Father Coughlin
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The public career of Rev. Charles E. Coughlin during the 1930s and early ‘40s is massively documented. Newsreels, publications, speeches, and broadcast recordings are all at your fingertips online. Yet the historical significance of this Canadian-American prelate (1891-1979) is maddeningly elusive. You may have read that he was an immensely popular but controversial “radio priest” with a decidedly populist-nationalist bent, or that he published a weekly magazine called Social Justice (1936-1942), (more…)
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December 25, Christmas Day, is also the birthday of one of the most exotic and courageous thinkers ever to stride across the American political stage: Lawrence Dennis.
Now, there are three basic facts everyone learns about Mr. Dennis at the outset.
One: he was a leading Right-wing economic and political theorist of the 1930s and ’40s—an American fascist if you will. (more…)
T.T. with Pet Python, 1930
Circus Day Was Not Yet Over
2,062 words
Part 1 of 2
An unlikely linchpin of Postwar America’s Far Right was a slick-haired, grinning ad copywriter and ex-actor with the mad moniker of Tiffany Thayer (1902-1959). Thayer earned a handsome pile as scribe of radio jingles (Pall Mall cigarettes) and “meretricious bestsellers” (Time, May 26, 1956)—quite enough for an apartment on swank Sutton Place and a summer house on not-yet-swank Nantucket—but his most enduring legacy was likely his Fortean Society, (more…)
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Editor’s Note:
Lawrence Dennis (December 25, 1893–August 20, 1977) was one of America’s most original Right-wing critics of liberalism, capitalism, imperialism, and the Cold War. Interestingly enough, he was part black, a fact that was known to his many Right-wing admirers. In commemoration of Dennis’ birthday, and as a Christmas gift to our readers, we are reprinting Keith Stimely’s excellent introduction to his life and ideas. (more…)
The rarely-photographed Harald Keith Thompson, Jr. in 1954
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Editor’s Note:
The following interview with H. Keith Thompson is based upon a typewritten transcription of the the original taped interview. Unless otherwise noted, additions in square brackets are in the typescript as well. There are also a number of hand-written corrections and additions on the typescript. Since the typescript was seen by Thompson, I am assuming that either he made these corrections himself or at least approved of them, so I have incorporated them where legible. For more on Thompson’s life and work, see Kerry Bolton’s excellent essay “H. Keith Thompson, Jr.“
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