors. No one's saying, "Yeah, you know, listen, I listened to some of his stuff and, you know, maybe he shouldn't have said what he said about Winston Churchill, but I think he was just being hyperbolic. And if you just listen to actually what he says about the whole conflict, you kind of get an understanding of who this guy is." And, um, so there was a lot of resistance to having you on, but I was like, "Fuck that resistance. I know what you actually do." And so that's why we're here.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And yeah, you know, I mean, the Tucker interview was... I, I could have been clearer in what I was saying. I'm not gonna like, uh, absolve myself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ju- Let's explain what you said because you were talking about what you say to Jocko, right?
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, that's how it originally came up 'cause Jocko's wife's English, right? So Churchill's like a sacred figure in their pantheon. And, um, and so I said that, you know, I s-... Maybe I'm being a little provocative here. I like to provoke Jocko with my Churchill takes or whatever, but that's only part of it. I mean, I'm very critical of, of Churchill's role, in my opinion, in turning the German invasion of Poland into the Second World War basically. You know? Um, that, you know, it, it's...
- 9:53 – 22:09
Understanding vs. endorsing: empathy, moral humility, and the cost of war
- DCDarryl Cooper
As I get older... You know, I posted something on t- on X today, uh, that, uh... Somebody had posted a video, a drone is going toward a Ukrainian or a Russian truck or something and it hits it and it doesn't blow up and it's like boom, boom. It tries... It doesn't blow up, doesn't blow up. And as I was watching that thing, I felt like th-... When it didn't blow up and the video ended, I felt like this, this really strong sense of relief that it didn't blow up, you know? And I... What I pos-... I reposted it and I said, "I think, you know, as I get older, like I just don't have the stomach for this kind of stuff anymore." And I see something like that and like I don't care who's in the truck. I don't care if it's Russians, I don't care if it's North Koreans or Ukrainians or-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, it's human beings.
- DCDarryl Cooper
I just like... I'm just glad that they're okay. Like that's what I actually felt at the time, you know? And as I get older, like that's just how I feel more and more about these things. Like whether... Uh, any, any conflict, it's just like... This is not, this is not like a young man's thought, I guess, but like, I'm just... I'm happy when they're over and they need... Like, I mean, the damage that they do to people and that... And, and not only to the people who are in it fighting, but that it, that it does to the societies and cultures that are involved in these things. It does real damage to our spirit, you know? Like I... Y- you should go back to '04 when the Abu Ghraib expose came out. You know, Americans were horrified by that and rightly so. You know, they saw those pictures. But the thing that was interesting is that they were horrified, yeah, partly because like, "Look how awful this is that they're doing to these people or something." But, you know, for all they knew, they, they knew these people were in prison. They might have thought they were terrorists or something. What people were really like feeling at the time was, "What are we doing to our people?" Like what, what is... You know, "What are we putting them through that our people are being reduced to this?" You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And the, you know, kind of the sad thing now is like I don't know if we would have the same reaction today. I, I, I think the war on terror has sort of desensitized us to a lot and hardened our hearts in ways that are not good for us. And so when I do my podcast, you know, whether I'm talking about the Israelis and Palestinians... I did a long one on Jonestown, seven episodes, like 35 hours long. And, um-Whoever it is, like my rule is that I don't record anything until I feel like I can put myself in the shoes of the people that I'm gonna talk about and really kind of understand how, how their actions made sense to them with the information they had and in the context of their time. You know what I mean? And so when you do something like that with the My Lai massacre, for example, I did that with, with that story, the Jonestown one. I mean, Jonestown you're talking about like this raving lunatic who took a bunch of people out into the jungle and they all committed suicide. So, you know, putting your... It's- it's very tempting and very easy to just write off any responsibility to understand what was happening there because you're like, "Well we know what was happening, these people were nuts." You know? But the thing is, like if you really think about the consequences of taking the wrong lessons from things like that, you know, the, the response that we, that the federal government had to the Waco standoff in the early '90s was very much informed by the way people thought about Jonestown, which is that, you know, we let this go on too long. The problem wasn't that, you know, uh, that maybe we had this, this paranoid group of radicals out here that, uh, you know, maybe we shouldn't have done so much to feed into that paranoia. We needed to ease these people out of it and try to deescalate. Instead we said, "We should've, we could've prevented it if only we'd have gone in hard right at the beginning and taken this guy out." And so then you get Waco, you know? And so there are real w- real world consequences to the, to taking the wrong lessons from these things, and, and really just kind of forgetting that it doesn't re-... I mean, look, you may have like your Jeffrey Dahmers or something out there that are an exception to this rule, but they are the exception that proves the rule. That it doesn't matter who you're talking about. You could be talking about Uday Hussein, you know, Saddam's son, just a sadistic monster of a human being. Um, but, you know, that kid was a three-year-old at one point, or that guy was a three-year-old kid at one point who did not... Like, it's not like he was waiting in line in the spirit world before he was born and they were like, "Who wants to be Saddam Hussein's son?" And he's like, "I do, I do." That's the world he was thrust into, you know? And you see a guy like that and then you, you know, you're horrified by the things that he does, but then you say, "Look man, you know, if the stories are true at least, like Saddam Hussein used to take him and his brother when he was six years old to go watch torture sessions and executions because he needed to harden them for, you know, ruling the country one day." And it's like, I don't, I, I don't wanna pretend like I have the remotest idea of, you, you know, how a kid is supposed to respond to watching torture sessions when he's six years old and coming up in that world. Like what do I know about that, you know what I mean? And so I, like I, I, I try to stay humble as I'm reading about these people, not assume that I'm better than them or different than them, uh, and really just try to understand them on human terms, you know? And again, it doesn't... When I did that in the, in the Tucker interview with regard to the Germans and the Second World War and the series that I'm working on right now, which is the Second World War from the perspective of the Germans, you know, it's people, people who... It's, it's not just people who are purposely misinterpreting things or anything. You know, a lot of people who are in good faith, they see something like that and they think you're trying to justify or rationalize what happened. You know? Um, because there is this, there is this thing where, I mean I, the Jonestown story, this really did kind of happen to me, where you know, when you get, when, when you get past a certain threshold of understanding people, it's, you're butting right up against empathizing with them. I mean, it's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... that's the very, you know, that's like the next step. You got to take one more step and you're empathizing with those people. And so people see that, you know, and you're empathizing with evil people, you know, who- whoever it is. But I really believe that it's, it's really good for us, like individually, you know, and, and as a society too, to, I think it has a, uh, positive effect on us to like, when we force ourselves to understand, you know, people we don't like, um, as human beings, and just understand that their motivations are really no different than ours. They're-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well this is one of the reasons why your, your podcast is so important, because you talk about things in this way, and this is one of the reasons why I knew you were misconstrued, or, or w- you would be misconstrued if something like that came up. Um, that's, doing that is fine with Jonestown, you know? With Jonestown everybody's like, "Well, how could these people have convinced these people to drink the Kool-Aid? Who, why would the people do it? Who, what kind of a monster turns into this genocidal maniac and brings people to the jungle and does this?" But when you do it with any other subject, you can kind of get away with that until it gets to Nazis, until it gets to World War II, and then there, people have these red flags that pop up that just completely block out any obj- objectivity. They, they, they lu- remove all nuance, you, you lose all objectivity. You, you just, anything you're saying, imagine being a young man drafted into Hitler's army at 17 years old and not knowing what you're doing and then becoming this monster. That's a Nazi apologist. Right? This is, we've, we've had this reductionist perspective on anything that has to do with that horrific moment in history, that if you even attempt to do this very comprehensive process that you do with all other subjects, where you look at the, the human angle, you look at these people, the conflict, how did this get started? It's not there's good people on one side and there's evil people on the other side. No, there's genuinely just human beings, and there's horrible circumstances and then there's evil people who lead these people in horrible circumstances to do evil, terrible things. And people are tribal and they can buy into all kinds of crazy ideas and go forth and do horrific atrocities and believe that God is on their side. This is a part of being a human being that has existed fucking forever. But in our culture, in our media environment where everybody is rightly so, so terrified of anti-Semitism, because there's real anti-Semitism out there.... and real antisemitism is horrible, just like real racism is horrible. The problem with calling everything racist and everything antisemitic when it's clearly not is that you diminish what that word means. You're- you're essentially crying wolf. You're doing it in ways where r- rational, logical people who know your work have a very good argument against it. Like, this doesn't make any sense in the context of which it was said. If you look at the body of his work, if you look at how he talks about things, this is how he approaches stuff. This whole being provocative is part of what you do. It's part of what makes the- the- the audio come to life in these podcasts when you're talking about these moments in history. This- this subject is just so sore with people. And particularly right now after October 7th, where, you know, I just- I remember all the sudden going on X and seeing antisemitism just like white- right out in the open, blaming Jews for everything, going, "Whoa," like, "Has this been hiding?" Like, what- and then you start thinking the way your paranoid Jewish friends think that everybody's antisemitic, and you go, "Well, now I kind of understand why they think that way." So I kind of understand the overreaction, but it is still an overreaction, and I think what you do is very valuable. It's very valuable to me and it's very valuable to human beings that want to hear this nuanced, uh, uh, uh, comprehensive perspective on these conflicts, and from a person who obviously cares deeply about them and cares deeply about the human cost of these. And one of the things you do so well, and I was just talking to Dave Smith about this yesterday, the w- the gravity of war, the gr- the- the- the toll it takes on the people that are engaged in it and the people that are, uh, just outside of it and what is left of their civilization, it's fucking horrific and it should be avoided at all costs. But we don't- you don't avoid it by exaggerating. You- you don't avoi- avoid it by distorting someone's perspective and turning everybody into a monster so that everyone's scared to talk at all, because this is the main objective. Any- uh, most overreactions like that that are public and s- hyper-aggressive and constant and continuous, it's not just you. It's to stop anybody from ever doing anything like that in the future to let them know there's consequences. There's gonna be financial consequences. There's gonna be- your- your- your- your status online, your- whatever you're, you know, however you're viewed by people will be now marred forever with this ugly stain of being not just an antisemite, but a Nazi apologist. That's what I read, Nazi apologist. Like, y- you can't say that unless you listen to his stuff. You can't. Unless they listen to your work, they sh- they can't say that, because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. It's- it's like someone trying to opine upon a culture that they've never read about or don't- have never visited. You don't know what you're saying.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, I've been told by people who should know, uh, that there are a few European countries I shouldn't try to visit because they probably won't let me off the plane.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I wouldn't go.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Because of- because of that podcast, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Bro, I'd stay in Texas if I was you. I'd hold up. (laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs) I'm up in- I'm up in North Idaho, so I'm far, far away.
- JRJoe Rogan
You should have told people that. (laughs) Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Oh, they- they don't wanna- they don't wanna try North Idaho. Man, it's, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's- yeah, it's a wild place. You got wolves and bears. Um, it's just, uh- this is just part of what people do, and-
- 22:09 – 28:38
Why antisemitism discourse backfires: censorship, trolling, and radicalization loops
- DCDarryl Cooper
I was- I was gonna say too, um, you know, that overreaction is really counterproductive, too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
You know, and- because to go back to what I said a second ago, like, understanding brings you right up to the brink of empathy, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
That- uh, you know, more understanding to these issues, and I've found this 100 times, you know, because, like, look, antisemitism's a weird thing, and we can talk about some of the history of that if you want. But, you know, it's- uh, it's this thing that people get obsessed with. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like part of their ideology. I've watched this happen to, like, good, clear-thinking regular people. They start listening to a few podcasts that, you know, uh- uh, they can't repost under their real name on Twitter because they're funny or interesting, and then pretty soon you can't bring that dude to a party anymore, because he just can't go 10 minutes without- in neutral company, like, bringing up the Jews. And it's like, that happens. You see that happen. I mean, the- uh, you know, like- like, so what you see on social media a lot. I mean, it's like a- there's no doubt there's been, like, a big explosion of that kind of rhetoric, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And I think a lot of it is online trolling and it's, uh, you know, the fact that people are so sensitive about it that, like, it's just the easiest way to get a huge reaction, you know, from- from people. Um, and I think a lot of it has to do with that, but I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact that so many of these- of these questions have really been made, you know, it's not like they're off limits, like they're illegal and you're gonna go to jail if you talk about them. I'm still sitting here. Uh, I mean, I'm on your podcast and I've- so that's a big platform to talk about these things. It's not like that, but the attempt is to make it so that you can't be in any kind of respectable society, respectable company.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, the- the attempt is to make you radioactive.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, and- and that, again, I think is just completely counterproductive, because, you know, people look at something... I think Theo was talking about this in one of his recent interviews. He was saying, you know, you- somebody sees what's happening in Gaza right now and they just see kids getting pulled out of rubble and it's shocking and horrifying and they see that and they find out that the US is sending money and weapons and they're like, "Well, why is that happening?" And they start looking into it, and they go to the websites that are gonna tell them the truth about it, and pretty soon one link leads to another. And when they go ask one of their, you know, h- history professors at school or something, like, "Hey, you know, Uncle Adolf 1488 in the comments section, like, told me X, Y, Z."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
Like, you know, um...... that you go and ask about it, he gets like shouted down and attacked for like asking the question. And then he, you know, what- that doesn't have the effect of him saying, "Wow, like I guess that really is terrible and I should never ask that again." They think, "Hmm, that's weird. Like why are people responding this way? I was asking that question in good faith," you know? And so it really has like the opposite effect of- of the one that is at least, uh, ostensibly intended, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
I think there's a bunch of things going on simultaneously. I think some of this is coordinated and I think, um, because I think that with everything now online, I think there's, um, public momentum opinions that aren't necessarily organically shaped. And, um, there's- there's groups that will mass tweet about something, and now we know that there's AI programs that will devise, uh, various different tweets and people running them through hundreds of computers, if not thousands of computers, all with multiple accounts, and they're- they're posting things constantly. They're- and they're doing this... There was a call to make it illegal for any employee of the government to post on social media, and this- the- I was like, "That sounds outrageous. That sounds like something that would stifle political discourse." I want congressional people to be able to be, excuse me, to be whistleblowers and to talk about what's really going on and this is why this bill can't get passed, this is why they added this to this, this is bullshit. But then someone explained to me, uh, that what they're trying to stop is astroturfing, is that if you're working for the government or for, now this is with USAID, the concept of the non-government organization comes into play. So people realize that NGOs are actually funded by taxes, so it's a non-government organization doing the bidding of the government and some of that may or may not include social media campaigns about specific issues. And, um, I think this happens with everything. I think this happens probably on the Free Palestine sign, I think they probably do it. I think it happens on the Protect Israel side, they do it. I think everybody does it and it's- it- it can- it's confusing because, uh, you'd like to know how do normal human beings actually think, uh, the actual world thinks versus massive amounts of people that are being financially incentivized to post these things. They're being paid, they're part of an organization that gets paid, they get funded, they have a directive, they go out and they- they pursue this campaign and they do it relentlessly. And they do it through organic ways like people who are, um, aligned with their cause, whether it's Free Palestine or Israel First or whatever it is, you- you get people to post about it, they'll do it real- just th- they'll do it willingly because they want to show everybody they're on the right side and they also want to proclaim on- on Twitter that they are, you know, their- this is their political perspective and "I'm aligned with you people, I'm one of the good guys." And so there's that, that happens too, and this is this chaos of social media and people looking for likes and audience capture and all that stuff that goes on. But at the end of the day, we rely upon people that we trust. We re- rely upon people that are supposedly objective and rational and reasonable and considerate and- and charitable, people who look at things and go, "Okay, what is- what's really going on here?" Like what is- like before I cast judgment, maybe I should pay attention to some of the things this guy's done. Maybe I should pay attention to his work. Maybe I should look into this instead of just repeating "Nazi apologist" because someone wanted to take a- a- just an overall comprehensive look at what happened, which is- we should all want to know what happened from a bunch of different perspectives so we could prevent any of this shit from happening in the future.
- 28:38 – 30:56
WWII escalation debate: de-escalation, moral tradeoffs, and the Holocaust timeline
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yes. I mean, the interesting thing about the World War II question is something I found through talking to people who, you know, disagreed with my- with my Tucker interviews, like if you put the question to them, and maybe if you put it directly like this, they would give you a different answer, but you kind of get the im- you know, you- you- you get to understand that this is how they feel about it, which is if there was two options, one of them is that the Second World War doesn't happen, at least in Europe, 40 million people don't get killed, uh, but, you know, the National Socialists stay in power and, you know, maybe Hitler dies 10 years later, like the Soviet Union, Stalin dies and things move on. People really kind of feel like, and maybe this is because they're not involved in it, like 40 million dead people is- that was a- that was a cost worth paying. And I think that is completely insane, man. Like it's- it's like if there was a sliver of a- of an opportunity to de-escalate that situation and bring it back down, like, you know, if I'm the emperor of America or Britain or whatever, I'm- I'm taking that chance. And if it turns out that Hitler was full of shit and, uh, you know, he stabs us in the back first chance he gets, all right, then we'll have our war, but...
- JRJoe Rogan
But is this pre- or post-concentration camps? Is this pre- or post-the beginnings of the Holocaust?
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is where it-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... gets into that, like should we decide to stop something in its tracks at whatever cost of life because ultimately that is the right thing to do because we're witnessing the genocide of a people and then we're also witnessing a group that will remain in power that has not just committed genocide but is committed to genocide?
- DCDarryl Cooper
Right. So what we were talking about and all of the points I was bringing up on Tucker were all from before that. In fact, they were from a- a full year before the s- uh, German invasion of the Soviet Union, that was June 1941 and that's where most of the Jews lived there in... So if he, you know, if Hitler never invaded the Soviet Union, he never even would have had access to those people. Now, Hitler didn't like the Soviet Union, you know, all the way back in Mein Kampf and everywhere else, I mean, it was central to his ideology that communism, socialism were the enemy and everything. He may have invaded the Soviet Union someday and gone and...... gone after all the Jews when he did.
- 30:56 – 48:32
Hitler’s antisemitism and Europe’s trauma: Vienna, WWI trenches, and postwar collapse
- JRJoe Rogan
When did Hitler start going after the Jews?
- DCDarryl Cooper
You mean in terms of, um, in terms of-
- JRJoe Rogan
R-rhetoric?
- DCDarryl Cooper
... the war? Oh. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDarryl Cooper
So, yeah, like, if you take him at his word in Mein Kampf, which is, you know, it's a piece of political propaganda, you know, that he wrote as a sort of a, a politician in Germany in 1924-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
... and so you have to take it with s-sort of a grain of salt, but it's also one of the few sources we have. Like, and he, i-i- given his audience at the time, he probably didn't have a lot of reason to, to make this part up, um, is that, you know, he had been from, like, small town Germany, right? And he was from a middle class family. Um, his father was a civil servant, respectable people, and nationalism back then was very much like a middle class ideology. And the, the middle class people, nationalists, would complain about the workers and, you know, the proletariat, how they all wanna be socialists and none of them have any national feeling and everything. And Hitler really didn't grow up with any really even knowledge of the Jews. He says his father, he never heard him say the word, and, you know, if they had any in the small town that he lived in, like, they were apparently well assimilated 'cause he, he didn't know about them. And so then he moves to Vienna when he's a young adult and there's a lotta Jews in Vienna and he starts to, you know, he's, he's, he's at the bottom of society now, you know, he's literally living in shelters, he's, um, hungry all the time. He's, like, down with the underclass after having grown up in the, in the middle class. And so he's starting to get a look at, uh, what the German people, the German masses, you know, that he's, like, sort of as a, as a child and a young man has, like, worked up this deep sense of, like, nationalistic fervor. He's actually getting an up close look at the underclass in Vienna and what he sees is not particularly impressive, you know, which is often the case when, you know, you can, you can have sympathy for and, um, want to lift up, you know, the underclass in any society, but the, the reason you wanna do that is because they're often living degraded lives in degraded circumstances. And so he gets an up close look at this and he doesn't like what he sees and it, he says in Mein Kampf that it really caused him, like, a moral crisis, you know, an ideological crisis. He's like, "Are these the German people? Like, really? This is what we're talking about?" And then he says in, you know, this is the way he relates it, he says it was actually the key that unlocked everything else for him is that, you know, he would say he realized, we could say he came to believe that, yes, the, these German masses, they are in a sorry state right now, but the reason for that is that they're being manipulated by the Jews, by the Jewish press, by the, you know, the, the, the Jews who own the, the theaters and put out the, you know, the films and whatever else, all of it. They're being manipulated and corrupted by these people. And so for him it became, like, and I, I think, you know, he has the, he had a lot of the same explanations and reasons you would hear from any anti-Semite then or now, you know, banking and whatever. Like, all those things were, like, in there, but I think the thing that gave it emotional valence for him is that his anti-Semitism was what allowed him to love the German people, you know? Like, it was, like, the only way for him that he could get around the revulsion he was feeling and actually being up close with the German underclass is he, you know, he, he excused their faults by blaming-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... by blaming Jews. And so it, his, his sense of love for his people, and I mean, look, it, Hitler's one of those guys, I, I noticed this when I was reading all the Jim Jones books and stuff, which I think I read all, pro- probably all of, um, they're, they're not very good, you know? Some of them are interesting, (laughs) like, they're good reads, but you can't help but, uh, but notice, especially after you've read several of the books, that the authors just cannot help but, uh, be, like, cynical and turn it into a polemic on every page. Like, even the thing Jim Jones or Hitler did as a child, they have, like, negative-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... editorializing to it and everything. And it's like, you know, it, it really kind of, it's, it's, a lot of them are still good books, you know, you read, like, the, the most recent sort of great Hitler biography by Ian Kershaw is a great book. He's a good historian, an excellent writer, and, you know, you have to learn to kinda see through that polemic, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... a little bit and then you have, you know, a good history on your hands, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's almost like it's an obligation if you're gonna cover a horrific figure, you have to look at things-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that way.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And, um, you know, it's a, uh... And so I think that, like, people who knew Hitler pre- before World War I, uh, and we have, like, memoirs and interviews with people who did know him pretty, pretty well, they say pretty much unanimously, like, "We never heard him mention the Jews back then." And this is the period in Vienna when Hitler says his anti-Semitism was developing and he was figuring these things out, um, and what I think was probably going on, like, my read of it at least up to this point, is that his anti-Semitism, just like a lotta people in, in Europe at the time, uh, was, it was theoretical and abstract, you know what I mean? Like, um, the Jews had never... You gotta remember, like, the Russian Revolution, all of the things that people like Hitler would associate with, with the Jews, like, none of that stuff had happened yet. Like, he might not like them, you know, he might think that, um, whatever, all the stereotypes that go along with him, but it was just sort of an abstract thing that it wasn't dangerous, right? But then the First World War happens and, you know, it's, it's really impossible for us today to understand the level of just trauma and devastation that that war had on, I mean, the European countries that were in, or all the country- countries that were involved. I mean, it was, you know, you're talking about a war where, you know, for, for several, uh, Olympics, Olympic Games afterwards, there were whole sports that, like, France and Germany just didn't participate any- in anymore because they didn't have the people for it. I mean, it was, you're talking about massive chunks of-... the young male population being killed out there. Right? And you take a guy like Hitler, who volunteered early, like right away-
- JRJoe Rogan
(sniffs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
... and he survived the whole four years of the war, and you think about him as just an example of this generation of people who use- who spent, like, their most formative young adult years in the trenches. I mean, in constant terror of doing things that, uh... I mean, forget about just like the, the p- the physical discomfort of living there. I mean, you're in the mud, you're covered with lice and fleas all the time, so is everybody else. You're... Especially later in the war, you're, like, living off of starvation rations if you're a German or an Austrian. And you're watching... I mean, you know, uh, Dan, his, uh... Dan Carlin's series on World War I is, like, probably my favorite piece of audio.
- JRJoe Rogan
Incredible.
- DCDarryl Cooper
It's so good. And, like, um, you know, one of the things he's so good at, way better than me at, is, um, kind of capturing the scale of events, you know? And so when he talks-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... about, like, the Battle of the Somme, when the British lost 60,000 guys on the first day, you're like, "I don't even know what that..." Like, what that even means. Like, it's, it's just so overwhelming, you know? And so you have this generation that spent their formative years in all of these countries under those just circumstances that we really don't have any context for us to relate to, you know? I mean, think about, like, you, you, you see these stories of, like, people sleeping in trenches, and over there in the corner is their dead friend who's been sitting there decomposing and being eaten by rats for three or four days, because you can't go up top to bury him because you'll get shot. And you can't bury him in the trench, uh, in the dirt under the trench anymore, because there's already bodies just completely wall-to-wall down there. You've already taken up all the space, right? Just that kind of... I mean, if you think about somebody today, if you walk outside your door on the way to work, your average person today, and there's a dead body on your, on your, you know, steps, your average person today is gonna be in therapy for years (laughs) over that, you know? I mean, that is a traumatic experience, very difficult. And so you have these young men who go through this, uh, who go through this just unbelievable experience, and from Germany eastward after, you know, if you, if you go back and think about what the map of Europe looked like in the year 1900, it didn't, it didn't look anything like it looks now. (laughs) It was basically like just a few big chunks, you know? You had France, you had Germany, the, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then you had the Russian Empire, and there were a few, like Spain and the Balkans and stuff, little things going on, but really it was just a few giant empires controlled everything from the Pacific Ocean, uh, in East Russia all the way over to the coast of France, right? And everything east of Germany in 1917 and 1918, those governments literally evaporated. They, they went away. And so, you know, you get to, uh, the immediate postwar period after these guys have just gone through this unbelievably harrowing experience, you know, their, their lives have been defined by violence, uh, for years, you know, at this point. And all of a sudden there's just state collapse everywhere from Germany to Siberia, and you literally have, uh, you know, private militias, groups of veterans, communist militias, like they're running cities, they're running the streets, like having running gun battles in the streets of, you know, of, of Berlin and, and Munich. And this is, this goes on for a few years, you know, just total social and economic chaos. And so, so you're talking about like the four-year war, but then a few more years after that. So you're 18 when you get in in 1914, now it's 1923 when things kinda start to stabilize and, you know, you've been, you've been at this for n-... Like, the, the, the first nine years of your young adulthood, right, this is the world that you live in. And it's, it's a... When, when, when you try to think of, you know, I talked about like, like Uday Hussein being brought to watch torture sessions or something. I mean, this is not, this is not exactly that, but it's, it's a, it's an experience that, like, we really have no way to relate to. And if you grow up in that world, especially when... You know, if you look at like what happened in Russia, 1917, the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, and they won. You know, they actually took over the Russian state and created the Soviet Union. You know, it lasted past the, long past the lives of anybody who had fought in World War I, for the most part. Um, and so people saw that and they took the lesson, both from World War I itself, but also from the aftermath and the revolutions that happened. The, the lesson they took is that violence w- can accomplish our goals, you know? And whatever we do to accomplish those goals, uh, as long as we survive, people accept it eventually. You know, Roosevelt normalized, uh, relations with the Soviet Union in 1933 when Stalin was literally still clearing bodies from the millions of people he starved in the Ukrainian Holodomor and in Kazakhstan, another million people. And like, at that time is when... And we knew, we knew it was going on, obviously, uh, and yet, you know, Roosevelt normalized relations with Stalin and people got over it. Just like with Turkey, Turkey does the Armenian genocide, and it's condemned at the time, you know, they were on the other side of the war and everything. But a couple years later, like, "Look, Turkey's an important, uh, strategically placed country, like, in the world, and we kinda need them on our side." And so, you know, "Sorry Armenians, but, you know, get over it." That's... And so people took that lesson, is that violence will accomplish our goals, and as long as we accomplish them and survive, people will get over it, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof.I, I'm, but again, I think this is what's really important about your work is that you do take into consideration all these aspects, which again, with Jim Jones, that's fine.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you even what you're saying is it's, it's obviously very relevant to what we're trying to, when we're trying to understand how World War II happened, how did the Nazis rise to power, like, what, what are we talking about? That's what we're talking about. We're talking about this horrific environment that's not considered, so it doesn't make you a Nazi apologist.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, and it's important to know too that, uh, you know, it's not like Hitler was going and giving big speeches in, at City Square in Berlin going on and on and on about how, "We're gonna kill the Jews," and the German people said, "Right on," like, "Let's go do it." That was, like, the speeches that are out there where he is talking about the Jewish question, like, almost all of those are, like, internal Nazi Party, like, rally speeches, you know? They're not him, um... He had to be careful about that. Like, in 1938, which is pretty far down the line, when, um, Kristallnacht happened, was kind of a nationwide pogrom against the Jews in Germany that was launched by, primarily by Goebbels, um, the propaganda minister. But there wa- there was outrage in the German cities. People in Berlin, a lot of the places were outraged by what was going on, and Hitler had to actually get on the phone with Goebbels and say, "Cut this shit out." Like, this is not, this is not good, like, and not because he loves the Jews all of a sudden, obviously, but because this is bad propaganda. People are not going for this. And that was the year before the war started, you know? And so these are just nuances that, you know, that become pretty obvious when you just remind yourself that you're just talking about people.
- 48:32 – 1:04:01
Nationalism, immigration, and identity: America’s fluid “we” vs. Europe’s fixed homelands
- DCDarryl Cooper
And America's very, you know, this is one of the... You know, America's a very unique country in a lot of different ways, but one of the ways that we're so different from the European countries, I mean, you can, I guess you could point to a lot of things, you know, the, the lack of a feudal history that we were emerging out of. We kind of just started out as a liberal republic, um, you know, the fact that we, we have, like, the frontier experience, which is just, you know, no Europeans can really relate to what was going on out there. I don't know if you've seen that new Netflix series, uh, American Primeval.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's amazing.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Dude, and I-
- JRJoe Rogan
I had Peter Berg on here the other day.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Oh, that's right. That's right, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And all I kept thinking as I'm watching this is like, "Man, this is not like the US Army that's out there like on the frontier confronting these situations. These are like..."... the regular people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... who, like, went out there and lived, and this is an experience. So, you have those things, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's very accurate, too.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. It was fascinating. I loved that they had Jim Bridger in there. That was a... I've always been a fan of his, so, um...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That was amazing, too. And i- and how about, uh, the Mormon guy?
- DCDarryl Cooper
Dude, people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Bradon Young.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah. People don't realize today, unless they really know the history, the Mormons were off the hook back in the day. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They were gangsters.
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They were fucking dangerous foes.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You couldn't fuck with the Mormons back then. They were-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Well, they were, they were-
- JRJoe Rogan
They had been fucked with.
- DCDarryl Cooper
They were ultra-cohesive, and they were serious about what they were doing. These people were not playing games. This was not, like, a thing to do for fun. They were dead serious about it even.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they had already been ran out of several states.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, yeah. So I was gonna say, like, the thing that's so different about America from a lot of the European countries, and when we talk about nationalism, like this is something that really, you know, that you have to keep in mind all the time, is that America... Like, we've been renegotiating our identity, like, generation by generation ever since America started. Like, from the very beginning. I mean, if you go back to the American Revolution and the, you know, the founding of the country in the late-1700s, before those guys were dead, a bunch of the major cities, and eventually all the major cities, like, very quickly by the middle of the 1800s, they're not majority Anglo anymore. It's not English people. It's a lot of Irish, a lot of Germans, still a lot of Anglos, but, you know, you have to... And the fact that different religion. You know, you've got Irish Catholics coming into this Protestant, very Protestant-at-the-time country. Um, a lot of the Germans that were coming in were German Jews, who, you know, were coming along. You think of people like, uh, like Astor. You know, the famous Astor family that was a German Jewish family that, that, uh, was in New York. And so that, that happens. And you're talking about, again, inf- an influx large enough to, to really swamp the Anglo population in many of the big cities. Well, not another, uh, you know, generation later, barely 40 years after the, um, you know, the, the, the Irish migration really hits its peak, huge influx from Southern Italy, from Eastern Europe, a lot of Ashkenazi Jews coming in. And pretty soon, it's not just, you know, uh, Anglos, well-assimilated, you know, Germans who are well-assimilated to the Anglo culture and then the Irish, which is what it was before. Now you have just as many Jews, just as many Italian Catholics, who are Catholics like the Irish, but they're still not quite... You know, they're still... Different communities. And we've just had to do that all the time. Even in 1924, when we kinda shut down immigration after the First World War, um, you know, we, we basically shut down immigration from 1924 to 1965. There was some, but, um, very limited and very selective. Um, but as soon as that happened, soon as the immigration pipeline was kinda, from Europe, was cut off, that's when the great migration of African Americans out of the South starts. And in about 40 years, you get six, seven million African Americans coming mostly from the country South into places like Detroit and, and all the places that, you know, you kind of associate with large African American communities now. It's kinda crazy to think about, but if you go back to, like, the First World War, you know, Detroit's African American population was like 2%. You know, all... And that was Philadelphia, Balt- uh, I think Baltimore had like eight or nine, but like, that was how it was. Pretty much all African Americans still lived down in the South. And so over the course of about 40 years, they all move out to all the big cities, and you have to still, like... They're from America, obviously, but like, you gotta renegotiate, like, your, um, your, your identity with these people and figure out, like, a new political compromise in these cities and the various places. And, um, when the great migration of African Americans starts to peter out, 1965, we reopen, uh, the floodgates of immigration with the Hart-Celler Act, and that's the world we're kind of in now. And so that's... And look, you know, especially back in the day, in the first, like, two, two big waves of migration into the US, the Ellis Island, you know, migrations. Um, like those were... Like, America would not be here today if we didn't do that. Like, there were not enough, uh, out-of-work English people, uh, you know, over in England to come over here and take over this whole continent. It was just never going to happen. The only way it was ever going to happen is if we were radically open and tolerant to people, you know. 'Cause you go back to... There's a, there's a, uh, naturalization law. I think it was the first naturalization law on the books in the United States, 1798. And you see a lot of, like, uh, racialist types, uh, point to this as if it kinda backs up their, you know, their idea of what, you know, of what America's history is and what it should be, because it says, uh, all person, all, "All white persons of good charac- all free white persons of good moral character, if you come to the United States, can become a citizen." And people see that and they focus on the white part, and they say, "See? You know, they wanted America to be a white country," or whatever. That is totally the wrong way to understand that law. I mean, if you were to go to, like, France or Germany or England or whatever, for them to pass a law that said, "Anybody in the continent, any European, you know, you guys can come over here, and we will make you a citizen with the full legal rights and privileges of our richest citizen." You know? "You will be an equal citizen." "You can just come here." Radically open. I mean, really, like, a revolutionarily open kind of law, especially back then. You know, you gotta remember, like, the Europeans still had another 150 years of just wantonly slaughtering each other, you know, uh, left, uh, still ahead of them. You know? You had, like, uh-... you- today, I mean, if you have, like, a person on, um, you know, on, who lives to the left of you, and they're the Thatcher family, and they're vaguely, you know, English, and then you have the McCoy family on the other side, and they're vaguely Irish, they're just (laughs) kind of white people to you now. Like, it all kind of seems like, "What's the difference?" Dude, go tell an English and Irish person that they were the same thing back in 1798. Like, these, they didn't, they did not identify with each other at all. There was a lot of bad blood, a lot of hostility. And so to say, "All of you people, with all your differences, you come over here and get with the program, and you can be one of us," just radically open. And again, we had to do that, or else the country would not be here, or it would be a, a, you know, an Anglo country sort of, um, clustered around the 13 colonies and maybe moved in a bit. But, you know, we wouldn't have been able to, to hold this whole continent against the French and the Spanish and everybody else who was around unless we were that open. And so that was like a prerequisite for America becoming what it, what it is today. Um, in Europe, it's very different, man. Like, there's, like, there's such thing as a Polish person, and Poland is the country where Polish people live, you know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDarryl Cooper
And, like, over here in America, like, we have, we have a much more fluid identity. We're constantly having to renegotiate it, and it's, you know, we think it's difficult today, you know, to, to integrate the immigrants that we've got and to try to renegotiate that. It's always been difficult. And, um, and to try to transfer our, uh, way of thinking about social identity, our way of thinking about, you know, what a nation is to the European countries, it, it just, it does not apply. Like, it really doesn't work.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's also, there's a thing when an all-white country wants to stay all white where people get very nervous of. If you have, you know, a, like, let, let's say China. Like, China is Chinese people. We, we all agree-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that it's like, it's filled primarily with Chinese people.
- 1:04:01 – 1:32:33
Coordinated migration concerns and a detour into labor: unions, exploitation, and the ‘best American story’
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, but I also think that there's- it's coordinated. And I think that, um, they're, they're doing it in America for a lot of bizarre reasons that you could attribute to trying to stack states and trying to overwhelm, um, Democratic voter registration in swing states and allow people to vote and give them a pathway to citizenship and allow them t- to vote and, you know, get them on the dole, get them on... Whether it's social security. We've talked about this before, where people were encouraged to say that they had bad backs or headaches so that they could be permanently disabled on social s- social security and just then you have a customer, you have a client. And then that, that client is gonna- you're gonna call upon them to vote for you. And if you only need 10,000 votes here or 20,000 votes there and they're objectively shipping in 10 times that much to some of these swing states, you gotta wonder. Like, this is not just... This is kind of taking advantage of the charitable aspect of Americans, how we view people wanting to come here for opportunity, which most of 'em are just doing that. Most of 'em are people that unfortunately were born in a place with no possibilities and a lot of crime and a lot of danger, and they have a family and they want to do better, and they came here, and I love it. I love that they do that. I love that they make it. I love that this is a place for that. But that can be taken advantage of. That can be taken advantage of in order to control the political parties, in order to tighten down on the laws, tighten down on the surveillance state, get everybody to use an app, put everybody on central bank digital currency 'cause it's more stable, have a social credit score system to make sure that everything goes well. And then the next thing you know, everyone's self-centered. Everyone is, uh, Twitter before Elon bought it. Ev- it's just- it's a dangerous place for freedom. And that's ultimately what America has to say that we stand for above all. Th- this is the place. If there's a place on earth where you can be free, this has gotta be that place. This is what we came here for. It's where the founding fathers, what this- what they were trying to do, with all the flaws and all the terrible things that took place here. Yes. Absolutely. Land acknowledgements, hallelujah. But at the end of the day, this place is supposed to represent freedom. But freedom can be manipulated. And you can, you can use your, your empathy and they, they can use it against you. And unfortunately, you have to be aware that there's nefarious forces that are involved in all areas of society where enormous amounts of money can be transferred. And that's how you have to look at it. This is ultimately about money, and, uh, whether it's about money bringing in people for cheap labor, which I think is fucked, um, because I think if you're in America, if you're here, if you're here, we're gonna call you an American. You should get paid what a fucking American gets paid. You should get health coverage, you should get everything. Shouldn't be able to, like, get people just 'cause they walked over here and you get 'em to work as- for slave wages. That's ridiculous. That's insane. That's anti-American. Uh, you know, but there's this giant-
- DCDarryl Cooper
I mean, I'll, I'll hold you up there. It might be, like, anti-American ideals, but that's the history of America right there.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is. It is.
- DCDarryl Cooper
I mean, that's the whole history of America.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's true. It's true. And that's the dirty little secret-
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of construction sites.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? I mean-
- DCDarryl Cooper
You, you go back to, like, um, you know, the 1850s, 1860s, and...You know, Irish dock workers on the East Coast, immigrant Irish dock workers, their life expectancy was 14 years from the time they stepped off the boat. And these weren't 60-year-olds coming over and working on the docks. You're talking about young guys who came over to do that, 14 years, you know. And when you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Horrible, brutal jobs.
- DCDarryl Cooper
With un- I mean, completely expendable, uh, human resource, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
We all remember the photos of people working on the Empire State Building, walking on the beams.
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just no safety, nothing, leather shoes.
- DCDarryl Cooper
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fuck off.
- DCDarryl Cooper
I'm a hu- like, there's a lot of... You know they have those, um, those political tests online, kind of tells you, like, what you are if you answer some questions?
- JRJoe Rogan
What are you?
- DCDarryl Cooper
I always end up right in the center.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
But I always have to tell people that I'm the last... the farthest thing from a centrist. It's just, I have a whole bunch of views that are very far right and a whole bunch that are very far left, according to this thing at least. You know, one of my far left views, before this World War II series, um, got kind of pushed to the front of the queue because of the Tucker controversy, I was working through a series on the history of the American labor movement. And, you know, people today think of teachers' unions and corrupt big labor organizations and so forth, but I'm a hu-... I mean, to me, the, the, the American labor movement, the first part of it, it's, it's, it's America's best story, in my opinion. I mean, 'cause, you know, you go back to the 1880s, 1890s. Like, I did one on the Battle of Blair Mountain, uh, in West Virginia-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... when 10, 11,000 coal miners who were just being brutally exploited, uh, by the, by the mining companies and their, and their mercenaries, I mean, they took up arms and they were ready to... Like, they were marching on, um, uh, the county next door to go, uh, free some of their compatriots and to hang the sheriff. I mean, they were... And they only stopped because the US Army finally showed up, and this is right after World War I. The US Army showed up and a lot of the guys who the miners were World War I veterans, and they, you know, they, they weren't gonna fight the army. Like, they were sort of, uh... Not, not even because they were afraid or discouraged by their prospects. They just weren't gonna... You know, there are... The- their problem was with, like, the sheriff and the mine, you know, the, the mine operators and stuff, not with the army. They didn't want to fight them, and so that diffused it. But, um, you know, you go back to those early, to those early decades of the labor struggles, and, I mean, people really have to, like... It was not some aberration when, uh, striking workers, you know, got a bunch of people killed, you know, like, where a bunch of Pinkertons or other mercenaries or even government forces. I mean, you go to, like, uh, you know, a, a, a mine, a coal mine in, uh, Colorado back in, it must've, I think it was 1912. And, uh, the National Guard of the state, which was completely... There was not a lot of people in Colorado at the time, so the National Guard and the, the state government was completely run by the mining operators 'cause they were the most important thing in the state. And the National Guard took up positions with machine guns up on a hill overlooking the striking miners' encampment. And the miners were mostly all gone because, you know, there were authorities looking for them and stuff. It was a lot of their wives and children and so forth, and they just opened up on these people and killed, like, 22 women and children. And like, that kind of thing was, like, that's an extreme kind of, uh, example, I guess, you know, of the brutality. But smaller versions of that, that's how it was. Like, people didn't believe back then, or a lot of people, the, the capitalists didn't believe back then that you had a right to strike. Today, we're like, "Yeah, if you don't want to go to work, you don't have to go to work, and if you all do it together, that's a strike." Like, you know, of course people can do... That's not how they thought about it back then. You know, they thought you were... They thought of a strike as like a form of sabotage, and so the authorities would be brought in, mercenaries would be brought in to, like, deal with these people. And you're talking about, like, people think of, like, socialists today or something when, like, right-wing people, I, I really try to get this across to them, that like, today you think, like, a left-wing per- socialist or whatever, and you think, like, a blue-haired college student who's screeching to you about this, that or the other. Back then, you, you know, you're talking about guys who, and, and women too actually in, in, in, uh, certain cases, but guys who spent 12 to 14 hours a day turning a wrench or swinging a hammer, and then after that, then they go to their meetings. You know, and they get home to their family and they sleep for four or five hours, that, you know, in a, in a basement two-room apartment that's got mold growing on the walls, and they have a bowl of cabbage soup with their four kids that live in this horrible place. Um, and then they go back and do it again the next day. These were, like, working people who were... I firmly believe, if it was not for their sacrifices, we would all still be working under those kind of conditions. Like, the, you know, the, the, um, the capitalist class, and I, you know, I'm not trying to sound like some kind of a, (laughs) you know, Marxist or something, I'm just, you know, that's what they were. Like, they were not going to compromise with people unless they were forced to, and those people, you know, they went out on the picket lines, they, they fought, they died, you know. In fact, you know, if you go up to a little bit later in the early 1900s, um, you know, probably the thing labor unions are most famous for these days is, like, the corruption, the mob involvement, and so forth, labor racketeering. And, uh, that kind of got started in the early part of the 1900s, but the interesting thing about it is, the, the way it started was, you know, the owners of, of the businesses, they were hiring, like, real thugs. I mean, the Pinkertons, you know, the, the, the different groups that they would hire, they would get people just out of prison, you know, violent people, war veterans, and they would, uh, send them against, uh, against the striking workers, have them spy on the workers, have them kidnap, like, guys who were trying to, uh, kind of get people into the union and so forth, and get rid of them, you know? It was, this kind of thing was happening, and so the unions started to say, "Well, we need some muscle too." And so who's the muscle? Well, if you got a bunch of, like, uh, Irish and Italian guys working on this dock, the toughest guys they know are the gangsters, and so they'd be like, you know, "We'll pay you. We need you to defend us from... You know, make sure that we don't get our teeth kicked in by the Pinkertons." And so they would do that.... and, you know, they ran into the trouble that, you know, th- it always presents itself in (laughs) situations like that, is the, you know, the people you hire to come in as muscle start to look around and be like, "Why do we have to take orders from these people again?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. (laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
(laughs) Like, uh, "Can't we run the show?" And that kind of started to happen. You started to get these, uh, you know, the unions that were, were racketeering, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DCDarryl Cooper
... or organizations. And so, like, you know, these are things about, um ... You know, h- history is extremely messy, you know? Uh, w- we have to always remember, like, people are often making deci- like, the crucial decisions that, like, turn history this way or that, you know, zig instead of zag, are often made under crisis conditions by people who sometimes they're great men and women, but a lot of times, you know, they're the person who happens to be there at the time, and they're doing their best, and they're taking advice from the people that are around them and they're, you know, they're making the decision that's gonna determine if we head off in this direction or that direction, you know? And, um, you can't ... I'm ... You know, the, the, the ... There was this one time, right? Like, um, this was probably ... I can tell this story because it's probably (laughs) it's back in the mid-2000s when I was still in the military. Um, I was over at my friend's house. He was at the hospital picking up our other friend who had had a bicycle accident and hurt his head, and he was picking him up and coming back with him. And so I was gonna meet him there so we could hang out, and, like, welcome him back from the hospital and so forth. So I get there and I call him up, 'cause he's not home, and I say, uh, "You know, Richard, um, I'm here, like, what's up?" He's like, "Ah, the doctors are being slow, whatever, so, um, I'm gonna be a little while." Well, I got a big 20-ounce venti, you know, Starbucks black coffee, and so I pound that thing in my car as I'm reading a book, and pretty soon I start to feel that pressure in my gut, like, I gotta take a shit. Like, I have to take a shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDarryl Cooper
It's like that caffeine shit, right? And, um, I call up my friend like, "Where are you?" Like, this ... "I need, I need you to get home now." He's like, "I ... The doctor's haven't even brought him to me, I don't know what's going on." He's like, um, "Go see if a door or a window is open or something." And so now I'm getting up and moving, and so that's making things worse, you know? And I check all the doors, I check all the windows, nothing's open. And I'm in the backyard and I'm, like, this close to just digging a hole-
Episode duration: 2:38:41
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Transcript of episode DE9oFxGoMvE
