Rise to Prominence

Charles Coughlin’s baritone voice and his ability to summarize complex issues into what he called “the language of the man-in-the-street” made his radio show, The Golden Hour of the Little Flower, popular nationwide, even among non-Catholics. The show was named after his church, The Shrine of the Little Flower, and he called its listeners his “radio congregation.”

When the 1932 election season began, Father Coughlin enthusiastically campaigned for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, after Roosevelt won the presidential election, Coughlin did not achieve the political access or power he had anticipated. Years later, Coughlin remarked, “He [Roosevelt] said that he would rely on me. That I would be an important adviser. But he was a liar. He never took my advice. He just used me.”

Frustrated by what he perceived as Roosevelt’s lack of gratitude and opposing many of the administration’s policies, Coughlin slowly began mobilizing his legions of listeners against the New Deal. In November 1934, he formed his own political action group, the National Union for Social Justice (NUSJ) with local chapters throughout the country. More than a year later, in March 1936, he began publishing a weekly magazine, Social Justice, to further spread his messages of isolationism, anti-Communism, antisemitism, and social reform.

Antisemitism

Coughlin linked Jews to the creation and spread of communism, an ideology he hated. He also frequently utilized literary and religious references to spread antisemitic stereotypes. In a November 30, 1930 radio broadcast, Coughlin argued “that modern Shylocks [an antisemitic slur derived from a character in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice] have grown fat and wealthy, praised and deified, because they have perpetuated the ancient crime of usury under a modern racket of statesmanship.” Throughout his career, he told listeners that Jews manipulated the economy, railing against the “international bankers” and “money changers” of the world.

Although it had already been proven to be a hoax, Coughlin published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—an antisemitic pamphlet purportedly providing evidence of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world—in multiple issues of Social Justice in 1938. A public outcry ensued, but Coughlin defended his choice in an editorial: “When we resume printing the Protocols we are not attributing them to the Jews. We are simply insisting upon their factuality be they plagiarized or not plagiarized, be they satires—or not satires.”

During his radio broadcast on November 20, 1938, while reports of the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany were still on the front pages of many American newspapers, Coughlin defended the Nazi attacks as justified. Claiming to merely be a “student of history,” he traced “the causes of the effect known as Naziism” [sic] for his listeners, concluding that Nazism had “evolved to act as a defense mechanism against the incursions of Communism.” Coughlin listed supposed communist leaders, claiming that the vast majority were “atheistic Jews.” Therefore, he argued, “Naziism, the effect of Communism, cannot be liquidated in its persecution complex until the religious Jews in high places–in synagogue, in finance, in radio and in the press–attack the cause, attack forthright the errors and spread of Communism, together with their co-nationalists who support it.”

Coughlin’s antisemitic speech was so controversial that a New York radio affiliate refused to broadcast his next show—a move a Berlin newspaper decried under a headline that translates to “America is Not Allowed to Hear the Truth.” Despite his now-explicit Nazi sympathies, Coughlin remained on the air in most of his markets and retained a large following.

After World War II began in September 1939, Coughlin urged his followers to oppose any loosening of immigration restrictions and to protest any American involvement in the war, which he predicted would end in a victory for Hitler. In his speeches and writings, Coughlin drew on fascist propaganda. In one Social Justice article, he even plagiarized entire paragraphs from German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Coughlin was a committed isolationist. In this 1935 speech, he called on the memory of World War I to argue for American neutrality in foreign conflicts. US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Decline

As Coughlin became more overtly antisemitic and isolationist, his popularity fell, but there were still a few million Americans tuning in to his radio address every week and reading Social Justice. His supporters grew increasingly bold in their antisemitism. Some even attacked Jewish businesses in New York; press reports blamed Coughlin’s rhetoric.

Facing mounting public opposition, Father Coughlin ended his radio career in May 1940. Two years later, the US government considered charging Coughlin with violating the Espionage Act by publishing enemy propaganda in Social Justice. He blamed “Jews and Communists and New Dealers” for the criticism, but the Catholic Church hierarchy in Detroit ordered Coughlin to cease all non-pastoral activities or risk being excommunicated.

Father Coughlin continued to be the parish priest at the Shrine of the Little Flower until his retirement in 1966. He died in October 1979 of illness.