Is America moving towards a Christian Reich?

Editor's note: Most people need structure, otherwise they tend to get chaotic as we are seeing in American "culture." It is a complex and nuanced relationship between Catholicism and fascism. Both fascism and the historical Catholic church have a hatred of liberalism in its extreme ideological form and communism (Marxists). This was witnessed in Germany when the Catholic Church allied itself to Hitler's Third Reich. Some within the Church viewed fascism as a way to bring order to society and restore Christian values. Along these lines of thinking, the Church and nationalist movements found common ground in promoting national identity and unity that people need to give them their needed and often demanded structured existence. Now that Pope Francis has passed away it will be interesting to see how we are once again seeing Catholicism and Christianity ally with the state in America. We wouldn't go so far as to call Trump a "Nazi" though because the description is used incorrectly. The term Nazi originated with a German-Jew to sabotage German National Socialism.

Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet, 'lax' alternatives
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When Fascism Was American

By Joe Allen | April 24, 2025

Before Donald Trump, there was Father Charles Coughlin, who popularized fascism for Americans in the 1930s.

The open racism and xenophobia that have characterized Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and perhaps provided much of its appeal, has been alarming. For a growing number of people, Trump's rhetoric is a sign of something deeper and more frightening: the growth of a fascist movement in the United States.

Ohio governor John Kasich — one of Trump's many rivals for the Republican nomination — produced an anti-Trump video that paraphrases Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's warning about the Nazis.

For many other commentators, as well, the violence Trump supporters have directed at critics during campaign rallies, along with the candidate's call for banning Muslims from the United States, are further confirmation that Trump is a Nazi. In the last Democratic presidential debate, former Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O'Malley denounced Trump as a "fascist demagogue."

Yet, on too many of these occasions, the fascist label has been reduced to a vague term of abuse rather than a bridge to a real political analysis of the underlying political forces that could produce a fascist movement in the United States.

The US hasn't seen the stirrings of fascist mobilization since the late 1930s when mounting fascist victories in Europe galvanized its adherents in America, chief among them Father Charles Coughlin and his Christian Front. This history has something to offer us today.

Our Father

By late 1938, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy had shifted the balance of forces among the world's major powers, while fascist general Francisco Franco wrestled most of Spain from republican forces. The growing power of fascism was increasingly impacting civilian populations, particularly in Germany. According to historian Warren Grover:

That year [1938] Germany demonstrated to the world that it would move with impunity in Europe and violate Jews' most basic rights: Jewish community organizations lost their official status and recognition (March); the registration of all Jewish property became compulsory (April); over 1,500 German Jews were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps (June); Jewish physicians could no longer treat Christians (June); Nazis ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue in Munich (July); All Jewish men were required to add "Israel" to their name and all Jewish women "Sarah" (August); Jews were barred from practicing law (September); German-Jewish passports were marked with the letter "J" for Jude (October); and finally Kristallnacht (November).

In the United States, the public and the press were virtually unanimous in condemning Kristallnacht, with one poll reporting that nearly 94 percent of Americans disapproved of Germany's treatment of Jews.

Yet despite Nazism's unpopularity, one voice took to the airwaves to defend these actions — Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest based in Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin was a popular radio personality with an audience of millions, largely concentrated in the northeastern United States, and in New York City in particular.

In a highly anticipated broadcast that took place eleven days after Kristallnacht, Coughlin began by posing three questions: "Why is there persecution in Germany today?"; "How can we destroy it?"; and why is "Nazism so hostile to Jewry?"

Coughlin presented a simple answer: Nazism was a "defense mechanism against Communism," and that the "rising generation of Germans regard Communism as a product not of Russia, but of a group of Jews who dominated the destinies of Russia."

In the broadcast Coughlin minimized the Nazi "fine" of $400 million on Germany's Jewish community with the claim that “between these same years not $400 million but $40 billion . . . of Christian property was appropriated by the Lenins and Trotskys . . . by the atheistic Jews and Gentiles" and accused the New York investment bank Kuhn Loeb & Company with helping to finance the Russian revolution and other Communist plots.

Coughlin's unapologetic Nazi propaganda inspired swift backlash. WMCA, the New York radio station that provided his largest audience, demanded to see his scripts in advance of any future broadcasts, and cancelled his program after he refused. Coughlin later admitted that he used "Nazi sources" in his broadcast.

Following the broadcast the New York Times' Berlin correspondent reported that Coughlin had become "the new hero of Nazi Germany." But Coughlin wasn't only a hero in Berlin; thousands of American supporters responded enthusiastically to his calls for militant action against "atheistic communism."

Coughlin began broadcasting from his Michigan church, "The Shrine of the Little Flower," in 1926, when radio represented a novel, thrilling experience for millions of people. With his rich baritone voice, and slight Irish brogue which he employed for great theatrical effect, Coughlin was made for the new medium.

The 1929 Wall Street crash and the ensuing depression impoverished large parts of Coughlin's working- and lower-middle-class audience. In the wake of the crisis his broadcasts changed from religious sermonizing to political commentary that began with violent attacks on communism. According to historian Alan Brinkley,

[Coughlin] continued to dwell upon his abhorrence of communism, socialism, and "kindred fallacious social and economic theories," but [his broadcasts] also emphasized other concerns: Coughlin’s fear that the selfish practices of "predatory capitalism" would drive Americans to embrace these pernicious doctrines.

As Coughlin attacked the "banksters" he blamed for the Great Depression, his audience grew massive. By 1933, the network of radio stations that carried his broadcasts reached a potential listenership of forty million.

In November 1934, Coughlin announced that he would organize his followers into a new political organization, the National Union for Social Justice. He denied that it was a third party even though it bore the hallmarks of every traditional American political party, and was organized by congressional districts. Coughlin waited for the right issue to flex the muscles of his new formation and got it in January 1935 when Roosevelt proposed that the United States affiliate to the World Court.

No president since Woodrow Wilson — for fear of provoking an isolationist backlash — had proposed the US make itself accountable to an international institution. A largely symbolic act, it initially appeared that Roosevelt would win the Senate majority needed to ratify the treaty for affiliation.

Coughlin mobilized his forces along with other World Court opponents, including the mighty newspaper chain of arch-reactionary William Randolph Hearst. They overwhelmed Washington with hundreds of telegrams over one crucial weekend and defeated the treaty. A jubilant Coughlin declared that he intended to slay greater dragons. "Our next goal is to clean out the international bankers."

The phrase "international bankers" was a euphemism for Jews and was widely used in those years by numerous public figures including auto magnate (and fellow Michigander) Henry Ford, who bankrolled the distribution of antisemitic propaganda through his newspaper the Dearborn Independent.

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What does institutionalized religion and fascism have to do with spirituality? Nothing. Our recommendation would be to stay clear of the Abrahamic religions. So, if you want to go in a different direction with your spiritual life, indeed even knowing what spirit is or means, try reading through this essay:

The Spirit and the Muse