Vitriol On The Fringe-- Again
A History Lesson

And so it begins. According to right wing talk
radio bafoon Hal Turner unless the new Congress
complies with his wishes they should be subject to
assassination list. Nice. A fine show he has I am

sure. Perhaps Ann Coulter, she of the poisoning judges advocacy, could be an appropriate guest for some intellectually stirring discussion. On what I am not sure, but at least they could be a support group for clueless fringies who haven't figured out there was an election and their dreams of neo con nirvanah are so much dust. Link to whole sorry saga here:


WorldNetDaily: 'Assassination' schedule announced for Congress


But before one gets too concerned with these fringy babbles and see some sort of disturbing new pattern developing bear in mind the examples of history. On the eve of the historic Democratic Party takeover of Congress a look at a previous Democratic 'Revolution', and the emotions it engendered, may be in order.

1932

The Great Depression begins to take a viral death
grip on the American ecomomy. Though it is often
thought the Market Crash in '29 was the cause of
Depression, this is not actually so. It's roots lay much deeper and complicated than that. Causes were multifold, ranging from production from rampant capitalism outsripping markets at the same time cash reserves were drying up. No-one was buying anything. Banks were collapsing ( in fact on Inauguration Day Governors in both New York and Illinois were forced to declare Bank Holidays of several days duration in order to prserve the remaining solvency of their states.)


Throughout it all- during the whole catastrophic
year Hoover had done nothing, his faith in the
system absolute. Unfettered Industry had built the
former prosperity and it surely would bring it back.
He rarely left his office and completly discounted
any tales of hardship and devestation his policies had wrought. And when he went out on the campaign trail he was shocked to find angry crowds and catcalls. After his loss, so resolute was he in his faith in his policies he pressed upon Roosevelt to adopt them in their entirity, so unable were he and his ilk to accept the failure of those policies. Right up to the end, even after the closing hours of his administration brought the insolvency of two major states, he prevailed upon FDR not to change a thing.

Roosevelt, of course, would have none of it. During the four months until he took over he said little, refusing all entreaties, allowing the Hoover Administration to finish it's term. It wasn't until the Inauguration, with his famous " Nothing to fear but fear itself" speech that he let forth his intentions and put forth the elements of what became the "New Deal" he had run on. And at that point the opposition got pretty vitriolic.


One of the nastier pieces of work was Father Arthur Coughlin who had a weekly radio show. Originally a
supporter of FDR he quickly broke with him, sparing
no restraint. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are pretty
tame stuff compared to their media ancestor. Coughlin was extremly anti-semitic and openly espoused Fascism. He eventually backed a miserable failure of a
third party run in '36. By the time he had faded from the picture by 1940 he had spread a lot of hate. And
it was very accepted. Huey Long was one of his allies
and was a dangerous type indeed. He ruled Louisiana
with an iron hand and made many threats against fellow Senators. He was

a major threat to FDR untill an assasin's bullet brought him down ( something his followers blamed on FDR, of course).

And the business community despised

him for the New Deal and it's attempts

to improve the working conditions of millions. The vile whispering campaigns

that were conducted would not be, one would think, part of polite society. And yet they where. Reaction amongst this set ranged from the seriously out of touch such as a Du Pont( Du Pont was a big financial backer of the anti Roosevelt's) executive who was upset because his domestic staff quit to get better paying WPA jobs to Harold Gray, the creator of Little Orphan Annie who had his tycoon character Daddy Warbucks commit suicide at the prospect of a fourth Roosevelt term. Rather exreme. And a bad idea. FDR died shortly after.

The hatred back then was pretty ugly. These people graduated from hating FDR to cheering Kennedys assasination all the way to their perverse disparegment of Bill Clinton. In fact, a case could be made that the roots of Clinton's impeachment were drawn from the well of residual hatred for FDR. Don't expect anything different from this group.

They haven't even begun to spew real bile yet. Not by 1930's standards.