Just read the following passage in this book:
- Capture.JPG (12.36 KiB) Viewed 5690 times
I see parallels between this and the actions and words of Trump and his defenders.
"From Idea to Reality
Cassidy was radicalized, appropriately enough, by Father Coughlin. Specifically, Cassidy was radicalized by the criticism directed at Coughlin for an extraordinary broadcast he delivered on November 20, 1938.
“Thousands of people must have been jolted out of their chairs,” Coughlin biographer Charles Tull wrote. In “Persecution—Jewish and Christian,” broadcast just a week and a half after Kristallnacht, “the Detroit priest actually proceeded to explain the Nazi persecution of the Jews as a defense mechanism against Communism.”12 Nearly a hundred German Jews were murdered during Kristallnacht, more than 250 synagogues were desecrated and burned, and nearly 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized. By the time Father Coughlin delivered his speech, Nazi authorities had rounded up more than 30,000 people and sent them to concentration camps for the “crime” of being Jewish.
But none of this moved Coughlin to sympathy. What did was the plight of Christians in Russia, Mexico, and Spain, which, according to Coughlin, “the Jewish gentleman who controlled the radio in the press” refused to report. Like Arnold Lunn, Coughlin found his grievance claim in the apparent widespread disinterest in Catholic suffering. But instead of using that grievance to foster a seemingly positive venture such as ecumenism, Coughlin castigated the silent. He engaged in what some today call “what-aboutism”: Jews were being oppressed, yes, but what about Catholics? A master manipulator of the media, he aimed to snatch away airtime from discussion of the Jewish persecution and steer attention to Catholic persecution under Communism. For Coughlin, Kristallnacht was an opportunity to talk about the real victims: Roman Catholics, who in the decades since the Russian Revolution had been placed under the thumb of “Jewish Communists,” with nary a word of protest from America’s Jews, politicians, or ecclesiastics.
Coughlin’s speech was an outrageous defense of Nazi atrocities. But to his followers, it was an impassioned plea for cosmic justice. “Witness the price that Christians have paid to uphold their religion against those who were anti-religionists,” Coughlin begged, “to uphold their Christ against those who were anti-Christ, to uphold their patriotism, their nationalism, against those who were unpatriotic and international.” As Bernard Duffy and Halford Ryan note, Coughlin’s speech was unusually effective in melding religious discourse and political critique. His “social and economic views were persuasively argued alongside and even within his religious and doctrinal message.”13
The speech has received a great deal of scholarly attention, but it may be the fifteen minutes afterward that most stimulated the audience. This portion of the broadcast—less noted in the voluminous Coughlin literature—was occupied by a prayer. After justifying the Nazi persecution of Jews, Coughlin delivered a version of the most recognizable exhortation of the entire Christian canon, galvanizing to Catholics and Protestants alike: the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began, as lilting organ music played in the background. At first there was nothing conceivably controversial in these rhythms and cadences. But then, between lines, Coughlin interspersed political nuggets. “Instead of gifts to the afflicted in distant lands,” Coughlin prayed, “our ships carry cargoes of debt.” “Forgive us our sins,” he continued, interjecting that “for too long we have been loud in our praise for those who preach the Gospel of Hate.” Finally, Coughlin’s growing tilt toward Catholic militancy came to the fore. “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done,” he implored, “God give us power, give us courage, courage even unto death oh God, to marshal our forces, to battle for thy will.”14 The organ music drifted to a stop, followed by a reflective pause heard across crackling radios from coast to coast.
Coughlin’s speech and prayer spoke to the existential struggle his followers already perceived between Communism and Catholicism, if not Christianity as a whole. But the general public, and many in his Coughlin’s church, were aghast at his willingness to blame German Jews for the catastrophe visited on them. In light of his incendiary words, Coughlin’s broadcaster in New York, WMCA, demanded that he clear his speeches with programmers before going on air. When he refused, the station dropped him. Coughlin’s supporters saw WMCA’s rebuke as a violation of his First Amendment rights, an overheated allegation given that the station, not the government, took him off the air. In any case, from the perspective of his fans, rejection by WMCA proved Coughlin’s point: Catholics like him were persecuted by “non-Christians.”15
The WMCA incident was a key step on the road to a living, breathing Christian Front. Coughlin’s removal from the station’s roster won him much clerical sympathy—James Keeling, a priest from St. Francis of Assisi parish in the Bronx, thought that the WMCA affair “was a dark cloud with a silver lining,” since “people have become aroused to the fact that [their] liberty is endangered.” A Paulist priest, Reverend James Carnell, defended Coughlin, saying that the “Communist government in Russia has murdered Christians and destroyed Catholic churches.” But more important was the lay reaction. In New York the Irish-American Progressive League and the Christian-American Committee Against Communism (CACAC) held a joint meeting to urge other radio stations to keep Father Coughlin on the air. For CACAC, Father Coughlin was “the one voice that America needs to stop Communism.”16 The only lay Catholic New Yorker to defend Coughlin in the press was the leader of CACAC: John Cassidy."
