• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    73
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    10 months ago

    There is absolutely precedent for this. I’m currently in the middle of reading “Prequel” by Rachel Maddow, which is all about American support for Hitler and fascism in the run-up to World War 2. Charles Coughlin had a radio program with tens of millions of listeners.

    Coughlin promoted his controversial beliefs by means of his radio broadcasts and his weekly rotogravure magazine Social Justice, which began publication in March 1936.[63] During the last half of 1938, Social Justice reprinted weekly installments of the fraudulent, antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[64] Despite this, Coughlin denied on various occasions that he was antisemitic,[65] yet he received indirect funding from Nazi Germany during this period.[66] A New York Times report from Berlin identified Coughlin as “the German hero in America for the moment” with his sympathetic statements towards Nazism as “a defensive front against Bolshevism”.[67] In February 1939, when the American Nazi organization the German American Bund held a large rally in New York City,[68] Coughlin immediately distanced himself from the organization, and in his weekly radio address he said: “Nothing can be gained by linking ourselves with any organization which is engaged in agitating racial animosities or propagating racial hatreds. Organizations which stand upon such platforms are immoral and their policies are only negative.”[69]

    On November 20, 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht (the Nazi attack on German and Austrian Jews, their synagogues, and businesses), Coughlin, referring to the millions of Christians who had been killed by the Communists in Russia, said, “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.”[70] After this speech, three radio stations—WMCA in New York City, WIND in Gary, Indiana, and WJJD in Chicago—dropped the program the following week on grounds of inciting racial prejudice, with Coughlin accusing them of being under “Jewish ownership”. [54] WMCA made their displeasure immediately known, with their booth announcer saying on-air after his November 20 speech, “Unfortunately, Father Coughlin has uttered many misstatements of fact”.[67] Station president Donald Flamm viewed an advance copy of the sermon and pressured Coughlin to edit it twice but did not see the final text, which he said “was calculated to stir up religious and racial hatred and dissension in this country”.[71][a] When WIND and WJJD also requested an advance copy of Coughlin’s next sermon for prior review and approval, his refusal prompted them to drop the program.[67] On December 18, 1938, thousands of Coughlin’s followers picketed WMCA’s studios in protest, with some protesters yelling antisemitic statements, such as “Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!” and “Wait until Hitler comes over here!” The protests continued for 38 weeks.[54][72] Coughlin was present at some of the protests.[54]

    In 1939 (!), a movie called “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” featuring some of the horrors of Naziism, aired in American theaters, and the movie industry tried very very hard to kill it (and succeeded in making major changes, e.g. removing anything and everything about antisemitism or Jews, replacing it with vague language about “bigotry.”) Among other things, the PCA said:

    To represent Hitler only as a screaming madman and a bloodthirsty persecutor, and nothing else, is manifestly unfair, considering his phenomenal public career, his unchallenged political and social achievements, and his position as head of the most important continental European power.