Invisible Rulers

19 “Fewer Coughlin Pickets; Protest at Radio Station over Ban Is Repeated,” New York Times, December 26, 1938, 27, https://www.nytimes.com/1938/12/26/archives/fewer-coughlin-pickets-protest-at-radio-station-over-ban-is.html; “WMCA Picketing Limited; Confined by Police to Broadway Side of Building,” New York Times, June 19, 1939, 8, https://www.nytimes.com/1939/06/19/archives/wmca-picketing-limited-confined-by-police-to-broadway-side-of.html.

20 David Goodman, “Before Hate Speech: Charles Coughlin, Free Speech and Listeners’ Rights,” Patterns of Prejudice 49, no. 3 (2015): 199–224, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.10 48972.

21 “Coughlin Copies Goebbels Speech,” Daily Clarion-Ledger, December 31, 1938, 1, published online at Newspapers.com, September 23, 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/article/23966340.

22 “Coughlin Supports Christian Front; While Not a Member, ‘I Do Not Disassociate Myself from Movement,’ Priest Says,” New York Times, January 22, 1940, 1, https://www.nytimes.com/1940/01/22/archives/coughlin-supports-christian-front-while-not-a-member-i-do-not.html.

23 The FBI raid of the headquarters of the Christian Front led to the arrest of seventeen men who came to be called the “Brooklyn Boys.” However, sixteen of the seventeen were found not guilty. See Andrew Lapin, “Ep. 7: Sedition,” Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Story, March 9, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2022/03/09/ep-7-sedition; J. P. O’Malley, “FBI Files Shine Light on Homegrown Nazi Plot to Overthrow US Government During WWII,” Times of Israel, January 28, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/fbi-files-shine-light-on-homegrown-nazi-plot-to-overthrow-us-government-during-wwii; Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Christian Front,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-Front.

24 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”

25 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews,” History Unfolded.

26 Stewart M. Hoover and Douglas K. Wagner, “History and Policy in American Broadcast Treatment of Religion,” Media, Culture and Society 19, no. 1 (January 1997): 7–27, published online at Religion Online, https://www.religion-online.org/article/history-and-policy-in-american-broadcast-treatment-of-religion.

27 Ibid.

28 In 1949, the FCC implemented the Fairness Doctrine, which aimed to regulate public discourse on controversial topics in broadcast media by requiring equal time for balanced opposing viewpoints. This rule itself sparked controversy due to its vague criteria for what qualified as a viewpoint requiring equal debate. In 1987, under President Ronald Reagan, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, citing its stifling impact on free speech.

29 Kate Klonick, “The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech,” Harvard Law Review 131, no. 6 (April 2018): 1598–1670.

30 Christopher St. Aubin and Jacob Liedke, “Most Americans Favor Restrictions on False Information, Violent Content Online,” Pew Research Center, July 20, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/20/most-americans-favor-restrictions-on-false-information-violent-content-online.

31 Daphne Keller, “Lawful but Awful? Control over Legal Speech by Platforms, Governments, and Internet Users,” University of Chicago Law Review Online, June 28, 2022, https://lawreviewblog.uchicago.edu/2022/06/28/keller-control-over-speech.

32 Renée DiResta, “The Digital Maginot Line,” Ribbonfarm, November 28, 2018, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line.

33 Giuseppe Russo et al., “Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning,” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media ICWSM 16 (2023): 742–753, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.09803.

34 Jeff Kosseff, Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).

35 Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing), “Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman?…,” Twitter, June 1, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230601142311/https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255321630552065.