( Father Charles Coughlin )The Grandfather of Hate Radio By Gordon Skene at Crooks and Liars, Friday Feb 20, 2009
A lot has been said lately about the state of talk-radio - the overwhelming presence of hate, lies, threats and hysteria. Everyone thinks its a phenomenon of the past twenty years. Sadly, no.RADIO PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE MIGS Occasional Paper Prof. Frank Chalk, November 1999 Presented in an earlier form to the Conference on "Synergy in Early Warning," Centre for Refugee Studies York University, Toronto, Ontario 16 March 1997. Revised May 1997
Hate radio has its roots back to the beginnings of radio. Although not the only one who used the airwaves to preach hate, fear and prejudice, Father Charles Coughlin was probably the most famous practitioner of extreme right wing sentiment. At his peak, his one hour "sermons" had an audience of several million and were a Sunday night staple on CBS Radio at first, and later NBC before his decline and eventual demise.
Coughlin established the template for what is the basis of Hate radio today. Although to be fair,Coughlin was articulate and had style - something todays practitioners have no clue how to use.
INCITING GENOCIDE AGAINST THE ARMENIANS AND THE JEWS
The extensive use of the media in Rwanda to prepare the soil for a genocide is unprecedented in a Third World country. The low literacy rate in Turkey at the time of the Armenian genocide precluded use of the press and magazines to reach more than a small number of intellectuals. The telegraph was used effectively to coordinate the genocide, but radio broadcasting was barely in its infancy in 1915. Instrumental to demonizing the Armenians was the use of more traditional instruments of shaping public opinion and raising the political temperature. Vahagan Dadrian, an historian of the Armenian genocide, cites the importance of the sermons of Muslim mullahs and the messages of the government and the Committee for Union and Progress spread by town criers, which were sprinkled with code words such as traitors, saboteurs, spies, conspirators, and infidels. Promoters of the massacre of the Armenians also disseminated falsely labeled photographs of rifles and other weapons to persuade Turks that their Armenian neighbors were storing up arms for use in plots to slaughter them.
In the industrial world, Nazi Germany pioneered the use of newspapers and radio broadcasts to promote genocide. Although the actual mass murder of the Jewish people was never directly mentioned in official German government propaganda, Joseph Goebbels prepared the way by instructing German editors to abandon every last shred of "bourgeois sentimental attitudes" towards Jews and to impress on the public that the destruction of the Jews would not be a loss to mankind, but just as useful to society as capital punishment for criminals. It was left to a private individual, Julius Streicher, an old Nazi and one-time Gauleiter of Franconia, to issue public calls for the murder of the Jewish people in his weekly, Der Sturmer. Streicher labeled Jews as germs and pests, not human beings, evil doers, as disseminators of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind. As the Judgement of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg reminds us,
it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race . . . extermination "root and branch" was preached . . . Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved . . . . (p.132)
Father Coughlin Hate Radio
Father Coughlin
Coughlin - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism/Father Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1971) By Richard Sanders, Editor, Press for Conversion!
Father Coughlin, “the Father of Hate Radio,” was born in Hamilton, Ontario. This rabidly right-wing, Catholic priest started with a weekly broadcast on WJR, Detroit’s “Good Will” station. CBS broadcast it nationwide in 1930 and 1931. He started his own radio network that grew to 30 stations. John Spivak, estimated that Coughlin’s broadcasts reached 40 million, said: “Only the President…had a bigger audience… The President spoke only on special occasions, the priest every Sunday…. To me, he was the most dangerous divisive influence in the country” (A Man in His Time, 1967).
Coughlin originally supported FDR, but turned against him in 1934 and created a political party, the National Union of Social Justice. Former Louisiana Governor, Huey Long was supposed to be their candidate, but he was assassinated in 1935. Journalist George Seldes said Long was America’s “first notable Fascist leader,...a very smart demagogue, [who] once said, ‘Sure we’ll have Fascism here, but it will come as an anti-Fascism movement.’” In the late 1930s, Coughlin called for FDR’s impeachment because he was “leaning toward international socialism or sovietism.”
Coughlin’s radio sermons praised Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The Nazi press praised Coughlin as “America’s most powerful radio commentator.” He ranted against Jews, the “Christ-killers and Christ-rejecters.” When a Boston Globe reporter asked him for proof that communists were influencing FDR, Father Coughlin belted the journalist in the face.
Coughlin's weekly paper, Social Justice, reached one million. It was sold in 2,000 churches. In 1938, it reprinted the anti-Semitic forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
... we do know that Coughlin really was allied with the openly-Nazi German-American Bund. By 1939, Coughlin had inspired and was directing a nation-wide, fascist network, the Christian Front, which John Spivak described as “street-fighting toughs.” Roy Carlson, who infiltrated and exposed U.S. fascist groups said:
"Like Hitler’s Brownshirts, the Christian Front was ostensibly organized to combat the ‘rising tide of Communism.’ All Jews,... liberals, New Dealers and labor organizations were called Communist; and since the Communist Revolution in America was scheduled to take place ‘any day now,’ the Christian Front–always under Coughlin’s inspiration and guidance—shouted that a private army was the only means to ‘save America.’ Coughlin filled the pages of Social Justice with Hitler’s sewer-spawned lies. He made direct use of Goebbels’ speeches, quoting the Nazi almost word-for-word.... He denounced the ‘poppycock of Democracy’ and branded Democracy as a version of Communism” (Under Cover, 1943).
“What He Has Done Is Sickening to Contemplate”: Catholic Liberal John Ryan Denounces Father Charles Coughlin by John Ryan at History Matters
Father Charles Coughlin and the New Deal :Anti-Semitism from the Golden Hour of the Little Flower by © Michael Streich Apr 27, 2009 at Modern History Suite 101.com
In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin would emerge as one of the most powerful radio personalities in an industry that was only slowing coming into its own. Coughlin’s Sunday “Hour of Power” broadcasts mixed religious themes with political issues, and were eventually used to convey such virulently anti-Semitic sermons that Coughlin has been called the “father of hate radio.” At his height, both Catholics and Protestants comprised over forty million weekly listeners.
Radio League of the Little Flower
Coughlin’s “Golden Hour of the Little Flower,” named for St. Therese of Lisieux who had recently been canonized, helped to finance the construction of a national shrine in Royal Oak, Michigan. Yet even before the pivotal election of 1932, Coughlin’s sermons had begun to incorporate political and social messages. Stoking fears of Communism, Coughlin skillfully wove anti-Semitic messages into his sermons, equating Communism with Jews.
University of Texas historian Robert Abzug writes that Coughlin “was one of the principal disseminators of anti-Semitic propaganda in mainstream American culture.” Throughout Hitler’s rise to power, Coughlin defended Nazism,ostensibly as a deterrent against Soviet Russia and Communism. He excused Kristallnacht and used propaganda speeches by Dr. Josef Goebbels without checking sources.
Couglin’s “Christian Front,” established in 1938, referred to the “synagogue of Satan” and published the Christian Index, a guide to non-Jewish merchants in New York City. Members of the Front were urged to “buy Christian.” Addressing Jews in a December 11, 1938 radio speech, Father Coughlin stated, “…You are a minority – a small but powerful minority. We are a majority – an easy-going, patient majority – but a majority always conscious of our latent power.”
--Father Coughlin :THE RADIO PRIEST : POLITICAL VIEWS, OLD TIME RADIO, AND RELIGION
The times had watched Father Coughlin lend support to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Then at a speech Coughlin gave in the Bronx – perhaps his most famous – he gave a Nazi salute and yelled out, "When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing." Proving this statement wasn’t a one-time lapse of judgment, Coughlin stated "Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted," after the Jews across Germany were attacked, killed and burned out of house and home.
His speeches and programs were becoming even more anti-Semitic from that point, and radio stations in New York and Chicago began refusing to air his content without first pre-approving his scripts. One of the only available stations for Coughlin was the small WHBI in Newark, New Jersey.
Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitism made him a hero in Nazi Germany, where newspapers ran daily, stating that "America is not allowed to hear the truth." Some of the American public shared Coughlin’s views, and 2,000 supporters gathered and marched in New York, protesting the migration of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s camps. These protests were not short-lived; they went on for several months, and Coughlin embraced his supporters.
At the height of his anti-Semitism, Coughlin had joined forces with an organization named the "Christian Front," which cited the now-famous priest as a vital influence. In 1940, the FBI shut down the Christian Front, after discovering the group was arming itself and planning to murder Jews, communists, and even United States Congressmen. Although Father Coughlin was never directly linked with the Christian Front, he never disassociated himself from their radical intentions. His reputation soon declined as a result.
Father Coughlin - Quotes antisemitism
"Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany?"
"If Jews persist in supporting communism directly or indirectly, that will be regrettable. By their failure to use the press, the radio and the banking house, where they stand so prominently, to fight communism as vigorously as they do Nazism, the Jews invite the charge of being supporters of communism."
"From European entanglements, from Nazism, communism and their future wars, America must stand aloof. Keep America safe for Americans and the Stars and Stripes the defender of God."
"When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing."
"Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted."
(Father) Charles E. Coughlin (1891-1979) at Holocaust Encyclopedia:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 4,2009
Coughlin believed in the existence of a secret world Jewish conspiracy. In 1938 his magazine Social Justice serialized the discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Coughlin believed to be accurate. This tsarist forgery purported to be the minutes of a conference of Jewish leaders plotting to take over the world.
Coughlin repeatedly used the "Judeo-Bolshevik threat" as a theme, asserting that the entire Soviet leadership, including both Lenin and Joseph Stalin, was Jewish. Coughlin also accused American Jewish financiers, primarily the Wall Street firm of Kuhn-Loeb, of collaboration with the Bolsheviks in their efforts to uproot Christianity in Russia. Publicly proclaiming that he was not an antisemite, Coughlin nevertheless argued that all the ills of modern society were caused by a Communist-Jewish conspiracy.
During the 1930s Jewish efforts to force Coughlin to tone down his anti-Jewish rhetoric or to get him off the air altogether failed due to his popularity and the support he received from the Bishop of Detroit.
and :
Father Coughlin: Radio Priest, Depression Demagogue at National History Standards
A book of his sermons published in 1932 sold nearly 1 million copies and money poured into the Little Shrine, (more than $55,000 in postal orders in one month—during the depths of the Depression). In a radio survey more than 55 percent named him “the most useful citizen of the United States politically in 1933” and more than 20,000 people waited to here him speak at New York City’s Hippodrome in November 1933. According to the Social Security Administration history site, "at the height of his popularity, Father Coughlin had a greater share of the weekly broadcast audience than Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey and Larry King combined."
Coughlin, Rwanda Genocide, Rush Limbaugh & The Power Of Radio
Father Coughlin 's anti-Semitism
RADIO PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE MIGS Occasional Paper Prof. Frank Chalk, November 1999 Presented in an earlier form to the Conference on "Synergy in Early Warning," Centre for Refugee Studies York University, Toronto, Ontario 16 March 1997. Revised May 1997
INCITING GENOCIDE AGAINST THE ARMENIANS AND THE JEWS
The extensive use of the media in Rwanda to prepare the soil for a genocide is unprecedented in a Third World country. The low literacy rate in Turkey at the time of the Armenian genocide precluded use of the press and magazines to reach more than a small number of intellectuals. The telegraph was used effectively to coordinate the genocide, but radio broadcasting was barely in its infancy in 1915. Instrumental to demonizing the Armenians was the use of more traditional instruments of shaping public opinion and raising the political temperature. Vahagan Dadrian, an historian of the Armenian genocide, cites the importance of the sermons of Muslim mullahs and the messages of the government and the Committee for Union and Progress spread by town criers, which were sprinkled with code words such as traitors, saboteurs, spies, conspirators, and infidels. Promoters of the massacre of the Armenians also disseminated falsely labeled photographs of rifles and other weapons to persuade Turks that their Armenian neighbors were storing up arms for use in plots to slaughter them.
In the industrial world, Nazi Germany pioneered the use of newspapers and radio broadcasts to promote genocide. Although the actual mass murder of the Jewish people was never directly mentioned in official German government propaganda, Joseph Goebbels prepared the way by instructing German editors to abandon every last shred of "bourgeois sentimental attitudes" towards Jews and to impress on the public that the destruction of the Jews would not be a loss to mankind, but just as useful to society as capital punishment for criminals.
It was left to a private individual, Julius Streicher, an old Nazi and one-time Gauleiter of Franconia, to issue public calls for the murder of the Jewish people in his weekly, Der Sturmer. Streicher labeled Jews as germs and pests, not human beings, evil doers, as disseminators of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind.
As the Judgement of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg reminds us,
it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race . . . extermination "root and branch" was preached . . . Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved . . . . (p.132)
and comparing Father Coughlin to Rush Limbaugh and other Hate Talk Radio Hosts see:
"Projecting Fascism " from " Rush, Newspeak and Fascism:An exegesis" by David Neiwert August,2003
Savage Nation: It's not just Rush; Talk radio host Michael Savage: "I commend" prisoner abuse; "we need more" at Media Matters.org May 13, 2004
Rage on the Radio Bill Moyers Journal PBS Sept. 12, 2008
Transcript :Rage on the Radio Bill Moyers Journal PBS Sept. 12, 2008
Pundits, Bloggers Blame Immigration for Swine Flu at Anti-Defammation League,Posted: May 08, 2009
Limbaugh Blames Sanford's Affair On Obama, Because Why Not? by Jason Linkins at Huffington Post , June 25, 2009
FRAMESHOP: DID LIMBAUGH TRY TO INCITE VIOLENCE? by Jeffrey Feldman, May 7, 2008
and see: Part 1: Hate media in Rwanda Call to genocide: radio in Rwanda, 1994 Alison Des Forges at The International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
RADIO PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE: MIGS Occasional Paper Prof. Frank Chalk, November 1999 /"Synergy in Early Warning," Centre for Refugee Studies York University, Toronto, Ontario 16 March 1997
And at Crooks & Liars "To attack Obama's New Deal, Beck invokes Henry Ford -- the Nazis' friend" By David Neiwert Thursday Feb 12, 2009
Henry Ford was no Oskar Schindler
Ford Motor Co. and the Nazi War Efforts ,Corporate Watch
also see pages on anti-semitism and Henry Ford & The Church & Anti-semitism
