Charles Coughlin

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Father Charles Edward Coughlin (October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979) was a Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. This radio program included praises of Hitler and Mussolini^[1] and was "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture."^[2] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious with his slogan of "Social Justice" against the New Deal.

Contents 1 Early broadcasts and political activism 2 Antisemitism 3 Silenced 4 References in popular culture 5 Notes 6 Sources 7 Other references 8 External links 8.1 Attribution

Early broadcasts and political activism

Coughlin was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Irish Catholic parents, and was ordained in Toronto in 1916. He taught at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, before moving to Detroit in 1923. He began his radio broadcasts in 1926 over station WJR, broadcasting weekly sermons on a regular program. In 1931 the CBS radio network dropped free sponsorship, so he raised money to create his own national network, which soon reached millions of listeners. He strongly endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1932 Presidential election. He was an early supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, and coined the phrase "Roosevelt or ruin," which was famous during the early days of the FDR administration as well as "The New Deal is Christ's Deal."^[3] However, Coughlin's focus changed during the 1930s as he preached more and more about the negative influence of "international bankers" and of Wall Street on the general welfare and about the need for monetary reform. Coughlin claimed that the Depression was a cash famine, and proposed monetary reforms, including the elimination of the Federal Reserve System, as the solution.

By 1934 Coughlin was perhaps the most prominent Catholic spokesman on political and financial issues, with a radio audience that reached millions of people every week. When he began criticizing the New Deal, Roosevelt sent Joseph P. Kennedy and Frank Murphy, prominent Irish Catholics, to try to tone him down. Ignoring them, Coughlin began denouncing Roosevelt as a tool of Wall Street. He supported Huey Long until Long was killed in 1935, and then supported William Lemke's third party in 1936. Thus, as Coughlin became a bitter opponent of the New Deal, his radio talks escalated in vehemence against Roosevelt, capitalists and Jewish conspirators. Kennedy, who strongly supported the New Deal, warned as early as 1933 that Coughlin was "becoming a very dangerous proposition" as an opponent of Roosevelt and "an out and out demagogue." Kennedy worked with Roosevelt, Bishop Francis Spellman and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) in a successful effort to get the Vatican to shut Coughlin down in 1936.^[4] In 1940-41, Kennedy attacked the isolationism of Coughlin (and aviator Charles Lindbergh).^[5]

Coughlin in 1935 proclaimed, "I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness."^[6] He accused Roosevelt of "leaning toward international socialism or sovietism on the Spanish question." Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice, an organization with a strong following among nativists and opponents of the Federal Reserve, especially in the Midwest. As Kazin notes, Coughlinites saw Wall Street and Communism as twin faces of a secular Satan. They defended a "people" who cohered more through piety, economic frustration, and a common dread of powerful, modernizing enemies than through any class identity.^[7]

One of Coughlin's campaign slogans was: "Less care for internationalism and more concern for national prosperity" which went well with the isolationist movement in the United States. Coughlin's organization appealed especially to Irish Catholics. In 1936, Coughlin helped found a short-lived political party, the Union Party, which nominated William Lemke for President. Coughlin promised to retire if Lemke did not get 9 million votes, and when he received only 900,000 Coughlin stopped broadcasting briefly. He resumed in 1937.

Antisemitism

After 1936, Coughlin increasingly expressed sympathy for the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini, as an antidote to Bolshevism, though this was before World War II began. His CBS radio broadcasts also became overtly antisemitic. He blamed the Depression on an "international conspiracy of Jewish bankers", and also claimed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. On 27 November 1938, he said "There can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution ... was launched and fomented by distinctively Jewish influence."

He began publication of a newspaper, Social Justice, during this period, in which he printed antisemitic polemics such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like Joseph Goebbels, Coughlin claimed that Marxist atheism in Europe was a Jewish plot. The 5 December 1938 issue of Social Justice included an article by Coughlin which closely resembled a speech made by Goebbels on 13 September 1935 attacking Jews, atheists and communists, with some sections being copied verbatim by Coughlin from an English translation of the speech published in 1935.

On November 20, 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, when Jews across Germany were attacked and killed, and Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues burned, Coughlin blamed the Jewish victims,^[8] saying that "Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted." After this speech, and as his programs became more antisemitic, some radio stations, including those in New York and Chicago, began refusing to air his speeches without pre-approved scripts; in New York, his programs were cancelled by WINS and WMCA, leaving Coughlin to broadcasting on the Newark part-time station WHBI. This made Coughlin a hero in Nazi Germany, where papers ran headlines like: "America is Not Allowed to Hear the Truth." On December 18, 1938 two thousand of Coughlin's followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would allow more Jews (including refugees from Hitler's oppression) into the US, chanting, "Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!" and "Wait until Hitler comes over here!" The protests continued for several months. Donald Warren, using information from the FBI and German government archives, has also argued that Coughlin received indirect funding from Nazi Germany during this period.

Additionally, after 1936, Coughlin began supporting an organization called the Christian Front, which claimed him as an inspiration. In January, 1940, the Christian Front was shut down when the FBI discovered the group was arming itself and "planning to murder Jews, communists and 'a dozen Congressmen'"^[9] and eventually establish, in J. Edgar Hoover's words, "a dictatorship, similar to the Hitler dictatorship in Germany." Coughlin publicly stated, after the plot was discovered, that he still did not "disassociate himself from the movement," and though he was never linked directly to the plot, his reputation suffered.^[10]

Silenced

At its peak in the early 1930s, his radio show was phenomenally popular: his office received up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners, and his listening audience was estimated to be as much as one-third of the nation. Coughlin is often credited as one of the major demagogues of the 20th century for being able to influence politics through broadcasting, without actually holding a political office himself.

Boyea (1995) argues that the Catholic Church did not approve of Coughlin. The Vatican, the Apostolic Delegation in Washington, D.C., the archbishop of Cincinnati, and the chairman of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) all wanted the priest silenced. They recognized that only Coughlin's superior, Detroit Bishop Michael Gallagher, had the canonical authority to curb him; and Gallagher supported the "Radio Priest." Therefore, due to Gallagher's autonomy and the prospect of Coughlin leading a schism, the Catholic leadership was impotent, a clear example of the limits of ecclesiastical power.

A radio battle was fought in the late 1930s between The Reverend Walton E. Cole, a Unitarian minister in Toledo, Ohio, and Coughlin. Coughlin, became highly controversial when his broadcasts took a political turn toward Nazism and anti-Semitism. Rev. Cole tried to prevail upon the Catholic hierarchy to have his inflammatory broadcasts stopped. Walton Cole’s widow, Lorena M. Cole, donated papers to the Claremont School of Theology with personal notes and reminiscences about this tense episode.

But Coughlin's biggest enemy was the FDR administration. They didn't want a popular radio announcer campaigning against them every week during the run up to the war. They decided that although the first amendment protected free speech, it did not necessarily apply to broadcasting, because the radio spectrum was a "limited national resource." New regulations and restrictions were created to force Coughlin off the air. For the first time, operating permits were required of those who were regular radio broadcasters. When Coughlin's permit was denied, he was temporarily silenced.

Unwilling to give up without a fight, Coughlin worked around the restriction by purchasing air time and having his speeches played via record. However, having to buy the time on individual stations seriously reduced his reach and strained his resources. And while Coughlin's voice grew dimmer, the voices of his critics grew louder.

According to Marcus' book, Coughlin's opposition to the repeal of a neutrality-oriented arms-embargo law triggered more successful efforts to force him off the air. In October 1939, one month after the invasion of Poland, the Code Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) adopted new rules which placed "rigid limitations on the sale of radio time to spokesman of controversial public issues." Manuscripts were required to be submitted in advance. Radio stations were threatened with the loss of their licenses if they failed to comply. This ruling was clearly aimed at Coughlin due to his leadership in opposition to the growing American involvement in the Second World War. As a result, the September 23, 1939 issue of Social Justice stated that he had been forced from the air "...by those who control circumstances beyond my reach" (pp 173-177).

Coughlin was down, but he was not out. He reasoned that although the government had assumed the right to regulate any on-air broadcasts (a right they still maintain to this day), the first amendment still guaranteed and protected freedom of the written press. He could still print his editorials without censorship in his own newspaper, Social Justice. However, FDR's administration stepped in again, this time revoking his mailing privileges and making it impossible for Coughlin to deliver the papers to his readers. He had the right to publish whatever he wanted, but not the right to use the US Postal service to deliver it. The lack of a conduit to his followers seriously reduced his influence, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war, the peace movement began to sputter out and isolationists like Coughlin were seen as being sympathetic to the enemy. In 1942, a new bishop of Detroit ordered Coughlin to stop his controversial political activities and to return to his duties as a parish priest. Coughlin complied and remained the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower until retiring in 1966. He refused numerous interview opportunities, and continued to write pamphlets denouncing Communism until his death at Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1979, at the age of 88.

References in popular culture

The character Brother Justin Crow from the HBO television series Carnivàle is thought to be partially based on Coughlin.

Notes

Sources

• Mary Christine Athans. "A New Perspective on Father Charles E. Coughlin". Church History, Vol. 56, No. 2. (Jun., 1987), pp. 224-235.
• Mary Christine Athans, The Coughlin-Fahey Connection: Father Charles E. Coughlin, Father Denis Fahey, C.S. Sp., and Religious Anti-Semitism in the United States, 1938-1954. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1991.
• Boyea, Earl. "The Reverend Charles Coughlin and the Church: the Gallagher Years, 1930-1937" Catholic Historical Review 1995 81(2): 211-225. ISSN 0008-8080 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Brinkley Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. 1982.
• General Jewish Council. Father Coughlin: His "Facts" and Arguments. New York: General Jewish Council, 1939.
• Tona J. Hangen; Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion & Popular Culture in America 2002
• Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History 1995.
• Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life Of The Priest Of The Little Flower, Boston, 1972
• John J. O'Connor, "Review/Television; Father Coughlin, 'The Radio Priest,'" The New York Times, December 13, 1988.
• Sherrill, Robert, "American Demagogues," The New York Times, July 13, 1982.
• Schlesinger Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Upheaval. 1960.
• Marcus Sheldon. Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower. 1973.
• Smith Geoffrey S. American Counter-Subversives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II. 1973.
• Tull Charles J. Father Coughlin and the New Deal. 1965.
• Donald Warren. Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin The Father of Hate Radio. The Free Press, 1996

Other references

• Pirodsky, Richard (2003). The Demigod. PublishAmerica. ISBN 1-59129-386-3.  This book is a fictionalized account of Coughlin's career.

External links

• Father Coughlin information at Religious Movements at UVA.
• Brief information on Coughlin, including an audio excerpt
• Find-A-Grave profile for Charles Coughlin
• Video of Father Coughlin attacking Roosevelt
• History Channel Audio File- Father Coughlin denouncing the New Deal

Attribution

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, Father Coughlin,[1], used under the GNU Free Documentation License