These theories are snapped up eagerly by the less rational of the president’s detractors, despite a rather embarrassing lack of evidence. For instance, according to Ruppert, Wellstone’s death was likely a murder because eight Democratic congressmen have died in plane crashes, versus only four Republicans.
KPFK, which aspires to be a news organization, would once have treated Ruppert’s claims with the skepticism they deserved – and as recently as 2002, its programmers did just that, humiliating Ruppert with a grilling on their public affairs program, ‘The Morning Show.’ But ever since then, Ruppert’s been given red carpet treatment, beginning with an appearance on radio host Michael Slate’s Tuesday drive-home public affairs show and culminating with appearances on KPFK’s news programs and fundraising drives.
Of course, Slate is likely a more extreme radical than Rupert. Slate is a prominent member of C. Clark Kissinger’s Revolutionary Community Party, a pack of Maoists with a long history of petty lawbreaking in America and support for mass murder abroad. Slate’s regular columns can be found in the party press, the Revolutionary Worker. At KPFK-FM, this type of lunacy is rewarded with a prominent, afternoon drive-time program.
All five of Pacifica’s stations have had similar problems with black anti-Semitism and political purges. Pacifica’s New York City station, WBAI, has aired comments as bigoted as any coming out of KPFK. On December 26, 2002, one of their hosts, a union organizer for the SEIU named Kamau Khalfani, claimed ‘the Jewish community is the spoiled brat of America ‘they have been allowed for whatever reason to walk with free reign.’ (He also delightfully proffered that ‘the term Jewry came out of jewelry.’) No action was taken. During a June 25 fundraiser at Houston’s KPFT, ‘Minister’ Robert Muhammad of the ‘Connect the Dots’ program claimed he had lost the top spot on the Anti-Defamation League’s ‘list’ but vowed to get back on top.
The Pacifica network has been leftist since the Pacifica Foundation was founded in 1946 by World War II conscientious objector Lew Hill. Its first radio station, KPFA in Berkeley, was founded in 1949, the first in the country to be financially supported by listener-subscribers. A second station, Los Angeles’s KPFK, was founded in 1959; a third, New York’s WBAI, was given to Pacifica in 1960. Houston’s KPFT and Washington’s WPFW were founded in the 1970?s.
For all of its existence, Pacifica has followed anti-American trends – it was opposed to the Cold War and intervention in Korea during the 1950’s, opposed to American intervention in Vietnam from as early as 1963, and had its Communist affiliations investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Its programmers and staff backed the 1960’s New Left and defended the terrorist activities of the hard-left Weatherman and Symbionese Liberation Army; in the 1980’s it supported brutal Marxist regimes in Latin America.
Many of the radio network’s current troubles can be traced back to a December 12, 2001, court decision, when Pacifica’s national board, faced with four different lawsuits, agreed to resign. The 1990’s were a difficult time for the network. The national board, all liberal-to-leftist individuals, were concerned about Pacifica’s limited growth. The fifth station had been added back in the 1970’s, and audience size remained small. They wanted their message to reach more people, and therefore decided to introduce national programming, to be carried by all five stations, in an effort to build a nation-wide identity. They also wanted to get the anti-Semites who were giving Pacifica a bad name off the air.
Both these moves annoyed the local station hosts, who preferred the status quo. When the national board began implementing their changes, these local radicals launched a smear campaign. When the board replaced old management which wouldn’t implement its decisions, it was described as a ‘political purge.’ When the new management removed some of the worst bigots from the airwaves, it was ‘censorship,’ and, since many of the anti-Semites were black, it was also ‘racism.’
