While many fascist groups in the U.S. of the 1930s, like the Klan and Black Legion, Protestant-based and virulently anti-Catholic, Detroit’s ‘radio priest’ Father Coughlin made his fascist pitch specifically to the flock, and became one of the most powerful political voices of the decade.

‘Father Coughlin—The Agent of Fascism in America’ from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 3 No. 35. May 23, 1939.

He Is Spreading the Poisonous Doctrines Of Hitler, Mussolini

“Practically all the sixteen principles of Social Justice are being put into practise in Italy and Germany.”–FATHER COUGHLIN

Father Charles E. Coughlin aspires to be the Adolph Hitler of the United States. He acts as Number One propagandist in this country for Der Fuehrer of Germany and Il Duce of Italy.

In nation-wide Sunday afternoon broadcasts, in his magazine “Social Justice” (for which he claims a distribution of hundreds of thousands weekly), and through other propaganda mediums, the prelate of the Shrine of the Little Flower seeks to poison the minds of his listeners and readers and to fill them with the prejudices of fascism. He poses as a champion of true Americanism and as a believer in justice for all, but this is merely the cloak under cover of which he disseminates his vicious fascist doctrines.

Of late Coughlin’s followers, in New York particularly, have become bolder. Gangs of these duped innocents–many of whom are honest Catholic workers–are descending regularly on Times Square and other central points to peddle the malodorous lies collected in “Social Justice.” These hawkers bellow forth their anti-Semitism at the top of their lungs. Coughlin urges his friends elsewhere to duplicate the actions of these New Yorkers. Significantly he likens them to a “mighty army.”

These Catholic workers do not understand that by peddling this filth against other workers who happen to be Jews they are effectively digging their own graves; for the Catholics, too, in this country constitute a minority. As in Germany, when and if the fascist leader finishes off the Jews. he’ll start in on the Catholics. Fascism needs an ever-widening circle of hapless victims to maintain the fiction of its prestige. First the workers and the Jews and then the Catholics.

Supports Fascist Wars

Father Coughlin pretends to be a lover of peace, but his peace propaganda is nothing but a gigantic fraud. He hopes thereby to make capital out of the widespread isolationist sentiment. Actually, however, Coughlin pays lip-service to peace only to serve his own selfish aims or those of his fellow-fascists, Hitler and Mussolini.

He has defended and continues to defend Nazi and fascist aggression wherever it occurs. Hitler and Mussolini’s strong-arm bullying and “little” wars are the kind of “peace” that Coughlin wants. He approves Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia and of Memel. He applauds Mussolini’s grab of Albania. He sides with the fascist Franco in Spain and his endless executions of workers and peasants. He endorses Hitler’s war-like statements. And he sympathizes with the ruthless, brutal war that Japan’s militarists have unleashed in China.

Father Coughlin makes Hitler’s anti-Semitism his own. By constant repetition of lies and distortion of facts, he spreads his race hatred. He and his followers carry on a malicious campaign of vilification and vituperation against Jews.

Father Coughlin seeks to disfranchise the workers and force them to toil under conditions of slavery. His attack on labor now is disguised as an attack on Communists and radicals. But to Father Coughlin any militant worker is a “red” and he seeks to incite his followers to club all militant workers into submission to the bosses. He also engages in attacks, still somewhat indirect and sly, on workers’ salaries and the shorter work-week. Talking about France, for instance, he says that the 45-hour week is preferable to the 40-hour week because “work is the source of production and real wealth and not doles and leisure.” When he thinks the conditions are ripe he will endorse the same anti-labor program for this country.

Does Bosses’ Dirty Work

Father Coughlin endorses reactionary legislation and condemns progressive legislation. Among other things, he advocates the changes in the Wagner Act which would benefit the bosses and prevent the growth of the labor movement. He opposes the right of asylum for the refugees driven out of Hitler’s hell.

Father Coughlin calls for a sham “revolution.” When he says this he is telling an obvious lie, and a conscious lie. He is trying in this way to befuddle the worker, the youth and the unemployed who are beginning to understand that only through a social revolution is there hope of a decent life. By “revolution” he means what Hitler’s “Nazi revolution” meant; an end of all social reforms, an end of democratic rule, an end of workers’ rights, an end of all freedom and all liberty. Coughlin would install a government under which workers will be unable to voice and defend their just demands a corporative state modeled after that now existing in fascist Italy.

Father Coughlin makes spurious appeals to the youth who face a blank future, and to the unemployed who are disillusioned with their prospects under democratic capitalism. He aims to enlist them in the ranks of his fascist hordes, to turn them loose against the labor movement as well as against the Jews and Negroes of this country. In this way Coughlin hopes to set the stage for the fascist seizure of power.

Father Coughlin sugar-coats his real intentions with honeyed words about “peace” and “social justice.” He even occasionally administers to Hitler and Mussolini a gentle slap on the wrist. But he is careful in the next breath to praise their actions.

While he is expending his efforts and vast sums of money–the sources of which can only be guessed–on laying the propaganda basis of fascism, he is also organizing the drilling of storm troops and creating the general staff and secret service for the fascist seizure of power.

Father Coughlin is the enemy of the worker, the poor farmer, the youth, the unemployed and all oppressed peoples. He seeks to set these natural friends at each other’s throats so as to facilitate the task he has set for himself–for which his mentors, Hitler and Mussolini and our own Sixty Families the Girdlers and DuPonts–have set for him–the strangling of opposition to poverty, starvation wages, misery and despair.

Father Coughlin lies when he says he is opposed to fascism. And he lies when he pretends that by his fake anti-capitalism he can improve the lot of the unemployed. the youth, the workers, the poor farmers, the small businessman.

How to Fight Fascism

Fascism and the evils of decaying capitalism can be fought successfully in only one way–by a militant working class, led by a revolutionary party. The fight for the dignity of all races and all peoples. the fight for the improvement of the conditions of the unemployed, the youth, the workers, and the other forgotten men, a fight carried on by their own militant and united activity–these are the methods and only methods by which fascism can be defeated.

Father Coughlin, hiding behind his sanctimonious mask of lies, hypocrisy and deceit. Whoever believes him and advocates his policies is furthering the cause not of peace and but of race hatred, decadence, decay and fascism. The Socialist Workers Party, dedicated to the fight against the more blatant fascism of the German-American Bund, is dedicated to the fight against the Bund’s twin, the fascist propaganda of Father Coughlin.

There have been a number of periodicals named Socialist Appeal in our history, this one was edited in New York City by the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party”. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists did not have an independent publication. However, Albert Goldman began publishing a monthly Socialist Appeal in Chicago in February 1935 before the bulk of Trotskyist entered the SP. When there, they began publishing Socialist Appeal in August 1937 as the weekly paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” but in reality edited by Cannon and other leaders. Goldman’s Chicago Socialist Appeal would fold into the New York paper and this Socialist Appeal would replace New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the newly constituted Socialist Workers Party in early 1938. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, and Albert Goldman. In 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/v3n35-may-23-1939.pdf