Father+Coughlin

=Charles "Father" Coughlin (1891 - 1979) =

Born in Hamilton, Ontario on October 25, 1891. Grew up under strict Catholic rule by his Irish-Catholic parents. Grew fond of the idea of priesthood as a teen. Taught for seven years at the Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario. Moved to the United States in 1923, living in Detroit, Michigan. He was one of the first political leaders to use the radio to reach a mass audience. His broadcast was cut but Father Coughlin was determined to keep is broadcasts alive: >raised the money himself >reached out to millions of listeners In the 1932 Presidential election, Father Coughlin was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He claimed that America's fate was **"Roosevelt or ruin."** When the Great Depression left the country with troubles, Roosevelt had a "New Deal": > it was heavily endorsed by Father Coughlin. Coughlin quoted about the plan, **"The New Deal is Christ's Deal,"** and **"God is directing President Roosevelt."** In the next years, there would be a change in demeanor from Father Coughlin. >he began to find disdain with Roosevelt's plans <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-top: 0.25in;">> claimed that the capitalist intentions of the President were damaging to the nation. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-top: 0.25in;"> Coughlin founded the //National Union for Social Justice,// a worker's rights organization, and stood vehemently opposite of Roosevelt 's plans. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-top: 0.25in;">
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Biography **

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0.25in;">After the 1936 election, Coughlin increasingly expressed sympathy for the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini as an antidote to Bolshevism. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0.25in;">His weekly broadcasts became suffused with antisemitic themes. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0.25in;">>blamed the Depression on an "international conspiracy of Jewish bankers" <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0.25in;">>claimed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0.25in;">On November 27, 1938, he said **"There can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution ... was launched and fomented by distinctively Jewish influence."** <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">He began publication of a weekly rotogravure magazine, //Social Justice//, during this period. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">Coughlin claimed that Marxist atheism in Europe was a Jewish plot against America. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;"> The December 5, 1938 issue of // Social Justice // included an article by Coughlin which was too closely resembled a speech made by Joseph Goebbels on September 13, 1935 attacking: <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">>Jews <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">>Atheists <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">>Communists <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;"> Some sections were being copied // verbatim // by Coughlin from an English translation of the Goebbels speech. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">At a rally in the Bronx in 1938, he reportedly gave a Nazi salute and said, **"When we get through with the Jews in America, they'll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”** <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 4.8pt 0in 6pt;">Coughlin also quoted **"Nothing can be gained by linking ourselves with any organization which is engaged in agitating racial animosities or propagating racial hatreds.”**

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 1.2pt 0.5in;">//“My purpose is to help eradicate from the world its mania for persecution, to help align all good men. Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, Christian and non-Christian, in a battle to stamp out the ferocity, the barbarism and the hate of this bloody era. I want the good Jews with me, and I'm called a Jew baiter, an anti-Semite.”//

__**HIDING ANTISEMITISM:**__
 * Over the years Coughlin managed to keep his antisemitism muted while he was on the air. After his split with Roosevelt and with the rise of National Socialism and Fascism in Europe, he attacked Jews explicitly in his broadcasts. Some historians attribute this change to Coughlin taking advantage of rising antisemitism around the world in order to keep himself alive. Based on his speeches, writings, and associations, Coughlin appears to have had significant antisemitic sentiment throughout his career.**

__<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">**“Somebody Must be Blamed”: Father Coughlin Speaks to the Nation** __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">// Father Charles Coughlin occupied both a strange and a familiar place in American politics in the 1930s. Politically radical, a passionate democrat, he nevertheless was a bigot who freely vented angry, irrational charges and assertions. A Catholic priest, he broadcast weekly radio sermons that by 1930 drew as many as forty-five million listeners. Strongly egalitarian, deeply suspicious of elites, a champion of what he saw as the ordinary person’s rights, Coughlin frequently and vigorously attacked capitalism, communism, socialism, and dictatorship By the mid-1930s, his talks took on a nasty edge as he combined harsh attacks on Roosevelt as the tool of international Jewish bankers with praise for the fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. The “Radio Priest’s” relentless anti-elitism pushed Roosevelt to sharpen his own critiques of elites, and in that sense Coughlin had a powerful impact on American politics beyond his immediate radio audience. This 1937 sermon, “Twenty Years Ago,” reflected much of what made Coughlin popular. //



<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">**Charles Coughlin**: __ What of democracy as well as what of capitalism? __ <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 16px;">Oh, capitalism shall never again flourish as once it did. Capitalism has been almost taxed out of existence in an effort to meet the coupons and the bonds, in an effort to meet the dole system tha <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">t is absolutely unnecessary in a country of our wealth. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">And democracy? All we who twenty years ago entered a war to fight its battles to make the world safe for democracy, tonight we stand aghast because its last fortification, its last tower of strength, the Supreme Court of America, who has been a protector of the rights of the poor, who has been the protector of the rights of the rich, who has been the protector of the libert <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">ies of all, is now assailed and is now the target for those who blame it for our misdemeanors and who blame it for the Depression and the following misery which eventuated from it. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">Somebody must be blamed, of course. But those in power always forget to blame themselves. They always forget to read the Constitution of the United States of America that says, “Congress has the power to issue and regulate the value of money.” And blinding their eyes to that as they protect the private issuance of money and the private fixation of money, we are going merrily on our way. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">Perhaps, perhaps another ambassador from another foreign capital shall come upon the scene. Perhaps, despite the advice of Washington of no foreign entanglements, despite the passage of the Jansen Act, which forbids us to lend money to those who already have borrowed it and who have not returned their loans, perhaps despite those things, way, some miraculous way shall be found to project America into the next maelstrom. And democracy once more, thinking that it has power within its soul, shall rise up to clap and applaud, because the youth of the land is going abroad to make the world safe for what? Safe for dictatorship? Safe against communism abroad when we have communism at home? Safe from socialism in France when we have socialism in America? Or safe, safe for the international bankers? <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">I ask you to think seriously of your decisions last November. You have asked for the New Deal that is an ancient deal in all its finance. You have what you asked for. I ask you to abide by your decision. You have been warned a thousand times. Those who warned you should now bow their heads. Even though truth be on their side, you have paid the price, democratic America. And now it is your turn to bear the burden in silence like men keeping America safe for democracy. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;">Good evening. God bless you. <span style="color: #3a4592; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;"> Source: Courtesy of Andy Lanset. __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">﻿ __ __[|Father Coughlin's most famous speach.]__

__<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',sans-serif;">Sources: __ __[]__ __[]__ __[]__ <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 1.2pt 0.5in;">//**__[]__**// __<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">﻿ __