A Tale of Two Charlies

Charles Edward Coughlin was an ultra-right Catholic priest, Christian nationalist and fascist sympathizer in the 1930s and 1940s. Although he began his public career as someone opposed to capitalism and communism, his politics turned right as his interest in European fascism grew. He used the latest technology—the AM radio—to broadcast his anti-left, anti-Semitic and pro-fascist thoughts to millions of listeners during that period. At his urging, an organization calling itself the Christian Front was founded by some of his followers. The group opposed labor unions, liberalism and progressivism, FDR while supporting the fascist rulers Hitler of Germany and Franco of Spain. When the FBI raided the group’s Brooklyn headquarters Coughlin issued a statement, saying that he was not a member of the Christian Front and disavowed violence, yet he did not disassociate himself from the group. Coughlin’s reach was vast. Like many such groups, the organization occasionally saw members leave the main organization to form their own more extreme sects. The 1940 arrests resulted in charges alleging the men planned to surround the White House with thousands of followers and then install the fascist George Van Horn Moseley (a retired Major General) as dictator of the United States.

Charles Kirk (Charlie) was an ultra-right Christian nationalist and fascist sympathizer in the 2010s and 2020s. He used the latest technology—internet video and podcasting software—to broadcast his, anti-left, anti-Semitic, white supremacist and misogynist statements to millions of listeners during that period. He was a founder of the extreme right-wing youth organization called Turning point USA. This group became known for its surveillance of teachers, liberal and leftist youth groups and others it deemed insufficiently nationalist. Kirk was one of Donald Trump’s main supporters and his group Turning Point USA certainly convinced many young people to vote for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Turning Point USA also sent hundreds (if not thousands) to the ultra-right Stop the Steal rally in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. A primary intention of many of the rally goers was to prevent the certification of the 2020 election and keep the defeated Donald Trump in power.

Both of these men were effective demagogues whose broadcasts and organizations broadened the appeal of fascist politics under the guise of promoting freedom and faith, equal rights and free speech. In reality, the politics these men promulgated were the politics of Christian nationalism, inequality, militarism and the primacy of the wealthy. Although Coughlin died in relative privacy, the murder of Kirk is being used by the US far right—from the public street to the White House—as an excuse to intensify the increasing authoritarianism of the trumpist movement currently in power. It’s useful to point out that when Coughlin was at his peak, the majority of US residents were anti-fascist. In the wake of Kirk’s death, one can’t help but wonder if that is still the case.

In July 1969, the US Black Panther Party hosted a conference in Oakland, California under the title United Front Against Fascism. The meeting drew over four thousand people from groups across the US Left, from students to communists, the Young Patriots to Women Strike for Peace. As Elston “Big Man” Howard wrote in the July 26, 1969 issue of the Black Panther newspaper, the attendees did not come to “be entertained or engage in ideological debate, but rather to come forth and make a stand against the rising tide of fascism in the United States.” He continued, “the only way that America can be salvaged is for those who understand that the entire world is sitting on death row be willing to recognize each other as human beings and work in common efforts on practical, concrete programs to end fascism.” (p. 7) As anyone who recollects the months following the conference knows, the US government would intensify its moves toward fascism a hundred times over. Black Panthers would be railroaded on false charges, their offices would be attacked by rapidly militarizing police forces and two of its midwestern leaders—Fred Hampton and Mark Clark—would be assassinated by a death squad of law enforcement officers on December 4, 1969. Other groups across the US Left would experience political and legal repression, underground media would be bankrupted and their offices shot up, antiwar protesters would be sent to trial on bogus and ultimately unprovable conspiracy charges and even ultra-liberal Democrats would find their mail opened and their phones tapped. In short, the US government was rapidly moving towards a proto-fascist state and Richard Nixon was leading the charge.

Fifty-five years later, the situation is arguably worse, at least in terms of the repression. Troops are being sent into US cities, assisting the local police and federal agents operating under the guise of immigration enforcement (an essentially fascist policing approach based in racism and xenophobia), computerized surveillance is the norm in almost every city and town across the US, and for every court that issues an injunction against this overreach there’s another that undoes that restriction. The prison population is at an all-time high and continuing to grow while makeshift detention camps that barely meet basic standards for human habitation (if at all) are being filled with humans whose papers are not in order. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of US residents—many if not most of them non-white skinned—are subject to the harassment and restrictions of the prison-industrial state, chained to electronic tracking devices, random visits by law enforcement to their homes and workplaces, and subject to arrest at any police agency’s whim.

Meanwhile, proto-fascist demagogues are celebrated in the media alive and dead as freedom of speech heroes, despite their rhetoric demanding adherents of politics and philosophies abhorrent to fascism be denied freedom of speech. The president, addled fool that he is, threatens the media while his henchmen and women reinterpret the rights of the rest of us to mean their opposite. Universities cower and newspapers bend over, either because they support the essential philosophy of those in power or because betraying their colleagues is preferable to losing the money and power acquiescence brings. The owners of sports teams celebrate a two-bit huckster of hate after his murder as if he were the second coming of Christ and those who speak out against this travesty find themselves without a job, fired for speaking freely. And I haven’t even touched on the collaboration of the US regime in the genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of women, children, and men in Palestine; a slaughter led by an indicted war criminal and a collaboration that includes the vast majority of those elected to be part of Washington’s regime.

The statement quoted by Big Man Howard above remains as true as the day it was written over fifty-six years ago: “the only way that America can be salvaged is for those who understand that the entire world is sitting on death row be willing to recognize each other as human beings and work in common efforts on practical, concrete programs to end fascism.”

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