Thorkelson was labeled as "rabidly pro-fascist and antisemitic"[2] and "Jew-baiting, fascist-minded"[3] by contemporary journalists for his use of the Congressional Record to reprint anti-British and anti-Jewish propaganda and his support for retired General George Van Horn Moseley.

During his time in Congress, Thorkelson mailed out 5,000 copies of a friendly, sympathetic interview with Adolf Hitler in collaboration with Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck.

[7][8] Modern historians have described Thorkelson as "best known for his diatribes against Jews and the New Deal and for his calls to revise the United States Constitution"[9] and "a raging anti-Semite and pro-fascist".

[10] Thorkelson inserted into the Congressional Record quotations from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from World Hoax by Ernest Fredrick Elmhurst, from blackshirt Sir Oswald Mosley's Action, from Los Angeles based Nazi-leaning publication Christian Free Press; and defended himself by saying: ... words, "Nazi", "fascist", "anti-racial", "anti-Semitic"... were created by the anti-Americans as a cloak to shield their own subversive activities.

[11]When he ran for re-election in 1940, he was defeated in the Republican primary by former United States Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin.