##### Metadata - Author: [[msnbc.com]] - Full Title: Transcript: The Brooklyn Boys - Category: #articles - URL: <https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/transcript-brooklyn-boys-n1299419> #### Highlights - The What they want is to overthrow the U.S. government and to end democracy in this country – by force. Their plot raised alarming indications that the federal government is not up to the task of dealing with that kind of homegrown threat. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410712)) - A group of armed, American men led by a Catholic Priest with a plot to overthrow the government of the United States, forgotten about and filed away in a stack of old newspapers. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410720)) - The file was, in fact, just massive. It was more than 2500 pages long. That’s as big as the FBI file on the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. And what was in all those pages, it confirmed Gallagher’s suspicions that those men with guns, they weren't kidding around. This was not a playful plot. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410747)) - Father Charles E. Coughlin. A Catholic priest, a radio preacher based out of Royal Oak, Michigan at the Shrine of the Little Flower. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410774)) - were fewer than 130 million people in the whole country. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410783)) - Coughlin wrote fan mail to Benito Mussolini. Coughlin reprinted a speech by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels about how Jews are the real aggressors, and Gentiles everywhere are just victims of the evil Jews. Coughlin translated that Goebbels speech from German into English, then published it word-for-word in his newsletter under his own name. Coughlin organized boycotts of Jewish businesses under the slogan "Buy Christian.” ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410791)) - In 1938, just a few days after Kristallnacht, Coughlin got on the radio to assure his American listeners that they shouldn't be too worried about what they might be hearing out of Germany about Jews being persecuted and Jews being murdered. They shouldn’t be too worried about that because Americans, he explained, should understand that the Jews had it coming. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410794)) - Father Coughlin told his followers that democracy was "doomed.” He said "We are at the crossroads. I take the road to fascism." ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410799)) - Father Coughlin spent every Sunday on the radio encouraging his listeners to feel attacked and put-upon by unseen forces; to admire fascism and fascist leaders, to see democracy as a failure, to hate and fear the supposed worldwide menace of the Jews. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410803)) - By 1938, Father Charles Coughlin— the most listened-to media figure in the whole country— called for the creation of a militia to pursue his aims. He called it “The Christian Front.” ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410807)) - Francis Moran is a Boston, Irish Catholic. He and his mother listened to Father Coughlin every Sunday. And in 1936, Father Coughlin came through Boston and Moran met with him. Coughlin commissioned Francis Moran to become his Lieutenant in Boston. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410832)) - Maddow: Francis Moran was also at the time meeting regularly with the German consul— with the Hitler government's representative in Boston— and with the Nazi official in charge of paying Germany's agents in the United States. Charles Gallagher's own scholarship unearthed evidence that the Christian Front's finances were bolstered by the Hitler government. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410836)) - Francis Moran called publicly for the confiscation of Jewish property in the United States. He told Christian Front rallies that President Roosevelt was a secret Jew— he called him “Mr. Rosenfelt” instead of Mr. Roosevelt. He called for FDR to be "removed from office by force and violence." And that wasn’t just Francis Moran freelancing. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410839)) - Coughlin insinuates President Roosevelt is Jewish. He now starts to call President Roosevelt a tyrant. That tyrannical language is not just, kind of, metaphor. It's got theological grounding where if, if the leader is deemed tyrannical, then physical activity can be taken to remove the tyrant. And so this is where he takes the concept to the Christian Front, we can take up guns against tyrants. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410843)) - Browning Automatic Rifles were stolen from an armory in Waltham, Massachusetts. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410857)) - A dozen cans of cordite. About 1500 rounds of ammunition, as well. Those explosives and that ammo went missing because the commander of a New York National Guard machine gun company took the stuff and gave it to the Christian Front. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410860)) - "A plot to overthrow the United States government with bombs and other arms— some looted from the arsenals of the Army itself— was charged tonight against [individuals] who were arrested and accused of conspiracy to create a revolution. "The plot, [Hoover] said, was aimed against Jews generally and involved seizure of key government agencies such as Federal Reserve banks, post offices, and Public Utilities.” ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410869)) - But in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, Father Coughlin claimed that he had no idea who these people were. Never heard of 'em. He literally tried to argue that they might be a Christian Front, but they were not his Christian Front. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410873)) - The FBI had put an informant inside the Christian Front. They had these stockpiles of weapons that they had seized from these guys during the arrests. They had information about the group's specific plans, all the military training they’d been undergoing to prepare for it. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410880)) - Father Coughlin, who had initially tried to distance himself from the Christian Front when they were charged, he proclaimed himself vindicated and victorious. He said the whole prosecution was all ginned up just to try and make him look bad. He said, in his words, that it was “a hoax.” ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1557513647/21410885))