Hate Radio And Extremist Groups Are Not New, Author Says
2-28-97
University Park, Pa. -- Extreme right wing groups and hate radio have been in the news in recent years, but such groups have always been a part of the American religious and political landscape. And, they have used radio to spread their messages for as long as radio has existed.
The era between the two world wars, particularly the 1930s, was a particularly volatile period, and a new book by Philip Jenkins, a Penn State historian, uses developments in Pennsylvania as a case study of the local activities and broader significance of such organizations.
"Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950," published by University of North Carolina Press, highlights the activities of racist, nativist and fascist groups who maintained a stronghold on Pennsylvanias cities during this time.
As elsewhere in the North, the Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania directed much of its hostility toward immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. By the time of its greatest influence in the state in the mid-1920s, it boasted 250,000 members statewide.
Other groups proliferated as well: the Italian Black Shirts supported Mussolini's policies; German-American Bundists were avid followers of the Nazi regime; and the Silver Shirts quickly became, along with Father Coughlin's Christian Front, the most notoriously anti-Semitic of the organizations.
Jenkins traces the uneasy alliances that united these groups in their commitment to a fascist agenda as well as the fundamental ethnic and religious differences that divided them.
By 1940, these groups had become so visible as to arouse public fears of insurrection or pro-Nazi sabotage. According to Jenkins, the threats they posed were often exaggerated
to tighten the political solidarity of the political mainstream, but a loose coalition of dozens of these groups nevertheless constituted a formidable political presence in the state. Jenkins based his research in Pennsylvania's extensive Ku Klux Klan archive and on other original sources and contemporary media accounts.
Professor of history, religious studies and criminal justice in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts, Jenkins is the author of many other books, including "Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Social Crisis" and "Using Murder: The Social Construction fo Serial Homicide."
The new book, "Hoods and Shirts," is available in bookstores or from the University of North Carolina Press (1-800-848-6224). The UNC Press is also the publisher of "Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement," Revised Edition, by Michael Barkun, and "Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928," by Leonard J. Moore. Both are newly available in paperback.
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EDITORS: Dr. Jenkins is at (814) 863-8946 (office) or at email: jpj1@psu.edu. For book review copies, contact
Lisa Dellwo, University of North Carolina Press, at (919) 966-3561, ext.
234, or by fax, (919) 966-3829.
Contacts:
Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (O), vyf1@psu.edu