Bob From Brockley links to an account of two ignorant New Zealand radio hosts making things comfortable for financial crisis scapecoaters to tell listeners that the Jews are to blame.

"Last Tuesday night tens of thousands of Kiwis tuned in to the talkback station Radio Live to hear a succession of callers blaming the chaos in the world's financial markets on a conspiracy run by Jewish capitalists and their allies. Radio Live talkback hosts Karen Hay and Andrew Fagan not only refrained from criticising these anti-semitic arguments - at certain points in the evening they actually joined in the myth-making.

The deluge of calls began just before eight o'clock on Tuesday evening, and didn't end until ten o'clock, when Fagan and Hay ended their shift. The first caller to advance an anti-semitic explanation for the financial crisis identified himself as 'Dean'. Saying 'it's alright for me to kick the Jews, because I'm Jewish myself', Dean argued that the 'greed' of a group of 'Jewish bankers' had caused the insolvency of American banks and the collapse of Wall St shares. Dean claimed that Jewish bankers had also caused the Great Depression and World War Two, and that the Holocaust had been a 'backlash' against them. Near the end of his call, Dean announced that he had been promoting his views at public meetings, and predicted that a 'new backlash' would punish Jews for the latest crisis.

Talkback radio hosts tend to set a 'tone' which determines the sort of people who ring their shows. A left-wing host, for instance, will usually attract more callers with left-wing views than a right-wing host. Listeners feel empowered to call in when they hear a host espousing or accepting views similar to their own. Neither Karen Hay nor Andrew Fagan had a word of criticism for Dean's anti-semitic rant; not surprisingly, they were soon deluged with callers who advanced similar views.

Several of the callers explicitly defended Hitler and Nazism. One woman argued that Hitler's rise to power was an inevitable and understandable result of 'multiculturalism', which supposedly tore apart the 'fabric' of German society after World War One. She suggested that the same sort of 'multiculturalism' was ruining contemporary New Zealand society. "

Read the rest.

UPDATE: one of the hosts, Karyn Hay, has cross-posted the following response on some of the blogs which have drawn attention to this:

"As one of the 'ignorant radio hosts' I cannot believe how one person's unreliable blog can create so much misinformation. Yes, a couple of ignorant callers did phone in with vaguely offensive remarks. I am of the firm opinion that if you 'give 'em enough rope they will hang themselves', and that's exactly what happened. The blogger writes: "Like the rest of the media, talkback radio should be free of censorship. The fullest spectrum of views should be heard in places like Radio Live, even if the price is the sort of anti-Semitic ranting that was heard on Tuesday night." Anti-Semitism was not the theme of the evening; we had a bunch of conspiracy theorists who persist in this idea that everyone from the Queen to the Rockefellers control the world from some secret hideout in Europe. Mad? Up to you to decide. Additionally the woman who was talking about multiculturalism was talking broadly about the New Zealand Labour Party's immigration policy which covers Asia, the Pacific Islands, the UK; the world in fact. She made the link (spurious or not) that these were the same conditions in Germany that contributed to Hitler's rise. Was she right? I have no idea; it's her theory. It is your right to refute this if you happen to think differently. At no point in that call did she mention Jews, and we know this particular caller anyway - she's politically motivated against the Labour Party so uses any 'topic' to score a point against them.
Why didn't the said blogger phone up? It's a free call. We would have welcomed his views, and that would have gone a long way towards balancing the argument. Incidentally, we discussed this blog on air last night and listeners who had heard the show phoned in to say they thought this blog was a storm in a teacup. I did not cut off the woman who was 'outraged'. It's simply not true; it just suits the blogger's argument. Talkback is just that: talkback. Put your point of view forward at the time via the phone, rather than making it a war of words after the event."

UPDATE 2: Maps responds to Karyn Hay and Andrew Fagan with a defence of open and wide-ranging debate - but moderated by hosts who are capable of setting the parameters for a factually accurate and rational discussion. Otherwise it's often the case, as in the case of UCU, that the debate you are hosting becomes a billboard for ideologues and haters.