A Brief History of Hate Radio - with Examples

It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio. ~ Joseph Goebbels, 1933

Father Charles Coughlin
Father Coughlin was the Rush Limbaugh of the 1930's. He was way bigger than Rush. Coughlin had a listening audience of 40 million Americans, three times Limbaugh's audience today. Coughlin evolved from delivering sermonettes in the 1920's to where by the late 1930's he was preaching against Jews and in support of Nazi Germany, even after Pearl Harbor.

Many people are beginning to wonder who they should fear most - the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination. ~ Father Coughlin, Dec. 8, 1941

As war was beginning in Europe, Father Coughlin organized a paramilitary group called the Christian Front. These thugs would beat Jews on the street and vandalize Jewish shops. Their offices were raided by the FBI in 1940. The FBI claimed the Christian Front planned the assassination of "a dozen Congressmen" and prominent Jews.

Rwanda
Hate Radio reached its zenith in Rwanda in 1994. The genocide of that year was instigate and organized by the Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM). This was something like America's EIB Network.

Tennessee Church Killer
But, I can hear my rightwing readers whine, they are just heathen, black African savages; that wouldn't happen in Christian America. In the summer of 2008, a man named Jim Adkisson had been well schooled by American hate radio that liberals are evil, that liberals have a hidden agenda to destroy the country.

[Liberals] are pernicious; they are diabolical; they are liars; they hate America; they will do anything to destroy America; they need to be stopped. ~ Rush Limbaugh Show, Jan. 25, 2007

Adkisson took his 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opened fire, killing two (news report).

And the Beat Goes On
Hatred of immigrants preached by radio talk show hosts have led to attacks on Hispanics across the country. Anti-gay violence is on the rise, spurred on by hate radio attacking "the gay agenda." And like Father Coughlin, they can hate you just for having the wrong religion. Heck, like Coughlin, they will even sneak in a little Antisemitism from time to time.

Bill Moyers on conservative talk radio inciting domestic terrorism.