Rachel Maddow’s hit podcast and soon-to-be Steven Speilberg-developed movie, Ultra, attempts to spook listeners into believing that an American fascist movement is ever looming by recounting the tales of extremist groups in the 1930s and 1940s. Unironically, the podcast tries to connect these groups with McCarthyism and anti-communist sentiment while drawing thinly veiled parallels to MSNBC’s current political enemies.
According to Maddow, the threat then was from the Ultra-right. However, she encounters a significant problem when delving into details—many of the show's main characters were politically closer to her and her MSNBC audience than said enemies. The podcast commits egregious mislabeling by branding all villains as members of the ultra-right-wing. These absurd labels obscure understanding the motivations and values of the story's villains, particularly the recurring character, Father Charles Coughlin.
Maddow describes Coughlin as the “most influential right-wing media figure in the country.” She argues there is “a direct throughline from him [Coughlin] to modern, ultra-conservative radio and TV personalities in the United States.” Maddow consistently frames Coughlin as the public face of America’s flirtation with fascism during that era. While there is some truth to this, Maddow awkwardly avoids addressing Coughlin’s view of government and the politics of his message.
One such awkward example is repeatedly found when the podcast refers to “Father Coughlin’s magazine” without mentioning the name of the magazine. The title Maddow and company have such a seemingly hard time pronouncing was named Social Justice.
Here Father Coughlin himself defines what exactly he means by the words social justice:
The words “social justice” point out that it is, first of all, opposed to the absolute injustices which are rampant in our midst, and signify that it stands for a fair and equitable distribution of wealth, of profits…
Charles Coughlin, More on The National Union, 18 November 1934.
Coughlin stood against the godlessness of communism but defined his movement with his hostility to “American capitalism” with the purpose of “breaking down the concentration of wealth, of eliminating the abuses which have been identified with capitalism, and of building up legislation for social justice…”1
Maddow strangely avoids mentioning the political party that Coughlin launched, the National Union for Social Justice. The principles of Coughlin’s party reveal his political orientation and the passions he sought to exploit. Maddow et al. want us to believe this was America’s brush with fascism while ignoring what guided it. Coughlin merged with Francis Townsend, who is credited with developing the movement for Social Security, and Huey Long’s following, known for the “Share Our Wealth” movement to support his new party with fundamentals such as:
Every citizen willing to work should receive a “just, living, annual wage.”
Nationalizing public resources.
“Upholding the right to private property but controlling it for the public good.”
Establishment of a government-owned Central Bank.
Maintain the cost of living on “an even keel.”
The “right of the laboring man to organize in unions” and the government's duty “to protect these organizations against the vested interests of wealth and intellect.”
In the event of war, a “conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men.”
Preference for the “sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights, with the government chiefly concerned for the poor, as the rich have ample means to care for themselves.”2
Coughlin attempted to make his political philosophy clear and distinct from his competition; one can judge where he lands on the subject of socialism versus capitalism:
International socialism is anti-religious and anti-moral. It not only restrains liberty. It abolishes it. It, too, like communism, cares only for the goods of this world.
But American socialism, as professed by the intelligent Norman Thomas or an honest Debs, while preferable to the capitalism which we have known, goes too far, to my mind, in its program for the nationalization of industry.
Charles Coughlin, Money is No Mystery, 30 December 1934.
Coughlin was one of the most vocal supporters of FDR and the New Deal in 1932. Philosophically this makes perfect sense. Today, Coughlin would fit comfortably under titles like Democratic Socialist and also with the modern understanding of “Social Justice.”
As is typically pointed out, Coughlin was a detractor of FDR by the 1936 election. This is one common reason he is mislabeled as conservative. But Coughlin’s attacks did not come from the Ultra-right as Maddow would have you believe. In Coughlin’s view, FDR had betrayed the principles of the New Deal legislation that Coughlin supported:
The money changers were given notice to withdraw! President Hoover and his property rights must surrender to President Roosevelt and his human rights! A free people had voted the old deal out of existence and had given a mandate to enthrone in its stead the principles of a new deal.”
Charles Coughlin, 03 March 1935.
In 1935 Coughlin outlined his ideological separation from FDR on account of his support for The Banking Act of 1935 which to Coughlin's chagrin failed to nationalize banks:
Whether or not Mr. Roosevelt assumes through this bill the title of a financial dictator, he cannot escape the charge, either now or in the future, of protecting the bankers’ questionable privilege of manufacturing money, of loaning credit and exacting in return their pound of currency flesh. Here, as I shall explain, is capitalism at its worst.
Charles Coughlin, 10 February 1935.
Coughlin departed from FDR because he compromised “with the economic theories of the old deal:”3
The American concept of a new deal was cradled in a revolution and nursed at the tortured breasts of a Civil War. In past there has been no compromise! In the present there can be no compromise, if a new liberty and a fresher freedom shall be born!
The first two years of the new deal will long be remembered as the years which enunciated a new philosophy for future years to practice. However, they were years which, despite its gracious pronouncements, are still wedded to the basic evils of capitalism, to the fundamental errors of the old deal. The money changers have not been driven from the temple. The financial system which crashed on the eve of the new deal’s birth has been revived and handed back to the care and ownership of those gentlemen of exploitation who, more than any other group, were responsible for our misery. Big industry has grown unimpeded to an abnormal size, pregnant with the profits of monopoly. Eleven million unemployed bread winners–500,000 more than last year–, 18-million dole fed citizens, and 20-million industrial workers are wondering how low the ever-dipping scales of inequality will sink below the American standard of living. One hundred and twenty-five-million Americans are puzzling their minds to determine when and in what manner courageous action will be taken to decentralize wealth, and to permit the bounteous products of our fields and our factories to flow unhampered by the undemocratic and unsocial private control of money.
Charles Coughlin, 03 March 1935.
Coughlin continued:
It is not our purpose to obstruct the main objectives of the new deal. Rather have we devoted our efforts and will dedicate our strength to support the new deal provided it remains true to its original plans. To my mind there can be no new deal if we persist in protecting the right of private individuals to coin and regulate for their own profit the money which belongs to the people of the United States. There can be no new deal as long as big monopolies are encouraged and little industries are starved out of existence.
More than that, there can be no new deal until industrial profits are justly divided with labor and until labor is guaranteed a just and living annual wage that is in keeping with the American standard of decency.
The new deal cannot compromise.
Charles Coughlin, Two Years of the New Deal, 03 March 1935.
If we rely solely on Rachel Maddow’s melodramatic descriptions of the dangers of fascism in her show Ultra, we will gain very little understanding of the motivations of historical villains–let alone recognize any modern incarnations.
Charles Coughlin, 18 November 1934.
Coughlin, A Series of Lectures on Social Justice, The National Union for Social Justice, 11 November 1934.
Coughlin, Two Years of the New Deal, 03 March 1935.