Radio Broadcaster Paul Harvey

‘Stand By’ For A Completely Random Rant...


Arash Norouzi

The Mossadegh Project | April 1, 2022                    


Paul Harvey, radio broadcaster (1918-2009)

Paul Harvey (1918-2009) was the most successful radio personality in American history. From 1951 to 2008, his jovial, familiar voice was delivered across 1,600 stations, reaching some 24 million people.

A dyed-in-the-wool Christian conservative, Harvey was a supporter and friend of Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Rev. Billy Graham. He’s credited with coining the term “Reaganomics”. In 2005, George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Besides offering news and opinion over the airwaves, Harvey was also an author and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. In 1960, he devoted one of his columns to a faded foreign political figure whom he detested. We won’t give it away by saying his name before the big reveal, but it goes without saying that if Paul Harvey disfavored him, he must have sucked.


United States media archive





July 23, 1960

Shadows of Coming Events Are Cast By Happenings of Past

By PAUL HARVEY

A while back the Wall Street Journal recited a sequence of events in a manner that made a profound impression on me. On the chance it might have escaped your attention—and the attention of the bearded beatnik demagogue to whom it was directed—may I retrace the chronology of events.

If you recognize the situation and the individual responsible before you get to the last paragraph—keep reading anyway.

Once upon a time there was a nation of considerable resources. It had rich soil. But it was a land that was never, in all its history, self-sufficient.

It always had to depend on outsiders to keep it economically healthy. It invited much foreign investment because it was thus able to import much Western skill and know-how.

Most of its trade, in this century was with Western nations so this little nation was naturally an ally of the West.

Russia, however, coveted this country.

One day a young, inexperienced but frightfully ambitious man came to power. He had a magnetic gift for spellbinding his followers with long hours of oratory. With this magical sway over his people, it was not difficult for him to hypnotize with promises that even the poorest of them should one day be rich and happy if only they would follow him.

They followed him.

He told them they need not depend on “grasping capitalists” in the West. They must throw off their chains and work out their own destinies.

He was a bitter and a harsh man. Some who disapproved of his plans and promises thought they detected a wild gleam in his eye as he ranted and raved against foreigners and foreign investment.

But his people were an emotional people, and when he said they could operate a business as well as any foreigner, they believed him.

The policy of his government became one of expropriation. There were promises to pay for the seized property, but only promises.

The seizures grew, little by little, and foreigners who had invested their money in the country began to look elsewhere.

But his people didn’t mind the departure of the technicians and managers. Hadn’t their leader promised he would make them technicians and managers?

The power and prestige and popularity of the petty dictator were never greater than the day he seized the big “foreign” oil refinery. It seemed, somehow, symbolic of all he stood for in standing up to the powerful nations he said were pauperizing his country and his people.

In a different way, it was symbolic of everything his policies and ambitions really stood for. For his nation, though rich in resources, became ever poorer and poorer and in time the wrathful people turned on him.

They overthrew his government and convicted him of treason and, jeered by his people, Mohammed Mossadegh was led off to an Iranian jail.


Did you figure it out? He’s talking, allegorically, about Fidel Castro.


Cassandra: Castro Following Mossadegh Trail (1960)
Cassandra: Castro Following Mossadegh Trail (1960)

Search MohammadMossadegh.com



Related links:

Right-Wing Radio Broadcaster Fulton Lewis, Jr. Suspects U.S. Role in Iran Coup (1953)

Iran According To Ed Sullivan (1951-1954)

David Lawrence: the Writer Who Hated the 1963 March on Washington



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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