82 Comments

To the reader who wanted to know more about the public housing failure, I recommend “High Risers - Cabrini Green and the Fate of Public Housing,” by Ben Austen.

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Very interesting answer to my first question. I appreciate you taking the time. You still left me hanging concerning when we get to hear about the Mexica and their wacky exploits again (my question about immigration was really just a cover for my Aztec question).

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Also, regarding you having to think some more about the lessons that can be learned from the American experience with integration (or lack thereof) - please do that AFTER you're done with Whose America. Do not get sidetracked by this sidetrack. Please.

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Can't imagine a worse example of integration than the US! Forcefully importing a specific demographic then allowing modern day ideologues to weaponize resentment for their own purposes?

I think the UK has done a better job of it, as the imported population was primed by years of cultural mixing within the Empire. Ofcourse, the English locals were either not asked or thoroughly attacked when they raised objections, but that point is now long past moot.

I read parts of Sweden, Germany etc are now thoroughly balkanised. Not so much a melting pot as a rancid salad bar...

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For what it’s worth I’ve never known a Brit who shared your opinion on integration in Britain. Those who are passionate about British history and culture know the days are numbered and they loudly lament it. Those that think it’s a “success” generally think it’s a success because Britain has become more international and more continental. There’s a lot of unrest within the Kingdom itself too. While a lot of English tend to consider themselves and everyone else British in my experience the Scots, Welsh, and Irish hold onto their ethnic identities over their national ones at least for the older generations. Millennials and younger seem to have abandoned both in favor of a more international identity. (Thus one of the reasons they get so inflamed by situations that are very uniquely American, like BLM.) This could be a very flawed view of the situation because the Brits I know are far from a randomized sample and I have never done any sort of real research on the matter. However the people I know who care about British culture think their immigration and integration policy has been disastrous.

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The Roman Empire is probably the only other example in history... While the Macedonian/Grecian Empire under Alexander was the most fluid... Rome had a way of assimilating or annihilating cultural and ethnic identity... There wasnt much middle ground for them...

And so it is in America... its force assimilation or annihilation... its been our M.O. since we were colonized by the Brits... the Spanish took a different and still similar approach which is often over looked.

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How would you describe the Spanish approach? Enslavement, annihilation, or assimilation through interbreeding?

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They used a combination depending on the empire they were up against! For the Aztecs they sought to annihilate... they used enslavement and assimilation else where thats my opinion

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I mean the UK simply conquered its neighbours in situ.... so I guess that's cooler.

Irish don't seem super thrilled about it, even today.

America integrated your displaced demographic, lol.

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Lol yes maybe, but after years of living alongside "the natives" the British conquers couldn't help but assimilate various customs along the way - I think Indian and Caribbean food is the best example.

The "natives" also (not always, but often) adopted the ways of the British, such as Christianity, individualistic philosophy and smaller things such as naming conventions.

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Valid.

I wouldn't say the French have done a better job of assimilation... would you?

Or the Russians/Soviets.... maybe a more pointed example of failed assimilation.

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Feb 23, 2023
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Lmao your fucking pfp

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Looking forward to the book list. I'm new here and haven't listened to many of your podcasts yet. This series was the first one I checked out in detail. Well done.

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Never knew about the long history of blacks and Jews. Same thing with the history of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Took notes on both listened to fear and loathing twice.

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Re: hate mail and the lack thereof

I think it would be difficult for most to take offense with your "everyone is blameworthy but no one is to blame" attitude towards these large social movements and events. Especially because you are unflinching honest in your characterization and retelling of the history.

Also, 4-8 hour podcasts are one hell of a gatekeep.

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"Constant mass immigration tends to fix a society in an eternal present, because the past is not shared and the future will be so unpredictably different that neither are worth thinking about." Is a really concise way of putting it. I'll be stealing it for future discussions. Past and future also becomes not worth FIGHTING for in that eternal present, at least for a lot of people involved.

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Thank you Darryl for putting this together, and thank you for enlightening. There are no longer the dinner conversations or bar talks about these subjects with any of my peers before we hit an immovable object and have to change topic. Your research is refreshing. Appreciated.

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Naivete... maybe with your first series... although the last descriptor for any of your podcasts I would choose is naive.

Hubris... I would say you are close to the sun... but you have one awesome set of wings brother!!! That wax must be made of asbestos!

Keep soaring!!

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“I trust my readers/listeners, and they’ve shown trust in me, and so whenever I write or record, I do it as if I’m having a conversation with you guys alone. I know that most of you would be far more disappointed by me being dishonest or closed-minded than if I simply took a stance you didn’t like, and so I appreciate that and try to live up to it.”

True! The honesty is one of many reasons I come back. History, especially the history we share is important, and it’s important to be honest about it even if it’s terribly painful at times. It’s about the only shield we have against people who wish to pull the wool over our eyes.

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Same here. There are other history podcasts I enjoy, but I never get so excited as I do for Martyrmade because it's the only one that doesn't feel watered down to minimize offending others

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Just fantastic stuff, Darryl. Thank you for taking the time. The Great Migration is wholly under-appreciated for its historical impact.

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You know, I love Martyrmade for many reasons, but among them is a deep sympathy for Darryl’s inclination to over-shoot the original goal and turn every comment response into a 1,000 word essay. I have the same curse-blessing-thing and I just relate a lot. I’m currently in college and I have a tendency to hit double the required word count on just about any assignment-- writing 20 pages is a breeze, but if I have to edit it down to 5 I can lose my mind and several hours (days?) of my time pretty quickly. And I also feel a need to constantly apologize for overwriting lol. All I’m trying to say is, I get it

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A quote that's attributed to Mark Twain (though who knows if it's really his?) goes "I apologize that I wrote such a long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one." Sounds like your situation

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I had a professor last semester-- he’s somewhere between 85 and 90 years old and writes books about Lincoln and the Civil War. Really down to earth and likeable guy. Kind of a character. Also served with the officer corps (U.S.) in Thailand while the Laotian Civil War was going on in the early 60s. The course I took with him was a Cold War history course. One assignment was a series of group presentations, and my group was assigned to discuss the relationship between the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, and U.S. motivations behind them, with Truman’s assertion that NATO and the Marshall Plan were “two halves of the same walnut” as the jumping off point.

Anyway, I ended up in the sort of lead role in the group and, naturally, the PowerPoint turned into some 30 slides that overshot the 10ish minute time limit by quite a bit. After it was over and we sat down my professor went up and started the class, drifting into a tangent (as he often did) about a correspondence between a great writer (I want to say it was Alexander Pope) and one of his close friends, whose letters have since become famous and which he enjoyed reading. He told us that Pope began one particularly long letter by saying something like, “I apologize for the length of this letter, however I have not had time to write a short one.” Everyone chuckled and he followed up, “that’s what happened to these guys. Not enough time for a short one.”

(Though actually I tried searching just now and nothing comes up about Pope saying this. I could have sworn it was a British writer rather than Twain, but I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a sentiment that more than a few great writers have expressed. Google attributes it to Pascal.)

All of that is to say, you’re right! Brevity is more difficult than length, a lot of the time. Sometimes overshooting has worked in my favor, other times not so much. In another class I had to do a 10-15 minute presentation on the history of US involvement in Afghanistan and overshot the one limit a little, to say the least (but really, how could anyone talk about that subject with just 10 minutes?) In that case though, when I asked how I was doing on time halfway though, the professor just encouraged me to keep going and I ended up more or less lecturing for 45 minutes, and later she gave me extra credit on another assignment for going over the top with that one. The Cold War guy wasn’t as thrilled and when I made eye contact with him he flashed me the spinning finger let’s-move-it-along hand gesture lol. I got an A but the only note said something like “it was a little long.”

Anyway, I’m sure you really needed to know all of this! Speaking of overly long writing…

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“All of History is prologue” it’s really how it should be man. Don’t let your college courses drive that out of you. It’s your curiosity driving you to ask the relevant questions. It’ll keep life interesting forever. Take it from this 42 year old.

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I thoroughly enjoyed this series considering it’s rare to find a complex take about complex issues.

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Thank you!

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Thank you for those links Darryl! Will check them out :)

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I can definitely testify to this part: "I see a lot of other content creators who take on much less controversial topics talk about how much hate mail they get, and I have trouble believing that they’re telling the truth." Unfortunately, that's not my experience. When I did an episode with Dan Carlin about the politics of Nazi Germany, in addition to decent amounts of hate mail, I received even a couple of death threats... all that for me and Dan stating the political equivalent of 'the sun is hot', since we didn't really say anything that any historian would find controversial

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So weird! I have experienced almost none of that.

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I am curious Darryl, how old are you?

There might be a generational piece to this. I don't Gen X has the backbone to street fight head on with your depth of street smarts. Certainly no-one in Canada that I ever met. It could be an American thing tho. Y'all projects were tougher than ours. We grew up on WWF... which was entirely fake.... no clue about MMA back then.

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Darryl’s the guy breaking up a fight with his hands on each guys chest... “calm down guys! I’m Switzerland!”

No one plays the middle like DC! LOL!

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More specific please... Darryl Cooper, or Dan Carlin...

Darryl's not really "playing the middle"... he's dishing out to both sides...

Not really cooling things down, but heating them up like a crucible.

See the difference.

Dan Carlin had less raw courage, he "played the middle".

Which is why he flaked on us all when Trump hit the scene.

He couldn't handle the heat in the kitchen.

Still kind of choked at him about that... but he's still awesome.

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I was disappointed, though not surprised, with Carlin's take on Trump. He grew up within the media outlets and I assumed he would still retain some trust in them. And just a fraction of trust in the mainstream media will have you thinking Trump is a movie villain

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Speaking of which... our buddy Kristaps just got car-bombed. He messaged me from the hospital. High on morfine so i can't fully make out all the details, but yeah... rough stuff

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Oh shit!

That's super sad.

That guy is dope... hope he makes it.

Worlds a dangerous place. I guess it always was.

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He'll make it. took shrapnel in the legs though

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Freaks me out a bit, to be honest....

War zone.... but are we clear of it?

Interested in all of your opinions on this.

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I’ve experienced some minor anon fame before and ended up getting about a dozen different folks writing me about how they’re being mistreated by famous people, the CIA, etc. Nothing credible, it was all very scattered and incoherent.

You get much of that?

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I have had some interesting interactions with people with serious psychiatric issues (i.e. folks who emailed me to tell me i had to tell joe rogan to stop sending people to spy on them outside their windows, etc.)

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Unfortunately due to the rampant mental illness in society I think that is just a part of interfacing with the public in any capacity. I had one lady accuse me of being part of an international dog kidnapping ring when her dog sitter lost her precious little ball of fluff when she was out of the country. I had literally nothing to do with any of the situation other than I had commented months before when looking at the dog that I always loved that breed and someday when I was too old for big dogs I wanted a little dog like hers. So when someone else lost the dog six months later clearly it was a conspiracy.

Another guy wanted us to remove the cyborg implants from his cat and help him sue the vet who put them in the cat. He insisted upon multiple X-rays when we informed him cyborg implants were not common practice and we couldn’t find any indications of any. After the whole cat was radiographed he concluded that they had clearly used some new highly classified components for the implants that we simply couldn’t see. Although I will say he was very understanding when we told him we couldn’t remove implants we couldn’t find.

Then mix in all the people who have imbibed in too much alcohol or the wrong cocktail of drugs and I think anyone who interfaces with the public in any way probably has some stories. It’s worse when it’s on the internet because of the safety of anonymity. Anybody who threatens to kill me in person in my small town might accidentally run into me at the grocery store, which would be really awkward, or they might run into my husband in a dark alley...

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Ya, I wish you would cut that out.... jk ;)

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That's awesome. i'm very glad for you.

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@Daniele you are by far one of my FAVORITE podcasters of all time.. your Conquest of Mexico series I bought from you is second to none! I wish you had one on Spanish Colonization of "America" such as FL and the west/south west...

I was a fan of yours and Daryl since you guys did the Jocko podcast! I ONLY joined Luminary to support you... ditched them after you left! I love your content brother!

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thank you so much! Deeply appreciated. Speaking of Florida, at some point I want to do an episode (or a series) on the De Soto expedition. Such a wild tale.

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That would be awesome

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OMG, the runner up for my favourite podcaster... Danielle Bolleli... Awesome to be in this thread with you two. I love that you are friends. Danielle. You remind me of Dan Carlin... beautiful gripping narratives with intense hardcore edges, but safely in the past where controversies have cooled and history is reliably robust.... Darryl has upped the ante on this by going after the TRUTH RIGHT NOW.... absolutely unflinching in the storm of hot ammunition. Darryl is superhuman like that. I do want to say Danielle's series on Cortes ranks up there very near the top of my list.... How's Luminary treating you?

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thanks, man. I'm no longer with Luminary. I'm publishing again on a free feed both new episodes and previously paywalled ones. If you can, please subscribe again to History on Fire (all free). Plenty of new stuff I've been publishing every month since July :)

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Hot damn.... I'm on it!

Happy to pay you... less happy about companies like Luminary. Seemed exploitative.... although I recognize that's a judgement call.

All of you should sign up for Danielle's show. He rocks!

I also think it's super cool that you held on to your Italian accent.

Reminds me of growing up in Toronto, Canada.

My Dad is Spanish and immigrated to Toronto after the war. We anglicized our name. Typerwriter's couldn't do the tilde over the n. (Still can't figure it out on my laptop either.) I mean, if I was latino, I would be Miguel... Which is what my Spanish relatives call me.

Most people at my High School thought my brother Tony was Italian and that I was Irish... lol.

He's 8 years older than me... so we didn't go to High School at the same time. I never figured that out until I was older.

Tough school, but not as tough as Darryl's, I bet.

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Luminary paid very well but of course caused me to lose a good chunk of my audience. Right now, I'm back to the free model of podcasting, with bonus episodes on Patreon to try to finance the whole thing.

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Cool.... probably a wise move in the end.

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If enough people support on Patreon, then this will work great. If not, I'll have to figure something else out.

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I nearly posted a reply to Scott Adams’ recent Twitter rant about race, by linking an article by Pat Buchanan called “A Briefing for Whitey” or something like that. I believe it’s one of his most viewed essays ever. And I was going to mention your series too. But I decided not to respond to the thread. Too much complexity. also I have been thinking about how recently I was on a zoom call (I work in corporate America) and was waiting for the call to start, and a black colleague took too long to mute whatever she was listening to. I heard just this: “white people...” so I gathered that she was listening to some CRT themed thing. And it dawns on me that many(not all) black people hate me for being white. I am nearly 50 years old and this only recently occurs to me.

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many(not all) black people hate me for being white.

I think someone might be overestimating their own level of importance here…

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Well I mean of course whites as a group and me being white, a part of that group. Not like anyone specifically thinks long enough about me to hate me individually.

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Hi Sarah, I'm not sure that many black people hate you for being white... Probably some do, but these days it seems there is almost more self-hating among whites on the left than white hating among blacks. Although I admit to having very little idea about how much actual white hating there is among BIPOC, to use a horrible acronym. I live in BC, on the west side of Kelowna, which was largely indiginous until a bridge was built across the lake. It's a little like living in Palestine... the west side was actually called Westbank until it was recently renamed. There is some tension with the local people, but this is Canada, it is almost all passive aggressive. The indiginous people of the "Westbank nation" are one of the wealthiest first nation groups in Canada, due to Kelowna's recent growth. They aren't about to start car bombing anyone. My kids have plenty of indiginous friends, mostly you wouldn't really be able to tell. They aren't particularly "coloured".

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To be fair I think these experiences are extremely extremely regional. For example your description of what it’s like for indigenous in Kelowna could not be more different than what it’s like for the Sioux at Pine Ridge. Also I’m not sure if in that area the old tribal hatreds still exist, in much of the US those tribal feelings still exist. I was often warned to avoid certain parts of certain reservations because I was a young white woman, but I mostly brushed that off as some underlying prejudice or other. However when indigenous people started telling me to avoid those areas I thought maybe I ought to listen. Although once I learned more about the tricky relationship between the various tribes I realized that my indigenous friends were likely more prejudiced than my non-indigenous friends. To this day I’m not sure how safe I am in those areas or not.

From a security standpoint it’s also worth keeping in mind that it takes very little spark to go from passive aggressive tension to aggressive violence. Something Sarah and I have to be more cognizant of than you do...

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I have this harrowing account in my genealogy research of one of my (female) ancestors being kidnapped by Indians. This would have been on the East coast, in the early days before the American Revolution. I can't imagine...I am trying to find it but need to look a bit more. If I find it I will post it.

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There are pretty horrifying stories on both sides from Olive Oatman to Sacagawea and Cynthia Parker to Pocahontas. Realistically such stories are more common historically than uncommon and as it seems a rather intrinsic part of human nature I think it will unfortunately continue to be disconcertingly common.

But I’m a Martyr Made listener, I’m always up for more harrowing stories.

Personally I try to walk a fine line of not judging individuals while also being cognizant of my own physical safety, and when it’s close I err on the side of personal safety. I also take into account the fact that substance use can make individuals less trustworthy and that groups are generally less trustworthy than individuals regardless of who makes up the group.

The fact that I’m a Christian probably helps with this. I’m called to love those who hate me, so even if every “BIPOC” person hates me I’m called to love them. Even if every self loathing white leftist hates me, I’m called to love them. I am responsible for my own heart and own actions, not for the motives or hearts of others. If Corrie ten Boom can forgive the Nazi camp guard who tortured her sister who ultimately died in said camp, I can forgive people for hating me.

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Have you read the Orenda? Definitely worth a read for fans of harrowing stories on all sides. Like Darryl Cooper for example. @DarrlyCooper

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I assume you mean the one by Boyden and not by Peer…no I haven’t but it looks interesting, it’s going on my list.

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Amen

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Thanks for that comment. I hope you’re right.

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