By Michelle Kelley
Recent shootings — from the attempted attack on congregants observing Yom Kippur at a synagogue in Halle, Germany, in October, to the killing of 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, six months ago — have been tied to the promotion of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate-fueled violence on the Internet. When far-right extremism goes viral online, the contagion infects flesh-and-blood human beings capable of materializing their hate by force.
So what do we do?
While restricting Internet hate speech is important, we might also consider devising a counterattack. Almost a century ago, when Jewish advocacy groups confronted the spread of fascist propaganda in the United States, they cooperated with other organizations and American mass media to produce counterpropaganda. This history shows that when social activists and media industry professionals join forces, they can mount a formidable challenge to the toxic rhetoric of the far right.
American anti-Semitism reached an apogee in the 1930s, spurred by the radio diatribes of the known anti-Semite Father Charles Coughlin and the scapegoating of Jews for the Great Depression. In response, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) established the Survey Committee, made up of professionals in fields including advertising, Hollywood filmmaking, broadcasting and academia. Its objective was to monitor the dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda in the United States. Under advertising executive Richard Rothschild’s direction, the Survey Committee also mounted a counterattack, producing what historian Stuart Svonkin calls “propaganda against prejudice.”
The Survey Committee quickly evolved into a complex web of interconnected committees, divisions and sections. The Film Section advised Hollywood studios to ensure their films didn’t inadvertently perpetuate Jewish stereotypes. The Magazine Section placed news items and editorials about the harmful effects of prejudice in some of the nation’s most popular publications. And the Mass Media Education Committee, made up of powerful executives from the advertising and entertainment industries, met regularly to discuss new ways of using media to curb social biases.
The head of the Radio-Television Section was Milton Krents. Newly hired at the AJC, Krents stood before a map of the United States and, like a general positioning troops on the battlefield, used pin tacks to identify radio stations. “Today, Nazi Germany is waging a new kind of war,” he wrote in an essay for the Contemporary Jewish Record (the predecessor to Commentary magazine). “In place of the shock troops of the first World War are giant radio transmitters firing their invisible salvos of subversive ideas in a never-ceasing barrage.” For Krents, propaganda was as powerful as artillery fire.
Originally published by The Washington Post, 11.12.2019 – read full story here.