Modern Lord Haw Haw Of The Far Right News Media

In several previous posts, I used the term “Lord Haw Haw”, and/or “Haw Haws”, when referring to Glenn Beck; Rush Limbaugh; Bill O’Reilly plus Sean Hannity. My usage of the term has prompted a couple of my younger friends to ask where that term came from and how?

Lord Haw Haw was the nickname of several announcers on the English language propaganda radio program, Germany Calling, broadcast by Nazi German radio to audiences in Great Britain from September 18, 1939 until April 30, 1945.

Radio critic Jonah Barrington, from the Daily Express, was the first to use the term:

He speaks English of the haw-haw, dammit get out of my way variety.

In my previous posts, I have often mused over the fact that the “far right” media has labeled President Obama a fascist when they themselves show all the tendencies of “Brown shirt, Boot Jack wearing” storm troopers.

Scholar Roger Griffin stated that:

Fascism is genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal…to generate a populist mass movement through a liturgical style of politics…to end the degeneration affecting the nation under liberalism. The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence.

All that sounds familiar when you listen to Fox News and/or Rush Limbaugh and their talking points.

The “far right” and Fox News are so quick to point the “fascist” finger at President Obama, and all who support him, that they get themselves wrapped up in the Joseph Goebbel’s style of vile and poison.

Sinclair Lewis, Nobel Prize winning author, is credited with saying

When fascism comes to this country it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Early in 1944, the New York Times asked then Vice President Henry Wallace, to write a piece answering the following questions: “What is a fascist? How many fascist have we? How dangerous are they?”

The very first point that the Vice President made sounds so much like he had viewed Fox News or had listened to Rush Limbaugh:

The American fascist…His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money and power.

In Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a national syndicated radio talk show host. The politician runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism as the talk show host portrays advocates of traditional democracy as anti-American. The politicians wins, he opens a Guantanamo style detention center and a “patriotic” laws are passed making it illegal to criticize the President.

How similar that sounds when looking back on the last 8 years under the Bush Administration and where the Karl Roves and far right media wish us to return.

Vice President Wallace even commented:

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascist in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. …They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow the power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

Finally Vice President Wallace, way before their time, hit the Beck; O’Reilly; Hannity and Limbaugh propaganda machine directly with a bullseye statement and summary:

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

A voice of reason from the past shows us the present and what the modern Lord Haw Haws of the right are all about.