By Jim Vacca
Oct. 30, marks the 83rd anniversary of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater broadcast of The War of the Worlds, a radio play adaption of the HG Wells novel of the same name. The first-person narrative in real time, written by Howard Koch, was so convincing that many understood this “fake news” to be true. Martians were invading the Earth. In the course of an hour these inter-galactic insurrectionists departed from their home planet and attacked Earth with gas bombs and heat rays. The creatures overran New Jersey and New York leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. In the aftermath of the invasion, Professor Hadley Cantril of Princeton University and his research staff did an exhaustive study into the causes of the panic reactions called “Invasion from Mars.” They estimated that approximately 6 million listened to the program and at least 1.2 million of those took the broadcast literally and reacted according to their natures and circumstances. In addition, an unknown number who did not tune into the broadcast were caught up in the mass hysteria. A mere switch of the radio dial could have dispelled the illusion of a world catastrophe, but a surprising number of people failed to make this simple check. How could so many people embrace such fabrication and abandon their critical standard?
At first I believed the audience of 1938 to be simply naïve. After all the most popular radio show in that Sunday timeslot, was the Chase and Sanborn Hour which featured Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergan, a comedy ventriloquist act….on the radio. If not naivete then ignorance must be the culprit. Orson Welles in character as Professor Pierson comforted his listeners with the fact that Mars was approximately 46 million miles from Earth. This was followed by a perfect storm of misinformation delivered over the airways as breaking news. “Ladies and gentlemen here is the latest bulletin from the InterContinental Radio News, Toronto, Canada: Professor Morse of McGill University, reports observing a total of three explosions on the planet Mars.” A basic understanding of science and physics could have been employed to dispel such nonsense. How could such a bizarre event with the same plotline as a Buck Rogers movie serial, that had no physical evidence or support be so widely accepted and believed?
Misinformation feeds ignorance and creates fear and what follows is panic. Professor Cantril interviewed ear-witness accounts of some Christian fundamentalists who longed for the apocalyptic end of the world in their lifetime and welcomed the Martians as God’s avenging angels. The Cantril study concluded that “those with an analytic ability freed from sentimentality” allowed themselves to check credible sources before letting fear rob them of rational thought. Our nation had made an emotional investment in radio, the airways were the domain of trusted, truthful voices and Presidential Fireside Chats. To perpetrate a deliberate hoax upon the American people was unthinkable. But might there be more? Perhaps “the invasion” revealed the power of radio, an emergent technology, to manipulate a mass audience in time of political crisis. The storm clouds of war were gathering. Maybe the casual listener, on that eve before Halloween heard the threat of “gas bombs” and thought not of Martians, but of Germans. By 1938, the world was beginning to unravel. A week after Halloween, in Germany, a state sanctioned spasm of anti-Semitic mob violence shattered not only glass but our moral grounding, Kristallnacht: 400 synagogues destroyed, 7,000 businesses burned to the ground, inestimable death. The monsters weren’t Martians, and it was Hitler’s use of the radio that supplied potency to the growing Nazi menace. The following year in New York City, on Feb. 20 1939 the German American Bund rallied 20,000 Nazi sympathizers in Madison Square Garden for a “Pro-America” spectacle flanked by swastikas. Americans outstretched their right arms and gave a Nazi salute to George Washington and the American flag, indeed, protected speech which Ted Cruz, through the agency of the Attorney General has recently confirmed. Inside they sang the Star-Spangled Banner while a hundred thousand protestors gathered outside the arena.
Lies and “alternative facts” still hold political currency. Our collective fears can still be manipulated by conspiracy theorists who glory at being in the eye of the cultural whirlwind. We must not allow the self-importance of unbridled narcissists to navigate the Ship of State. The real treat this Halloween is to not be tricked by those who, in their lust for power, will do anything to claim the privilege of elected office. We need those who will serve the common good and act with integrity. I have no desire to stick a knife into the pumpkin heart of childhood innocence by examining the political legacy of this autumnal festival, but there are lessons to be learned, even for unwilling pupils and members of Congress.
The radio is no longer a media in ascendancy, it has been replaced by the Internet and in particular, Facebook. Martians no longer threaten our democracy, but we are still under threat by those who troll cyberspace with duplicitous intent. Naiveté and ignorance can no longer be justified in denying what we see right before our eyes, our homegrown Invasion of Jan. 6. And no matter how much Fox News and Republicans in Congress try to paint the veneer of respectability and authority over a lie, the American people, those who have not abandoned their critical thinking faculties, can spot a fraud whether it be 1938 or 2021.
Jim Vacca lives in Louisville and is a retired Boulder High School teacher.
