What’s behind the far-right push to turn Churchill into World War II’s villain: historian

The Atlantic's David Frum, the former George W. Bush speechwriter and conservative, lambasted the far-right wing for playing up the conflict online to generate more traction, more clicks and, with it, more money. It begins a cycle that both he and British historian Andrew Roberts believe has created the rise in far-right hate.

The art of the hate-click is real. It's when people are so disgusted by a headline that they click on it. Frum said that the latest tool is being deployed by the fringe right with an attack on former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Frum said that they're doing it all for the clicks and their fringe behavior is simply itching for "shock value." Roberts explained, "the more shocking you are, the more likely you are to appeal to the lowest form of human nature."

He recalled the nickname "shock jocks," radio DJs who would "say the most outrageous things possible, therefore drawing attention," Roberts said.

"That is the nature of the internet," he added. "The more shocking you are, the more likely you are to appeal to the lowest form of human nature, I suppose. So it’s built into the algorithm of the internet, in a sense. But also, I think that, as well as wanting to shock and be perverse and so on, there’s also a very—even darker side to all of this, which, as I say, is anti-Semitism, and I think it has contributed enormously to the present rise of anti-Semitism in the world."

On Wednesday, a jury found Google and Meta culpable for pushing addictive algorithms. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee explained in one talk that people can become just as addicted to negative emotions as they can positive ones.

"The arousal of these stress hormones that create fear, that create anger, aggression or that create pain give the body a rush of energy," he said. "People become almost like an addict. They need the problems in their life to reaffirm their addiction to that arousal to that emotion. And if you can turn that response on by thought alone, number one, you become addicted to your own thoughts. And number two, you become addicted to the very life that you don't even like."

It made Frum ask what the cause is and what the effect is.

"Do you start as an anti-Semite and then wanna rehabilitate the Third Reich, or do you start by wanting to rehabilitate the Third Reich because you look at a lot of old picture postcards and imaginary scenes and Leni Riefenstahl movies and think, Well, that’s an accurate depiction of reality. They must have had a point about the Jews? Which goes first, this cultish attraction to the Third Reich or the anti-Semitism driving the cultish attraction to the Third Reich?" asked Frum.

Roberts thinks that they're both sides of the same coin. They can then lead people down the road of "anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-civilization, anti-Christianity, and anti-culture" ideologies, too. Some turn anti-Semitic and toward Christian Nationalism, while others go from anti-semitism to Islamic extremist groups.

He also touched on Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strongman example that has inspired the manosphere and incel (involuntarily celibate) communities. They think it's "macho" to invade and blow up buildings, Roberts said.

This culminates in the recent debate over Winston Churchill, who is currently on the five-pound note. There's a movement in the U.K. to remove him and replace him with a bird. There are other movements to remove the people like the writers "and the people we're proud of" and replace them with animals or flowers.

"The British people, typically, are taking it as a huge joke, and they’re putting forward completely absurd animals that are going to do — if it’s done on a vote, then all hell’s gonna break loose, frankly," Roberts laughed.

But it's part of a larger issue that has been ongoing since the 1970s, in which the neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier and author David Irving sought to destroy Churchill's reputation. He has become an icon for the far-right. For the neo-Nazi community, it comes from Joseph Goebbels, who "demonized Churchill," said Roberts.

Frum noted a growing divide between real history and the world of what he called "internet history."

That rewriting is alive and well in the U.S. as President Donald Trump's administration tries to remove any mention of the history of slavery or the forced removal of Native Americans from museums and universities.

He chastized, "And the development and peace that the world enjoyed after 1945 was a product of American power and British endurance, and had the British made the choice that is being recommended to them by all these fool, loudmouth bloggers, their own childhoods would’ve been overhung by terror and fascism and tragedy."