‘You are hated for standing up to international Jewry. To this day their Jewish owned media empire continues to “educate” people with endless documentaries slandering you as a cruel evil madman who murdered six million Jews.’
Internet Radio host Jeff Rense on Adolf Hitler
As we have seen in the first two parts of this investigation, internet radio broadcaster Jeff Rense is one of Hitler conspiracy theorist Harry Cooper’s most zealous supporters. On the evidence of his broadcast output Rense is also a paranoid, antisemitic, Holocaust denier, who regrets Hitler lost WW2. Most importantly he runs an Oregon-based Internet and satellite radio station, the Rense Radio Network which places this unmoderated fake history and fake news online and makes it available for anyone to listen to.
by Roger Clark
[NOTE: thePipeLine actively opposes all forms of racism and intolerance. Some of the images and links in this series of article carry racist, offensive and anti-Semitic content. They are included purely to provide evidence of the abhorrent views of Harry Cooper’s associates, and the pseudohistory and conspiracy theories of the Far Right.]
Harry, Hitler and Hate Radio
According to the US based Anti-Defamation League – which combats anti-Semitism – webmaster and internet radio broadcaster Jeff Rense ‘maintains a virulently anti-Semitic Web site, subtitled “The Global War Over News, Information & Control Of Your Mind.” Like the web site his radio show promotes a wide variety of conspiracy theories … including a great deal of antisemitism expressed both by Rense’s guests and Rense himself.’
In that context he broadcasts what is effectively hardcore Nazi propaganda to America and the world and Cooper is an eager participant.
For example, in April 2015 Rense celebrated Hitler’s one hundred and twenty-sixth birthday. There was even a cake. Harry Cooper took part in that program and to mark the occasion Rense even published a specially designed page on his website glorifying Hitler.
The 2016 birthday greeting to Adolf Hitler designed by David Dees and published on Rense.com
[David Dee’s/Jeff Rense, published in the public interest for purpose of criticism and reporting]
The page was created by the artist David Dees who is described by the US based Anti Defamation League as another anti-Semite, Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist. Like Jeff Rense, Dees publicly campaigns against Jewish people although he claims his argument is with “Zionists”. On 14 October 2015 Dees responded to a comment on his website which accused him of being anti Jewish by stating,
‘No, I tend to like ‘jews’, they are super smart and fun to chat with, but what I hate are the Zionists, and there are christian Zionists and jewish Zionists, find out about Zionism please.’
However, this claim looks decidedly hollow when it comes to examining Dees’s views about the Holocaust.
Put simply, when it comes to the Holocaust he thinks Hitler was ‘FRAMED’ … ‘Holocaust gas chambers = ZIONIST JEWS HOAX’, he proclaimed on one of his posters. On another Dees declared: ‘HOLOCAUST? NO THEY DIED OF TYPHUS and starvation caused by the allied bombing of German supply routes in WW2 … THERE WAS NO GAS CHAMBER HOLOCAUST. Or 6 million victims … Gassing Jews is Zionist propaganda inflicted on us heavily to justify creating the illegal state of Israel.’
By creating images like this artist David Dees appears happy to operate as the advertising agency for the racists and anti-Semites of conspiracy central
[Deesillustration.com: fair use for the purpose of criticism in the public interest ]
David Dees also hates the allies and resents their conduct during the war.
‘The Americans and the Brits … bombed Germany back into the Stone Age,’ he told the Jeff Rense program. ‘They dropped 75-100 percent more bombs on Germany than Germany was able to drop on England.’
However, in spite of this highly dubious, even offensive, attempt at moral equivalence, Jeff Rense calls David Dees ‘a genius’, while Harry Cooper employed him to design the cover for his book Hitler in Argentina. He also shared a program with him praising Hitler. Indeed, the arrangement has been so fruitful that by the beginning of 2015 nine of Cooper’s books had David Dees covers. ‘We’re coming out with another 12 to 15 books this year and David is going to do the covers on all of them,’ Cooper enthused on Rense Radio on 16 January 2015. ‘I wouldn’t have anybody else do my covers. He’s inventive…’
Inventive is one way of putting it.
David Dees also appears to own a website which includes more anti-Semitic material and nightmarish illustrations, including books entitled The Controversy of Zion and The Israel Deception, alongside Mr Coopers more innocuous looking U-boat titles. In fact, when you examine his output Dees is the ultimate conspiracy theorist. In an article entitled ‘Conspiracy Theory Meets Art’ critic, Dan Seitz, analysed his work, stating:
‘Dees, being a conspiracy theorist, hates everything that disagrees with his conspiracy theories. Obviously, everyone, from the news networks to the educational system is lying to you! Lying! And teaching your children to be stupid! … Everything You Know, Including Common Sense, Is Wrong.’
Besides Cooper and Dees, many of America’s most notorious racists and anti-Semites appear on the Rense Radio Network which the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] have called ‘a hate radio empire’. Some have their own talk shows including the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who took part in the Holocaust denial conference in Iran in 2006. And Don Black from the racial hate organisation Stormfront. Other hatemongers and anti-Semites run adverts, or feature in Rense Radio Network programs. So worrying is Rense’s output that the SPLC has published two reports detailing Rense’s activities – ‘Jeff Rense: In his own words’ … And ‘A New Report on Jeff Rense and his Rense Radio Network’.
In spite of this Jeff Rense remains a life member of Harry Cooper’s Sharkhunters International and on the advisory board. Harry says he is a ‘good friend.’ Jeff returns the compliment and sells copies of Hitler in Argentina on his website.
While the quietly spoken, reasonable sounding Rense may seem to be on first listening, a consummate interviewer, letting his subjects develop their arguments through long form conversations where he does not impose his own personality, the listener rapidly realises that his own historical judgements are crass and worrying. He thinks Hitler is maligned and misunderstood. ‘You have been lied to,’ he tells listeners. ‘You know nothing about Adolf Hitler the man – nothing … You actually know nothing about Winston Churchill either.’
That, according to Rense, is all the fault of “the Jews” whom in true paranoid anti-Semitic form Rense seems to think control everything and everyone. He is obsessed with Jewish people. He drones on and on about his view of the Jews in nearly every program which Harry takes part in. He never lets up and he is proud of his attitudes.
‘If I want to hate someone,’ he declared during his Hitler birthday program, ‘I should be allowed to hate someone … Right? … Okay? … That’s called the First Amendment – freedom of thought, freedom of speech. It’s all inclusive.’
Meanwhile Rense dismisses genuine historians out of hand: ‘The truth of the matter is the conspiratorialists have it right and the historians have it wrong,’ he asserts, regularly mocking expertise and claiming renowned scholars of the Nazi period are shills in the pay of, you have guessed it, the Jews.
But he’s wild about Harry Cooper, feeding his Walter Mitty fantasies, and encouraging him to ever greater excesses. Cooper, Rense claims is ‘a historian’s historian’ … ‘one of the most remarkable, honest historians working in the field of uncovering the truth…’
Rense heaps praise on Cooper in program after program. ‘Harry,’ he trumpets, ‘is truly one of the great historians of my lifetime and our times…’ Harry’s book, he tells listeners, is ‘rolling back the veil of lies and deception and the twisted version of history that we are taught as children and as adults. This is an extraordinary book. The research into it is unmatched … The book is entitled very simply Hitler in Argentina – tells you the whole story … it is a fact. Hitler was in Argentina … This is the documented truth of his escape from Berlin, his life in Argentina, and the two towns that he lived in … this is the book that could turn history finally into the light of day.’
Rense has a flimsy grasp on reality. But Harry Cooper stays on the line from Florida – he broadcasts by phone – lapping up the praise as one outlandish remark follows another. Then Harry puts recordings of these programs out on his Sharkhunters website so the whole world can hear them. In this way he endorses what Rense says. He is proud of these programs.
Currently Harry appears in them at least once a month. Between January 2013 and November 2016 he appeared more than 40 times in broadcasts normally lasting two hours – an extraordinary amount of air time. This is possible only on the internet where the playing field is levelled by low costs, little regulation and a global reach, so that the traditional broadcasters like the BBC and NPR, compete for the same audience as Rense and the myriad of other fringe broadcasters.
Like Cooper, Rense then also makes recordings of the Cooper programs available through his own website. And these programs are being picked up and repeated all over the internet, including on You Tube, magnifying the potential damage.
And all the while Rense keeps plugging Cooper’s book Hitler in Argentina…
“This is the definitive story done with honour and integrity. It tells the truth”, he told listeners on 21 February 2014.
As we saw in Part Two of this investigation, not when the Führer is confused with a certain long dead London pensioner, and its authoir cites as evidence another photograph, lifted from the internet, which was clearly faked within the last few years, it doesn’t.
Happy Birthday Mein Führer!
On – 17 April 2015 – Cooper and Rense broadcast THAT program – celebrating Hitler’s birthday – ‘The Birthday of the Man Who Didn’t Die in His Bunker’. At a time when people were commemorating the 70th anniversary of Hitler’s downfall, Cooper, and his neo-Nazi friend, launched a savage attack on truth and memory. In a program that for many plumbed the depths of indecency they celebrated Hitler’s life and rule and they treat this genocidal tyrant as a statesman of genius. No mention that he was a racist, imperialist, warmonger directing a war of annihilation and aimed at limitless German conquest. No mention that he was creating a vast slave empire.
During the programme Rense complained Hitler was ‘continually vilified by the world’s Zionist press.’ He was sorry the Nazis lost WW2. ‘Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and we are where we are today,’ he said.
What about Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941? He thought that ‘brilliant’ in spite of the fact that the attack started a war of attrition on two fronts that Germany was bound to lose. Millions died, Germany was smashed to smithereens and Communism advanced far into Europe. For over 40 years we were threatened by a Third World War during the Cold War.
Rense, who also claims the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion are genuine, denies the Holocaust outright in his programs. Hitler, he says on his website, ‘NEVER built Jewish gas chambers … the Holocaust hoax is one of the greatest shakedowns in history’ – in other words a swindle to make money and worse.
‘It’s a very, very sad story of massive brainwashing that has gone on for 60 years plus, and it’s not going to change,’ he tells listeners. ‘They’re teaching Holocaust history now in primary schools around the United States and in Europe and it’s only going to continue to get worse … to lie about something and then capitalize on it and make trillions of dollars on it ultimately, doesn’t work for me…’
Rense added: You have to keep in mind that the rail lines to the main labour camps like Auschwitz were never bombed or interrupted because they were making money for the Western banking interests – (i.e. the Jews) – that were involved on both sides of the war…’
Rense approved Hitler burning books, thought Hitler ‘gave us honest money’ and that he boasted Green credentials long before it became politically fashionable with his ‘… obvious love and sensitivity to animals and devotion to a healthy environment’.
It is never mentioned that those qualities were less apparent to the people attacked by Nazi bombers, armies, warships and submarines so admired by Harry. And those who died in Hitler’s death camps.
‘You were loved,’ said Rense about Hitler, ‘not because you were a great dictator, but because you were a great teacher, a living example of the philosophy and order you preached.’
Rense objected to the ‘Jewish owned media’ maligning Hitler. On his website he declared: ‘You are hated for standing up to international Jewry. To this day their Jewish owned media empire continues to “educate” people with endless documentaries slandering you as a cruel evil madman who murdered six million Jews.’
According to Rense the real criminals were the allies. ‘You hear about General Eisenhower war hero,’ he declared. ‘No, no. He was a mass murderer … Eisenhower was one of the most heinous figures in history in my book – right with Churchill, FDR who ran the most overtly, obvious communist administration in this country’s history up to and probably including this one.’ ( meaning President Barack Obama)
In a later program Rense added: ‘Eisenhower was a genocidal maniac. He was a mass murderer. He was as evil as Stalin…’
His hatred of Churchill also knows no bounds. On 16 January 2015 he had this to say:
‘You hear some of the stories about Winston Churchill – you want to vomit. The guy was just putrid – a pervert owned by Barnard Baruch – probably the wealthiest Jew in the world…’
Barnard Baruch was a distinguished Jewish American financier and advisor to Presidents Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt and Truman.
What does Harry do when he hears these outlandish remarks made in broadcasts he is taking part in? Does he slam down his phone in disgust and walk away from the program? … NO WAY! … Harry stays on the line and chips in. He tells us Hitler was a great man along with Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. He commiserates with the Nazi war criminals who were hanged at Nuremberg. He thinks they were maltreated by the allies. He talks about his forthcoming trip to Germany. And on 9 June 2015 Harry told another program – Time Out: Shark Hunters Intro Show – ‘The crime of the century was Eisenhower, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin etc…’
Recordings of the attacks Cooper and Rense made on their critics in the Hitler Birthday show were put out not only on Cooper’s website, but on YouTube and other internet outlets declaring: ‘ZIONIST ATTACK ON “HITLER IN ARGENTINA” – HARRY COOPER … The Zionists hate it that Sharkhunters revealed that Adolf Hitler didn’t die in the Bunker in Berlin, but that he was permitted to escape and live another 20 years in Argentina. Harry Cooper, author of Hitler In Argentina and Escape from the Bunker, with Jeff Rense.’
Predictably the more Cooper’s faults are exposed the more his acolytes defend him. The bulk of reviewers on Amazon’s US site suggest Hitler in Argentina is a great book. Some are written by paid-up members of Sharkhunters, including one who went into raptures over Hitler in Argentina, but failed to tell customers he had this conflict of interest. James Bauernschmidt is one of Cooper’s most ardent supporters and a member of his organisation. On 18 April, 2014 he posted a five star review entitled ‘Fascinating, simple fascinating!’ It’s garnered more positive hits than any other panegyric.
Another member used his review to urge customers to join Cooper’s Sharkhunters. In his five-star plug called ‘Time to Rewrite History’, published on 30 April 2015, Jay Gillespieon encouraged readers to enrol:
‘Anyone with an interest should consider joining,’ he declared. ‘I was privileged to join in 1987. Sharkhunters is a neutral organization, unlike many others, run by a man who values history…’
Harry Cooper – True Neo-Nazi or a useful idiot?
The key question in all this remains, Is Harry Cooper a neo-Nazi, or merely a useful idiot – a naïve simpleton and propagandist for a cause which he fails to understand, who is used cynically by neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers? The answer may seem obvious in the light of the evidence we have presented. But we ask this question because Harry Cooper is in a constant state of denial. On 17 July 2015 he denied again on Rense radio that he was a neo-Nazi: ‘I’m not,’ he declared. ‘I’m a Republican.’
Cooper made that remark two days after a German court convicted a 94-year-old former guard at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews. The guard, Oskar Groening – a member of the SS – was known as the ‘book-keeper of Auschwitz’. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
‘I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria,’ Groening told the BBC in the 2005 documentary Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution … ‘I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place.’
More than one million people, most of them European Jews, died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Groening publicly discussed his role at Auschwitz. He said he was speaking out in order to silence those who deny the Holocaust took place. But he failed to silence Jeff Rense. And Cooper seems to relish the attention controversy brings: ‘I offend as many people as I can,’ he told Jeff Rense on 17 July 2015. ‘I can be a obnoxious as I want to be. It just comes naturally to me. I’m a natural…’
It probably also failed to silence two other people who Harry Cooper admitted to knowing on Rense Radio; discredited historian and proven Holocaust denier David Irving. And the Australian born – in Cooper’s words, ‘very nice lady’ – Lady Michelle Renouf. She explained her support for Mr Irving, and for the Holocaust denying right-wing Catholic bishop Richard Williamson, telling the Telegraph,
‘Our concern is not Holocaust denial, but debate denial,’ adding ‘People should have the freedom to question the accepted view of what happened. That questioning is part of our culture.’
The Third Reich never did anything wrong – okay?
Cooper is keen modern Germans should believe his revisionist and outlandish interpretation of Hitler, the Nazis and WW2. Two days after the Auschwitz SS guard Oskar Groening was jailed Cooper told Jeff Rense about his visits to Germany:
‘Older people don’t believe the propaganda crap,’ he said. ‘But they’re afraid to say anything because their government has laws in place so you can’t do much. The younger people are starting to say, “Hey wait a minute, we don’t believe all this stuff about how evil and mean we were”. So they’re starting to learn, too. And our book Hitler in Argentina is selling fairly well over there.’
Yes, Cooper is rehabilitating Hitler and Nazis. He is having the book translated into German:
‘We’re going to get it done. It’s going to come out very shortly in Spanish … It’s already out in French. And it’s selling quite well in English. It’s the truth – how Hitler did not shoot himself. Eva Braun did not take poison. They died in South America…’
RENSE: ‘Of old age…’
COOPER: ‘Yep, yep. Of course Hitler sooner than Eva Braun because her health was in pretty good shape. His health was pretty rocky. Plus there was a big age difference.’
RENSE: ‘It’s all there. It’s all in the book … It’s probably one of the most remarkable books of history that will ever be written because it shatters one of the biggest lies of the whole 20th-century. Just shatters it.’
That is the view Cooper and Rense want modern Germans to believe as well as everyone else, including Americans. Far from showing qualms about these programs Harry urges members of Sharkhunters in his newsletter to listen to recordings of them on his website where they are available permanently.
‘Enjoy!’ he says.
Attack! … Attack! … Attack!
As Cooper’s claims become more outrageous they attract increasing criticism. His response? … Deny everything and Attack! Accuse your opponents of doing what you yourself are doing. So according to Harry Cooper and Jeff Rense the ‘Southern Poverty Law Center is a Terrorist/Hate Group’ – the exact opposite to what it is in reality.
As for this writer? According to Cooper I am ‘that impotent little British weasel’ who prints ‘lies and slander against Hitler in Argentina.’
‘Lies and slander’ ? … That’s a dangerous accusation to make when your book is filled with idiotic fantasies, grotesque errors and falls apart when properly examined.
One of the characteristics of conspiracy theorists is they see conspiracies everywhere. They are suspicious about everybody. No critic has integrity. The more genuine expertise in a subject a person has the more dishonest and suspect they are. Conspiracists attribute base motives to anyone who differs from them. Cooper and his associates use all the classic techniques of trolling, intimidation and disinformation to try to silence their critics – threats, smears, innuendo, insults and defamation are their currency and they are reckless in their attacks. They falsely claim critics are paid to rubbish books and make the apparently paranoid suggestion that may even be paid agents of influence or even agents of Intelligence services. Here is Cooper at work employing that technique:
‘Our book is absolutely and solidly based on hard facts. Some have advanced the theory that Clark is paid by (you fill in the blanks here) to discredit all such books that set history straight.’
Like his book Cooper’s remarks are full of false claims and inaccuracies. It’s untrue to suggest I work for any organisation he can’t even name. Nor am I paid to discredit his, or anyone’s, books. Where’s the proof? It is also untrue to say his book is ‘absolutely and solidly based on hard facts’. I have quoted numerous international authorities in my reviews all of whom rubbish Hitler and Bormann survival myths. I’m not a lone wolf pursuing an eccentric personal agenda. When Cooper can get some support, let alone the whole weight of the academic world behind him, people may take him seriously. So far this has failed to happen. Like many authors of pseudohistory Cooper objects to people who write long reviews analysing his theories and presenting expert evidence that contradicts his assertions.
Yet although his remarks are untrue and defamatory Cooper keeps repeating them in his newsletters, on his website and elsewhere:
‘This poor, impotent little twerp is thought to be an agent of MI6 or similar who is paid to attack any such work that tears away the propaganda and false history we have been taught.’
Cooper claims my proof that Hitler died in 1945 – or as he calls it ‘alleged proof’ – ‘all boiled down to merely parroting official government reports which, as we now know, were carefully crafted fiction.’
Again this is untrue. Coopers view defames named individuals – experts of the utmost integrity – who have examined the evidence and gone public with it, including countless serious academic and mainstream historians. I’m not just ‘parroting official government reports’ that are ‘carefully crafted fiction.’ Hitler and Bormann survival myths are rejected by experts all over the world. It is Harry Cooper who parrots fiction. But in his case it is neither carefully crafted nor well written.
In my Amazon review of Hitler in Argentina – entitled ‘Hopeless nonsense – Save your money’ – and reviews of his two earlier books Escape from the Bunker – I criticised Cooper’s misleading use evidence. My comments angered those who believed the Hitler survival myth to the extent that many retaliated with libellous fantasies based on zero evidence.
‘Who bought and paid you, Roger Clark?’ demanded one who calls himself Hank.
Another falsely claimed I was a ‘Professional disinformation agent … and, obviously, since he’s paid to do what he does, he will never admit to his covert role.’
James Bauernschmidt also had suspicions about me: ‘My guess is that he is a professional debunker paid by MI-6 or MI-7 to spread propaganda,’ he wrote on the Sharkhunter’s website. ‘My research a few years back about the JFK murder had made it clear to me that powers that be actually employ naysayers to debunk challenges to official stories…’
James has clearly done his research. MI7 was indeed the department of British intelligence which dealt with propaganda. Unfortunately, however, it was disbanded in 1940 and subsumed into the Ministry of Information, which no longer exists.
How To Annoy A Conspiracy Theorist
All this proves that there is a simple recipe if you want to provoke dedicated conspiracy theorists: write long, carefully-sourced articles analysing their mistakes and quoting major authorities. It drives them mad. Adding the odd joke at their expense makes them even more cross.
This is because the standard analytical concepts of following and weighing evidence which are employed by academics and journalists the world over, are not just foreign to them, but dangerous to their carefully crafted world view. Reveal their claims are false and you will find you have kicked over the wasp’s nest. Instead of responding with well sourced arguments of their own they react like religious fanatics whose deepest beliefs have been called into question. You can find such fanatics all over Amazon and the Internet, writing reviews and exploding with fury in the comment columns. One such individual is an anonymous critic who calls himself ‘K’. When he read my criticisms of Cooper’s Hitler and Bormann survival books K became hysterical, resorting to outright defamation.
‘You are a known member of a Jewish hate group’, he raged on Amazon citing no evidence whatsoever. ‘It’s an obvious disinfo effort. He is merely a liar.’
K then proceeded to denounce me and the renowned experts and institutions I quoted in my reviews.
‘It’s really nasty,’ he raved, ‘what he and a few others are doing here and how they are straight up lying and pushing the old propaganda and trying to influence people.’
He accused me of ‘spewing complete inaccurate disinformation’ and ‘quoting false sources etc’. He wanted me banned and prosecuted:
‘Amazon should ban you for life for your ranting and your foolishness and nonsense that you are trying to pull here; and the authors of these books should file suit against you for multiple reasons. It’s very simple … You are confused and wrong.’
I am not – as K’s falsely claims – pushing a disinformation agenda. I am simply quoting recognised authorities who contest Nazi survival myths. And with good reason. No major authority thinks Hitler, Eva and Bormann escaped Berlin in May 1945. Cooper – and K – would have us believe this is because thousands of renowned historians, experts and institutions are in ‘lockstep’. In their view ever since 1945 mainstream historians and academics have lied, deliberately falsifying history as part of a vast global conspiracy to bamboozle the public about the true fate of Hitler. The massive conspiracy about the conspiracy is so watertight that no one ever breaks ranks. They are all fraudsters who are paid to deceive. According to Cooper they dare not dissent for fear of ostracism. And yes – most of them are Jews.
‘Somebody does not want the story told,’ as one true believer put it. ‘There be people in today’s government that do not want the truth. What a slap in the face of the Jews.’
Despite what survivalists claim there is no sinister conspiracy to conceal Hitler’s fate, let alone a worldwide Jewish plot to hide the truth. Time after time Hitler conspiracy theorists fail to make their case. They present no convincing evidence – hard, verifiable facts – to back up their claims that Hitler escaped from Berlin in 1945 and went to live in Argentina, or anywhere else. That he did is a theory which is typified by an alarming lack of precision, a rejection of the basic tools of logic and rational discourse, and a flight from reality. Such sloppy accusations by amateurs are no substitute for knowledge. In fact Cooper demonstrates to perfection of the old adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Witnesses quoted by him in Hitler in Argentina and Escape from the Bunker are often unreliable and even scurrilous. His case relies almost completely on rumours, word of mouth, hearsay and unfounded, unchecked, alleged information.
But in spite of generating such an easily debunked narrative he fooled K who was then determined to silence me. Whenever I challenged Hitler and Bormann survival books K urged Amazon to take action against me:
‘You should be banned from Amazon’ … ‘I have reported you for abuse for several instances of breaking the rules here and hope others will do this also’ … ‘I have reported you for abuse and hope you get banned soon’ … ‘I have reported you for multiple instances of abuse, you are wrong’ … ‘People need to report this person so Amazon will do what needs to be done about him.’
Why all the passion and fury? It seems to be because K appears to adore Adolf Hitler: ‘Any intelligent and educated person,’ he wrote, ‘can see that almost all of this Nazi history is filled with propaganda and incorrect information in an effort to portray Hitler and the Nazis as the most evil thing imaginable for various reasons.’
On 9 Dec 2015 K declared: ‘People deserve to know the Truth, that Adolf Hitler clearly escaped and lived in Argentina after World War 2, there are real authentic pictures of him there and a mountain of real evidence now that you cannot deny…’
But deny it I did. I challenged him to produce these ‘real authentic pictures’ of Hitler in Argentina and the ‘mountain of real evidence’. Tell us where we can find them, I demanded. Name your sources.
But answer came there none.
During angry exchanges K revealed more about himself: ‘Ah,’ he wrote, ‘I see now, you must be Jewish, now it makes perfect sense. It really is funny how you and other similar types have attempted to influence people here on Amazon about the release of this information. I now understand why you hold on so tightly to your false Beliefs that Hitler died in Germany. Like I said now it all makes perfect sense. Sorry mister but you are guilty of High Foolishness.’
K’s remarks became so strident Amazon felt compelled to delete many of them to prevent potential libel suits. You can see the gaps in the comment columns where some were posted. His attempts to get me banned failed. My critical reviews are still there. But this encounter with a fanatical conspiracy theorist – one of many during this ongoing debate – is revealing. It shows the kind of people Harry Cooper and other Hitler survivalists attract to their cause. A glance at the remarks on Amazon and across the Internet shows many are irrational and steeped in anti-Semitism. Like Jeff Rense they believe there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to deceive us all.
I’m sorry to disabuse K and other believers. But I’m not a member of any hate group – let alone ‘a known Jewish hate group’ – name one K? … I’m not even Jewish. And I have never been a secret agent. Nor do I belong to any organisation that pays me to criticise lousy books. I write my reviews because I have built up knowledge of this subject over decades, made numerous historical programs for BBC radio, spoken to countless historians, WW2 veterans and victims of the Nazis. And I’ve even interviewed at length Hitler’s architect and armaments and production minister Albert Speer.
It’s a matter of truth. As one observer remarked: ‘When someone says something ridiculous and it goes unchallenged it becomes the new normal.’
That is why, when I see concerted attempts to misinform about this most sensitive and important aspect of the history of the 20th century, I challenge the deceivers to produce evidence to substantiate their claims. It is a well known adage, spoken most famously by astronomer Karl Sagan, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. But Hitler survivalists consistently fail to find anything even convincing and constantly contradict each other. Cooper claims his book Hitler in Argentina ‘is absolutely and solidly based on hard facts.’ I say that statement is false. His book is full of glaring errors, as are its two predecessors called Escape from the Bunker.
Money … Money … Money
As I keep saying, no one pays me to write my Amazon reviews, in spite of protestations to the contrary. However, it seems that neither Harry Cooper, or Jeff Rense are working Pro Bono. In 2015 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that Rense.com brought in around $55,000 per month. Meanwhile Harry Cooper not only has a pension but may well obtain large amounts of money from his controversial activities. Even though he told Jeff Rense that Sharkhunters only had $800 in the bank each member of Sharkhunters pays an annual subscription of $50. This means that if the organisation does have more than 8,000 members as Cooper claims, that adds up to an income of over $400,000 a year.
Also what about all that Nazi memorabilia and propaganda he sells on his website and advertises in his books – the DVDs, wartime music CDs, interviews with veterans, art prints, hand signed photos – masses of material from the mainstream to the more esoteric. Alongside a CD of Bavarian Oompah Music you can also purchase a CD titled Music of the NS and SS (I) and another with the title Speeches by Prominent Men in the Reich & Music. I think we can be reasonably sure those ‘prominent men‘ are not opponents of the Nazi regime? Still, it all brings in money. So do Cooper’s regular Nazi history tours for which he charges large fees. Then there are all those books he keeps pumping out in their various versions. Cooper claims Hitler in Argentina is a bestseller.
Unfortunately it is difficult to obtain any accurate figures as to quite how much Harry Cooper stands to make on sales from the Sharkhunters shop. However, on the page selling fine art prints he comments that 10% of the revenue is given to the German U-Boat memorial and adds that to date he has donated “more than $6,700”. Taking that figure at face value it means that to date Harry Cooper has sold some $67,000 worth of prints.
If you listened to Cooper on The Truth Traveller radio program on 11 April 2016 (second hour) you would also have heard how he finances those expensive trips to South America. About 38 minutes into the show he told listeners:
‘No one gets a salary at Sharkhunters. Fortunately we have a couple of angels who, when we’re going away say – “Oh fine. Heh, you need five grand? Here!” – Boom! – a cheque comes in the mail. God bless these people. They are the ones who help us … Our angels cover my costs going down there.’
By July 2016 Cooper had listed about 45 angels on his Sharkhunters website who helped fund his tours abroad: ‘These expeditions are costly…,’ he told readers.
‘With the advent of our 2016 South American Expedition, we allowed Members to be part of our expeditions as well with their donations, which are tax deductible. That’s right – TAX DEDUCTIBLE donations. In addition to Sharkhunters International we also have our Sharkhunters International Submarine Research Institute (SISRI for short) which is a legally constituted 501 (c) (3) tax exempt organization and donations to SISRI are tax deductible in the US.’
As an incentive Cooper added: ‘Sharkhunters will give you a gift for your generous donation…’ Give $150 and ‘We will give you a HARD COVER copy of our history shattering book Hitler in Argentina. Only 200 hard cover copies have been produced and there will be no more. Yours will be numbered and signed.’
Earlier in Part One of The Truth Traveller radio program Cooper uttered some further insults and once again falsely accused me of receiving money to write critical reviews about him on Amazon:
‘We feel – quite accurately – that he is paid to do this,’ he said.
‘Quite accurately’? … Where’s the proof? … Nowhere. Because – boring as it is to repeat – I’ve never been paid to write my Amazon articles. A dishonest smear doesn’t become truthful by repetition anymore than Cooper’s claims that Hitler survived WW2 convince on the same grounds. This constant inability to tell the truth, even in minor matters let alone major historical events, destroys Cooper’s credibility.
So Harry stop making false accusations about your critics being paid by unknown shadowy figures to rubbish your works, especially when you refuse to tell us the identity and affiliations of your own ‘angels‘.
How conspiracy theorists thrive
Some people may ask how conspiracy theorists, such as Harry Cooper, can get away with their outrageous behaviour and unsupportable views of history?
While pseudo history and conspiracy theories have always existed, take the example of the faked “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and which lie at the basis of much of the anti-Semitism of the 20th century and which were probably written up in their best known form in Russia in around 1905, but they have been given huge additional appeal and global reach by the Internet. This has transformed the way we communicate and it is a gift to those who wish to spread weird or even dangerous ideas. In his book Among the Truthers Jonathan Kay examines America’s growing conspiracy pushing underground.
‘For the first time in history,’ he writes, ‘ordinary people can spread their opinions, no matter how hateful or eccentric, without them first gaining the approval of editors, publishers, broadcasters, or paying consumers. At the Web’s birth in the mid-1990s, it was imagined that these new information technologies would usher in an Enlightenment dream world of mutual understanding and rationalism. Instead, the opposite has happened. Rather than bringing different groups into common discussion, they instead propelled radicals into their own paranoid echo chambers.’
Harry Cooper and other Hitler survivalists live in such echo chambers. They have been helped by the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in the United States in 1987. This had required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a way that was honest, equitable, and balanced. Once gone organisations, such as the Rense Radio Network, could flourish. This has had a profound impact on American society and politics.
Then there’s the First Amendment that conspiracy theorists ruthlessly exploit. At the beginning of each of Rense’s programs an announcer tells listeners:
‘The views and opinions expressed by the guests, callers and hosts on this and all Rense Radio programs do not necessarily reflect or agree with those of the network, its commercial sponsors, its radio station affiliates, or Internet broadcast platforms. In these controversial times we believe the First Amendment and freedom of the press are absolutely essential to the survival of our nation.
Thank you. And now enjoy the program.’
This means you can say what you like and to hell with the consequences, and Harry Cooper does, egged on by Jeff Rense. But just because a bogus professor tells you Hitler survived the war doesn’t make it true – especially when that bogus professor fails to provide any substantial evidence to back up his case. Instead Cooper provides a text book example of a conspiracy theorist in action – a man who is unable, or unwilling, to tell the difference between truth and fiction.
The trouble with Harry
Even though he ticks all the conspiracist boxes Harry Cooper shows no awareness that he is doing anything wrong. On the contrary he seems to glory in his works. But when an author publishes books that are grossly and palpably false and lauds one of the greatest criminals in history it is time to take a stand. When he compounds that offence by appearing in programs that outrage public decency – where the host vilifies renowned experts and claims bogus books are true – it is time to say enough is enough. This nonsense has gone on for years. What Cooper is doing is unacceptable – malefic and sick.
Cooper may have set out to create an innocent history group when he founded Sharkhunters in the 1980s. But over the years he has entered the danger zone. He has crossed the line. He is getting drawn ever deeper into the mire. He is now up to his neck in a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying, swamp.
After years of searching:-
- Cooper has failed to produce any evidence that Hitler, Eva and Bormann survived WW2.
- He has failed to produce any photos, documents, or artefacts belonging to them.
- He cannot tell us when, where and how they died.
- He has found no medical records, human remains, graves or DNA, let alone children, in South America.
- There are no plausible witnesses. Only rumours and hearsay.
Nonetheless, the way Cooper and his Nazi-loving cronies insult and defame experts who have spent a lifetime studying this subject is to many people disgusting.
In his book Counter-Knowledge the British writer Damian Thompson examined the way conspiracy theorists avoid the proper use of scientific methods in the collection and evaluation of evidence.
‘People,’ he wrote, ‘who share a muddled, careless or deceitful attitude towards gathering evidence often find themselves drawn towards each others fantasies. If you believe one wrong or strange thing you are more likely to believe another.’
There are plenty of confused people around who do dumb things and Cooper is one of them. He’s mixing with the wrong people and forever chasing phantom Nazis. Some people may think he’s no more than a crank – a genial buffoon we can safely ignore. But he has a cult following and a global reach and his Hitler survival books can do real damage because they threaten our understanding of history. Everything that distinguishes a work of scholarship from trash is missing from them. His books are rotten with ignorance and add nothing to the sum total of human knowledge.
As we have seen Cooper is also happy to keep neo-Nazi company, appears on neo-Nazi radio shows, employs a neo-Nazi to design his book covers, and regards former members of Hitler’s SS as friends.
At the time of writing he is apparently also considering translating Hitler in Argentina into Russian. It will be interesting to wonder how modern Russia will react to the false claims that the Red Army failed to prevent Hitler escaping in 1945?
And he’s planning further trips to South America and Europe.
In the autumn of 2016 he said: ‘We’re going to Bavaria and Austria where we’re guests of German veterans down there – hundreds and hundreds of them – mostly from the 5th SS…’
On his website Cooper added: ‘Every American soldier I have talked with who was up against the Waffen SS in combat has the highest respect for these true warriors. They were the toughest fighters of World War Two. I personally know many veterans of the Waffen SS and they are all honourable men. During our “Patrols” in which Sharkhunters brings Americans to Europe to meet their counterpart, American and German veterans who fought against each other seventy or more years ago become fast friends.’
The trip was scheduled to last for 15 days from Saturday 24 September to Saturday 8 October 2016. The price, a cool $3,576. This includes all hotels (double occupancy), transportation, breakfasts, entry to all places and all meetings with the veterans. A single room costs an extra $700.
On his return Cooper described the trip in detail on Rense Radio. On 18 November he confirmed he and his party had met SS members: ‘This,’ he said referring to a photo, ‘is the Saturday evening fellowship with a couple of hundred veterans in there from all branches and other countries as well. But the vast majority of them are 5th SS. They’re just decent, normal people and American veterans who fought against the SS tell me they were the toughest people they ever fought. They just never quit.’
In the same program Cooper expressed satisfaction at the way modern Germans were reacting to his interpretation of World War II: ‘I’m finding a lot of younger people in their 20s in Germany really want to know about this part of their history. And they’re digging into it. And they don’t want to hear their grandfathers were monsters and murderers. They want the true story.’
Anyone got a spare $1.5 million?
Cooper plans more tours next year and also hopes to visit South America again. However, a more ambitious plan to explore military sites in Antarctica seems to have stalled. In the summer of 2016 Cooper reported he spent 8 days in Monte Carlo in Monaco. Arriving by helicopter Cooper says he was greeted by a relative of Prince Albert II, the reigning monarch of the principality and one of the world’s wealthiest royals. Cooper was hoping to raise $1.5 million to fund his Antarctic expedition. A meeting with Prince Albert fell through but Cooper said, ‘We met with a lot of his people’.
With the aid of an assistant called Annet he states he attended receptions ‘meeting all sorts of important people’ and says he ‘had a big ship lined up’ – complete with a hospital and helicopter – and was ‘visited by a man very, very close to Prince Albert. He broke out of a meeting with the Prime Minister to meet us at the Yacht Club – a fine gentleman. We were discussing what we needed to do and everything was green flag up.’
Cooper also had discussions with two scientists one of whom investigated his activities online. The scientist was appalled at what he found. Next day he called Annet and shouted at her: ‘Do you know Cooper is a Nazi and Sharkhunters is a hate group?’ The scientist then phoned other people and Cooper’s proposed Antarctic adventure collapsed.
Enraged, Cooper launched an all-out attack on his critics. He set up a special webpage where he and his followers – zealous post-truthers – could vent their anger: ‘Spitlickers’ are LIARS!’ the page begins in typically understated form, adding ‘We challenge these liars to take us to court. They will not because they are indeed liars and so we are legally entitled to label them as such……and we do.’ Of course that works both ways.
Entering the Weird Zone
Regretfully, in spite of that disappointment Harry Cooper is finding more outlets for what his critics see as his Nazi propaganda. The AIOHOW music website have put online large numbers of his Hitler in Argentina programs with Jeff Rense – a total of 20 were in place by June 2016.
Recordings of these Rense programs, where messages of hate are mingled with sham history – plus programs transmitted by other radio stations – are springing up on conspiracy sites all over the Internet. There are now so many it’s difficult to keep track of them, but Cooper appears to be pursuing something of a media blitz.
Cooper’s appearance on Rense Radio on 13 May 2016 was one of his most bizarre. Rense has produced a DVD called What Really Happened To Adolf Hitler: Remote Viewing The Death Of The Führer. This features the conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs and clairvoyant, Dick Allgire, who claims he can travel backward in time and see Adolf Hitler. Rense told listeners remote viewing ‘allows us to psychically go into the past and future and remotely view events … Remote viewing allows us to time travel…’
Rense narrates the DVD commentary. The cover blurb claims: ‘Remote viewing is an advanced psychic communication tool … Dick Allgire produces amazing new information that shows Hitler did not die in the bunker … Allgire discovers information that corroborates other research indicating Adolf Hitler escaped from the bunker.’
During the radio program Cooper repeated his Hitler survival conspiracy theory: ‘There is nobody in the world who knows more about Hitler in Argentina than I do,’ he declared.
Linking the parapsychology and pseudo history Rense was ecstatic: ‘This remote viewing session really underscores the truth of your book – the reality of the story that Don Angel reported to you … We’re now getting further confirmation of your long and dedicated work to bring historical truth to all of us.’
At the start of the program Rense lavished praise on what he described as Cooper’s ‘landmark book’ Hitler in Argentina and ‘Sharkhunters – one of the great organisations online to bring history to you in its one hundred per cent unvarnished truth.’
Rense also repeated his belief – uttered so many times during his Harry Cooper programs – that mainstream history is a ‘succession of lies and perversions of reality … a grand deception – a fraud perpetrated on the unwitting public … The story of WW2, which we are ingrained with, is a lie. It’s just a lie.’
According to Rense a clairvoyant’s ‘breathtaking, time travelling remote viewing of the passing of Adolf Hitler as an old man’ – along with Harry Cooper’s and other survivalists’ activities – has ‘finally exposed some of the biggest lies of our age.’
In short, cranks have more credibility than all the experts who have studied Hitler and the Third Reich since the end of WW2.
When you invoke the supernatural and a clairvoyant to verify a historical event which never happened you enter a realm of total irrationality. Only a fool or a charlatan would appear in such a program, let alone put out a recording on his own website for the whole world to hear. But that is what Cooper has done. Readers must look at the evidence and decide for themselves into which category Harry Cooper falls.
Meanwhile, he told Jeff Rense without irony at the end of this two-hour venture into the absurd: ‘This is one of your better shows’.
This is an ongoing saga. Outlandish events keep happening in the strange world of Harry Cooper. Every few weeks there are new developments. Cooper continues to flood the internet with fake history while at the same time campaigning to discredit honourable historians and destroy faith in accurate records of the past. In so doing he’s insulting the memory of 50 million people who died as a result of the criminal activities of Hitler and the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1945.
As is now all too clear, Neo-Nazis are operating in clear sight on the U.S. mainland. They are broadcasting their toxic message to the world 24 hours a day via the Internet. It is time action was taken. Over the years we have seen the appalling impact conspiracy theorists have had. Rehabilitating Hitler and the Nazis does real harm to community relations and in the worst cases, as with the case of British MP Jo Cox who was murdered by a self-radicalised, Neo Nazi Terrorist, people die.
You might think that Harry Cooper has no class. Being obnoxious and offending many people as possible is certainly childish and is probably unwise. But Cooper does more than offend people – he is insulting and outraging them.
Meanwhile, those 3,700 email time-bombs to journalists are ticking away in the media…
History smashing is a dangerous business if you are economical with the truth and Harry Cooper forgot the old adage – if he ever knew it – ‘Verify your references’. In other words, check your sources and get your facts right. Of course, given his record of fantasy, misrepresentation and falsification, and moving as he does among the stormtoopers of the Alt Right, in what many commentators now call the Post Truth world, it is a stretch to assume Harry Cooper even cares about facts in the first place.
Meanwhile Harry Cooper and Sharkhunters International continue to publish this statement on their website.
‘Sharkhunters is not now and never was a hate group; and Cooper is not now and never was a Nazi.’
Readers of this series of articles can draw their own conclusion as to how true that statement actually is.
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