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| Father Coughlin On Our Right By TIME Magazine [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elmer_Thomas_and_Charles_Coughlin_on_Time_magazine_1934.jpg Chapter 8:Father Coughlin: Fomenting Anti-Semitism via The Radio Father Coughlin, also known as Charles Edward Coughlin was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1891. He would raise to fame in Detroit after in the 1930's he signed a contract to speak nationwide on CBS radio. Father Coughlin gained fame so quickly that "he was employing 100 clerks to process 80,000 letters a week, and Royal Oak had to build a post office expressly to handle his mail." As Mightier than the Sword by Rodger Streittmatter describes it, Father Coughlin had a very large following and therefore the words that he spoke on the radio were listened to be a vast majority of people. In today's world if you wanted to compare how much viewers this guy had you could look in today's radio. A similarity in terms of viewers could be with Rush Limbaugh radio show or Sean Hannity's radio show. They are the two highest in terms of viewers without any music being involved. People today still have the ability to capture the audience in terms of quotes. You just won't hear it as much today because of the fact there are many different media outlets that will report what is going on.  Picture Of Old Radio Microphone By Badseed (Own work (Own photo)) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Father Coughlin started to come over heavy criticism after he started publicly promotion anti-semitism on his radio show. Now when talking about anti-semitism it will affect people differently whether it will directly affects them or even if it doesn't affect them they will still have a reaction. Anti- semitism is a heavily talked about topic at times. This is the case also for many different religions or topics. Mightier than the Sword describes how Father Coughlin, said terms like "Jews hoarding gold" and "Bad international Jews." Father Coughlin didn't really care if this affected anyone he was just simply delivering a message no matter if it was completely false. And the viewers that Coughlin had for the time can not be stated enough. Most of the people that did listen could easily believe the things he said and then start delivering these false statements as well as him.  Man holding one of Father Coughlin Published Documents Dorothea Lange [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons A reason that I specifically chose to talk about Father Coughlin is, I can somewhat tie it to me. Not the anti semitism part. I have some family members that are Jewish. My father is Jewish and I consider myself somewhat Jewish although I was never really raised with a religion due to my father being Jewish and my mother being Christian, although I still celebrated each of the holidays. Anti-Semitism I'll see every now and then but it's not even close to prevalent as it was in the past. Father Coughlin actually defended Naziism. His exact quote from Mightier Than the Sword was "Naziism is a defense against communism!" The book talks about how many radio stations immediately dropped him once he stated this sentence. He stated this sentence right around the start of World War II so tensions were very high. With tensions high, he show how much of a bigot he is to make these hateful statements. I would say that if he had tried something like that today he would have been immediately fired and reprimanded but back in 1939 he was still allowed to speak on the radio.  Picture of A Radio Tower By Craig Franklin en:User:Lankiveil (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Once being reprimanded Father Coughlin didn't stop there. As the book puts it he says, "And when your rights have been challenged, when all civil liberty has succumbed before the invaders, then may Christians meet force with force" What Father Coughlin was telling his listeners was to attack any Jewish people they saw. That lead to "Coughlin storm troopers" who "Pushed Jews off sidewalks, battered them with verbal insults, and baited them into Nazi-like street brawls where brass knuckles and knives were the weapons of choice." Like the book is telling you this is extremely disturbing to hear. Even for the time being 1939 I don't understand how they could let this guy speak on the air when all he says is stuff that is extremely anti-Semitic. I guess you can see how far we've come at times when you see that thankfully you don't have many issues like that today around a little over sixty years later.  Picture of Older Radio By Fabiomoie (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Chapter 8
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