Simon Schama on social tension in Europe and the US

27 May 2010

Speakers: Simon Schama

Award winning journalist, author and academic Simon Schama compares the tension and sentiment building in Europe and the United States to that prior to the French revolution in 1789. The development from Keynesian policy to that of public sector reductions and brutal cuts in real wages and social services is a delayed trigger for anger at those responsible for the financial mess. He calls it ‘a recipe for serious indignation’, one that will lead to the reawakening of the long-forgotten issues of local chauvinism and militant nationalism that will feed off a perceived lack of accountability in the EU and United States.

Schama ends with an analysis of one of the original ‘shock-jocks’, Father Charles E Coughlin, who in the Roosevelt era exploited the power of radio to deliver an anti-Semitic, anti-FDR message, and states his belief that the philosophical grandeur of the political elites clouds their ability to recognise the power of these orators.