A View Through a Dim Mirror, into the Conservative Past

I want to continue my little series about fringe right wing ideology with a discussion of the emergence of right wing talk radio in the late fifties and sixties. This is a subject that has received very little attention, and I have found it difficult to put together a lot in the way of facts about it. It is an important subject, I think, because it is a crucial part in how the right in this country cultivated generations of people who were willing to mindlessly accept the teachings of their leaders.

I started listening to these people in the mid-sixties, primarily on radio station KXEL in Waterloo Iowa, which was a very powerful clear-channel station that could be heard throughout much of the midwest, and which carried primarily religious programming. It had a sister station in Tijuana called XEL, which in addition to carrying much of the same programming, became famous as the home of Wolfman Jack.

Religious broadcasting first emerged in the early days of radio. The first religious radio "star" was the con-artist Aimee Semple McPherson in the early 20's; many others quickly followed her. The mixture of religion and right wing politics was by no means unknown before the 50's- the most notorious figure in this genre is certainly the Nazi propagandist Father Charles Coughlin, who broadcast pro-German and anti-semitic tirades until 1942, when he was finally silenced by the Catholic Church. This sort of thing tamped down the mixture of politics, religion and radio for a while, and (as far as I can tell) religious radio broadcasts pretty much stayed away from politics until a new generation of characters arose on these stations in the late fifties.

Some of these were ostensibly religious characters, whose background was in evangelism, who became more and more political as time went on. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Reverend Carl McIntyre: Mcintyre started his program, The Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, as a non-political religious show. Over time he became more and more political, railing against Liberals, Communism, socialized medicine, sex education and other conservative causes of the day, like fluoridation.

Reverend William Stuart McBirnie: McBirnie was an itinerant evangelist who eventually settled in Glendale California, one of the wacko capitals of America, and built a very large church which still looms over the 134 freeway. Like McIntyre, he became more and more political, eventually having a show called the Voice of Americanism, which was almost entirely devoted to justifying extreme right wing positions.





A little publication of Rev. Mc Burnie







Billy James Hargis: Hargis was a very colorful character and seems to be a little more remembered than the two guys above. He actually has a Wikipedia page, from which I will take the liberty of quoting:

"A motto of Hargis was "All I want to do is preach Jesus and save America". He was convinced that the perils that he saw threatening America was part of a conspiracy, which he identified with Communism. Hargis saw the national and world events as part of a cosmic struggle, where the ultimate actors were Christ and Satan. While Communism represented the latter, America, in Hargis' view, was the object of God's love and should return to the Christian ideals he believed it was founded on. He had a "simplistic conception of Americanism consisting of a vague notion of Protestant Fundamentalism and an idealization of the virtues of republicanism". Hargis was also a member of the John Birch Society, and making his pro-segregation stance clear, accusing Martin Luther King Jr. of being a Communist-educated traitor..."

Hargis, in what will be no surprise to observers of such characters today, met a predictable fate:

"In 1974, Hargis announced that he would step down from most of his activities, including resignation from the presidency of American Christian College, due to health problems. However, a sex scandal erupted at the College the same year, involving claims that Hargis had had sex with four males and one female student. In fact, a couple he married found out on their wedding night that he had deflowered both of them."

What is important to note here is that all of these people originated as evangelical Christians and then led their followers into the world of right wing thought. Evangelical Christianity was, and is, a very "top-down" religion. It was accepted in evangelical Christian circles that pastors speak the word of the lord, and that their pronouncements were not to be challenged by the congregation (hardly an unusual concept in many religions.) Thus, these people were propagandizing to an audience which had had its capacity for critical thinking desensitized- an audience that was ripe for manipulation. This was not, as is generally assumed today, a case of right wing politicians exploiting the uneducated masses- the modern conservative movement grew out of fundamentalist religion, not the other way around. In truth, the likes of William F. Buckley never reached any more than a minute segment of the American people, compared to the above characters.

However, it was not long before right wing political figures realized the opportunity that these ostensibly religious stations offered. A classic example of this was the figure of one Melvin Munn, on the Life Line radio show. Here is a sample of Munn's view of himself:
"He is a Christian and writes on many religious subjects. He is also a loyal American who isn't afraid to shoot straight at drugs, one-world government, inflation, gun control, welfare, school textbooks, United Nations, etc. neither does man have the right to use government and the law, in the name of charity, to force the unwilling to do that which he would not do if the choice were his. Before any citizen concludes that the poor have a better life under state welfare than their counterparts had under true charity one hundred years ago, he should examine the present and investigate the past." Congress has no right to give charity. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitutuion, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."
Here you have a classic 60's style statement of the notions that infect the teabag movement today- "tentherism," an ingnorant, mean-minded interpretation of the constitution to deny the government the right to aid anyone but themselves, hatred of taxes, obsession with nonexistent threats to the second amendment, even manipulation of school textbooks to force future citizens to accept the views of the right; and all justified on the basis that Munn is a good Christian.

An innocent but deluded figure? Well, the Life Line program was actually funded by the Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt, regarded as the richest man in the world at the time, and a wonderful parallel to current tea party backers and funders of right wing causes, and also Texas oil billionaires, the Koch brothers. It was never anything but a front to push their self-serving propaganda on the ignorant.

What is important to understand about all of this is that the extreme right as it exists today grew out of evangelical Christianity, and not the other way around. A pre-existent mass of ignorant, gullible people found a place on the political spectrum that suited their greedy, self-absorbed and self-righteous views. And they have, unfortunately, hundreds of years of religious experience in how to breed a compliant, ignorant following.

Note: Because of the lack of documentary material about this period, a good deal of this is based on my own recollections. If anyone can correct or add to what I've had to say, please let me know.