8 | OCTOBER 22 • 2020 

Thanks For Making
Holidays Awe-some

The Jewish holidays which 
occur in the first 10 days 
of the month of Tishri are 
called the Days of Awe. 
Similarly, I, and I am sure 
this is how most of us in 
the Jewish community feel, 
am in awe at the hard work, 
dedication and creativity of 
our religious leaders to make 
a bad situation, the worst in 
memory, as palatable and 
meaningful as possible.
 I experienced it in my 
own B’
nai Israel of West 
Bloomfield congregation, 
but I know it took place all 
over our Metro Detroit area 
and actually all over the 
country. To them all I say 
wholeheartedly: yishar koach, 
it is appreciated beyond 
words.

— Rachel Kapen

West Bloomfield

Corrections: 
In “A Place of their Own, 
(Oct. 8, page 22), Melanie 
Cohn, Jonathan Reinheimer 
and Reed McAlpin’
s names 
were misspelled.

In “Lawsuits Target White 
Supremacists,” (Oct. 8, page 
24) the sentence about two 
defendants facing civil arrest 
should have said that this is 
“fairly unheard of in a civil 
suit.” Also, Integrity First for 
America does not claim that 
the defendants hid weapons 
around Charlottesville but 
had weapons with them for 
their rallies in the city.

letters

VIEWS

continued on page 10

editor’s note
Then And Now
I

n 1939, the FBI infiltrated 
a violent militia plotting to 
overthrow the U.S. govern-
ment.
This group was called the 
Christian Front. They and their 
even more extreme offshoot, 
the Christian 
Mobilizers, met 
secretly to dis-
cuss what they 
believed was the 
hostile takeover 
of America 
by radical, 
anti-Christian 
left-wing groups. 
By this description, they 
were really referring to Jews. 
They blamed Jews both for 
Communism in Europe and 
the unchecked capitalism that 
led to the Great Depression 
they were only just recovering 
from. This was incoherent, but 
it didn’
t have to make sense. It 
just had to unite them against a 
common enemy.
The Christian Front consid-
ered Hitler and fascism, and 
its potential to destroy Jewry, 
to be the true torchbearers of 
American values. And they 
believed President Roosevelt 
was opposing this new world 
order because he was a puppet 
of the Jews (or maybe secretly a 
Jew himself). 
So, they trained new recruits 
in firearms in preparation that, 
one day, they would take their 
country back.
The Christian Front exist-
ed far outside the political 
two-party system. But they 
were taking advantage of a cer-
tain hostile climate in America 
— a time of extreme polar-
ization and division as people 
struggled under the Great 
Depression — to push their 

hateful agenda. 
And they were egged on by 
prominent figures in politics 
and the media — most signifi-
cantly, Detroit’
s own Father 
Charles Coughlin at the Shrine 
of the Little Flower Catholic 
church in Royal Oak. 
The “radio priest,” with an 
audience of millions, went all-
in on the Christian Front and 
devoted many episodes of his 
national broadcasts to them. 
He praised them for standing 
up to the far-left Communist 
sympathizers he said were 
roaming our streets. When the 
FBI arrested and charged them 
with sedition, Coughlin used 
his show in the weeks leading 
up to their trial to defend them 
as protectors of American 
values. The jury returned no 
verdict, and all charges were 
eventually dropped.
Still, American attitudes 
were beginning to shift away 
from the far-right ideologues 
that had run rampant across 
the airwaves in the years prior. 
A semi-united front was being 
presented against fascism. 
Coughlin had at one point 
been the most powerful voice 
in the country, but he was fall-
ing out of mainstream favor 
the more he chose to embrace 
the paranoid right-wing fringe 
that constituted his “base.” 
But this fringe, though 
small in number, was still 
large enough to fill rallies at 
Madison Square Garden and 
violent enough to do serious 
damage to the country. 
And these American fascists 
(for that is exactly what they 
were) hung on their hero’
s 
every word. They didn’
t trust 
other media; only Father 
Coughlin told “the truth.” He 

was their filter bubble. 
In those secret meetings 
the FBI witnessed, Coughlin’
s 
followers would play his show 
and cheer, delivering “sieg 
heils” all the while.
“We will fight shoulder to 
shoulder and be content to use 
your weapons,” Coughlin said 
on one episode. “Rest assured 
we will fight, and we will win.”

RETRACING OUR STEPS
I often hear that we are living 
in “unprecedented” times. But 
I disagree. 
Recently, the FBI arrested 
members of a new antigov-
ernment militia right here 
in Michigan. They called 
themselves the “Wolverine 
Watchmen,” and they were 
plotting to kidnap Gov. 
Gretchen Whitmer because 
they believed her COVID-19 
lockdown protocols were an 
affront to American values.
Very little separates these 
new extremists from those of 
Father Coughlin’
s time, except 
for 81 years. 
Like the Christian Front, 
these men do not fit neatly into 
our Democratic-Republican 
orthodoxy. Their politics are 
unmoored from the main-
stream. A Detroit Free Press 
investigation found that some 
are vocal Trump supporters, 
while at least one called the 
president a “tyrant.”
However, also like the 
Christian Front, our new gen-
eration of domestic extremists 
are plainly taking advantage of 
an already violent, heightened 
climate in America. This is a 
time when half of the country 
so deeply distrusts and despises 
the other half that there is an 
opening for this kind of terror. 

Andrew 
Lapin
Editor