A Friday Dose Of Father Coughlin - Religious fanaticism at it's best. The Grandfather of Hate Radio - speaking on the world economic situation on August 27, 1939.
August 27, 2010

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Father Coughlin - "cause Jesus told me so."


If anybody was curious as to the origins of Extremist Radio, you don't really have to go any further than the weekly broadcasts of Father Coughlin, whose rants filled the airwaves throughout the 1930s until finally even the Catholic Church had enough and banished him from his radio sermons.

I've posted Coughlin earlier on Newstalgia, early on when I could only provide a ten minute clip. But here, from this broadcast of August 27th 1939, you get the hear him in his entirety, including his warm-up speaker Father Curran who, judging from his particularly acid tone and beaming antisemitic rants, was something of a hatchet man for his illustrious boss.

But without naming names, Coughlin did his level best to elude:

Father Coughlin: “The concentration of power has led to a three-fold struggle for domination, concludes His Holiness in this excerpt. Of course there is a struggle for dictatorship in the economic sphere itself. And then the fierce battle to acquire control of the state so that it’s resources and authority may be abused in the economic struggle. And last, the clash between states themselves, Unquote. And so my friends, I speak to you of the evils of Capitalism. But I would impress upon your minds that these evils, as serious as they are, should be traced back to their parent evil – to the evils of trying to get along without God. Of trying to succeed without following the pathway of Christ. Of trying to keep Christ’s principles from the banking house, from the factory, from the school. Of trying to keep Christ’s teachings outside the Labor Unions, the home, the hearts of the people and the government.”

So if you ever thought the hate was more subtle in the past - you would be terribly wrong.

It's just timeless.

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