Part Two: Elizabeth Dilling: The Original Candace Owens

Robert concludes the Liz Dilling story with her thrilling exploits to support Father Coughlin in taking down FDR and supporting the Nazis.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alson media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, Katie. I'm not sure
if I think the government would call that terrorism or not.
You should really check with your lawyer. Oh hey, everybody,
it's behind the bastards. I'm sorry, I was just docking
with my guests for this week. Katie's stole, Katie, Let's
pretind weren't talking. How are you doing? How's everything? Everything fine?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
And it is absolutely nothing incriminating happening over here at all.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
Above board Eagle.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
You had the right to own those F twenty twos.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
I can vouch for this woman.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
This woman has done nothing wrong, nothing wrong except watch
Gilmore Girls.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Nothing wrong. Those were your recreational F twenty twos. You
were allowed to have them. Absolutely. We're talking about Liz
Dilling in Part two of our BTBS on She's you know,

(00:59):
the she's the first. Honestly, she's the first. I had
titled this as like the first fucking Candice Owens or
something like that, or or Laura Lumick. She's got pieces
of those, but you know now that I think she
is more like the precursor to Philish Laughley. Like that's
really probably the best way to although, as we're going
to talk about the reason why I thought more modern
with it is she becomes crowdfunded in a way that

(01:22):
is directly mimicking I mean both like how a lot
of like people just in our industry make their living today,
but how a lot of like conservative media people get started.
Where she is building this like grassroots like from the
she's like convincing people to give her money to go
like root out communists in the world. Like it's a
very modern business model, which is weird to me.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Absolutely, she tapped into that fear mongering grift real yeah, yeah, early.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
On exactly, so she is ahead of her time, you know,
you can you never like we don't like to be like, well,
that's a smart lady, but that is a smart lady,
just not in a way that most of us like
respect people being intelligent, but she clearly is.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
It's a smart lady who had the wrong.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Influences and sure a brain that wasn't put to its
proper use and then found its uses.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
That's that's what I was getting from our first episode.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I think that might that's a healthy way to look
at it, as like, oh if only if only the
things that she was clearly gifted at had been put
to a less evil end. But then the question is like,
would that have happened? Would would something less evil have
motivated her this way? You know? And I guess that
gets into the fiddlier questions about human morality. Anyway, it
does the opening of the Red Network, which is again

(02:41):
that's her second big book, right, that's that's basically this
telephone book of all of the communists in the country
and the secret left it wing agents trying to bring down,
you know, capitalism. The opening of this book was dedicated
to the professional patriots. Right again, it feels very modern
where she's like, open, this book is dedicated with the
professional patriots, and she just cribs it is everyone who
is as crazy as she is and believes that the

(03:03):
whole country is about to fall to the reds. So
this book is for all the people that everyone says
that you're crazy, but you're not crazy. I know you're
not crazy. We all know that. You know. The books
intro warned about becoming communist, socialist, world conspiracy quote with
its four horsemen atheism, immorality, class, hatred, and pacifism for
the sake of red revolution is boring. Within our churches, schools,

(03:25):
and government and is undermining America like a cancerous growth.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
First off, it's so embarrassing how little these conversations have changed.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Sorry, yeah, yes, very little, like it is, come on.
But also like the Four Horsemen, you know, we know
what the actual four horsemen are, and they're all cool
stuff like famine and like war and plague, and they're
not the class hatred, the horsemen of class hatred, the
horsemen of pacifism for the sake of red revolution. That's

(03:56):
just bad writing. Was that's just bad writing.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
Taking some real liberties here.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah. Before she gets into the book, she makes sure
to thank the staunch DAR, of which the author unfortunately
is not a member, which is so sad, And she
calls the DAR the best informed body of women on
this subject in America. She just cannot stop licking those boots.
Another person she thanks is mister Harry Young, who we

(04:20):
talked about last episode of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation
and who brought the protocols of the Elders of Zion
to the United States, who she brags, held sufficiently annoying
in his anti red free speech to be honored by
intimidating libel suits filed by the notorious Free Speech for
Red's Only ACLU. So the book was just a reprint

(04:41):
of a lot of her old essays and a list
of groups like the ACLU that have what she considered
to be known communist ties. One portion of the book
is dedicated to the Socialist Party and the New Deal
and argues that the US Socialist Party was growing to
subsume the Democratic Party and would soon take it over entirely,
and that the New Deal was the instrument through which

(05:02):
the Democratic Party would be devoured by the Socialist Party.
How does a socialist party do it today?

Speaker 4 (05:09):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's a fanciful document, And every notion in Dilling's book
is again fanciful at best and outright idiotic at worst.
This has been proven by the paths that history took. Right,
we know that she was wrong. Dilling labeled some four
hundred and sixty American organizations communist, radical, pacifist, anarchist, socialist
or IWW controlled. That's the International Workers of the World.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
The idea that radical passivism is something to be afraid
of is so wild to me.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Pacifists are just the Passimism only serves the Red Revolution, right,
it just stops you being able to fight against communism,
you know, even though weirdly enough, in like World War Two,
some of the only people who like her didn't want
to fight the Nazis were pacifists. Things get mess interesting
and interesting. Your allegiances the weird. Yeah, she never examines

(06:04):
that at all. So it listed thirteen She lists thirteen
hundred or so of these different organizations. Because she is
a woman, she assumed that her own word would not
be of value to the readers of her book with
that extensive backup. And this is one of the weirdest
things about this. She'd repeatedly be like, I know you're
not going to trust what I'm saying about this because
I'm just a lady, right, And then she'll provide like

(06:25):
that's how she writes this book a lot. She'll she'll
include males, so you don't have to take it for me.
Here's a man saying the same thing. Like it's both.
She's very cognizant of her reader's biases and shares them,
and that's part of the text in a very strange way,
where she's like, obviously, as a girl, I don't know
what I'm talking about. Here's the smarter again.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
It's so fascinating, it's a really interesting level. She doesn't
buy it because she have to be the one to
write this bullshit.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yes, yes, now. The Red Network was a massive success
among the crank right, which was even then forming as
a reaction of the moneyed classes to FDR's New Deal
and the terrifying thread of communism abroad and at home.
The first ultra wealthy founders of far right anti communist
paranoia have started gearing up in this period, and Elizabeth
Dilling has helped you make a place for herself as

(07:16):
one of the most prominent red baiters in the country.
In the years to come. The Red Network would be
cited as expert testimony and a dozen congressional investigations and
legislative investigations, and Ericsson Wrights was used successfully in at
least one court case. So a bunch of different like this,
her book is cited regularly, it becomes part of a
bunch of different attempts to bring charges to different communist groups.

(07:39):
There's obviously nothing of any real informative value in the
Red Network. The book existed primarily condemn people by association,
using spurious rumors that would tar anyone left of Hitler
as a communist subversive looking to outlaw Christianity. Because Liz
did such a good job of making her book appear
exhaustively sourced by citing numerous prominent cranks, like the guy

(07:59):
who'd helped bring modern anti Semitism to the US, it
quickly became beloved by police officers because they could say, look,
we know this is a bad guy. Look at all
the citations that say this groupie is a part of
is dangerous. Right, Like cops love the Red Network because
they can point to a meeting of an organization in
their town and be like, we had to break it up.
It's in this book, you know. Like she's given them

(08:21):
the main thing they need, which is an excuse to
go brutalize somebody. The New Republic would warn in an
article in the nineteen thirties that Dilling's book carried weight
with many law enforcement officers, particularly local cops, who were
quote only too glad to have a list of suspected
communists that they could hassle. The book had been designed
for this purpose, to provide an excuse for reactionary police officers, congressmen,

(08:43):
and private mobs to attack regular citizens on at least
two episodes of this show, I've cited the work of
pioneering anti fascist journalist Dorothy Thompson, who, among other things,
wrote an essay titled who Goes Fascists that I've quoted
a number of times on this It's the one where
she's playing that parlor game. She's like talking about like
a normal party in the United States in like the
late thirties, and is like, I try to imagine if

(09:05):
fascism came to America, which of these people would go?
And it's a studying artifical because it works perfectly today.
She describes all the kinds of people who went fascist
in our own We've watched it happen in our own lives.
Dorothy's a genius, was a brilliant writer. Dorothy Thompson described
Elizabeth Dilling as quote one of the most successful to
famers of private character in this country. And that's a

(09:26):
very good way to look at her. Is her business
is defamation, and it's providing an excuse for police officers,
for thugs, for bigots to attack folks by tarring them
as communists. That's what it is. Her book is an
excuse for violence, you know, more than anything Now, one
of the things that made Elizabeth novel was her willingness
to throw all pretense of civility and earnest disagreement out

(09:49):
the window. Her enemies were communist traders subversives, and all
liberals were socialists. We've meant all liberals were some kind
of read. As Christine Erickson writes for the Journal of
American Studies, Dyling's willingness to irreverently paint all liberals with
varying shades of red won her many accolades from the right.
What helped make the Red Network an instant hit among
patriots was its accessibility to older studies by Representative Hamilton Fish,

(10:12):
who headed an investigation in nineteen thirty one of communist
activities in the US, and Senator Clayton R. Lusk, who
compiled a four volume report of the Joint Committee Investigating
Seditious Activities in New York in nineteen twenty. Now, these
old works weren't particularly accurate, but neither was the new
data that had been gathered by guys like Harry Young right,
And neither is anything that Liz is bringing into this.

(10:33):
What matters is she's adding all this together, which makes
it seem like there's a weight of evidence behind her claims.
The Red and network sells very well, but only some
of that money goes to Liz. Many copies are distributed
and given away or sold by third party groups with
mailing lists. She doesn't always make money off of this. Still,
even though this doesn't necessarily make Liz wealthy, it provides

(10:54):
her with one of a kind clout amongst cranks. Right,
she is now like the top of the list when
it comes to this kind of person.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, I always feel like a broken record, but I
have to say it.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
It's just it's the same playbook now.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
It's lying. Lying is the right way to make a living,
you know, it's just easy.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, yeah, and giving people the permission structure to do
the bad things or to villainize people to you know,
bring the force of the law whatever.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
One of the most reliable ways to make a lot
of money in American media is to find a group
of people that a bunch of assholes already want to hurt,
and then give them an excuse to hurt those people.
You know, great way to make money in America.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
Thank god she didn't have a Twitter account.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, people treated her in this era like how I
imagine Alex Jones wishes he was more consistently treated as
a heroic truth teller who, for the very first time,
had provided regular Americans with a way to fight back
against the Reds, who you know, were destroying the country.
One of Elizabeth's fans told her that he consult did
the Red Network almost daily, a fact that implies a

(12:03):
life more depressing than I can express. She was popular
among women with influential husbands too, which gave her a
kind of influence in and of itself. And that's like
an interesting thing to me, is a lot of her
claims to like being able to change things is like
the wife of this guy started her wringing her husband
about lizzus bullshit, and so's this guy like got involved
in making changes. Yeah. It's yeah, unfortunate what a good

(12:26):
business that is to be in in this period of time,
but it.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Does work and smart smart ever, I guess to pinpoint
that as profitable.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
For her, Yeah, and she's very much cognizant of that
of that, like this is one way you can change
the world is by getting wives to harass their husbands
about stuff like this.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
Very effective.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, many of the people in organizations named in her
book were Jewish, a fact that was not missed by
the outright fascists and Nazi symbolizers that were increasingly organizing
in the United States as the thirties War on. The
German American Bund distributed free copies of the Red Network.
So did the Aryan Bookstore of Los Angeles, which was
founded in nineteen thirty three. This was an institution in

(13:06):
LA for years, for quite a long time, Aran Bookstore.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
I have not Yeah Yeah bookstore.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
I wanted to look into this. So for an idea
of the kind of good, respectable conservative writing that the
Aryan Bookstore published. I found a nineteen forty FBI file
on the Aryan Bookstore that included several examples of their
original publications. So one of these was a pamphlet for
the United Florida ku Klux Klan, who apparently paid to
have their weekly newspaper distributed via the bookstore. Here's how

(13:36):
one paragraph of that document read, why the ku Klux Klan.
The facts about the ku Klux Klan, its birth, mission,
and purpose had been most widely distorted by the Jew
controlled news media immediately after the Civil War. The Jew
radicals and revolutionaries who had gained a large control over
the Union government sent their carpetbagger stooges. And I'm not
even going to finish this paragraph because it gets a
lot worse after that. You get the idea Lizze being

(13:59):
sold by these people, right.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
Yeah, Like, I don't need to finish that statement for
you to know the company her ideas are keeping. My god, yaik, Yeah,
I'm not exaggerating by calling you basically a Nazi.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
If your books are primarily being sold in the Aryan
Bookstore of Los Angeles, what I just read should make
it clear that, as always Elizabeth Dillings, anti communism was
a synonym for anti Semitism and fascist rates hatred. Another
Aryan bookstore publication sold right alongside The Red Network was
the Christian Youth Cores Weekly Report. Sophie's going to show

(14:33):
you a little excerpt from the Christian Youth Core Weekly Report.
It's got a very fascist looking flag with like a
plus sign and like a white circles, almost like a swastika.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yah.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah. Our emblem, the red field is for the blood
of Christ that was shed for us. The white circle
is symbolic of the ever loving life through Christ. And
the Cross. Oh good, that seems. And then the first
article under the Christian Youth corep Weekly Report, what is
Jewish ritual murder?

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Oh? My god?

Speaker 2 (15:06):
That other great publication. Again, these are just Nazi papers.
Liz is just a Nazi. She's selling her book in
Nazi bookstores because she's a Nazi. I'm sharing all that.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah, I don't think that she would shirk from that description.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
I mean she after a certain point she shere would
but yeah, during this period of time, I think she
would be croudy to be identified with them.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Sure, I bet she still continues with her anti communism
part though.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
So yeah, I'm sharing all this stuff because I want
people to understand Liz Dilling's bedfellows from the Jump are
outright Nazis. This is everything she's tricked by. She doesn't
like fall into this. She's not surprised by the fact
that she's like standing side by side with these folks.
These are her allies from the Jump. And the fact
that she's also popular with garden variety conservatives is because

(15:53):
many garden variety conservatives were also basically Nazis until World
War II made that too dangerous an ideology to a
spouse dealing identified herself with these people from the jump,
writing in the Red Network that Nazi Germany was only
mean to Jewish people, defensively quote the large number of
revolutionary Russian Jews in Germany doubtless contributed towards making fascist

(16:14):
Germany anti Semitic. She's absolutely racist. Yeah, she's fucking for
sure a Nazi. Easily easy to judge her as that
if he.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
Was living in Germany, she'd have the armband.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
You know, Hey, don't worry, She'll get to Germany before
the story is over.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Don't worry.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
For the most part, been on this ideological journey, Elizabeth
has had numerous allies, but none of them held a
candle to the man who was her primary, pure and
influence her real in a lot of ways, like this
is the guy that she sees herself as subservient to
and sees herself as really like working to, like aid
and further, this is the great man of her era,

(16:55):
the finest reactionary rabble rouser of his day, Father Charles.
Now we've talked about Father Coughlin in the past. He's
come up a couple of times on this show. As
you'd expect from the name Father Coughlin was a Catholic
priest who was also his Ara's equivalent of I mean,
he's another like Alex Jones type figure. There's a lot

(17:16):
of these guys at the time. He is like a
reactionary right wing radio guy who's ranting about Communist subversion
on the air. He's infamous for spreading racist conspiracy theories
about communism and the Jews, and he's primarily motivated after
a point by an insane and unreasoning hatred of FDR's
new deal. That's a big thing for Father Coughlin and
his like heyday. Now give you a brief overview of

(17:38):
his life. Charles Coughlin had been born in eighteen ninety
one in Hamilton, Ontario, to a devout Catholic family, who
encouraged him to enter preparatory seminary school at Saint Michael's
College when he was just thirteen. He'd graduated in nineteen
eleven as president of the first graduating class of his
newly established college, and then entered the seminary proper. Despite
his confirmed status as a Canadian, his precise of Catholicism

(18:01):
drew him to the United States, in particular to Waco,
where he worked for the Basilian Order. Now this basically
means that he was really into this particular stream of
like it's Catholic, but it's like orthodox Conan monasticism, because
like the Basilians are mostly popular in Ukraine. But again
it's a weird, like almost orthodoxy colored Catholic thing. As

(18:24):
far as I can tell, I don't understand it. Well,
I'm not super into Catholicism anyway. He gets ordained on
June twenty ninth, nineteen sixteen, and started teaching psychology and
a few other classes at Assumption College in Ontario. In
nineteen eighteen, the Basilian Order decided that all of its
members needed to take a vow of poverty. Right, so
they're like, we really think that, you know, what we're
doing is best if everyone agrees never to have any money.

(18:46):
And Father Coffin is like, well, I don't see why
I need to be poor, and so he leaves.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, he didn't like that.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Whoa wait, we're poorn out. No no, no, no, no no.
So he joins a diocesan clergy in Detroit, and his
career continued along without incident until nineteen twenty six, when
he was asked to help raise money to build a
new parish in Royal Oak, Saint Teres of Lessoue, and
he had been interested in the burgeoning new technology of
radio for some time and decided to work out a

(19:14):
deal with a local station to help him to let
him perform a radio show to raise money. Father Coughlin
turned out to have a gift for this, and his
fundraiser was a huge success, in large part because he
doesn't just stick to religion. A big portion of his
first broadcasts were dedicated to ranting about the spread of
communism in the United States, which he saw in terms
very similar to Elizabeth Dilling. In fact, she caught his

(19:35):
first broadcast, and Amy Die suspected helps to radicalize her
that she watches him give this first broadcast when she's
getting started as an anti communist activist, and this is
a big thing that motivates him now. Dilling's anti communism
was firstly rooted in her Christian faith, but as time
grew on, she grew furious at the fact that most

(19:55):
priests and pastors were not like Father Coughlin. As one
biographer rowe, she became nauseated by her church's attitude towards communism.
Had to restrain to herself to avoid being thrown out,
and had no time to waste in a church activity. Right,
so's she's disgusted by the actual churches that she goes to,
and she's really drawn to this guy because she's acting

(20:16):
the way she thinks every priest ought to be acting. Right.
She doesn't understand why every man of faith in her
world isn't talking like Father Cofflins. That's a big part
of why she loves this guy.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
The guy refused to take the vow.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Of poverty that would not think about.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
It's so interesting just despite being raised a certain way,
although there's plenty of contradictions in how she was raised,
but that.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
The Catholicism just the religious aspect.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
But like, no, I know better than the priests, I
know better than the church that I've grown up in.
I find it distasteful.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
It's weird.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, I mean I think it makes sense if you
understand that, like for someone like this, religion is not
about what the faith says or even what godd says.
It's about finding the ultimate boss to back up that
whatever your opinion is is right. Right, you have the
ultimate called authority. That's all that it is to them, really,
I think for the Yeah, honestly so. One of Liz

(21:13):
and Father Coughlin's favorite Bible verses was Matthew ten thirty four,
think not that I am come to send peace on earth.
I come not sent peace but a sword. Now this
you'll get this that Pete hagg Seth likes that verse too.
By the way, they believed only organized political Christianity could
defeat the radical left. By the early nineteen thirties, when

(21:33):
Dylan was publishing her most influential books, CBS picked up
Coughlin's program, and by the end of nineteen thirty one,
it had more than forty million listeners. By nineteen thirty three,
the year before the Red Networks publication, Coughlin had one
hundred and six clerks to handle the delusive mail from
his fans. In nineteen thirty five, the Radio League of
his parish had cashed four million dollars in money orders

(21:54):
in just twenty months. Coughlin, like Dillan, Yeah, so she's
I mean, yeah, this this brings in a shitload of money. Right.
Coughlin is famous in a way that almost no one
is in this period of time. Unlike Dylling, Coughlin was
initially a supporter of FDR right, not out of any
strong political conviction. He certainly doesn't like believe, particularly in

(22:15):
FDR's politics, but he does believe that he really ought
to be involved in a presidential administration, and so in
early nineteen thirty two, he actually meets FDR, and FDR promises,
if I get elected, I'll go to you directly for
like advice, you know, I'll ask you for your advice
on different things. Because Coughlin he has a bunch of
things he wants to advise the presidency about. So Coughlin

(22:35):
backs FDR because he thinks he's going to have an
end to the new administration. And in fact, Father Coughlin
invents a couple important catchphrases that help like sell FDR's campaign,
including the New Deal is Christ's Deal. But after FDR wins,
Roosevelt's like, well, this guy's obviously crazy. I'll let's block
his number, like I'm not actually going to go to

(22:57):
him for advice or anything. And Father Kauflin, when he
realizes he's been betrayed, loses his mind and begins dedicating
himself to attacking the New Deal as godless communism, and
he said, what's funny to make because Dilling hates FDR
from the start. She loves Coughlin from the start, but
she always ignores that Coughlin likes FDR when he thinks
he's going to get something out of FDR, like, she

(23:18):
can't square with that.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
In nineteen forty six, Coughlin starts a weekly newspaper titled
Social Justice and used it to attack FDR. He joined
with an alliance of anti Roosevelt figures to stop the
president's re election campaign, campaigning alongside Huey Long, Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith,
and of course, Elizabeth Dilling. By the late thirties, she'd
become almost as in demand a speaker as him, and

(23:41):
was giving speeches several times a week at women's clubs,
veterans clubs, chambers of commerce, and other civic organizations around
the country. During the election, she often gave five speeches
a day. Now, by this point, she'd become a big
enough name that she was taking home fifty percent of
the money she collected during her talks, plus expenses and
an honorariums. She's she's doing okay, but this still isn't

(24:02):
big money by her standards. That said, Her motivation to
doing this is not financial. Primarily, it's because within the
very narrow window of what women ought to be doing
that she espoused, this was the path that allowed her
the most agency and fame. Right that she's not breaking
the rules, and probably because she's not taking too much money,
but this is like the most she gets to be

(24:22):
out in the world while pretending that she's still holding
to her values. About that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
Is a Huey Long?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Is that?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
The Kingfish guy?

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, it is about Huey he is. Yeah, he's a
Louisiana governor who is a fascinating figure.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Dare I say.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
Certified side bastard?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, for sure. Side. Well, we're gonna he'll get his
episodes one of these days. He's been. There's just a
lot to say about all Huey. They don't make them
like that anymore in American politics, for better and for worse.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
The Kingfish Yeah, I would say, so, yeah, oh.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, oh yeah. No, nobody like Huie and nobody like Uie.
It's a shame. I mean Hughey's last chapter especially, I
do wish more more politicians would take a take a
leaf out of the end of his career.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
All right, it's time for the bastards on hueye.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah yeah yeah, so Amy Dies thesis does a good
job of describing how Elizabeth evolved as a speaker, using
lessons that she cripped from Father Coughlin's program as a rubric,
Elizabeth Dilling presented her speeches much like Coughlin's, full of
anguish and hateful words. Elizabeth would incorporate props into her speeches,

(25:42):
such as red banners, YWCA, songbooks, magazines, pamphlets, and of course, newspapers.
Elizabeth would sing songs about the so called Red menace
and ridiculed it at every opportunity. Her husband, Albert, but
a company, Dilling on the piano and pass out sheet
music to provoke the audience. A favorite of the audience
attending her speeches was Dillings and pression of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Elizabeth would speak at a Yiddish accent, ridiculing the First

(26:04):
Lady at every opportunity. Elizabeth's speeches would normally last around
two hours, and the audience loved every minute of it.
The audience sat rapidly, fearing it might miss a good
story or important reference. She was always careful to end
and often begin her lectures by acknowledging that again she
was quote just a woman with a mouth in her words,
and true to that. Her audiences were never as big

(26:26):
as the ones that Coughlin could draw, but she was
easily the most famous woman in far right politics for
her time, and while in big crowd for her was
seldom more than one hundred or two hundred people, her
fans were unusually dedicated. Dylan later recalled after one lecture,
about fifty people from the audience arose to pledge their
lives to Jesus as the antidote to communism. Wow, okay, yeah,

(26:49):
good stuff. Now. While father Coughlin became his own cottage
industry with a vast staff, Elizabeth continued to do all
of her own research in writing She is a one
woman shop. Her husband Albert was her only assistant, and
he helped so often that his real work suffered. Over time,
Despite her strongly stated belief that women should not work
and certainly shouldn't be the breadwinner of the family, her

(27:11):
work began to make up the bulk of the family income.
In nineteen thirty five, she'd started reaching out to one
of the most famous men in Chicago for help Charles R. Walgreen.
What business do we think Charles R. Walgreen was in
any guess? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the CBS guy.
You're right, You're right, you're the CVS guy. Bride aid, Yeah,

(27:31):
that's the right idea, Yes, yeah, yeah, I second Charles A.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Walgreen passed by mind that Walgreens was named after a
person for sure.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah it's a guy. It's a guy starts as a bootlegger,
if I'm not mistaken, or basically because they needed a
way to legally sell people booze during Prohibition, and that's
where Walgreens got it start. Now, because Walgreen's niece attended
the University of Chicago, Elizabeth thought that he would be
willing to help her launch a war against Communism among
the school staff. And basically she goes to him and says,
do you know how many of these teachers are in

(28:04):
my book? The Red network is like card carrying socialists
and communist infiltrators. And Wargreen is horrified, and he indeed
withdraws his niece from the college when Dilling shows him
how many professors were suspected communists. Now, one of the
men that she accused was Harold Swift, a president of
the board of trustees. She considered a cream puff type
of red quote, one of the millionaires who like to

(28:26):
play around with radicals. So again, this is not like
an actual political fire, Brad. This is like a rich
guy who's on the board of a big university. He's
just not a dick. But she says some Richmond turned
to booze, some to chorus girls, and others to communism.
When the revolution came, his throat would be slit. And
the communism is like, maybe we should pay teachers more

(28:48):
and stuff. I have a feeling that's more when she's
considering that evils position. Yeah, despite her dire claims, the
committee that investigated Swift found no reason to take action
against him. But Dilling was regularly successful in ruining careers
and launching waves of random hate and people she decided
were guilty of communism. And again there's a lot a
lot in common with like the modern anti progressive communist,

(29:12):
you know, fucking professor on campus crusade that's especially ignited.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
It's like some Laura l type for real Laura Lumer type.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
There's Bill Ackman in there. You know, some of this fucking, this.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Fear mongering around your university is in the education system.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
But she's one of the first people on the right
to do that in an organized way and doing it
in a way that you could you could literally just
swap the names out. And it's the same way this
this reads today when people accused professors and stuff of this. Yeah,
Dylan was regularly successful in ruining people's careers, but like
her idle father Coughlin, she resolved the greatest effort of
her working life for the fight to unseat FDR. In

(29:51):
speeches that election the nineteen thirty six election, Dylling told
audiences of DAR members and rotarians that if FDR won
re election there would be zero chance another free election
ever taking place in the United States. And we can
see just how right she was.

Speaker 4 (30:05):
God, she was prescient.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, she really saw it all coming. That was the
end of democracy in America. While Coughlin was clearly a
power hungry opportunist willing to bend for the sake of
his own influence, Elizabeth pursued her political advocacy with the
feverish intensity of a true believer. She didn't just campaign
against FDR, she dedicated herself to finding his replacement. Now,
for some reason, she decided the best way to do

(30:28):
this was to sabotage the potential candidacy of another man
that she saw as just as bad as FDR. So
she decides, I have to make sure the right man
gets like in position to take down FDR. And the
best way to do that is to stop another guy
I think is even worse from becoming a candidate. And
the guy that she sees is even worse is like
a potential disastrous Republican presidential candidate in thirty six is

(30:51):
Senator William Borah of Idaho, and her fear was that
Senator Bora might win the Republican nomination, which would lead
to what she considered a communist versus communist general election. Right,
if Bora runs against FDR, it's just two communists on
the ballots. Let's take a look, Okay, as communist Senator
Elizabeth dedicated herself destroying William Edgar Bora had been born

(31:11):
the year the Civil War ended. He grew up in Kansas,
but moved to Idaho to practice law before he was
elected to the Senate in nineteen oh seven. He became
known as a progressive insurgent against President Taff's policies and
fought against both the Treaty of Versailles, and turned Calvin
Coolidge down when he offered to make Bora his running
mate in nineteen twenty four. Bora was mixed on the
New Deal, which is why he decided to run in

(31:33):
nineteen thirty six. But this is also why Dilling saw
him as just as bad as FDR, because he's pro
New Deal, he just wants it to be somewhat different, right,
and so she's like, he's just still a communist now.
Bora also was supported of the ACLU and was in
favor of extending diplomatic recognition to the USSR, a country
that undeniably existed. All this added up to a communist

(31:55):
in Liz's book, like.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
You that's a second, that's no go for her. He's
been over there. You can't have diplomatic relations with those you.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Can't acknowledge that they exist even though they do. It's
a very like this is that we're gonna do this
with fucking Taiwan for a huge part of like the
latter twentieth century, where we're just like, no, if you
want to talk to China, you have to talk to Taiwan,
and some people who are rational will be like But
like guys, you can feel however you want about the
civil war. But like, Taiwan is obviously not China. There's
a whole country. There's millions of people, hundreds of millions

(32:29):
of people living in China governing. We can't just pretend
this island speaks for all of them. That's stupid as shit.
But we did it for a long time.

Speaker 4 (32:38):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'm just gonna I don't know now, can't you tell meist?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
If I don't say so, it's still Azar over there.

Speaker 4 (32:48):
Shut up, it's a grown up.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's really funny children. As I described from this is
Liz talking about Bora quote. Both the public and the
Chicago Tribune would call Bora the idol of Moscow. To
sway votes against Bora, Elizabeth wrote a pamphlet entitled Bora
from Within. The Grand Old Republic Party distributed five thousand
copies at its national convention in Cleveland. Soon after, Elizabeth

(33:13):
started taking credit for denying Bora the presidential nomination. After
basking in the glow of Bora's defeat, Elizabeth id another
presidential nominee whom she deemed as being unworthy. That person
would be none other than Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon.
Elizabeth saw Alfred M. Landon as a night clerk trying
to appear as a serious candidate for the oval office.
Due to his apprehension, Landon had a hard time speaking

(33:35):
in front of a large crowd. Elizabeth feared that Roosevelt
would out talk Landon and therefore FDR would win the presidency.
I gotta give Liz credit for one thing, which is
she is right. Alfred Landon was a dog shit candidate
for the presidency, a terrible eye, especially against FDR. You
want to take maybe the man with the greatest natural

(33:57):
political instincts who's ever become a president of the United
dace States, and you put alf fucking Landon next to
his ass. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
Just anybody that doesn't like speaking in front of crowds.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
I have, Yeah, the guy who's scared of speaking of
crowds to fight a FDR in a fucking plitable cage match.
That'll work. That'll work. He's not charismatic, he's not the
most beloved man in American politics. So it eventually becomes
clear that Landon is going to win the Republican nomination,
and so Liz has no choice but to try and
help his campaign. Right, So she's like, Okay, I wanted

(34:34):
to stop him, but he's going to be it, so
I have to coax him into into seeming competent. This
was going would prove to be very difficult for her
because she doesn't know Alf Landon, and her incendiary speeches
and columns about what Landon should do have the effect
of just making him seem worse. Right, She's trying to
help the campaign, but all she does is attack him,

(34:54):
and it just makes him It just eats away at
his support base even more. The Dillings even named the dog,
who they find stupid and annoying, Landon, and that fact
tells you a lot that Like, but they named their
dog after a guy they hate, and also they hate
their dog.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Like they hate their dog.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
You don't have to have it, you know that, right, Like,
if you hate the dog, you don't need that doesn't
need to be your dog.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, you don't have to mock You're like a kid. Yeah,
this confusing, This.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Is confusing, weird. I don't understand your choices. Yeah, but again,
it was land in your FDR. So Elizabeth and her
husband set to work finding a way to save him
from the Jewish people they believe were secretly running his campaign.
It was one of their kids there was, like, well,
Landon's not a great candidate, but all these Jews are
running his campaign and that's really hurting him. It's like, ah, man,

(35:44):
alf Landon, like Barack Obama himself could have like injected
alf Landon with the raw essence of his charisma, and
the sheer weight of Landon's anti charisma would have drowned
out the Obama cells. Or I don't that you know
what I'm getting.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
There's no hope for this man.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
There's no hope for this man. No one could have
made alf land And a president. That was simply not
possible until Hubert Humphrey. There was never a weaker fucking
candidate for the presidency. Yeah, so Albert, her husband, this
is Dylling's husband, gets a job with alf Landon's campaign
headquarters in Chicago. Because again they know that we don't
have any connections to Landon. So if we're going to

(36:23):
convince him that we know how he's got to win,
we need to get you, Albert. You have to get
your foot in the door and the Chicago campaign office.
And Albert does get a job for the land In campaign,
but as soon as he starts work on the first day,
he realizes something terrible. Both of his bosses are Jewish men.
That's gonna work for this guy. Here's die. She could

(36:45):
describe what happened next. Elizabeth was convinced that only over
confident executives supported Landon. Elizabeth made this assumption after she
and Albert dined with six executives who claimed they did
not need the campaign because Landon would win easily. She
complained that neither Landon nor Roosevelt discussed the real issue,
which was Marx versus Washington. After Roosevelt wanted Landed carried
only two states, Dylan Solis was to say, I told

(37:08):
you so. To the industrialists who had predicted Landon would win.
They got what they deserve. She said, two steaks. My god,
have some fucking self respect, alf Honestly, if you had
any self respective thing to do would be to like
watch one Roosevelt speech, like one of his fucking fireside chats,
and be like, now, I don't got this juice. I

(37:29):
simply don't have the juice to take this man out
like I'm now Landon. No one can blame me for
realizing this is beyond my abilities.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
My name's alf Landon.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
I'm literally named alf Landon. You want me to go
up against this guy? He doesn't have legs and he's
kicking my ass, Like my.

Speaker 4 (37:46):
God, he can run circles around me.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, yeah, Like Jesus, just you have. There's a degree
of sympathy you have to have for like, oh, you
thought you could beat FDR in nineteen thirty six you
you so Dylan got out of the thirty sixth election
with at least more grace than her idol father Coughlin.
Coughlin had made the mistake of backing a third party,

(38:11):
the Union Party. This was an extension of an organization
that he had formed earlier that year, the National Union
for Social Justice. And just by the way, if you
want to think about, like what a shit show it
was when Biden dropped out at like the last possible
minute and the Democratic Party had to line up behind
a single candidate with just a couple of months before
the election. Coughlin tries to do that, but with starting

(38:33):
a new party in the last year of the year of.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
The election, he's overestimating his own influence.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Here he is and again because Coughlin Dylan loves him,
but he's not the same ideologically as her. He is
a fascist, but he's not a pro capitalist fascist. There
are pro capitalist fascists and there are anti capitalist fascists.
And in fact, part of what the Night of Long
Knives was. One thing that happened in the Night of

(39:01):
Long Nimes in Nazi Germany is that they got rid
of the anti capitalist fascists. But in this day and age,
the Union of for Social Mess National Union for Social Justice,
and he loves the term not.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
In line with her.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
It isn't it isn't It isn't social justice. Number one.
It means a very different thing to Catholicism in this
time than it does when people use the term today.
People use social justice today, do not think of it
in a religious Social justice is a Catholic term in
this time and period, and very much is considered one.
It's something the Church cares a lot about, right and
but cares about from its standpoint. I'm not saying the

(39:38):
Catholic Church in the thirties is woke in amar.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
This is you know what, Yeah, this is a good
clarification for me.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, but Father Coughlin's Union Party is anti capitalist and
anti monopolist, right, because anti monopolism is like the most
the big populist interest at the time is like trust
busting in the US. If you are populist, you have
to be anti mini kind of regardless of whether you
come down. That's just the way things work in America
at this point in time. So again, the fact this

(40:08):
might sound like Coughlin is someone on the left, he's
not at all. He's just kind of going for the
big populist interest at the time, which include a lot
of trust busting. And Coughlin does add a shitload of
anti semitism in the mix, which makes it clear that
he is still just warming up a chunk of Nazi politics, right,
It's just a slightly different chunk than the one Dilling
finds appealing. And you know, obviously added to this mix,

(40:31):
he also puts a lot of hatred of the New Deal.
Per an article in the Bentley Historical Society Library of
the University of Michigan quote, the National Union for Social
Justice Team teamed up with Francis Townsend, an activist, and
Gerald L. K. Smith, an organizer and white supremacist to
form the Union Party. The express goal of the Union
Party was to unseat Roosevelt in the nineteen thirty six
presidential election. They put forward their own candidate, William Limkey,

(40:54):
hoping Limkey could draw enough votes away from Roosevelt to
allow alf Land and the Republican candidate to win. So again,
they're both trying to get Landon to win both her
and like Dilling and Coughlin, but they're doing it in
very different ways. Dilling is trying to support the Republican
Party the traditional way. Coughlin is trying to sabotage FDR's
campaign by drawing votes away from Roosevelt so that Landon wins.

(41:16):
That's what his hope for a third party is. Right now.
The problem is that Coughlin also not only does he
attach his name to this attempt, he makes a public
promise that if the Union Party doesn't get nine million
votes in November, he will retire from public life. If
I can't bring nine million votes to Limkey in November,
oh get off the air. You'll never hear from father
Coughlin again. Now, had Father Coughlin moved nine million votes,

(41:41):
that would have been twenty percent of the total votes
cast in nineteen thirty six, which is a hell. No
one's ever had that kind of popularity. Fucking Joe Rogan
could never have come twenty percent of the electorate moved
because of his fucking actions. Father Coughlin is not even
coming close to this right, he fumbles historically the Union Party.
He can't even get a million votes. Very funny now,

(42:03):
because he'd promised. Father Coughlin does briefly quit his radio show,
although he comes back like two months later something like that.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
Never I never said I'd go away forever, he said.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
I said I'd go with forever, and I was going to.
But then a friend of mine who just died on
his deathbed, his last wish was that I start being
on the radio again. What could I do. I'm not
gonna say no to my friend's dying.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Wish, Robert, Katie and Robert, I promise my dying wish
will not be that you do more podcasts.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
No, Sophie's dying wish was that I get eleven million
dollars to spend on Heroin. You know, she always said,
I hope Robert gets eleven million dollars for Heroin. But
I did always did eleven.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Million dollars for Robert's joy of Choice.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
I know, very generous of you and your death.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, Heroin, it's good for It's not, but
it is time. I mean, it's better than today's true fitting.
All these kids are doing fucking Heroin's basically oh zimbit
compared to that shit. Anyway, here's ads. We're back. Probably

(43:20):
shouldn't be comparing Heroin to a Zimbic. We still want
to get that sweet sweet o Zimbic money, Oh Zimbic.
I don't know much about whether or not it's good
for you, actually, so I feel weird about advertising.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
So we stay neutral around here.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
It seems like we need more longitudinal data before I'm
going to be doing that.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Sometimes it's like I'm.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Not against it.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I'm not against drugs that help people. I'm against advertising
drugs that I can't vouch for.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, I don't know. Like dick pills are one thing
I just worry about, like encouraging everyone to take that
shit when we don't know enough about it yet.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
We also like but hair loss drugs ads because we
know that shit doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
No, no, I think it does now? Is the weird
Like I don't. I didn't want to do hair loss
ads because like when I was a kid, alex joke
like that was always the thing that meant something was shady.
But I think, like the there are actual hair lost
solutions now that are shit like. But I'm not super
knowledgeable about that world, as you can tell by my head.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Of hand, Like what's that like my monoxidil or whatever,
monococ Yeah, I think it.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Is real, right, Like they're real stuff there. Yeah, anyway, whatever,
do whatever you want. Your gender affirming care is your
gender affirming care. Just look at it that way. That's
what a bald miss care is for men.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Just don't blame me.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, that's what testosterone supplements are for, you know, like
fucking RFK Junior who wants to stay swollen his sixties
even though he can't fucking do a proper bench press,
my god, man, Like Jesus, sorry, embarrassment is fun, that's yeah.
So Father Coughlin quits his radio show, and then he's like, oh,
my friend's dying wish was that I would be racist

(44:59):
on radio one last time. So he goes back. But
Coughlin can't go back to the simple life of a
radio priest who made anti Semitic propaganda anymore. He's got
the politics bug now and he can't quit. So he
starts complaining on the air that the Vatican has been
infiltrated by Communist agents. Now here's the thing. I'm not
an expert on Catholicism, but my understanding of the way

(45:21):
it works is that if you are a Catholic priest,
the Pope is your boss, and like any employment situation,
you're not supposed to just like get out in front
of the media and say my boss is being manipulated
by communists. Secretly, your boss might get pissed at you
because you're not supposed to be talking shit like that.
You're a subordinate to the to the Pope, right, and

(45:44):
to these other Anyway, Father Coughlin is getting out of pocket,
and he's pissing off the rest of the Catholic hierarchy,
and he is accountable to that hierarchy. He's not a
free agent. No Catholic priest is if they want to
continue being a Catholic priest. It's kind of an important
fact about how can fall on. So this sparks a
chain of events that leads to Father Coughlin having his

(46:06):
operating permit revoked and being taken off the air for
another few months. And when he's taken off the air
for the second time, Elizabeth Dillon feels his loss keenly.
She was convinced that her fave had only suffered so
because Communist agents had infiltrated the United States. She formed
the Patriotic Research Bureau, an organization dedicated to clearing Father
Coughlin's name. She was its only member and put out

(46:28):
a monthly bulletin to her mailing list. As always, she
solicited donation. No, I mean she has a lot of readers,
she's the only like, yeah, and she solicits donations because
she's got all these Like anyone who's ever been interested
in her shit, she has their address and she'll just
mail them shit and if they want to send her money,
they'll send money back. And that's kind of what keeps
your going. It's a proto Patreon type thing, right.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
I was going to say a little Patreon exactly.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Dilling herself was very open about the small donations that
kept her in business, and when you read her description
of the things that fans sent her, it does sound
weirdly like a modern like, right, wing crowdfunding kind of deal. Quote,
one woman who's in and this is Liz talking. One
woman who's income was forty dollars a month and he
was going blind, sold one hundred dollars bond for seventy
seven dollars and sent seventy five to Dilling. An elderly

(47:15):
man who worked as a cement mixer sent her one
hundred dollars and left everything he owned to Dilling and
his will. Right, this is kind of how she should
she like puts out what people are saying, right, because
she's this is partly advertising exactly what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, sorry, yeah, and she interjected to
this is shameful.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
The reason she's saying it this way is that, like, so,
if you're sick and going blind and only have a
little bit of money, you should send it to me,
because you know you care about this country, right, give
me everything you've got.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
It is very much like that give till it hurts
evangelical impulse.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
Yeah, cleanse your soul by giving me all your money.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
That's right, that's right. Uh so, yeah, she urged her
Catholic followers. One of the other things I find funny,
So She's not just solictening for donations in a early
modern crowdfunding way, she said, attempting to like weaponize and
turn her audience into a tool for her activism in
a very modern way. She starts urging her readers who
are Catholics to send letters to the Vatican, to flood

(48:11):
the Vatican with letters, and a number of them do
because she prints a form letter with like her monthly
issue of the Bulletin, that they can just fill out
and send to the Vatican. This form letter read quote,
Holy Father, we plead for our father Coughlin, have him
continue his radio broadcast in the same heartfelt way, not
incensored platitudes which defeat the dignity God bestowed on man,

(48:32):
but as an alter Christus, fearless and outspoken, going about
doing his father's business, spreading the doctrine of the mystical body,
a brotherhood of man with the fatherhood in God, to
confute the atheistic communism and other godlessisms. To continue to
espouse the cause of the poor, for the rich have
ample means. Holy Father, many of us were tricked by
artful propaganda, but now we humbly ask Your Holiness to

(48:52):
give us back our father Coughlin, as he should be
free and unrestrained in preaching the doctrine of Christ to
the poor and to all who will listen. That's the
form letter she puts together for these people. And today
I don't think the Vatican would respond to a handful
of form letters being sent from some American pranks. But
this was the late thirties. The idea that American Catholics

(49:13):
could write letters and have them reliably reached the Vatican
in just a couple weeks, that's a pretty new idea
in the nineteen thirties, Brandon, people have not been able
to just send a letter to the Vatican for a
very long time. That's a really new concept. And the
Church has zero experience dealing with a fan write in campaign.
No one really has experienced with fan write in campaigns.

(49:36):
And that's what this amounted to. If you wanted to
like why Star Trek is a thing, it's because they
organized after Star Trek got canceled the original series, one
of the first fan write in campaigns, and like, no
one had been I mean technically there had been some
things like that before, but it hadn't really ever happened before.
And so for the first time watch a studio suit
See like fans sending in letters about a show are like,
wait a second, is there money in this?

Speaker 5 (49:58):
You know?

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Right?

Speaker 2 (50:00):
And it's a similar thing here where like the Vatican
is like, whoa, this must really mean a lot of
people are pissed off at what we've did. If four
or five letters have showed up been the Vatican, I
don't know how many show up any right, seems like
a lot back then because the Church has no experience
dealing with this sort of shit. So the pupe folds,
or at least someone in the Vatican folds, and by

(50:22):
December of nineteen thirty seven, it was okayed for Father
Coughlin to take to the airwaves again. In January of
nineteen thirty eight. Everyone was thrilled when he returned, and
in short order he forms a fascist club called the
Christian Front, which kind of sounds like a militia and
that it describes itself like Father Coughlin described it as
a literal crusade against anti Christian elements and American culture. Now,

(50:44):
is it not?

Speaker 4 (50:46):
Did I hate that this kind of wash? I think? Okay?

Speaker 2 (50:52):
He was. He was on the edge of trying to
frame it as a militia. Sure, but he doesn't. He
has to kind of pull back on this because not
long after he introduces the Christian Front in nineteen thirty eight,
Christal Knocked happens, like the Nazis do Christalnoch in Germany,
and there's mobs burning synagogues, breaking Jewish buildings, murdering people

(51:14):
in the street, all sorts of a horrific shit, and
the world's conscience is shocked. This is widely reported on
and people are horrified, in part because folks like Elizabeth
Dillon had been saying there's no racism in Nazi Germany.
They're just having to defend themselves periodically against the violence
of the Jews. But it's entirely defensive, and this krystal
knock makes it impossible to continue that lie. Right afterwards,

(51:34):
the owner of Coughlin's main station demanded to take an
early look at the script for his next broadcast, like
the day after Christallknock. This guy's like, we need to
look at what he's going to put out before we
let that probably, And sure enough he finds the script
filled with angry and insane allegations against the Jewish people,
and he demanded changes. Father Coughlin did alter the script,

(51:55):
but in his final broadcast he still claimed that Christallnock
hadn't been anyone's fault really, or at least it hadn't
been any Christians fault, and so it wasn't something any
Americans should concern themselves over. His attitude was more like,
this is just a natural reaction and part of because
of all the bad things the Jews have done. But
you know, to whatever, you could blame, maybe the government
of Germany for it has nothing to do with Christianity,

(52:17):
and it's nothing Americans should be concerned by. And you
shouldn't feel bad for these Jews, really, you know, that's
kind of his attitude. He's a massive piece of shit.
He's one of the worst people who ever lived. Now,
this makes a lot of people very angry, but not
Liz Dilling. She fucking loves Father cough However, she soon
had to devote her time to less enjoyable things. The
nineteen forty elections were coming up, and once again Dilling

(52:40):
intended to do her part to replace FDR with a
proper nationalists. The fact that another World War was obviously
coming made the concern even more immediate Elizabeth couldn't bear
to see the United States opposed Nazi Germany in nineteen
thirty eight, she actually visited Germany, attending the Nuremberg Rally
that year, and love she goes to a fucking Nuremberg rally.

(53:03):
Liz Dilling, Oh yeah, oh yeah, she could not be
just the Nazist Nazi whoever Nazi this lady. It's very funny.
One of my favorite things, because Liz Dilling, her writing
is still somewhat popular among the far right today. In fact,
like to this on eleven or so fucking Glenn Beck

(53:23):
quoted her on his show and trying to get people
to read. I think it was the Red Network. So
she periodically comes back up. But you can find her
writing on like outright neo Nazi websites, And I've read
some articles from actual modern Nazis who will criticize her
by being like she didn't actually know anything about national
socialist ideology, like she was not knowledgeable about the tenets

(53:44):
of national socialism. And they're right about this, like Liz,
I know more about Nazism than Liz Dillon ever did, right,
Like she she is not well read about what the
Nazis believe, because all that matters to her is that
they hate the Jews and the Communists, right, Like, That's
that's what really matters about Nazism, you know. So Liz
was never a Nazi in the sense that she actually

(54:06):
understood a lot of what Hitler wanted. But she was
a Nazi in the more important sense that she understood
all that Hitler really needed her to understand about him,
which is, you know, these people hate Jews and Communists, right,
you know, that's it. After World War Two started in
nineteen thirty nine, agents of the German state in the
US tried to use Liz as a voice, and she
was invited to speak at the German American Booned gatherings

(54:29):
that year, while she extoed the virtues of the Germany
that she had briefly seen. As the next presidential election
wound closer, Liz again readied herself for feverish activity. Unfortunately,
there were again no Republicans her met with her approval.
Thomas Dewey had prosecuted the leader of the German American Booned,
and Robert A. Taft had worked for the AFL as
a lawyer. Arthur Vandenberg, a conservative Michigan Senator Dilling otherwise

(54:53):
liked backed the hated New Deal. Bereft of hope, Elizabeth
pinned an essay about her breathless desire for a presidential
man on a white horse. This is like one of
the very first and you'll see bits of this today,
like American conservatives yearning for like an American Pinochet or
an American Caesar. Elizabeth's the first person to really write

(55:14):
this out in a very direct way where she says, God,
all we need is our own sexy, charismatic fascist. If
only we had a Hitler. That's really She's the first
right winger in America to write and if only we
had a Hitler piece. And I'm going to quote from
Dye's thesis here. She proclaimed in her essay that there
had to be a better candidate out there who could
defeat Roosevelt. Elizabeth encouraged the Democratic nominee to step forward

(55:36):
and let it be known that he could end communism
single handedly. The public enjoyed her so much that they
felt encouraged to take up arms and look for a
better presidential candidate. Eventually, Elizabeth came to terms, as she
did in the nineteen thirty six election, that she must
support the candidate who opposed Roosevelt without any type of enthusiasm.
Dillan supported Wendell L. Wilkie for president. And this doesn't work.

(55:58):
You know, the situation is about as dire as it
can be for Liz. You know, democracies hanging in the ballance.
And so Elizabeth knows what she has to do. The
only thing that could possibly defeat FDR's political machine and
save the United States she has to write a book
so racist she can only publish it under a pseudonym.
It's the only way to win, the only way to

(56:18):
save America. Something I put my own country. Yeah, I
got a hunger down and write a book so racist
that in nineteen forty I don't feel safe putting my
name is a white woman on it.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Beautiful perfect no notes also the self hatred in that
as well of people will take it more seriously under
some other name. Probably I'm assuming she chose a man's name. Wow, yes, yes,
did I choose I'm assuming correctly.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
So. The Octopus was billed as an expose of the
shadowy network of influence behind the New Deal in Roosevelt. Now,
when you hear Octopus and the title of something written
by an anti Semite anyone who knows they're Nazi political
cartoons things of this image. Sobey's gonna put it on
screen right now. There's a few versions of this political cartoon,
but these are all political cartoons from Nazi Germany that

(57:10):
feature usually like a globe and then an octopus that's
like reaching its tentacles out over the world, and there's
like a star of David on the octopus's head or
over the octopus, and the octopus like has a face.
It's like a caricature of a Jewish man. Sometimes there's
a few variants of this you'll see, right, but it's
like octopus, an octopus meant to sort of represent the

(57:32):
extensive Jewish conspiracy.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Right.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah, So Dylan's book The Octopus was in fact so
racist that the name she the fake name she picked.
She can't just go with even a normal fake name.
She has to make it the fake name of a
religious leader so that maybe people won't find it as racist.
So her pseudonym is the Reverend Frank Woodruff Johnson. Okay, yeah,
that'll make people ignore the racist friend Frank Woodruff Johnson.

(58:00):
As I explains, quote, when people wrote to Dilling with
questions about the Jewish faith, she often referred them to
Johnson's fine book. The Jews can never prove that I'm
anti Semitic, she said, I'm too clever for them. I
think I think, I think I might be able to
prove your anti semitic. That sentence, for example, does a
good job alone? Does it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
That really, that's really all I gotta do. Yeah, that's
the Bechdel cast for anti Semitism right there, the Bechdel test. Yeah. Uh.
Dialing arranged for Hudson, a Jew bating pamphleteer in Omaha, Nebraska,
to distribute her book. For an idea of how bad
the book was. I'm just going to read you one
brief snippet from the text. Did Americans get a truthful
impression from the press about the communist, socialist, anarchist church

(58:43):
burning Spanish government strongly favored by Jewry. This is her
part of her talking about, like during the Spanish Civil War,
how like the list like anarchists and kind of left
wing elements would like light Catholic churches on fire because
in part they were also opposing the Catholic Church was
backing the Franko whist regime, and she's divorcing all of
that from its historical context and just saying the Jews

(59:04):
did it. The je Jews part all the churches. Yeah,
and also just that like the church burning's favored by jewry.
We took a poll and they all love it. In
a shock turn of events, the Octobus was not a
best seller and did not impact the election in any way.
The United States entered World War Two, no matter how
much Father Coughlin and Liz Dillings shouted that it shouldn't.

(59:27):
Liz was also an active member of the America First
Committee and helped to found the Mother's Movement, which was
a protest campaign that was like a last minute attempt
to try to shame America into not entering the war
against the Nazis. And here's how Lillian Greenwald describes the
Mother's Movement that this is like kind of her last
big hurrah at trying to create a political movement. Here's

(59:48):
how Lillian Greenwall describes the protests that they took part
in nineteen forty one. This was for an article on
fascism in America. Under Miss Dilling's guidance, the Mothers promptly
went on a rampage. While Congress was considering matters of
grave importance to our national destiny, they were exploiting all
the techniques of mass pressure with a few womanly frills
of their own. They deluged congressmen with pleas, threats, imprecations,

(01:00:10):
and cajolery by way of letters, telegrams, petitions, and personal visits. Alternatively,
as it suited their purpose, they dabbed genteely at their
eyes with delicate white handkerchiefs, or howled lustily in burlesque heartbreak.
In August of nineteen forty, more than one hundred Detroit
and Cleveland mothers descended on Washington, where, in a Roman
holiday spirit, they hanged Senator Claude Pepper and effigy. Later

(01:00:30):
swathed in funeral garments, they established a death watch over
the Senate while it debated the conscription bill. The mothers
were excluded from the Senate gallery, but allowed to use
the Senate reception hall. Their major coup was the Mother's
Crusade against seventeen seventy six, a demonstration which sought to
prevent the passage of the Lynn Lease Bill. In February
March nineteen forty one, marshaled by missdialing with Charles B. Hudson,

(01:00:51):
editor of the rabid antisemitic dope sheet America in Danger
stage managing behind the scenes, about five hundred and battled
mothers stormed the halls of Congress.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Wow, so yeah, that's a lot of histrionics, the theatric,
it's really yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
She's just trying helping no one. No one can critique
a mother for being concerned about their sons dying, you know,
and using that to like, you're not concerned about people dying.
You're concerned about people stopping Hitler. That's what this is,
that's about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
And you don't actually care about their sons fighting in
a war at all.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
You just don't want And.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
There's entertain there's a beautiful moment. You can tell how
much this pisses people off. Senator Carter Glass, who's like
a Southern senator, and it's like this very much like
a Southern hospitality. Pull the test, Kiti, You're never supposed
to be like rude, especially to women in public. He
gets he gets asked about these protests and he's like,
I believe it would be put in it to inquire
whether they are mothers. I don't believe these are moms.

(01:01:55):
Let's check it out.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
Great quote.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Once the US entered World or two, Dilan continued to
speak out against it, to crying rationing and blaming the
Jews for everything. She was ultimately charged under the Smith
Act for sedition in July of nineteen forty two. Oh
This was part of the unfortunately short lived Brown Scare,
in which the federal government briefly turned its efforts to
finding and prosecuting fascist sympathizers. The resulting trial, Usvwinrod included

(01:02:21):
twenty six defendants, and Dilling lost top billing to another
fascist we've discussed on this show. She denied trying to
incite a mutiny in the armed forces by distributing fascist propaganda,
and in nineteen forty four the case expanded to charging
the defendants for their involvement in a worldwide Nazi movement.
The charges were dismissed in nineteen forty six because the
evidence that they'd actually violated US law was pretty weak. Unfortunately,

(01:02:44):
the long term effect of the Brown Scare was per
Christine Erickson to give a government stamp of approval for
targeting unpopular dissidents who had disagreed with the political status quo,
thereby helping to set the stage from the Karthi witch hunt,
and that they did right. Scary, it doesn't amount too much.
The Red Scare uses the Brown Scare some of the
precedent head set to go after the opposite kind of people.

(01:03:08):
Elizabeth Stilling's work was cited during the Red Scare by
Joseph McCarthy repeatedly, and in the post war period, she
predictably became a vociferous Holocaust and I are not super shocking, right,
not shocking at all? Good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
Oh god, everything's so depressing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
It's again, how little things changed, all the little things like, yeah, predictable,
everything's done.

Speaker 4 (01:03:31):
I've heard that before. Yeah, a Holocaust and I are okay.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Holocaust are Yeah, she gets it. She gets into that
growth industry.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
I certainly understand at this point in time. How Actually,
I don't really understand how people can be Holocaust deniers.

Speaker 4 (01:03:48):
I don't, but I understand that they are at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
However, immediately after the Holocaust, how does Holocaust denial land
with people?

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
Not good?

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Convenient? It's easy, Yeah, it's convenient, it's easy. Yeah. Most
of her life is not that interesting. After this point,
she does write a book even more racist than the Octopus,
which you can still find in Nazi bookstores and telegram
channels to this day.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
Is it even more racist than the Octopus?

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Yeah, even more racist than the Octopus? Racist and even
more racist her two books. One of her favorite conspiracy
theories later in life is that Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower was
a secret Jew. He's Heidi.

Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Kay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Yeah. She also include JFK's New Frontier of being the
Jew Frontier, So, you know, great, real creative.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
At the end of her life, she seriously wouldn't hill
on Twitter these days.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Yeah. By the end of her days, Liz couldn't even
support Barry Goldwater because his running mate had been a
prosecutor at Nuremberg. She's too much of a fascist for
Barry Goldwater.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
You know what's cool. There's hateful person, You guys know
what's really cool. Though she's dead.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
She is dead. She thirtieth nineteen sixty six and Lincoln, Nebraska.

Speaker 5 (01:05:10):
Yep, hope it hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Yeah, fingers crossed.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Geez Yep, Liz, I just flipped my pencil. I know,
I saw frustration.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Yeah, I saw Katie getting angry and angry.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, it's frustrating.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):
But she is dead, so there is that, but it
does feel like her spirit lives on in far too
many people.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
And it is depressing always yep to see how little
has changed, the.

Speaker 4 (01:05:41):
Attacks, the phrasing of the attacks, the lies.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Yeah, yep, yeah, it's cool. I love it. Well, Katie.
Where can people find you online?

Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
Thank you for asking. You can find me over at
some more news and even more news.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
We do a few shows a week with Cody Johnston.
We've got a Patreon live streams sometimes. Now get in
the hang of it. Yeah, it's fun, it's fun, it's new,
it's different.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
I don't know how people do it every day. Yeah,
but it feels like a party. So check us out.
Look at our socials and you'll see when we're live
streaming and it's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Yep. Yeah, we'll check that out. And uh yeah, check
out this podcast. Next week we'll have someone else for you,
you know, hopefully who isn't this person? Definitely who isn't
this person? But I don't know it'll be I can't read.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
I don't know I would come back.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
What is this my podcast? All right? We'll find if
we're done, anyone, go go away, hy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:07:08):
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