“The Radio Priest”: Charles Coughlin
He insisted that the United States must be a Christian nation, and that its God-given rights were being hijacked by subversives from within and without. He dabbled in anti-Semitism and accused Jews of financing wars and socialist revolutionaries. He praised dictators and avowed enemies of the United States, who in-turn, portrayed him as a hero. He was the master of a new medium of communication but used it for unsavoury ends.
I am talking about Charles Coughlin, the “Radio Priest,” a 20th century precursor to contemporary media provocateurs. A victim of persecution as a young man, he would fuse his enmity towards capitalism and communism to become a fascist propagandist. His is a story of the last century, yet it has never been more relevant; we cannot dismiss it.
Charles Coughlin, the only child of Irish Catholics, was born in Ontario, Canada in 1891. The Irish that settled in southern Canada in the 19th century worked on the Great Lakes, where Coughlin’s father drove a steamboat. They coalesced around the Catholic Church; a necessary source of community, for an impoverished people.
A successful student, Coughlin entered the priesthood after completing his studies, enrolling in a seminary in Toronto. He was inspired by an 1891 encyclical, issued by Pope Leo XIII, entitled “Rerum novarum” (revolutionary change). In it, the pope expressed his concern for the working poor, while also condemning “the spirit of revolutionary change” championed by socialists. Leo’s advocacy for the working classes, whom he hoped to emancipate through Christianity rather than communism, would inform Coughlin’s later life.
After being ordained as a priest, Coughlin became a pastor in a working-class Catholic suburb of Detroit. This was a difficult period for his parishioners - between 1840 and 1924, over 30 million Europeans, most of whom were Catholics, had settled in the United States. Discriminatory anti-Catholic literature warned of the perceived threats of the new arrivals who, in the eyes of the country’s Protestant-majority political class, were more loyal to the papacy and their Catholic schools than to American values. The Ku Klux Klan claimed that nuns delighted in the whipping of young girls, and warned that Catholics were set to “burn, waste […] and bury alive” non-Catholic heretics. Indeed, in 1926, the Klan would burn Coughlin’s church to the ground.
Robbed of a pulpit to broadcast his message, Coughlin needed a new medium to spread God’s word, and he had the perfect solution. The first radio broadcast had occurred in Detroit in 1920, and its usage in the time since was skyrocketing - between 1923 and 1931, the proportion of American households that owned a radio rose from 1% to over 50%. Coughlin snagged a job at a local radio station, gifting him a national audience.
He impressed people immediately - one listener praised his “emotional and ingratiating charm … warmed by the touch of Irish brogue.” By 1930, his program was being aired on CBS networks, giving him access to 40 million listeners. His commentary mimicked Rerum novarum – he highlighted the plight of the poor, but warned of the “Red Serpent” propagating the “purple poison of Bolshevism.” In his mind, runaway inequality would lead the Catholic working class to renounce their faith in God and instead embrace the Marxist creed.
The Radio Priest’s critiques of capitalism and communism led him to single out a group that was blamed for the tyranny of both – the Jews. Jewish bankers were accused of predatory lending, and Jewish socialists were denounced for orchestrating the Russian Revolution. Coughlin’s anti-Semitism was exacerbated by the 1929 Wall Street financial crisis. The crash, which caused the unemployment rate in the United States to rise to 25%, led to a rise in far-left organizing and activism.
In response, Coughlin excoriated the “German Hebrew,” Karl Marx, and insisted that Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, was a Jew “who had established the nation’s banking system in the interests of the rich and well born.” These inflammatory remarks meant that CBS would not renew their contract with him. Nevertheless, Coughlin was sufficiently endowed to set up a network of stations across the United States, as well as a new church, complete with a monumental engraving of a crucified Christ on the cross. His faithful followers, now scattered across the country, would frequently travel to Detroit to listen to their messenger.
Coughlin was initially supportive of Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected as President in 1932, telling a House Committee that “God Almighty” was helping him to alleviate poverty, but it wouldn’t last. Coughlin, seeking an advisory role in the administration, proposed the free coinage of silver to benefit the poor and the nationalization of the banking sector, suggestions that Roosevelt’s cabinet refused to entertain. Incensed, Coughlin set up the National Union for Social Justice (NUSJ), and made the President the centrepiece of a nefarious Jewish conspiracy.
The NUSJ called for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, the nationalization of key public resources, and a more equitable tax system. Alongside this, its newspaper, Social Justice, also printed English translations of speeches made by Joseph Goebbels, and passages from the notoriously anti-Semitic text, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.
Social Justice’s screeds mirrored Coughlin’s unyielding anti-Semitism – in 1938, he defended Kristallnacht, telling his listeners that the “communistic government of Russia” led by “atheistic Jews” had murdered more than 20 million Christians. He promoted the “Christian Front”, a militia composed almost entirely of Irish Catholics in New York who would attack Jews and encourage their adherents to buy “Christian” products in order to destroy “Judeo-Bolshevism”.
He also attempted to inoculate children from socialism, launching a “Youth Movement” in his church to warn the young about the Soviet menace. He even formed a political party, named the Union Party, headed by Congressman William Lemke to run in the 1936 presidential election, but it garnered less than 2% of the popular vote. In fascist Europe, Coughlin’s message was not ignored – he was praised in an Italian newspaper in January 1939, while the Nazi press lauded him as a hero.
Coughlin opposed US entry into World War Two, insisting that it was part of an elaborate Jewish plot. Now obligated to suppress anti-war sentiment, FBI agents caught 17 of his followers in a Nazi spy ring and raided his church, confiscating his personal papers. Additionally, the US Postal Service suspended Social Justice’s mailing privileges. Almost all American radio stations stopped broadcasting Coughlin’s speeches, leading him to conclude that “men powerful in radio and other activities” were doing the devil’s business.
Denied a megaphone to share his anti-Communist sentiments, Coughlin’s diatribes against perceived injustices would be largely ignored for the rest of his life, and he would die in obscurity in 1979.
In this essay, I have readdressed the story of an ignoble individual, whose story cannot be forgotten. Unrepentant to the end, Coughlin insisted shortly before his death that “I could have bucked the government and won […] the people would have supported me.” Regrettably, modern media has been appropriated by charlatans and demagogues, who exploit the legitimate fears of their audiences to advance their dishonourable agendas. The “Radio Priest” may be gone, but his legacy endures.
