Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Elizabeth Dilling: The Original Candace Owens

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Robert concludes the Liz Dilling story with her thrilling exploits to support Father Coughlin in taking down FDR and supporting the Nazis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Also media. 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 talking with my guest for this week.

Katie stole. Katie, let's pretend we weren't talking. How are you doing? How are you doing? Everything fine and innocent? Absolutely nothing incriminating happening over here. Nothing incriminating at all. Aboveboard legal.

You had the right to own those F-22s. I can vouch for. this woman. This woman has done nothing wrong. Nothing wrong except watch Gilmore girls. Nothing wrong. Those were your recreational F-22s. You were allowed to have them. Absolutely. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. There was no anything inside those eyes. They turned black. It scared the hell out of me. Evil, wake up. I'm the one that saw the murder take place by Crevettes. And DePippo. Anthony DePippo showed no signs of remorse, appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum.

I said, I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the devil's quarry in the Bone Valley Feed on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joy is essential, and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. One. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby.

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She's calling the hotel while they're checked in together. Yeah, that's right, Sophia. And it gets worse. It's Vacate to Vacation Week on the OK Storytime podcast, where she caught him buying gifts on Amazon and then taped the 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. So she planted evidence before he even took off? And spoiler, Sophia, two years later,

karma hits so hard, he's calling his ex-wife in tears, saying about his mistress, what a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show Off Campus. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit. What's next for season two and just how close the off campus cast really is?

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she's, you know, she's the first, honestly, she's the first, I had titled this as like the first fucking Candace Owens or something like that, or Laura Lumerick, she's got pieces of those. But, you know, now that I think she is more like the precursor to Phyllis Schlafly, 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 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. Absolutely. She tapped into that fear mongering grift, real. Yeah, yeah, early 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 it clearly is. It's a smart lady who had the wrong influences and a brain that wasn't put to its

proper use and then found its uses. That's what I was getting from our first episode. 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? It would it 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 again, that's her second big book, right? That's basically this telephone book of all of the communists in the country and the secret left 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, this is dedicated to the professional patriots. And she describes it as everyone who is as crazy as she is and believes that the whole country is about to fall to their 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 book's intro warned about the coming 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 and government, and is undermining America like a cancerous growth. First off. It's so embarrassing how little these conversations have changed. 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 immorality, class hatred, the horsemen of class hatred, the horsemen of pacifism for the sake of Red Revolution. That's just bad writing, Liz. That's just bad writing. She's taking some real liberties here. Yeah.

Before she gets into the book, she makes sure to thank the staunch D.A.R, of which the author, unfortunately, is not a member, which is so sad. And she calls the D.A.R. the best informed body of women on this subject in America. She just cannot stop looking those boots. Another person she thinks is Mr. Harry Young, who we 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 was 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 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 U.S. 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 the Democratic Party would be devoured by the Socialist Party. How's the Socialist Party doing today? Yeah, I know.

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 460 American organizations, communist, radical pacifist, anarchist, socialist, or IWW controlled. That's the international workers of the world. The idea that radical pacifism is something to be afraid of is so wild to me. pacifists are just,

there, pacifism only serves the red revolution, right? It just stops you're willing to fight against communism, you know? Oh, okay.

Even though, weirdly enough in like World War II, some of the only people who like her didn't want to fight the Nazis were pacifists. Things get messy. Interesting.

Interesting. In war, your allegiance is in the weird. Yeah. She never examines that at all. Uh, so it listed 13, she lists 1,300 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 without extensive backup. And this is one of the weirdest things about this.

She repeatedly would 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, that's how she writes this book a lot. She'll include mail. So you don't have to take it from 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 a smarter man saying it.

So fascinating. It's really interesting. And yet on some level, she doesn't buy it because she feels called to be the one to write this bullshit. 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 threat 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 to make a place for herself as one of the most prominent red baiters in the country. In the years to come, the Red Network would be cited as expert testimony in a dozen congressional investigations and legislative investigations,

and Erickson 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. There's obviously nothing of any real informative value in the Red Network. The book existed primarily to 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 who helped bring modern anti-Semitism to the U.S., 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 group he's 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 has given them the main thing they need, which is an excuse to go brutalize somebody. The New Republic would warn in an article in the 1930s that Dillings 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, 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 Fascist, that I've quoted a number of times on this. It's the one where she's playing that part of their

game. She's like talking about like a normal party in the United States in like the late 30s and is like, I try to imagine if fascism came to America, which of these people would go? And it's a studying article 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. It was a brilliant writer.

Dorothy Thompson described Elizabeth Dilling as, quote, one of the most successful defamers of private character in this country. And that's a very good way to look at her. 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 the window. Her enemies were communist traitor subversives, and all liberals were socialists, which meant all liberals were some kind of read, as Christine Erickson writes for the Journal of American Studies. Dilling'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, who headed an investigation in 1931 of communist activities in the U.S. and Senator Clayton R. Lusk, who compiled a four-volume report of the Joint Committee investigating seditious activities in New York in 1920. 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. 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 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 her with one-of-a-kind clout amongst cranks, right? She is now like the top of the list when it comes to the... kind of person.

Yeah. Yeah. I always feel like a broken record, but I have to say it. It's just, it's the same playbook now. It's the same fucking thing. Lying is the right way to make a living, you know? It's just easier. 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. 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. Ooh, thank God she didn't have a Twitter account. 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 consulted the Red Network, almost daily, a fact that implies a 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 ringing her husband about Liz's bullshit, and so this guy, like, got involved in making changes. Yeah? It's, yeah, unfortunate what a good business that is to be in in this period of time. But it does work. And smart of her, I guess, to pinpoint that as profitable 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. Yeah, very effective. 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 30s 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 1933. This was an institution in L.A. for years for quite a long time. Did you hear of the Aryan Bookstore? I have not. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arrian Bookstore. 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 1940 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 one paragraph of that document read. Why the Ku Klux Klan? The facts about the Ku Klux Klan, its birth, mission, and purpose have 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 carpetbaggers stooges, and I'm not even going to finish this paragraph,

because it gets a lot worse after that. You get the idea. Liz's book is being sold by these people, right? I don't need to finish that statement for you to know the company her ideas are keeping. My God. Yikes. Yeah. I'm not exaggerating by calling you basically a Nazi 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 hatred. Another Aryan bookstore publication sold right alongside the Red Network was the Christian Youth Corps Weekly Report. Sophie's going to show you a little excerpt from the Christian Youth Corps Weekly Report. It's got a very fascist-looking flag with like a plus sign and like a white circle. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Almost like a swastika. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 Corps Weekly Report, what is Jewish ritual murder? Oh my God.

I've got another 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 of this stuff because it's- Yeah, I don't think that she would shirk from that description. I mean, she, after a certain point, she sure would. But yeah, during this period of time, I think you're right.

She would be proud to be identified with them. Sure. I bet she still continues with her anti-communism part, though. 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 never a thing 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 many garden variety conservatives were also basically Nazis until World War II made that too dangerous an ideology to his spouse. Dilling 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 Germany anti-Semitic.

Oh, yeah. She's absolutely a Nazi. Yeah, she's fucking for sure a Nazi. Easily, easy to judge her as that. If she was living in Germany, she'd have the armband, you know. Hey, don't worry. She'll get to Germany before this story's over. Oh, good.

Don't worry, Katie. Oh, yeah. She hasn't traveled to me. Yeah. For the most part, while she's been on this ideological journey, Elizabeth has had numerous allies, but none of them held a candle to the man who was her primary peer 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,

the finest reactionary rabble-rouser of his day, Father Charles Coughlin. 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 Cothlin was a Catholic priest who was also his era as equivalent of, I mean, he's another like Alex Jones type figure.

There's a lot 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 in his heyday. Now, give you a brief overview of his life. Charles Coughlin had been born in 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario, to a devout Catholic family

who encouraged him to enter preparatory seminary school at St. Michael's College when he was just 13. He'd graduated in 1911 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 shade of Catholicism drew him to the United States, in particular to Waco, where he worked for the Basilean Order. Now, this basically means that he was really into this particular stream of like, it's Catholic, but it's like Orthodox Choden monasticism. Because like the Basilians are mostly popular in Ukraine. but again, it's a weird, like, almost orthodoxy, colored Catholic thing as far as I can tell. I don't understand it. Well, I'm not super into Catholicism.

Anyway, he gets ordained on June 29, 1916, and started teaching psychology and a few other classes at Assumption College in Ontario. In 1918, the Basilean 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. And Father Kaufman is like, well, I don't. see why I need to be more. And so he leaves. Yeah. He didn't like that, right? Whoa, wait, we're pouring out? No, no, no, no, no, no. So he joins a diocese and clergy in Detroit, and his career continued along with that incident until 1926 when he was asked to help raise money to build a new parish and Royal Oak

St. Teresa of Lesu. And he had been interested in the burgeoning new technology of radio for some time and decided to work out a deal with a local station to help him to let him performer 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 first broadcast, and Amy Dye suspect it 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, like, motivates him. Now, Dillings anti-communism was firstly rooted in her Christian faith, but as time grew on, she grew furious at the fact that most priests and pastors were not like Father Coughlin. As one biographer wrote, she became nauseated by her church's attitude towards communism, had to restrain herself to avoid being thrown out, and had no time to waste in a church activity. Right? So she's disgusted by the actual churches that she goes to, and she's really drawn to.

and she's really drawn to this guy because he's acting 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 Kauflitz. That's a big part of why she loves this guy. The guy that refused to take the vow of poverty. That would not take a vow of poverty. It's so interesting. Just despite being raised a certain way, although there's plenty of contradictions in how she was raised, but that the Catholicist, just the religious aspect.

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. It's weird. 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 God says. It's about finding the ultimate boss to back up that whatever your opinion is is right, right? You have the ultimate call to authority.

That's all that it is to them, really, I think. Yeah, yeah, honestly. So one of Liz and Father Cothelan's favorite Bible verses was Matthew 1034. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I come not sent peace, but a sword. Now, this is, you'll get this, that Pete Hegzeth likes that verse too, by the way. They believed only organized political Christianity could defeat the radical left. By the early 1930s, when Dilling was publishing her most influential books, CBS picked up Coughlin's program.

And by the end of 1931, it had more than 40 million listeners. By 1933, the year before the Red Network's publication, Coughlin had 106 clerks to handle the delusive mail from his fans. In 1935, the Radio League of his parish had cashed $4 million in money orders in just 20 months. Coughlin, like Dillon, yeah, so she's, I mean, yeah, this brings in a shitload of money, right? Yeah. Like, Coughlin is famous in a way that almost no one is in this period of time. Unlike Dilling, Coughlin was initially a supporter of FDR, right? not out of any strong political conviction.

He certainly doesn't believe particularly in FDR's politics, but he does believe that he really ought to be involved in a presidential administration. And so in early 1932, he actually meets FDR. And FDR promises, if I get elected, I'll go to you directly for advice. You know, I'll ask you for your advice on different things because Coughlin has a bunch of things he wants to advise the presidency about. So Coughlin 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, Rosadalt's like, well, this guy's obviously crazy. Let's block his number.

Like, I'm not actually going to go to him for advice or anything. And Father Coughlin, when he realizes he's been betrayed, loses his mind and begins dedicating himself to attack the New Deal is godless communism. That's funny to me. 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 can't square with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In 1946, Coughlin starts a weekly newspaper titled Social Justice and used it to attack FDR.

He joined with an alliance of anti-Rosevelt 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 30s, she'd become almost as in demand a speaker as him and 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 50% of the money she collected during her talks, plus expenses, and an honorarium, so she's doing okay, but there still isn't 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 in 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 out in the world while pretending that she's

still holding to her values about that sort of thing. Is a Huey Long, is that the kingfish guy? Yeah, it is. Hewley Long, we'll talk about Huey. Huey is, yeah, he's a, Louisiana governor who is a fascinating

figure dare I say side bastard certified side bastard yeah for sure sidebatch well we're gonna he'll get his episodes

one of these days he's been there's just a lot to say about old Huey they don't make them like that anymore in American politics for better and for worse the king fish guy

yeah I would say so yeah oh yeah nobody like Huey and nobody like Huey. It's a shame. I mean, Huey's last chapter especially, I do wish more, more politicians would take a, take a leaf out of the end of his career. All right. It's time for the bastards on Huey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce

the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, We interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In the moment, it felt like it was going on forever.

I didn't think I was going to live. I was terrified. There was no anything inside those eyes. They turned black. it scared the hell out of me that was your first murder case yes sir fair to say this was the biggest case of your career

yes sir rape a murder for a young 12 year old child as bad as it gets I would think so evil wake up I'm the one that saw the murder take place by crevette and de pippo

Anthony de pippo showed no signs of remorse appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum I said I'm not guilty I'll take it to the grave listen to the devil's Quarry on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the devil's quarry ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Love for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Okay, if you know me, you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration, for support, and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression.

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We just have to find it. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, Hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah

from the hit show off campus. Congratulations on the massive show and massive success. Got through about episode I left the next morning to go meet the guys. Came back, I was like, cool, let's pick up where we left off. And that series had been completed without me. Oh, no.

That's like the number one rule of watching something. It's literally cheating. It's cheating. That's crazy. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit. What's next for season two? And just how close the off-campus cast really is. We're genuinely so close. What's the group chat called?

If you can say, if it's allowed to be said on the pod. That's a great question. One of them is off-campus Brazil. Okay, love it. Shout up Brazil. Shout up Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Dean's B'I's. Our conversation with Mika Abdallah is out now.

Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas in the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So Amy Diasthesis does a good job of describing how Elizabeth evolved as a speaker using lessons that she cribbed from Father Coughlin's program as a rubric. Elizabeth Dilling presented her speeches much like Coughlins, full of anguish and hateful words. Elizabeth would incorporate props into her speeches, such as red banners, YWCA's 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, would accompany Dilling on the piano and pass out sheet music to provoke the audience. A favorite of the audience attending her speeches was Dillings' impressions of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Elizabeth would speak in a Yiddish accent, ridiculing the First 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 as the ones that Coughlin could draw. But she was easily the most famous woman in far right politics for her time. And while a big crowd for her was seldom more than 100 or 200 people,

her fans were unusually dedicated. Dilling later recalled, after one lecture, about 50 people from the audience arose to pledge their lives to Jesus as the antidote to communism. Wow. Okay. Yeah. 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 work began to make up the bulk of the family income. In 1935, 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? Get any guesses to what company he helped start? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is the CBS guy. You're right, you're right.

You're CVS guy, right aid, yeah. Yeah, this is the right aid, dude. Yes, yeah. I never thought, I never even, Charles All Walgreens. I never passed my mind that Walgreens was named after a person. For sure. Yeah, it's a guy. It's a guy.

It starts as a bootlecker, 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 Walgreens' 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 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 play around with radicals. So again, this is not like an actual political firebrand. This is like a rich guy who's on like the board of a big university. He's just not a dick. But she says, some rich men turn 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 and stuff. I have a feeling that's more what she's considering that. Evil. 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, you know, fucking professor on campus crusade that's especially united. She sounds like some Laura Lumer type, for real. Laura Lumer type. There's Bill Ackman in there, you know, some of this fucking. This fear mongering around your universities and the education system. 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 literally just swap the names out. And it's the same way this this reads today when people accuse professors and stuff of this.

Yeah, Dilling was regularly successful in ruining people's careers. But like her idol, Father Coughlin, she resolved the greatest effort of her working life for the fight to unseat FDR. In speeches, that election, the 1936 election, Dilling told audiences of D. D.A.R. members and Rotarians that if FDR won re-election, there would be zero chance of another free election ever taking place in the United States. States, and we can see just how right she was. God, she was prescient. Yeah, she really, she saw it all coming. That was the end of democracy in America.

Yeah. 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 this was to sabotage the potential candidacy of another man that she saw is 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. It's like a potential disastrous Republican presidential candidate in 36 is Senator William Borah of Idaho. And her fear was that Senator Bora might win the Republican nomination, which would lead to which she considered a communist versus communist general election, right?

If Borer runs against FDR, it's just two communists on the ballots. Let's take a look at this communist senator. Elizabeth dedicated herself destroying. William Edgar Borah had been born 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 1907. He became known as a progressive insurgent against President Taft's policies and fought against both the Treaty of Versailles

and turned Calvin Coolidge down when he offered to make Borra his running mate in 1924. Borough was mixed on the New Deal, which is why he decided to run in 1936, 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, Borah also is supportive 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 in Liz's book. But you, that's like, that's no go for her. She's been over there.

We, you can't have diplomatic relations with those even though you can't acknowledge that they exist even though they do. It's a very like, we're going to do this with fucking Taiwan for a huge part of like the latter 20th 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, 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 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. I love that. I'm just going to pretend like a la-la-la-la. I don't know what you're talking about. Can't be communist if I don't say so.

It's still a czar over there. Shut up. It's like grow up. It's really funny. Like children. As Di 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 5,000 copies at its national convention in Cleveland. Soon after, Elizabeth started taking credit for denying Bora the presidential nomination. After basking in the glow of Boris defeat, Elizabeth eyed 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 in front of a large crowd. Elizabeth feared that Roosevelt would out-talk Landon, and therefore FDR would win the presidency.

I got to give Liz credit for one thing, which is she is right. Alfred Landon was a dog-shit candidate for the presidency. Terrible. Especially against FDR. You want to take maybe the man with the greatest natural political instincts, who's ever become a president of the United States, and you put Alf fucking Landon next to his ass. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Just anybody that doesn't like speaking in front of crowds, I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The guy who's scared of speaking of crowds to fight FDR in a fucking political 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 to stop him, but he's going to be it. So I have to coax him into seeming competent.

This 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, and it just makes him, it just eats away at his support base even more. The Dillings even named their dog who they find stupid and annoying Landon.

And that fact tells you a lot that like, but they name their dog after a guy they hate, and also they hate their dog. Also they hate their dog. 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. Yeah. And you don't have to mock your dog. It's like a kid. Yeah, this is confusing. This is confusing. I don't understand your choices. Yeah.

But again, it was Landon or FDR. So Elizabeth and her husband set to work finding a way to save him from the Jewish people they believed were secretly running his campaign. It was one of their kids. It was like, well, Landon's not a great candidate, but all these Jews are running his campaign. That's what's really hurting him. It's like, no, man. Alf Landon, like Barack Obama himself could have, like, injected Alph Landon with the raw essence of his charisma. and the sheer weight of Landon's anti-charisma

would have drowned out the Obama cells. You know what I'm getting at it, right? There's no hope for this man. There's no hope for this man. No one could have made Al Flandin 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 Dillings husband, gets a job with Alph Landon's campaign headquarters in Chicago because, again, they know that, Well, we don't have any connections to Landon. So if we're going to 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 in the Chicago campaign office.

And Albert does get a job for the Landon campaign, but as soon as he starts work on the first day, he realizes something terrible, both of his bosses are Jewish men. How do you think that's got to work for this guy? Here's Die. She describes what happened next. Elizabeth was convinced that only overconfident 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 won and Landon carried only two states, Dilling's solace was to say, I told you so, to the industrialists who had predicted Landon would win. They got what they deserve, she said.

Two states. My God. Have some fucking self-respect, Al. Honestly, if you had any self-respect, the thing to do would be to, like, watch one Roosevelt's speech, like, one of his fucking fireside chats and be like, no, I don't got this juice. I simply don't have the juice to take this man out. Like, I'm Alph Landon. No one can blame me for realizing this is beyond my abilities. My name is Alph Landon.

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 God. He can run circles around me. 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 1936.

You. You. So, Dillon got out of the 36 election with at least more grace than her idol, Father Coughlin. Coughlin had made the mistake of backing a third party, 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 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 months before the election. Coughlin tries to do that, but with starting a new party in the last year of the year, the year of the election.

He's, he's overestimating his own influence here. He is. And again, because Coughlin, Dilling 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 Long Nives in Nazi Germany is that they got rid of the anti-capitalist fascist. Right. But in this day and age, Kaufland is... What was the name of his thing? The Union for Social Justice. So National Union for Social Justice,

and he loves the term social justice. Not in line with her. 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. It very much is considered one.

It's something the church cares a lot about, right? But cares about from its standpoint. I'm not saying you should view the Catholic Church in the 30s is woke in a modern sense. You know what? Yeah. This is a good clarification for me. Yeah. Yeah.

But Father Kofflin's union party is anti-capitalist and anti-monopoulist, right? Because anti-monopoulism is like the big populist interest at the time. It's like trust-busting in the U.S. So if you are populist, you have to be anti-monopoly, kind of regardless of whether you come down. That's just the way things work in America in this point in time. So again, the fact this might sound like Kofflin is somewhat 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, 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 in this mix, he also puts a lot of hatred of the New Deal. Per an article in the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan, quote, The National Union for Social Justice 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 1936 presidential election. They put forward their own candidate, William Limke, hoping Limke could draw enough votes away from Roosevelt to allow Al Flanan 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. 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 9 million votes in November, he will retire from public life. If I can't bring 9 million votes to Limke in November, I'll get off the air.

You'll never hear from Father Coughlin again. Now, had Father Coughlin moved 9 million votes, That would have been 20% of the total votes cast in 1936, which is a hell no one's ever had that kind of popularity. Fucking Joe Rogan could never have come 20% of the electorate move because of his fucking actions. Father Coughlin is not even coming close to this, right? He fumbles historically. The Union Party can't even get a million votes. Very funny.

Now, because he'd promised, Father Coughlin does briefly quit his radio show, although he comes back like two months later. Something like that? I never said I'd go away forever. Well, he says, I said I'd go away 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 going to say no to my friend's dying wish, right? Robert, I promise.

Katie and Robert, I promise my dying wish will not be that you do more podcasts. No, Sophie's dying wish. wish was that I get $11 million to spend on heroin, you know? She always said, I hope Robert gets $11 million for heroin. But I did say, always specified heroin. $11 million for Robert's joy of choice. Yeah, it means heroin. I know.

It's very generous of you in your death. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, heroin, it's good for it. It's not. It's not, but it is time for that.

I mean, it's better than today's drugs. Perfect timing. Fittin all these kids are doing. Fucking heroin. It's basically, oh, Zimbic compared to that shit. Anyway, here's that. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them.

And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. honest talk podcasts on iHeart radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts in the moment it felt like it was going on forever i didn't think i was going to live i was terrified there was no

anything inside those eyes they turned black it scared the hell out of me that was your first murder case yes sir fair to say this was the biggest case of your career yes sir rape a murder for a child He was 12-year-old. Just as bad as it gets. I would think so. Evil, wake up. I'm the one that saw the murder take place by Creveit and DePippo. Anthony DePippo showed no signs of remorse,

appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum. I said I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the devil's quarry on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the devil's quarry ad free with exclusive. content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby.

Okay, if you know me, you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration, for support, and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety.

Olympic champ Sean Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast. There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, Hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show off campus. Congratulations on the massive show and massive success.

Got through about episode five. I left the next morning to go meet the guys. Came back. It was like, cool, let's pick up where we left off. And that series had been completed without me. Oh, no. Oh, that's like the number one rule of watching something. It's literally cheating.

It's cheating. That's crazy. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit. What's next for season two? And just how close the off-campus cast really is. We're genuinely so close. What's the group chat called? If you can say, if it's allowed to be said on the pod.

That's a great question. One of them is off-campus Brazil. Okay. Love it. Shout out Brazil. Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Dean's B. Our conversation with Mika Abdallah is out now.

Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas in the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We're back. Probably shouldn't be comparing heroin to Ozymbic. We still want to get that sweet, sweet Ozymbic money. Ozimic, I don't know much about whether or not it's good for you, actually. So I feel weird about advertising. So we stay neutral around here.

Seems like we need more longitudinal data before I'm going to be doing that. I thought sometimes it's like... I'm not against it. I'm not against drugs that help people. I'm against advertising drugs that I can't vouch for. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. 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. We also, like, don't do hair loss drugs ads because we know that shit doesn't work. 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 Joe, like, that was always the thing that meant something was shame. It was shady. But I think, like, there are actual hair loss solutions now that aren't bullshit. Like, but I'm not super knowledgeable about that world. As you can tell by my head of hair.

Like, what's that? Like, monocidil or whatever. Monoxidil. Yeah, I think it is real, right? Like, there are real stuff now. 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 baldness care is for men. Just don't blame me. Yeah. That's what testosterone. are for, you know, like, fucking RFK Jr. Who wants to stay swollen in his 60s, even though he can't fucking do a proper bench press.

My God, man. Like, Jesus. Sorry. An embarrassment. No, but it's a mess. That's a fun tangent. Yeah. So Father Kaufflin quits his radio show.

And then he's like, oh, my friend's dying wish was that I would be racist on the radio one last time. So he goes back. But Kaufflin 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 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 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 Catholic this works. So this sparks a chain of events that leads to Father Coughlin having his

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 Dilling 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 a monthly bullet and do her mailing list. As always, she solicited donation. No, I mean, she has a lot of readers. She's the only like member of this. 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 her going. It's a proto-patriot type thing, right? I was going to say a little Patreon. Exactly. 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, bright wing crowdfunding kind of deal.

Quote, one woman who's in, and this is Liz talking, one woman whose income was $40 a month. month and he was going blind, sold a $100 bond for $77 and sent $75 to Dilling. An elderly man who worked as a cement mixer sent her $100 and left everything he owned to Dilling and his will. Right? This is kind of how she should be ashamed of herself. Like puts out what people are, right? Because this is partly advertising.

Exactly what you're saying. Yeah. No, no, sorry. I interjected to you. This is shameful. 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 say. send it to me because, you know, you care about this country, right? Give me everything you've got,

you know? It is very much like that give till it hurts evangelical impulse. Yeah. Cleanse your soul by giving me all your money. That's right. That's right. So yeah, she urged her Catholic followers. One of the other things I find funny. So she's not just soliciting for donations in a really modern crowdfunding way. She's 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 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 could 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 in censored platitudes, which defeat the dignity God bestowed on man, but as an altar 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 godlessness 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 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 so 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 30s. The idea that American Catholics could write letters and have them reliably reach the Vatican in just a couple weeks, that's a pretty new idea. In the 1930s, random 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 experience with fan write-in campaigns. 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, I went to studio suits, see like fans sending in letters about a show. Or like, wait a second. Is there money in this? You know? Right. Like, 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 in the Vatican, I don't know how many show up exactly.

It must represent everybody. Right. Seems like a lot back then because the church has no experience dealing with this sort of shit. So the Pope folds, or at least someone in the Vatican folds. And by December of 1937, it was okayed for Father Coughlin to take to the airwaves again in January of 1938. 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 malicious. and that it described itself.

Like, Father Kaufland described it as a literal crusade against anti-Christian elements in American culture. Now, is it not a militia? Did somebody borrow that? It kind of was. I think, okay. 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 1938, Kristolnacht happens. Like the Nazis do Kristallnacht in Germany, and there's mobs, burning synagogues, breaking Jewish buildings, murdering people in the street. All sorts of horrific shit. And the world's conscience is shocked. This is widely reported on, and people are horrified. In part because folks like Elizabeth Dilling 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, Kristallnacht makes it impossible to continue that lie, right? Afterwards, the owner of Coughlin's main station demanded to take an early look at the script for his next broadcast, like the day after Kristallnacht, this guy's like, we need to look at what he's going to put out before we let that hit the air. Probably smart. 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, but in his final broadcast, he still claimed that Kristallnacht hadn't been anyone's fault, really. Or at least, it hadn't been any Christian's 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. And it's nothing American 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 Kaufflin. However, she soon had to devote her time to less enjoyable things. The 1940 elections were coming up, and once again Dilling 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 1938, she actually visited Germany, attending the Nuremberg rally that year and loving it. She goes to a fucking Nuremberg rally. Liz Dilling.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. She could not be just the Naziist Nazi, whoever Nazi, this lady. Jesus. 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, in like 2011 or so, fucking Glenn Beck 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 of national socialism. And they're right about this. Like, Liz, I know more about Nazism than Liz Dilling 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 what really matters about Nazism, you know? So Liz was never a Nazi in the sense that she actually 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 II started in 1939, agents of the German state and the U.S. tried to use Liz as a voice. And she was invited to speak at the German-American boon gatherings that year, while she extowed 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 who met with her approval. Thomas Dewey had

prosecuted the leader of the German-American Boone, and Robert A. Taft had worked for the AFL as a lawyer. Arthur Vandenberg, a conservative Michigan senator, Dilling otherwise liked, backed the hated New Deal. Burriffed 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 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 wing in America to write an 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 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 1936 election that she must support

the candidate who opposed Roosevelt without any type of enthusiasm. Dilling supported Wendell L. Wilkie for president. And this doesn't work, you know, the situation is about as dire as it. can be for Liz, you know, democracies hanging in the balance. 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. It's the only way to save America. Something so racist, I can't put it out under my own name. Yeah. I got to hunker down and write a book so racist that in 1940, I don't feel safe putting my name as a

woman on it. 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, she. Did I choose? Yeah, okay, I'm assuming correctly. 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 their Nazi political, cartoons, thanks of this image. So he's going to 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 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 that's like a caricature of a Jewish man sometimes. There's a few variants of this you'll see, right? But it's like an octopus meant to sort of represent the extensive Jewish conspiracy, right? Yeah. So Dilling'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 racism. That'll do it. Reverend Frank Woodruff Johnson.

Sure. As Dye 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 might be able to prove your anti-Semitic. That sentence, for example, does it?

That sentence alone, does it? Yeah, yeah, that's really all I got to do. Yeah, that's the Bechtel cast for anti-Semitism right there. The Bechtel test, yeah. Dilling arranged for Hudson, a Jew-baiting pamphleteer in Oman. Mahonda Braska 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 burning Spanish government strongly favored by jury?

This is her part of her talking about like during the Spanish Civil War, how like the 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 Francoist. regime. And she's divorcing all of that from its historical context and just saying, the Jews did it. The Jews did it. The Jews burnt all the churches. Yeah. And also just that like the church burning's favored by jury. We took a poll and they all love it. In a shock turn of events, the Octopus was not a bestseller and did not impact the election in any way. The United States entered World War II, no matter how much Father Coughlin and Liz Dilling shouted that it shouldn't. 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 how Lillian Greenwald describes the protests that they took part in in 1941. This was for an article on fascism in America. Under Ms. 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, and cajolery by way of letters, telegrams, petitions, and

personal visits. Alternatively, as it suited their purpose, they dabbed genteelly at their eyes, with delicate white hangarchiefs or howled lustily and burlust heartbreak. In August of 1940, more than 100, Detroit and Cleveland mothers descended on Washington, where in a Roman holiday spirit they hanged Senator Claude Pepper in effergy. 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 1776, a demonstration which sought to prevent the passage of the Lynn Lease bill in February to March 1941,

marshaled by Ms. Dilling, with Charles B. Hudson, editor of the rabid anti-Semitic dope sheet America in Danger, stage managing behind the scenes, about 500 embattled mothers stormed the halls of Congress. Wow. So, yeah. That's a lot of histrionics and theatrical displays. Yeah. And she's just trying to, no one can critique a mother for being concerned about their sons dying, you know.

And using that too, like, if you're not concerned about people dying, you're concerned about people stopping Hitler. That's what this is about. You don't actually care about their sons fighting in a war at all. You just don't want to intervene. There's a beautiful moment. You can tell how much this pisses people off. Senator Carter Glass, who's like a southern senator and is like this very much like a southern hospitality polites kind of. You're never supposed to be like rude, especially to women in public.

He gets asked about these protests. And he's like, I believe it would be pertinent to inquire whether they are mothers. I don't believe these are moms. Let's check it out. Great quote. Once the U.S. entered World War II, Dylan continued to speak out. against it, decrying rationing and blaming the Jews for everything. She was ultimately charged under the Smith Act for sedition in July of 1942.

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, U.S. v. Winrod included 26 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. In a 1944, the case expanded to charging the defendants for their involvement in a worldwide Nazi movement. The charges were dismissed in 1946 because the evidence that

they'd actually violated U.S. law was pretty weak. Unfortunately, the long-term effect of the Brown scare was, per Christine Erickson, to give a government stamp of approval for targeting unpopular dissidents who disagreed with the political status quo, thereby helping to set the stage from McCarthy witch hunt. And that they did, right? The Brown scare doesn't amount to much the red scare uses the brown scare some of the the precedent headset to go after the opposite kind of people elizabeth's dillings work was cited during the red scare by joseph mccarthy repeatedly and in the post-war period she predictably became a vociferous holocaust denier not super shocking right not shocking at all um good stuff oh god everything's so depressing it's again how little things

changed all of this like yeah predictable everything Everything's done. I've heard that before. Yeah. Holocaust denier, okay. Holocaust denier, yeah. She gets into that growth industry. I certainly understand at this point in time how, actually, I don't really understand how people can be Holocaust deniers.

I don't. But I understand that they are at this point. It's convenient. However, immediately after the Holocaust, how does Holocaust denial land with people? Not good? It's 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. Is it called Even More Racist than The Octopus? Yeah, even more racist than the octopus. Racist and even more racist. There are two books. One of her favorite conspiracy theories later in life is that Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower, was a secret Jew. He's hiding it.

Okay. He's keeping it hidden. Oh, the secret Jew things. He's secretly Jewish. Yeah. She also include JFK's new frontier of being the Jew frontier. So, you know, great, real creative at the end of her life. She seriously would kill on Twitter these days.

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. Wow. You know what's cool, though? Hateful person. Do you guys know what's really cold, though? She's dead.

She is dead. She dies April 30th, 1966 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yep. Hope it hurt. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Jeez. Yep.

Liz, I just flipped my pencil. I know. Yeah, I saw Katie get, yeah, I saw Katie getting angry and angry. Yeah, it's frustrating. But she is dead, so there is that. But it does feel like her spirit lives on in far too many people. Yep. And it is depressing always to see how little has changed.

The attacks, the phrasing of the attacks, the lies. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's cool. I love it. Well, Katie, where can people find you online? Thank you for asking. You can find me over at some more news.

and even more news. We do a few shows a week with Cody Johnston. We've got a Patreon. Yeah, I love that guy. We do live stream sometimes now, getting the hang of it. Yeah. It's fun. It's fun.

It's new. It's different. 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. Yep.

Yay. Cool. We'll check that out. And, yeah, check out this podcast next week when 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 the future. I don't know. I would come back. Yeah. What is this? My podcast? Oh, yeah, shit. All right. Well, we're done, anyone. Go, go away. Hi. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out

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Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show Off Campus. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit. What's next for season two and just how close the off campus cast really is? What's the group chat called? One of them is Off Campus Brazil. Okay. The boys have their own group chat called Dean's B'I's.

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