The Deplatforming of Father Coughlin.

January 26, 2021 9:52 AM

Slate article about the time Father Charles Coughlin, the frothing anti-Semitic radio priest and spiritual ancestor of, oh, lots of programs today (previously), got kicked off almost all radio by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1939 after inciting his listeners to march on Washington and was sent back to his pulpit by the Catholic Church in 1940. Most were glad to see him go, but a few saw it as a disquieting precedent. "Then as now, the serene pleasure of no longer having to listen to a noxious voice blare incessantly in the ear coexists with a queasy unease at the realization of how suddenly and imperiously the rulers of corporate media can switch off one’s microphone."

If you would like to hear his dreadful shows, there are some archived here. But I don't recommend it.

posted by JanetLand (17 comments total)

"For Americans who were unsure of how to deal with Coughlin, the paradox was solved by the advent of World War II. In January of 1940, the FBI caught 17 of his followers in a Nazi spy ring, and soon after, calls for more understanding of Nazis were flatly treasonous."
posted by clavdivs at 10:26 AM on January 26, 2021 [18 favorites]

He couldn't have been de-platformed if he hadn't been platformed in the first place. And according to the article, after he was de-platformed the first time from major radio networks, he still managed to re-platform himself by cobbling together an even bigger syndication network. Just like now, broadcasters were happy with the ratings he brought in right up until the point he became too much of a liability.

I'm all up for discussing effects of media consolidation, but having that discussion without acknowledging that someone chose to provide him with a platform in the first place just seems incredibly short sighted. Those radio stations could have given airtime to someone who wasn't Father Coughlin, but they repeatedly chose to give him a microphone before they decided to turn it off.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:28 AM on January 26, 2021 [26 favorites]

with a queasy unease at the realization of how suddenly and imperiously the rulers of corporate media can switch off one’s microphone.


Suddenly. After a period of months or years where you're allowed to hold the megaphone.

Imperiously. Revealing that there are in fact people in charge of institutions who make decisions about what's advantageous or not, or even right or wrong. And that this has to be done *even about speech*, as much extra freedom as we might hope to allow people.
posted by wildblueyonder at 10:44 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm genuinely interested to find out how many outspoken communists were able to reach audiences as big as Coughlin's.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:46 AM on January 26, 2021 [15 favorites]

Nobody was stopping Coughlin from building his own radio network and using it to get out his word. Freedom of speech only means the government can't stop you from speaking. It doesn't give you a printing press or a radio tower. Get your word out any way you want, but don't expect to use the services of others without them having a say in whether you get to use their services.
posted by hippybear at 11:04 AM on January 26, 2021 [15 favorites]

Deplatforming seems to work broadly, if the goal is to reduce distribution of propaganda/misinformation. There's a group that measured the quantifiable effects of actively removing ISIS-related content from Twitter, as an example:

A conscious, supportive, and influential virtual community is almost impossible to maintain in the face of loss of access to such group or ideological symbols and the resultant breakdown in commitment. As a result, IS supporters have re-located their online community-building activity elsewhere, primarily to Telegram, which is no longer merely a back-up for Twitter...

From a quantitative perspective, the data discussed in this section demonstrate three key findings. First, IS and their supporters were being significantly disrupted by Twitter, where the rate of disruption depended on the content of tweets and out-links. Second, although all accounts experienced some type of suspension over a period of time, Pro-IS accounts experienced this at a much higher rate compared to the Other Jihadist accounts in the dataset. Third, this severely affected IS’s ability to develop and maintain robust and influential communities on Twitter. As a result, pro-IS Twitter activity has largely been reduced to tactical use of throwaway accounts for distributing links to pro-IS content on other platforms, rather than as a space for public IS support and influencing activity.

Nazism didn't die with Coughlin not having a platform, nor with Hitler dying in a bunker, but having fewer spaces, virtual or real, to establish a community and share sentiments and disinformation seems to have measurable consequences on reducing right-wing extremism.

Perhaps a more useful question is: how do you stop these things, before they start? As mentioned above, terrorists have to be given a platform, for it to be taken away, and people use what tools are available in front of them. ML approaches that analyze older datasets of terrorist network growth and content could be put to use to discover, as well as monitor, manage, and disassemble such groups, before they get out of control, and we end up with a global war, pandemic, or even domestic unrest, and all the consequences that come with that.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:14 AM on January 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

Nobody was stopping Coughlin from building his own radio network and using it to get out his word. Freedom of speech only means the government can't stop you from speaking. It doesn't give you a printing press or a radio tower. Get your word out any way you want, but don't expect to use the services of others without them having a say in whether you get to use their services.

It's ..... not quite that simple, at least when it comes to radio. The government leases specific frequencies to various companies to prevent interference. That was part of the rationale for such regulatory measures as the fairness doctrine. How that applies to something like the internet is the more interesting question.
posted by eagles123 at 11:14 AM on January 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

I've thought about Coughlin on and off for a while, so I really enjoyed seeing him discussed here. I'm not sure the deplatforming bit is as interesting as the similarities with the way talk-radio has developed since the 80's.
posted by sfred at 11:53 AM on January 26, 2021

I was sure Robert Evans covered this asshole in Behind the Bastards, but searching my podcatcher for "Coughlin" didn't find anything. Unless he was namechecked in the goat testicle implant doctor episode? I guess I'll have to relisten to find out.
posted by snerson at 12:05 PM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

The FCC requires a person running for office or broadcasting a political statement to fill out forms, NAB pb-8 for example. These did not not exist by the time CBS cancelled his éminence grise. The 1934 communications act "Allows the President to suspend or amend rules and regulations upon proclamation “that there exists a war or a threat of a war or state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency or if he deems it necessary in the interests of national security or defense.”

I found this sanitized bio from
"Social Security History-
This is an archival or historical document and may not reflect current policies or procedures."
posted by clavdivs at 12:17 PM on January 26, 2021

The left never gets this kind of platform in America. You don’t have to worry about being de-platformed if you’re are never platformed.
posted by interogative mood at 2:28 PM on January 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

→ Nobody was stopping Coughlin from building his own radio network

I'm surprised he didn't head down to Mexico to put his show on one of the huge X stations that broadcast from just over the border. Those massive stations could be heard across much of North America (especially in the evenings).
posted by scruss at 2:36 PM on January 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

Update: he was namechecked in the goat testicle implant doctor episode (part 1, part 2, cw for medical bastardy) but not discussed. Dr. John "Goat Nutz" Brinkley was so filthy rich from his scam he built one of the stations scruss mentioned.

JanetLand's original pullquote is undoubtedly the home run of the article, but I really liked the drive-by about America as a Civilization being "optimistically titled."

This was a great post! Thank you for sharing JanetLand!
posted by snerson at 7:19 PM on January 26, 2021

I grew up a couple miles from his church The Shrine of the Little Flower. There was still a big radio antenna on top of it (this was in the 1970’s). I asked my Mom about it. She said “Father Coughlin used to broadcast from there. He hated Franklin Roosevelt.” I thought “How could you hate Roosevelt? He beat Hitler!” I asked my Mom why and she said “He thought he was a communist.” I could not wrap my ten-year old brain around any of that.
posted by marxchivist at 8:35 PM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Coughlin gets a mention in Woody Guthrie's song 'Lindbergh':

Yonder comes Father Coughlin, wearin' the silver chain,
Gas on his stomach and Hitler on the brain.

Guthrie himself was deplatformed by the Los Angeles radio station KFVD in 1939. The owner J. Frank Burke was a liberal New Dealer, and Guthrie at that point was toeing the Communist party line on the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Guthrie's 'More War News' ('If I'd been living in Poland then / I'd been glad Stalin stepped in') was apparently the final straw.
posted by verstegan at 1:13 AM on January 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

@marxchivist: I also grew up near The Shrine of the Little Flower (and still point to my palm to describe where I'm from). My parents and I had a very similar conversation.
posted by wicked_sassy at 5:07 AM on January 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Snerson, he was covered during an overview of American fascism on the show along with the Silver Shirts, the German American bund and Lindbergh’s America First party.
posted by Selena777 at 9:35 PM on January 27, 2021