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Little-known History
of US Antisemitic
Far-right Detailed
H I STORY
ELEANOR LINAFELT | JE STAFF
WHILE MUCH OF the
story of the Christian Front,
a far-right, antisemitic and
anticommunist movement
occurred elsewhere along the
East Coast, it had its begin-
nings in Philadelphia.

Charles Gallagher, an
associate professor of history
at Boston College, detailed
that history in his recent book
“Nazis of Copley Square:
Th e Forgotten Story of the
Christian Front, 1939-1945”
and during a Feb. 7 webinar
hosted by the Institute for
Jewish-Catholic Relations at
Saint Joseph’s University.

Gallagher said Marine
Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley
Butler received a call to his
Main Line home in 1935
from Charles Coughlin, the
“foremost media priest of the
1930s.” Coughlin, who hosted a
wildly popular antisemitic
and anticommunist radio
show from Detroit that aired
across the country, encour-
aged Butler to lead Christian
soldiers to invade Mexico.

He saw the Mexican govern-
ment as communist and was
concerned about Catholics
being persecuted.

While the Christian Front
itself hadn’t yet been founded,
Gallagher said that this
“exchange is fascinating and
coalesces a number of themes
that play out in the book:
militarism, paramilitarism,
Catholic theology and Catholic
grievance claims.”
But Gallagher said he did
not want to write a book about
Coughlin, who has been the
subject of many studies.

“I wanted to write about
the foot soldiers who do dirty
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM work for Father Coughlin,” he
said. “No one has written about
them.” One such fi gure was John
F. Cassidy, the leader of the
Christian Front in New
York. Aft er the movement
formed in 1939, he hosted a
rally in Philadelphia where,
as Gallagher recounted, he
told his audience of 10,000
that “it’s morally permissible
for Catholics to take up arms
against communists.”
Cassidy planned to lead a
bombing campaign in New
York that the Christian Front
would blame on communists.

“Th ey thought they would
save the nation by creating this
plot,” Gallagher said.

While Cassidy’s plot was
ultimately stopped by the
FBI and he was arrested, the
Christian Front persisted.

It moved its operations
to Boston, where Francis
P. Moran, a leader in the
movement, found mentorship
in Herbert Scholz, a Nazi based
there. Membership grew, which
attracted the attention of
British intelligence. One of
their agents recruited Frances
Sweeney, a devout Catholic
dedicated to promoting human
rights in Boston, to lead the
Irish American Defense
Association, which she never
knew was a front for British
intelligence. Eventually, under pressure
from Sweeney’s organiza-
tion, the local police detained
Moran. He disbanded the
Christian Front but moved his
operations underground.

According to Gallagher, the
fallout of the Christian Front
resulted in “gang warfare”
against Jews in Boston in 1943.

“Gangs of Irish Catholic
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