Now’s The Time for Christians to Question the Post-War Consensus
Not only is questioning established historic narratives healthy, it is honorable and good.
Back in September, Tucker Carlson interviewed Darryl Cooper, a podcaster, and the two discussed the so-called Post-War Consensus. To the outrage of many, including many evangelicals, Cooper questioned the accuracy of what we’ve been taught about World War II. The notion that it takes time between the passing of historic events and our proper estimation of them is a pretty common thought in academic historiography, also known as “letting the dust settle.”
Despite the reasonableness of Cooper’s observation, many came relatively unglued, insisting that such “revisionism” had undertones of anti-semitism, or Nazi sympathies. Despite Cooper saying nothing positive of Adolf Hitler, because he recalled less-than-perfect aspects of Churchill’s role in the second world war, surely he was engaging in pro-Nazi propaganda. Carlson was then excoriated for ‘platforming’ a “Nazi apologist.”
Evangelical leaders like Owen Strachan (above) were quick to deride those willing to give Cooper or Carlson a hearing, and young men neck-deep in the Populist Social Revival (PSR) responded as you would expect when the de facto heads of the religious establishment forbade them from having such a view; they adopted the forbidden view.
For Strachan, and so many others, the willingness to characterize Churchill as anything less than “the man appointed to save the West” (these are Strachan’s words), is “evil, foolish, and objectively insane” (also Strachan’s words). Watching the response to criticism of Churchill could have, after it, a new razor named – perhaps Strachan’s Razor – that the more closely aligned one is to their own establishment (whatever kind of establishment that might be), the more they protest an attempt to deviate from established narratives.
Since then, evangelicalism has felt the rippling effects of the PSR in our circles. The ill-fated and ill-conceived Antioch Statement, produced by Doug Wilson, James White, and others, was published last week and squarely took aim at those questioning the Post-War Consensus, accusing them of a theological and moral failing. Doug Wilson likened them to fatherless boys who need direction (by comparison, the last time he used this description it was for rogue criminals perpetrating mass violence in America’s streets).
The rest of us sat contemplating the weirdness of our current timeline, with Douglas Wilson and James White aligning perfectly on this issue – including the condescension – with Russell Moore, all apparently convinced that reevaluating World War II is a tell-tale sign of spiritual sickness. The Antioch Statement called this the “unwillingness to accept the received accounts of almost anything.”
WHAT IS THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS?
That depends who you ask, and in what context. Originally, the term referred to the political and economic view of Great Britain from the end of WWII to at least Margaret Thatcher. But in this context, it refers to the “received account” (to quote the Antioch Statement) of the historical narrative of World War II.
Why the war began, how the war grew from a regional conflict to a global war, who the bad guys and good guys were, and the inscripturated canon of facts and figures as agreed upon by the winners of that conflict, are all a part of post-war consensus.
Most attention on the post-war consensus involves data coming out of the Holocaust. For example, the figure of “six million Jews” killed in German concentration camps, is a figure first posited in 1961 by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl in a testimony against war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. Although the spread given, at the time, was “between 5.1 and 6 million,” you’re not permitted to say it’s 5.1 million. That would be challenging the post-war consensus because that six million has, somewhere along the way, been the accepted – and only accepted – figure fit to be uttered.
But most of post-war consensus is far less specific than the number of Jewish dead. Why did Hitler invade Poland? He was evil. Why did Germany fall in lockstep behind Hitler? He spoke well and it was mesmerizing. Why did Churchill want a world war? Hitler would have invaded all of Europe. When did the origins of World War II begin? Not a day before January 30, 1933.
Anything short of these answers has been forbidden in the West since the war ended. After all, most of us have grandfathers or great-grandfathers who fought valiantly in this conflict, and as the Antioch Declaration points out, to question the narrative is to “dishonor their legacy.”
Of course, immediately following the aftermath of World War II, our current post-war consensus had not yet been established, and that was a very good thing. The Allied Powers (particularly the United Kingdom and United States) did not make the same mistakes in their Marshall Plan, that they made after World War I. Chiefly, they recognized that Germany’s revolt against the West had a historic context, chiefly their mistreatment at the hands of the UK, and the plan would not make those same mistakes twice.
The West, in the first few decades after the war, acknowledged those mistakes were made, and sought to avoid them. But as the Post-War Consensus grew from the history textbooks, the ideas that resulted in the Marshall Plan became forbidden concepts and history grew generalized in a good vs evil paradigm. And today, establishment figures like Owen Strachan are very, very committed to the narratives they were taught in high school.
HISTORY IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN WHAT YOU MIGHT THINK
The truth is, anti-semitism exists and is indeed evil (although, no more evil than any other kind of race-based hatred). And the truth is, Hitler indeed did seek to exterminate the Jewish race, at least in Germany and German-occupied Europe. And, of course, he killed myriads and multitudes and no doubt, millions of the Jewish people in an attempt to do so.
However, just as the Allied Powers had to take a real estimation of the root causes for Germany’s aggression in order to prevent it from ever happening again, the world needs an honest accounting of the “causes of things” in order to prevent tragedies in the future.
That said, it’s incumbent upon us all to recognize that “victors write the history books.” That’s a quotation from Winston Churchill, who retired from politics and became a historian and literally wrote the history books. The point of Carlson and Cooper in their now-infamous podcast, is that time must pass to weed out mid-war propaganda from post-war history. That’s fair, no matter what.
OUR PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRE QUESTIONING THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS
It’s not my contention that Post-War Consensus, so far as WWII is concerned, is necessary to re-evaluate the evil of Hitler. Dead men need no public relations, and especially not evil men like Hitler. But let’s take a moment and ponder where we are in our current timeline.
Currently, mainstream media would have us believe:
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for no particular reason, except that he is evil. Ukraine, which was just minding its own business, was enjoying its independence from any interference or influence of another nation. For the sake of nothing but nation-conquering, Russia attacked Ukraine as a springboard to rebuild the Soviet Union. The United States and NATO then came to Ukraine’s defense for purely humanitarian purposes, staving off an impending genocide of the Ukrainian people, because it’s in our strategic national interests.
Mark my words, that’s how the tale will be told in the history books for at least 50 years, should the world not ignite into Nuclear Winter. In fact, I can guarantee you that is already in Western textbooks. I’d provide an example, but I can only find news stories in English about Russian textbooks saying precisely the opposite (as you would expect).
However, the above mid-war consensus, as it’s given in the press, is hardly accurate. Russia invaded after NATO promised expansion to Ukraine, in violation of a promise made to Russia at the close of the Cold War in 1991. At the time, NATO acknowledged that moving troops any closer to the Russian border would rightly be taken as an act of aggression and thwart a tentative peace with Russia. Meanwhile, the United States government conducted a coup in Ukraine in 2014, installing the nation’s current leadership, and embraced the nation as a puppet state. Russia then invaded five days after Kamala Harris announced NATO’s plans to annex Ukraine. A great many Ukrainians are sympathetic to Russia, because a great many Ukrainians are Russian. In fact, a majority of Ukrainians are Russian in areas like Donetsk, Makiivka, Ternivka, Dnipropetrovsk, Krasnodon, Sverdlovsk, and Krasnodon Raion, particularly in the parts of Ukraine that Russia initially wanted to occupy. Little attention has been given to Ukraine’s imprisonment of journalists who speak of these things.
UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE POST WAR CONSENSUS IN THIS CURRENT CONFLICT. World War II was caused, largely, because of Great Britain chose not to treat Germany as though the Great War had ended. They refused to give Germany the right to their own national security. Although we learned that lesson after WWII, we forgot the lesson after the Cold War, and have treated Russia as though the Cold War never ended. We have not eased up on our hostilities or changed our foreign policy toward Russia accordingly. This is why it’s so dangerous for evangelicals to be told to accept the “post-war consensus.” It prevents us from repeating past historical blunders.
And among evangelicals, almost no attention has been given to Ukraine’s ouster of the Russian Orthodox Church under threat of imprisonment, or the root causes of conflict centering on Ukraine’s embrace of homosexuality and transgenderism and Russia’s opposite of the Western sexual ethic (or lack thereof). Instead, evangelicals have focused on Russia’s ban on American adopted of Russian babies, without explaining that it’s because the United States allows homosexuals to adopt, and American policies allow the sexual mutilation of children. For example, Russell Moore and Kay Warren have beat the drums of war over Russia’s “adoption ban” but have not made an effort to explain that their reason should seem wholly acceptable to evangelicals under any circumstance. It would make more sense for Russell Moore to use his influence to get America to drop its child mutilation and child grooming adoption policies than deride a foreign ‘dictator,’ but a lot about Russell Moore doesn’t make sense (if you consider him a Christian).
IT’S A DANGEROUS TIME TO FORBID NARRATIVE-QUESTIONING
It seems that Americans, and in particular, American evangelicals who are more conservative than the average, are finally ready to consider that what we’ve been told about the Ukraine conflict might not be entirely true. In fact, American support for the war in Ukraine has dwindled to an all-time low, and people are no longer accepting the narrative we’ve been given.
I’ll write that again. Americans are no longer accepting the narrative we’ve been given.
And neither, should we. The world is on the verge of a nuclear apocalypse, as the Biden Administration has approved the use of American rockets to strike at Russia’s interior, and Ukraine is now using them. In response, Putin is flexing his muscle with a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that can carry a nuclear payload and strike not Kiev, but Dallas. And Putin has nearly 6 thousand nuclear warheads to put on those missiles.
Questioning narratives is good. Questioning narratives prevents war. Questioning narratives keeps us from repeating mistakes, just as the Allied Powers chose not to repeat the mistakes they made after World War I.
Chastising evangelicals for coming to the same conclusions about the context of World War II that informed the Marshall Plan – chiefly the complicatedness of history – is hardly appropriate. And chastising evangelicals for not accepting the “received accounts” of virtually anything without research and investigation is quite the opposite of Christian discernment.
Brownie points can certainly be scored by insinuating your opponents are anti-Semitic for questioning things not remotely related to the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, but that has real-world consequences. Those consequences, in our current historical timeline, could be the end of our historical timeline altogether.
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