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Introduction
The relevance that technology yields within contemporaneous
society is something that is hard to ignore. This,
moreover, is something that is made especially
apparent when considering it in light of the fact
that technological integration currently prevails
within practically every platform of modern society.
From the business to the political and from scientific
to the religious sector (s), each seems to have
its respective share of technological integration
that is typically tailored to yield maximal profitability
and/or stability. Take into consideration, for
instance, the prevalence of various software and
Internet web sites that are respectively relevant
to businesses needing to keep track of their inventories
and politicians/religious institutions needing
to spread their propaganda via electronic media.
Indeed, it would be relevant to here acknowledge
that although the adherence to technological vehicles
[the media in particular] is exceptionally frequent
today, it isn’t exactly a new entrant in
the societal cycle. Take into consideration, for
instance, the era within the US that earned the
title of the Great Depression upon the pretext
of being rife with economic and political strife
and contention.
Addressing the Great Depression; Salient Features
The Great Depression was basically instigated
within the 1920's, when the US stock market saw
a boom as a result of the optimism that had become
widespread due to a number of reasons. For businessmen
and economists, the prime reason for this optimism
was the belief that the newly born Federal Reserve
would stabilize the economy. In addition to this,
the pace of technological progress and integration
appeared to promise rapidly rising living standards
in addition to expanding markets (DeLong, 1997).
This optimism, however, as it soon turned out,
had false roots. For instance, when the US Federal
Reserve's conceptualization of the need to discourage
stock speculation led it to attempt a raise of
interest rates the result was an initial recession.
This recession had a rather drastic impact on
the collective organizational sector and consequently,
the national economy. The recession had firms
that had been caught unaware terminating their
plans of further purchase of producer durables
that, in turn, led to the inevitable decline of
the production rates of firms making producer
durables.
The high rate of inconsistency within the job
market, furthermore, made for a prevalence of
would be consumers being left unemployed and robbed
of their purchasing power. And while this fall
in the collective purchasing power of wannabe
consumers impacted the organizational sector considerably;
of even more deteriorative relevance was the fact
that consumers who did have the jobs cut back
on their purchases of consumer durables due to
the persistent economic uncertainty that had continuously
fretting about the tenure of their jobs. The resultant
fall in demand made for a fall in prices and deflation,
both ailments that were further contributed to
as a result of the inevitable decline of overall
production rates (Eagles, 1986).
A phenomenon rendered rather unsurprising when
considering it in light of the primeval nature
of the era and the society is that this slump
resulted in a significant degree of religious
propaganda being broadcast with an essence of
being economically and politically relevant. There
were a significant handful of people lobbying
the idea of socio-political and economic revolutions
propagated via societal welfare and equality.
The popularity of their lobby, moreover, was considerably
promoted as a result of the fact that the crash
of the stock market (DeLong, 1997) had caused
a large number of workers in Lincoln, Nebraska
and Iowa to lose their jobs. People began to anxiously
ponder anew about big businesses, power held in
the hands of an anonymous few thousands of miles
away and the means to get that power so as to
end the strife they were facing.
They jumped to whatever propaganda, religious
or political, they saw as yielding even the slightest
possibility of redemption. This also renders understandable;
moreover, reason why the masses flocked to Father
Charles Couglin's proposed ideology when he resorted
to taking his suggestions on the radio waves.
The people of the time, with the working class
in particular, had become a desperate lot on account
of the uncertainty that they saw stretching out
on all social fronts.
Father Charles Couglin & his radio program
Born and bred in Canada, Charles Coughlin eventually
joined the priesthood after which he moved to
Royal Oak, Michigan in the 1920s. He started a
small radio program on WJR Station in Detroit
when his new church needed to raise funds to pay
off a diocesan loan that had been needed in order
to refurbish the Church after it suffered damage.
His program was comprised, initially, of nothing
more aggressive than short sermons and homilies
concluding with the church’s need for donations
so as to pay of the loan.
The beginning of the Great Depression, however,
saw the tone and theme of Couglin’s sermons
on air changing rather dramatically. By the early
1930s the flavor of his broadcasts had shifted
totally from theology to economics and politics.
He began to stress more vocally upon socialism
than religion and gradually became increasingly
anti Semitic. In addition to this, moreover, his
understanding of the inconsistence within the
socio-economic sector (s) induced him to the use
the situation to his advantage in as much as proposing
programs that would ‘restore power to local
communities and the individual’ (Brinkley,
1983).
He proposed social justice upon the grounds of
asserting the existence of what he termed as his
social gospel, a critique of the distribution
of wealth that was melded into an ideology built
upon an ‘imagined Jewish banking conspiracy’
(Harvey & Goff, 2004). While he was initially
a good friend of Roosevelt and supported him on
his radio program, Couglin and the president eventually
fell out over several issues.
It would be noteworthy to here consider that when
Couglin first turned from theology to politics
and social activism, he overtly supported Roosevelt
with the coining of the phrase ‘Roosevelt
or Ruin’ (Hadden & Swann, 2004). He
took to offering radical economic theories to
the president as to how the latter should deal
with the depression and expected to be taken in
as a personal advisor. However, this all ended
when Roosevelt accepted neither Coughlin's personal
approaches nor his economic theories.
The relevance of Couglin’s program to the
Great Depression
This led to Coughlin bitterly taking his revenge
in as much as forming the National Union for Social
Justice and its attendant political branch, the
Union Party, to unseat the president in the 1936
elections; his plans were unsuccessful. However,
a good orator with an exceptionally modulated
voice, Couglin effectually took advantage of the
economic situation during the era and soon established
himself as one of the most influential names of
the period. His fame was especially promoted due
to his putting forward a well-developed socio-economic
theory predicated on monetary reforms (Harvey
& Goff, 2004). It was particularly as a result
of the mass media relevance that he received that
Father Couglin’s name stands out as one
of the more instrumental individuals within the
Great Depression.
Take into consideration, for instance, the fact
that by 1930, his sermons became so popular [with
listeners approximately amounting to 100.000]
that the Columbia Broadcasting Service (CBS) had
begun to broadcast Coughlin's sermons nation-wide.
The priest went on to establish the Radio League
of the Little Flower as a result of which he was
receiving 80,000 letters a week within a year’s
time (Marcus, 1973). In addition to this, moreover,
he was also getting an equally significant influx
of financial contributions from his listeners,
something that indicated that the waves of Anti-Semitism
that he was creating were being rather well received.
The radical propaganda that Couglin preached seemed
to have an almost mystical impact on the ever-increasing
number of the listeners on his talk show in as
much as inducing an [otherwise] unimaginable number
of people to become politically aware and active.
This awareness, moreover, in spite of being fueled
by a sentiment as negativistic as Anti-Semitism,
turned out to have a neutralizing impact on the
Great Depression. In addition to this, furthermore,
the exceptionality of the scope of Couglin’s
audience also established a new medium with a
political voice. This is something that is emphasized
when considering the title he earned; ‘the
Radio Priest’ (Warren, 1996).
The decline of Couglin’s program and his
popularity
It was basically as a result of having his views
rejected by Roosevelt and having the consequent
seeds of bitterness and jealousy growing within
him that Couglin began to experience rapid decline
in spite of the exceptionally significant degree
of support that he had been receiving.
The falling out with Roosevelt, for instance,
had left him proverbially soar and this led to
his becoming even more bitter towards the Jews.
The exceptional limits of his Anti-Semitic remarks
eventually brought forth the radio channels request
that his texts be pre-censored before being put
on air. The radio channels owner was a Jew and
when he didn’t give in to Couglin’s
demands to do a national broadcast of his Anti-Semitic
sentiments grounded into economic theory; Couglin
set up his own network in order to have the show
broadcast as per his specifications.
His failure to unseat Roosevelt in 1936, however,
was what actually caused him to become so significantly
bitter and hateful towards those in financial
and political power. He was especially hateful
towards the Jews upon the imagined pretext that
they were controlling the US via a banking conspiracy.
Eventually, the height of Coughlin’s anti-Semitism
caused the newly created Federal Communications
Commission to yank him off the air.
This is not surprising when considering the extent
to which he had reached. Take into consideration,
for instance, the fact that he retired from the
airwaves in 1936 only to return the next year
with newly rejuvenated hate against the Jews that
was practically fanatical in its proportions.
He strongly criticized the world participation
in World War II for the prime reason that he saw
the protection of the Jews as the only aim of
the war. ‘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’ (Witt, 2002) was the question
he put forth in order to justify his opposition
of the war. It would be relevant to acknowledge
that Couglin was an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini
due to the economic and social vehicles they promoted.
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