Roy Masters

Roy Masters was a British-born American controversial talk radio personality. Born to a Jewish family in London, he emigrated to the United States of America as an adult and embraced Christianity. Although completely lacking any training in psychology or counseling, he hosted a radio program offering advice to distraught callers, based in Los Angeles but syndicated nationwide through his Foundation for Human Understanding, beginning in the 1960s. His conservative views about the relationship between men and women have caused feminist groups to accuse him of being misogynistic.

In the late 1970s, he moved his base of operations to rural Oregon out of fear of a nuclear attack on California, and bought a ranch which he encouraged his listeners to send their troubled children to. (Unproven accusations of child abuse and child molestation ended this program several years later.) While Masters' program had been essentially apolitical prior to this time, he increasingly advocated the political and social positions of the Religious Right and embraced the developing survivalist movement.

Masters' popularity declined in the 1990s. In 2001 he praised the Al Qaeda hijackers for committing the 9/11 attacks against what he considered a "decadent Western world" that had allowed women too much power. This was in keeping with his earlier praise for the Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini for limiting women's rights.

External links

• Foundation of Human Understanding