The weekly magazine "Social Justice"

Father Coughlin began publication of a weekly magazine called  Social Justice during this period. Coughlin claimed that Marxist atheism in Europe was a Jewish plot against America. The December 5, 1938 issue of Social Justice included an article by Coughlin which resembled a speech made by Joseph Goebbels on September 13, 1935 attacking Jews, and communists, with some sections being copied verbatim by Coughlin from an English translation of the Goebbels speech. At a rally in the Bronx in 1938, he alledgely gave a Nazi salute and said, "When we get through with the Jews in America, they'll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing." Coughlin did state "Nothing can be gained by linking ourselves with any organization which is engaged in agitating racial animosities or propagating racial hatreds." Some other articles Coughlin lambasted “Jewish” financiers and their control over world politics, culminating with a story recounting his own version of the infamous 20th Century forgery, the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to be minutes of meetings of Jewish leaders as they plotted to take over the world. As war approached, Coughlin's politics shifted further toward the extreme right. He promoted fascist dictatorship and authoritarian government as the only cure to the ills of democracy and capitalism. He associated with fascist leaders and known antisemitic thinkers in Great Britain and the United States, including.

In a 1938 broadcast, Coughlin helped inspire and publicize the creation of the Christian Front, a militia-like organization that excluded Jews and promised to defend the country from communists and Jews. The Front organized “Buy Christian” rallies throughout the country. In New York City, police arrested several of the militiamen for harassing Jews on the street, many of them seniors, women, and children. In the context of increasingly violent language, the Christian Front made national news in 1940, when the FBI arrested 18 members in Brooklyn, New York, on suspicion of conspiring to overthrow the government. Its members continued to attract headlines during the early 1940s for violent acts against Jews. An isolationist from the beginning of his career, Coughlin had blamed Jews for inciting the strife in Europe. He vigorously opposed any intervention by the United States government. Even after the Japanese navy and air force attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Coughlin denounced the entry of the United States into World War II, claiming that the Jews had planned the war for their own benefit and had conspired to involve the United States. This last missive proved to be his undoing, however, for the U.S. Government had been tracking Coughlin even before Pearl Harbor. In September 1941 his request for a passport was denied by the State Department with the stated reason: “reported pro-Nazi.” Coughlin's comments after Pearl Harbor and changing public sentiment towards entry into the war gave the government its opportunity. In 1942, agents of the FBI raided Coughlin's church and seized all parish records and personal papers. During the investigation, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle argued that Coughlin's magazine Social Justice had repeated “in this country the lines of enemy propaganda warfare being waged against this country from abroad.”
While U.S. authorities permitted Coughlin to continue publishing his magazine, it prohibited him from using the U.S. Postal Service to disseminate it. On May 1, 1942, Archbishop Edward Mooney, the new leader of the Catholic Church in Detroit, instructed Coughlin to cease all non-pastoral activities on pain of being defrocked.