Mailbucket #8: What Is a Historian?

Also: The crippled civil war

We here at Fif’ HQ get more email than we can possibly process in our Members Only episodes (which, for those tens of thousands of you on the free-subscription plan, typically include lengthy responses to subscriber mail). Sometimes those emails are especially good and too long to read out loud, hence the occasional bucket. (Previous instantiations: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7.)

As per custom, I do the lightest of copy editing, add the odd hyperlink or two, respond at the bottom in italics, and edit out the cheesecake pics addressed to Moynihan. Onward:

From: Jack Henneman

Subject: On “Historians” and “Not-Historians”

Date: Sept. 9, 2024

Gentlemen -- and I say this without equivocating calumnies directed at any one of you -- I had hoped to weigh in [during Second Sunday] on the question of who is and who is not a historian.

FWIW, in the introductory episode to The History of the Americans podcast I specifically disclaim being a “historian,” even though in the last four years I’ve written more than a million words of pretty detailed podcast script.

The reason I say I am not a historian is that, as the son of a professor of history, I have a decent sense for how academic historians think about the question. It is not a question of whether one’s writing is geared to a wider audience, although it must be said that in the last generation academic history has gotten increasingly esoteric and less likely to appeal to non-professionals. (Gordon Wood has written about this, noting that the void has been filled by non-historians, people like David McCullough and Walter Isaacson.)

I’d say that true historians do three things, in rough order of importance:

1. They work with original documents (or digital versions of them), not necessarily to the exclusion of secondary sources but definitely as the backbone of their work. In so doing, they unearth new historical knowledge, rather than just editorializing about or interpreting the findings of others. (This is not to say that historians don’t do that -- Heather Cox Richardson, Kevin Kruse, etc., do it all the time, but they are not acting as historians when they do, IMHO.)

Point is, you can tell whether somebody is a “historian” by looking at their footnotes -- did they read the source documents or (even better) find new source documents, or do they merely cite the work of others who did? I doubt “Martyr Made” has done much reading in the original German....

2. Historians are trained to “think historically,” which is to avoid anachronism. You can tell the difference more or less immediately. Historians know (or damn well should know) what fits in its time and place and what does not. They know, to pick a random example, that the Puritans didn’t banish people from Massachusetts Bay because they were assholes or just zealots (which some of them surely were), but because they had the same theological commitment to “conformity” within the polity that prevailed throughout the Christian world in 1635.  

3. Historians are trained in historiography, meaning that they know how the historical understanding of their topic of interest has changed over time and why it has changed. This is a huge topic, over which no doubt hundreds of shelf-feet have been written over the years. Suffice it to say that the reasons for changing historiography over time is not, professionally speaking, rooted in cranky overweighting of random facts to support results-oriented outcomes. (Which, by the way, is the original sin of the 1619 Project, at least according to its critics among professional historians.)

All of these things are taught to scholars who earn PhDs, so it is easier to claim [that] one is a historian if one has one.

Anyway, you guys probably know all of this, but since there is such confusion over it (as Moynihan pointed out), it is worth spelling out.

Best,

Jack Henneman

(The History of the Americans podcast, and Never Fly Coach devoted fan....)

(We are not worthy! Thank you, Jack, for putting succinctly what the brutally hung over Moynihan was trying to piece together on Sunday.)

***

From: Victor

Subject: Sept. 8, 2024

Date: In Defense of Darryl Cooper

I was going to make this a comment on the Substack post, but it got a bit long-winded for that, so here it is as a listener email instead. I’m currently writing this while drinking shitty house wine on a 10-hour flight from Germany of all places. And my flight attendant looks like Bari Weiss. I think it’s the glasses. 

Don’t hate me but I might be the only person around here who is a paid subscriber to both Martyr Made and TFC going on the past 3 years or so. Coincidentally they’re also the only podcasts I pay for. Having consumed all of his content (and that of TFC for that matter ❤️) I feel like I could provide some insight to Darryl Cooper’s comments and perspectives for those who are only exposed to a more recent, superficial layer of this whole ordeal.

In the excerpt from the Tucker interview, he wasn’t talking about the Holocaust, he was specifically referencing the Soviet POWs that were coming in in the hundreds of thousands, and how the German brass didn’t have a plan to accommodate that. (Can we just pause a second on the fact that the Germans were encircling entire armies of Soviets, 400,000 at a time, and STILL lost the eastern front? My goodness I find this sort of thing fascinating, but I digress.) Should he have also brought up the Jewish aspect of Nazi policy? Yeah, probably should’ve been at least a footnote there explaining that he’s not excusing that at all, but the mass killing of Jews hadn’t really got going yet in early Operation Barbarossa, so it didn’t pertain to the context of the specific comment Cooper was making. 

His views on Churchill, which I mostly disagree with, are coming from Cooper’s very non-interventionist worldview. He is an isolationist through and through, so this is going to color his hot take concerning Churchill (and Ukraine, and probably Taiwan, etc.). Again, despite seeing Churchill in a less favorable light than most, I don’t agree, but it’s still disingenuous to say he’s a Nazi apologist just because he’s wrong in saying Churchill was more of a villain than Stalin or Hitler.

His tweet about Hitler being in heaven is being misinterpreted in the media. Here’s the deal. He said the Trump shooter is in hell, and looking for Hitler he is going to be disappointed to discover he’s not there. What he’s saying is this: the Trump shooter saw Trump as Hitler, as is the hyperbole towards whichever cultural conservative is currently in the spotlight (but especially Trump). Cooper is saying the shooter is going to be disappointed that HIS Hitler, Trump, was not successfully assassinated. Where Darryl fucked up imo is not including “HIS” in the tweet. Because now it’s easy to presume he’s talking about the actual Hitler, rather than the perceived contemporary one. 

His other tweet, about Hitler occupying Paris being better than the opening ceremony shit show was a troll post meme. Does he honestly think Hitler and the Nazis conquering France was better than dumb woke shit? I seriously doubt it. Should he have made the meme? Probably not. For whatever reason Darryl can’t help himself to shitpost on X, and there are several of us on his Substack telling him he needs to stay the fuck off X and stick to long-form podcasting, which he excels in. But oh well. 

As far as the accusations of him being an anti-Semite, that’s just ridiculous. I’m just as much a rabid Zionist as most everyone around here, and I can honestly say his 30-hour podcast series on Israel/Palestine couldn’t be more even-handed. A lot of time he will make a teaser comment to get people talking, that would imply he favors one side or the other. But once the long form gets going, nuance dominates.

I don’t agree with a lot of Darryl’s politics; I’m mostly an Establishment-hating radical centrist while he’s “to the right of Attila the Hun” (his words). So I’m not going to be able to provide apologies or rationale for all of his views. But there is currently an effort to misconstrue a lot of what he’s saying. I’m a bit disappointed with The Free Press for resorting to the same superficial pearl clutching that corporate media (and the White House) is doing, but I still love Bari. And Moynihan, that goddamn degenerate.

Anyway, I hope this provides some context. I’m off to watch Ben Hur for the remaining 4 hours of this flight. Love you guys. Cheers. 

(Thank you for the testimony, Victor, and for your love! I have not been, and will not become, a consumer of Cooper’s work, but I know that many of our listeners are.

I don’t call Cooper a “Nazi apologist,” but I don’t think it’s “disingenuous” -- insincere, dishonest -- to arrive at that conclusion when someone says Winston Churchill was more of a villain than Hitler, and that Hitler was sincere in his proposals for peace. I similarly would not call Cooper’s Putin-tastic interpretations of NATO expansion “disingenuous.” These sentiments may be wrong, they may be right, but I think it’s better to take people at their word, unless there’s specific reason not to.

I don’t doubt that there’s “an effort to misconstrue a lot of what he’s saying,” but there are also careful, good-faith critics, such as Noam Dworman, who I find more personally relevant to consult.

As for Cooper’s trolling and shitposting, this is precisely why I will not become a consumer of his work. Not only do I dislike such behavior intensely, I consider it to be an early warning sign that one’s political commentary and intellectual work writ large will become, if it isn’t already is, contaminated. But, you know, I’m entitled to my outrage, I’m not entitled to yours, etc.)

***

From: Aleks

Subject: Darryl Cooper…Amateur Dickface

Date: Sept. 7, 2024

Hi Fifth, 

Long time listener, first time writing in. Proud paid subscriber for over two years. Michael, I’ve really been enjoying hearing you on Honestly recently. Might make me a paid subscriber there if you continue. 

Thanks for adding to my own understanding of history, and [of] my own history in particular. Michael’s recommendation of the book A Secret Life was very solid -- [I] enjoyed it as a child of Martial Law Poland, born in ‘79 in Warsaw to a very interesting family with deep involvement in the AK on one side, and another side … in the post-WW2 military structure. (Grandfather [was] a colonel in the Polish Army; in WW2 he had fought with the Polish First Army, which made its way into Germany along with the Soviets in the late part of the war … a story for another time.) 

A few years back a friend recommended Martyr Made’s 15-hour God’s Socialist series, about Jonestown and radical ‘60s-‘70s politics (Weather, the BLA, etc.). I thought it was fantastic. 

Then I started listening to his show about [Jeffrey] Epstein, and things got weird. He was trying to make a connection between Epstein and the Mossad, through Robert Maxwell, who, Cooper claimed, was himself a Mossad agent. It was weird, conspiratorial, and just going in a strange direction in its view of the world that I don’t subscribe to. Then I saw this asshole’s Twitter posts and he came off as such a partisan ghoul that [I] stopped paying attention to him. 

Recently I read Bryan Burrough’s book Days of Rage, and then after that Tim Reiterman’s book Raven, about Jim Jones and the People’s Temple. I had to laugh to myself, as I realized Cooper’s God’s Socialist podcast was essentially a cut-and-paste job from those two books, adding nothing to them at all. It’s embarrassing to lean so heavily on two sources, and if he made any money at all from the series, he should certainly be paying royalties. 

Anyway, fuck that guy. He couldn’t hold a candle to Dan Carlin. 

Also, regarding artists with four-album streaks, certainly Radiohead, with five: The Bends (great), OK Computer (brilliant), Kid A/Amnesiac (brilliant), Hail to the Thief (solid), In Rainbows (great). My biased opinion, as I’m a Radiohead fanatic. 

Thanks for reliably being a voice of reason in these fucked up times.  

(And thanks for YOUR testimony, Aleks, including about the four-album challenge, which -- predictably! -- generated a crazy amount of response; I’ll probably collate some of it soon. Though I still regard Kid A & Amnesiac as separate if related entities….

As for Robert Maxwell, one of the wildest characters of the late 20^th century: He almost certainly was Mossad, a connection considered noteworthy by the pre-eminent Epstein reporter. Take it for what you will.)

***

From: Amanda

Subject: Illness-Fakers, Scammers, etc.

Date: Sept. 10, 2024

Hello gentlemen,

I was so shocked to hear Moynihan mention r/illnessfakers on the pod! Two of my guilty pleasures meet in this episode. 

I’m obsessed with reading these posts, and I loved the Scamanda podcast. Some other recommendations of mine include the podcast Nobody Should Believe Me, which in season three follows the Maya Kowalski case from the Netflix “documentary” Take Care of Maya. Fascinating stuff about Munchausen by proxy, but if you listen to [the] season too long, you’ll hear the podcast host let her stupid politics take over any journalistic integrity she may have had. Another podcast called Sympathy Pains follows a similar theme. 

I have an actual disability which makes this all the more fascinating to me. Moynihan -- I wonder as a diabetic if that may drive some of your curiosity as well. The desire to be disabled is truly sick, and I can say with pretty good certainty that in 2024 a solid 75% of disability “influencers” are completely faking it. I grew up in a wheelchair, and only when I got a scholarship to a private university in Seattle did I begin to witness the phenomenon of people wanting to be disabled. It made sense in a way, because they could use their status to get extra time on tests and register for classes early. The incentives were there even in 2012, but now they exist tenfold due to the clout of being disabled. 

It’s absolutely miserable listening to these assholes, and I am constantly subjected to it. They board the planes early with their fake service dogs, and they fight me for accessible seats at venues. When I went to the Taylor Swift concert last year I heard a young, very healthy looking woman tell disability services they needed to move her to a better seat because due to her disability she couldn’t be too high off the ground or she could die. There is a schism in the disability community, where people are mostly shamed into silence lest we be accused of ableism ourselves. If one more person with EDS or POTS posts about “invisible disability,” I’m going to have to start a crippled civil war. 

One more you will appreciate. As someone who lives in NYC, people ask me what the hardest part is about being in a wheelchair here. I could easily say the train, or the Chinatown sidewalks, but the most surprising part of my existence here is how often old men stop me on the streets to tell me about a disabled lover they took in their youth. I’ll never forget the elderly man at Starbucks who went into great detail about a woman named Kitty who managed to change his life from her wheelchair. 

Anyway -- thanks for all you guys do! I appreciate so much your voices on current topics and listening is always a breath of fresh air.

(As John Lennon taught us, the one thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside. And you, Amanda, definitely are not!)

***

From: David B.

Subject: Australian Returns From Visiting (and Loving) the States

Date: Sept. 8, 2024

Good afternoon gentlemen (and that’s all three of you -- I think you’re all gentlemen),

I thought I’d drop a quick line having just returned from holiday to the United States, and let you know that I really enjoyed it, and that my fellow countrymen should ease up on the smug, self-regarding, ill-informed criticism of it. I had a couple of observations I wanted to share; you might find it interesting as an outsider looking in:

If you just want the quick version and can’t be bothered reading the entire email, all I’d say is that America is a country of extremes. Outside the U.S., we focus a lot on the extremes on the right of the political spectrum, but there’s plenty of extremism on the left as well, which plays out in a way I can only really describe as demented one-upmanship. For example, the impression I get when I visit cities is that the people who run them don’t recognise anti-social behaviour as [a] concept. Say a group of people are just hanging around somewhere like a carpark, looking inside windows and the like; that didn’t seem like something that police would deal with until it escalated to being a crime against the person (or a crime against property, on the understanding that the sole job of the police officer was to give a report number for insurance).

If my local petrol station had a whole bunch of Australian flags around the place, I’d probably think that’s a bit tacky, and I think the median city-dwelling wanker (like me!) would regard that as racism-coded. But I drive into a local [American] gas station to get a coffee (yuck), and they’re all over the place. And I’m thinking to myself, fuck yeah, in this country we salute the flag! Saw so many more American flags on the side of highways in two weeks than I saw my whole life in Australia. Several “Let’s go Brandon” and “No step on snek” flags too.

Another one I noticed was the free checked luggage and pre-boarding for active military personnel, even for personal trips. I cast no judgment whatsoever, although I note that Australia is on the complete opposite end of [that] spectrum, where the attitude to service in the Defence Force is, “It’s just a job, mate.”

I did also notice that the U.S. has a very strange relationship with means-testing. In Australia, virtually all government benefits are means-tested, because we have an obsessive aversion to anyone getting money or assistance that they don’t need. You guys seem to be a bit more selective with it, with Medicaid and Federal Student Aid being very tightly targeted, vs. Social Security being available to anyone who paid in regardless of the asset [or] income position. Same deal with V.A. housing and education benefits.

Flying was nice. I like it how when we landed in Denver, the flight attendant said “Welcome to Denver, the Mile High City,” and not “Qantas acknowledges the traditional owners of,” etc. etc. etc. The captain stepping out onto the jet bridge to say goodbye to the passengers was also a nice touch.

Ads for prescription medicine on TV: astonishingly based. No notes.

Now, here’s where I’m going to say contrarian stuff in defence of the U.S.

I’m sick and tired of smug Australian journalists and political commentators talking about Australia’s gun laws. While I think the National Firearms Agreement was [John] Howard’s greatest achievement as prime minister, realistically you’re not going to get something like that in the U.S., and people outside the U.S. should stop smugly suggesting that it’s possible. Related to this, I highly recommend this extract from [a] documentary about the Howard government and the response to the Port Arthur Massacre. And for Matt Welch, since you’re a fan of union busting (for comedic purposes -- I understand you opprobrium is reserved for public sector unions), you can watch this extract about how Howard’s government busted the maritime unions.

I’m also sick and tired of the ill-informed commentary on healthcare. Now it is true that the U.S. has a very complex and expensive healthcare system, the fact remains that (as I understand it), if you’re employed full-time and have good group insurance, you’re actually doing really well. The system really sucks when you have to pay for COBRA or marketplace insurance, or if you fall between the many cracks in the Medicaid system. It’s fanciful how people suggest that switching to “Medicare for all” like Australia would lead to everyone keeping the same high standard of coverage. You know the reason why so many Americans on X talk about getting therapy is because they can actually get therapy. In Australia it’s 10 sessions with a psychologist (and a $100+ out-of-pocket [fee]) and then you’re on your own. The drug price situation is pretty dumb, though. The fact that you can give a GoodRX code to the pharmacist and magically wipe half the price with no insurance gives the game away: the prices on a lot of drugs are kind of made up.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed visiting your wonderful country and I can’t wait to visit again. Thanks for reading this far, and if you do read this on air, skip the boring bits please.

Cheers!

(USA! USA! Oi! Oi! Oi!)