Charles Coughlin

Charles Edward Coughlin ( born October 25, 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, † October 27, 1979 in Birmingham, Michigan, United States) was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, as Father Coughlin through his sermons on the radio and his anti-Semitic positions nationwide notoriety gained.

A native of an Irish immigrant family Coughlin took one of the first priests, the new medium of radio. From 1926 his sermons were broadcast weekly. A gifted preacher, he quickly became popular, it was at times a week up to 80,000 listeners letters; it is assumed that at that time up to one third of the U.S. population at least occasionally followed Coughlin sermons. Politically, he supported against the background of the Great Depression initially the Democrats and the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but then turned his attention to a middle position between the Keynesian government policies and advocated by Republicans laissez- faire policy to.

From the mid- 1930s Coughlin private banks in general and the Federal Reserve Bank and Wall Street began in particular for the obvious economic problems of the U.S. to blame. At the political level, he founded the National Union for Social Justice and the Union Party, which relied upon the popularity Coughlin, with their anti -bank rhetoric tried to turn especially to the farmers in the Midwestern United States. However, the party failed in the elections; instead of targeted 9 million votes received William Lemke, the presidential candidate, just as disappointing perceived 900,000 votes.

After 1936, the anti-Semitic elements took on an ever larger space in Coughlin sermons and articles. He accused the Jews of being " murderers of God " and made them responsible for capitalism, liberalism and communism. In his newspaper, Social Justice, he printed from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938, he described them as a result of the persecution of Christians by Jews, for which he was hailed by the press in Nazi Germany. On December 18, 1938 Coughlin organized a demonstration in New York against the inclusion of Polish Jews who were Nazi Germany; this was followed by a demonstration over months protracted anti -Semitic campaign; according to FBI data Coughlin received this material support by German authorities. In 1938, he threatened the Jews to an even tougher treatment than in Germany. A so-called Christian index should serve to identify shops Christian owner and help to boycott Jewish owned shops; The slogan used in this case was: " Buy Christian ". Another project Coughlin was at this time the organization Christian Front, which sought an authoritarian dictatorship and armory (with the aim to attack Jewish institutions and the Federal Reserve ) docked. When the FBI these activities revealed in 1940, the Christian Front was dissolved. The reputation Coughlin in public was strongly affected.

Coughlin also received support from the isolationists of the America First Committee, as the patriotic Jewish Chicago Milton Mayer. In an article "The Case against the Jew " to a series of articles of the "Saturday Evening Post " it was directed against " hasty and fruitless attempts at assimilation of the Jews " and called for the Jews in the United States, the ghettoization. " Coughlin is to denounce not save him ( the Jews ). The destruction of Hitler will not save him. All of these false hopes are founded on the great mistake of his adaptability " Hannah Arendt and Joseph Maier replied on April 3, 1942 in the emigrant newspaper" build "on Milton Mayer's contribution to the article" Cui Bono ". ?:

" But in order today to criticize the Jewish people in the time of its greatest need, one must be legitimized. For the legitimacy it does not even enough to have never sat with the enemies of his people at a table. You can only grow out of that passionate commitment to the future of the nation, which is about more than just the soul rescue of isolated individuals. Self-criticism is not self-hatred. The criticism of the Jewish patriots against its own people has the purpose to prepare the people for the fight better. Such rebellion can never hurt. The questionable courage of Milton Mayer on the half truth only helps the cheeky lie of anti-Semites. Who, as he wants us back chasing the ghetto, and be it as always cleaned out with patched-together rags from the attic of theology, has excluded themselves from the ranks of those to which we are to hear that people are ready. "

1942 had Coughlin, due to the increasing public pressure ( he got because of the Sedition Acts appearance ban and allowed his magazine no longer ship via the United States Post Office) and a speech and writing prohibition by the Catholic Church, adjust its radio broadcasts and retired on its activity as a parish pastor in Royal Oak in Oakland County back. During his last years, Coughlin wrote against communism and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.