The Speaking of Liberty Radio Program

Background

The Council for Democracy

General Charles Douglas "C.D." Jackson was an expert on psychological warfare who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, and later as Special Assistant to the President in the Eisenhower administration. Jackson, then the Vice President of Time Magazine, had formed a 'Council for Democracy,' as a lobbying-and-public-relations firm. The Council soon emerged as an effective and visible counterweight to the shrill isolationist rhetoric of the "America First" organization led by Charles Lindbergh. Jackson, an effective propagandist in his own right, shaped a media operation which by 1940 had placed anti-Hitler editorials and articles in eleven hundred newspapers a week around the country.

In the fall of 1940, the Council for Democracy, led by the noted radio broadcaster Raymond Gram Swing, began a media saturation campaign. The Council for Democracy left no doubt as to its main purpose: 'To crystallize and instill in the minds of Americans the meaning, value, and workability of democracy as a dynamic, vital creed -- just as Nazism, Fascism, and Communism are to their adherents."

Jackson further reorganized The Council for Democracy in 1941, "to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups throughout the United States. Jackson was also one of the early proponents of an "institute for democratic leadership," which he'd first suggested to Princeton University in 1941 to counter Germany's own "Fuehrer Schule" propagandists--by using their own concepts. Though Princeton University appeared less than enthused with the concept, The Johns Hopkins University showed far greater interest. Its School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) was launched in 1943. From 1950 on, the SAIS became one of America's leading centers for education and training in Foreign Affairs.

Post-Depression Fascism in America

Fascism throughout world history has tended to take root and thrive when its target society was at its most vulnerable. By no means a new 'ideology,' fascism experienced its greatest successes between approximately 250 A.D. and the Middle Ages. During periods of constant war, abject poverty, widespread disease and almost continual civil unrest, promoters of fascism seized on the weaknesses of a populace to 'divide and conquer,' so as to promote the interests of the wealthy and powerful over the interests of the downtrodden.

Such tactics were not only employed to geo-political advantage. The rise of the earliest Catholic Church and that of England's own Anglican Church were two of the most notable examples of fascism exploited in the name of religion. But whether exploited in the name or religion or political ideology, fascism, by the mid-1930s, had yet again taken root through much of Europe and even post-Great Depression America.

So it was that from feudalism to outright fascism throughout history, the worst of history's powerful and wealthy bad actors have continually attempted to divide and subjugate its citizenries. America's own fascists of the pre-World War II era were comprised mostly of powerful industrialists and manufacturers who, while at the same time expanding internationally, assumed the guise of 'nationalists' and 'isolationists' in an effort to have their cake and also eat it: further expanding and consolidating their international conglomerates, while opposing all efforts to come to the aid of the very countries from which they were attempting to further profit.

The battles between America's isolationists and America's "One-World" proponents raged throughout the Administrations of Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, with isolationist rhetoric growing increasingly strident with each new administration. By the time that Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the Presidency, America had become virtually split between isolationists and proponents of intervention against growing fascist hegemony throughout the Far East and Europe.

From the United States Department of State and its Office of the Historian:

"The isolationists were a diverse group, including progressives and conservatives, business owners and peace activists, but because they faced no consistent, organized opposition from internationalists, their ideology triumphed time and again. Roosevelt appeared to accept the strength of the isolationist elements in Congress until 1937. In that year, as the situation in Europe continued to grow worse and the Second Sino-Japanese War began in Asia, the President gave a speech in which he likened international aggression to a disease that other nations must work to "quarantine." At that time, however, Americans were still not prepared to risk their lives and livelihoods for peace abroad. Even the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 did not suddenly diffuse popular desire to avoid international entanglements. Instead, public opinion shifted from favoring complete neutrality to supporting limited U.S. aid to the Allies short of actual intervention in the war. The surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 served to convince the majority of Americans that the United States should enter the war on the side of the Allies."

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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