THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Father Coughlin, Huey Long Records
Recalled in 'Voices of Protest' Volume

Demagogues had their ef-
fect on American politics
and some left bitter records
in their treatment of
economic and social issues.
Chief among them half a
century ago were Huey
Long and Royal Oak (Mich.)
cleric Father Charles E.
Coughlin.
The record of their ac-
tivities is recalled in "Voi-
ces of Protest: Huey Long,
Father Coughlin and the
Great Depression" (Vintage
Press, Random House sub-
sidiary, first published in
1982 by Knopf), by Alan
Brinkley.
Perhaps the combined
attitudes of the two de-
magogues is best sum-
marized by the author,
thus:
"It would be a mistake,
however, to exaggerate the
limits of the vision of Long
and Coughlin and neglect
its elements of boldness.
Faced with an economic di-
lemma of bewildering prop-
ortions, they might have re-
lied, like other leaders,
upon far more simplistic
and distorted explanations.
"They might have focused
their wrath upon Jews (as
Coughlin ultimately did in
the last stages of his career),
upon communists (whom
both denounced, but upon
whom neither dwelled),
upon blacks, immigrants,
intellectuals, or other seem-
ingly alien groups.
"They might have em-
phasized, as many unhappy
Americans did in the 1920s
and as many more would do
in later years, irreligion,
immorality, and other cul-
tural phenomena. They did
not. They spoke instead
about economic issues of
genuine importance; they
denounced men and institu-
tions who bore no little re-
sponsibility for the prob-
lems of the era; and they of-
fered solutions that, what-
ever the many failings,
represented rational, con-
crete approaches to knotty,
problems.
Indeed, the Long and
Coughlin movements
may well have been the
last effective expressions
of the themes of populism
in basic economic terms."
Brinkley points out that
Coughlin borrowed his
editorial views in his Social
Justice magazine from
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi
propaganda minister. This
is how the Brinkley volume
exposes the Coughlin
plagarism:
"Coughlin's own edito-
rials spoke stridently of the
`communistic Jews'; and in
one, he plagiarized egregi-
ously from a speech by Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goeb-
bels, liftng such passages
as: 'Almost without excep-
tion, the intellectual lead-
ers — if not the foot and
hand leaders — of Marxist
atheism in Germany were
Jews.' "
Coughlin's Social Justice
magazine was dominated by
him, according to Brinkley,
and it continued an anti-

Semitic policy, as Brinkley
indicates:
"Coughlin denied until
the end of his life that he
had ever been an anti-
Semitic and even in 1938
and 1939, he was always
careful to distinguish be-
tween 'good Jews' and
`bad Jews,' separating
himself from the Nazi ar-
gument of an inherent
racial evil in Jewishness.
It was also true that dis-
cussion of Jews never oc-
cupied nearly as large a
proportion of Coughlin's
rhetoric as it did those of
some of his more venom-
ous followers.
"Nevertheless, Coughlin
maintained almost total

control over the contents of
Social Justice, and substan-
tial control over the ac-
tivities of many of his sup-
porters at this time; and if
he was unhappy about the
blatant anti-Semitism
being preached in his name,
he never put a stop to it."
There are many other ex-
poses in the Brinkley book.
Noted anti-Semites are
listed, including Gerald L.
K. Smith. At least one
anti-Semitic association is
of interest, as in the follow-
ing:
clear
was
"Less
Coughlin's relationship
with Pennsylvania Con-
gressman Louis McFadden.
A voluble and erratic figure,

Friday, September 30, i%3 17

Rabin: Marines Protecting
U.S., Not Israeli Interests

McFadden was one of the
Congress's severest critics
of the Versailles Treaty, a
persistent advocate of
monetary reform, and, in-
creasingly in the early '30s,
an outspoken anti-Semite.
Whether Coughlin and
McFadden were 'close
friends,' as some obser-
vers have suggested, and
whether McFadden was
influential in Coughlin's
later turn to anti-
Semitism, as others have
claimed, is difficult to de-
termine. But the two men
did communicate.
Revelations about the
noted anti-Semites and
especially Coughlin always
retain an interest.

TEL AVIV (JTA) —
Former Premier Yitzhak
Rabin said that should any-
thing serious happen to the
United States Marine forces
now in Lebanon, the United
States would blame Israel.
He said Israel should exp-
lain to the American public
that the Marines are in
Lebanon serving American,
and not Israeli interests.
The Marines first arrived
in Lebanon in August 1982
under orders from President
Reagan to oversee the
evacuation of the PLO from
Beirut.
They departed on Sept.
10 only to return 19 days
later after the massacre
of civilians at the Palesti-

nian refugee camps of
Sabra and Shatila at
Lebanon's invitation to
"restore Lebanese gov-
ernment sovereignty and
authority over the Beirut
area."

Rabin, a leader of the op-
position Labor Party, also
said he anticipates a
"Vietnam-type solution" in
Lebanon, resulting in an
American withdrawal of its
troops from the multina-
tional force, with Lebanon
becoming "a Soviet-Syrian
achievement and . . . a fai-
lure for Israel and the Un-
ited States with regard to
the overall political situa-
tion in the Middle East."

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