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Father Charles Edward Coughlin (pronounced /ˈkɒɡlɪn/ COG-lin;^[1] October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979) was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. Early in his career Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his early New Deal proposals, before later becoming a harsh critic of Roosevelt.^[2] It was at this point Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue antisemitic commentary, and later to rationalize some of the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.^[3] The broadcasts have been called "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".^[4] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, with his slogan being Social Justice, first with, and later against, the New Deal. Many American bishops as well as the Vatican wanted him silenced, and he was eventually silenced by his superiors.

Coughlin was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Irish Catholic parents, Thomas J. Coughlin and Amelia Coughlin, and was ordained to the priesthood in Toronto in 1916. He taught at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, before moving to Detroit in 1923. He began his radio broadcasts in 1926 on station WJR, in response to cross burnings by the Ku Klux Klan on the grounds of his church, giving a weekly hour long radio program.^[5] In 1931 the CBS radio network dropped free sponsorship, so he raised money to create his own national network, which soon reached millions of listeners. He strongly endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1932 Presidential election. He was an early supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and coined the phrase "Roosevelt or ruin", which became famous during the early days of the first FDR administration. Another phrase he became known for was "The New Deal is Christ's Deal."^[6] In January 1934, Coughlin testified before Congress in support of FDR's policies, saying, "If Congress fails to back up the President in his monetary program, I predict a revolution in this country which will make the French Revolution look silly!" He further stated to the Congressional hearing, "God is directing President Roosevelt."^[7]

Coughlin's support for Roosevelt and his New Deal faded later in 1934, when he founded the National Union for Social Justice (NUSJ), a nationalistic worker's rights organization which grew impatient with what it viewed as the President's unconstitutional and pseudo-capitalistic monetary policies. His radio programs preached more and more about the negative influence of "money changers" and "permitting a group of private citizens to create money" on the general welfare of the public.^[8] He also spoke about the need for monetary reform. Coughlin claimed that the Depression was a "cash famine". Some modern economic historians, in part, agree with this assessment.^[9] Coughlin proposed monetary reforms, including the nationalization of the Federal Reserve System, as the solution.

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