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<font color="black"> The John Birch Society is a conservative American exceptionalist organization founded in 1958 to fight what it saw as growing threats to the Constitution of the United States, especially a suspected communist infiltration of the United States government, and to support free enterprise. In the past it was known to have promoted a conspiracy theory view of history, and this was one of the reasons the Society had been marginalized within the conservative movement since the 1960s.
It was named after John Birch, a United States military intelligence officer and Baptist missionary in World War II who was killed in 1945 by armed supporters of the Communist Party of China, and whom the JBS describes as "the first American victim of the Cold War." His parents joined the society as life members.
Based in Appleton, Wisconsin, the society describes itself as "a membership-based organization dedicated to restoring and preserving freedom under the United States Constitution." It says that members come from all walks of life and are active in all 50 states via local chapters. Its mission is to achieve "Less Government, More Responsibility, and — With God's Help — a Better World." The JBS was formed as an educational organization and does not endorse candidates, but has often come out against political figures seen as un-American.
The John Birch Society is anti-totalitarian, particularly anti-socialist, anti-communist, anti-fascist and libertarian. It strenuously defends what it sees as the original intention of the U.S. Constitution, rooted in Judeo-Christian principles. It idealizes the Founding Fathers as anti-communists. The John Birch Society opposes what it describes as collectivism, which in its view includes wealth redistribution, economic interventionism, socialism, communism, and fascism. The John Birch Society believes that collectivist conspiracies throughout the world have significantly shaped history, and it seeks to expose and eliminate their claimed control in government in the modern era. This degree of conspiracism has isolated the Society from many other conservative groups.
During the 1960s, The John Birch Society opposed aspects of the Civil Rights Movement due to concerns that the movement had a number of communists in important positions and due to the fact that it was backed and supported by the American Communist Party. The John Birch Society opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the belief that it was in violation of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped the rights of individual states to make laws regarding Civil Rights. For example, in 1962, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy warned Martin Luther King, Jr. that, "communist agents were manipulating King". Then, in 1963, President John F. Kennedy also told King of his concern regarding two communist members and asked they be removed.
The John Birch Society has always described itself as being open to people of all races and religions and claims it is staunchly against racist beliefs.
Finally, The John Birch Society is anti-globalization and has an illegal immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It has been a major opponent of the United Nations, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA, and other free-trade agreements with other nations, believing them to be destructive to American principles, the economy, freedom and national sovereignty.
The John Birch Society was established in Indianapolis, Indiana on December 9, 1958 by a group of twelve "patriotic and public-spirited" men led by Robert Welch, Jr., a retired candy manufacturer from Belmont, Massachusetts. A noted founding member was Fred Koch, founder of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in America. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as The Blue Book of the John Birch Society and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new JBS member receiving a copy.
"According to Welch," writes the progressive watchdog group Political Research Associates about the Birchers, "both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order managed by a 'one-world socialist government.'
Welch saw "collectivism" as the main threat to western civilization, and far-left liberals as "secret communist traitors" who provide the cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction."[1]
The John Birch Society's objective has been to fight communism and totalitarianism using some of communism's own techniques — organization of front groups, infiltration of other groups,and letter-writing campaigns. They have organized grassroots chapters in every state and are the only Americanist organization to have full-time paid field staff assisting those chapters. Their activities include distribution of literature, pamphlets, magazines, videos and other educational material while sponsoring a Speaker's Bureau and encouraging members to conduct letter-writing campaigns especially to elected officials.
One of the first public activities of the JBS was a "Get US Out!" (of membership in the UN) campaign, which claimed in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] UN is to build a One World Government (New World Order)." In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to "join your local PTA at the beginning of the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise, and go to work to take it over." One Man's Opinion, a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed American Opinion and became the Birch Society's official publication. It has since been replaced by the bi-weekly magazine, The New American.
Robert Welch's underground book, The Politician, which influenced the early JBS, was a lengthy, scathing attack on President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said also that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance but said nothing because he wanted to get his country in the war. It spawned much debate in the 1960s over whether the author really intended to call Eisenhower a communist. G. Edward Griffin, one of his friends, thinks that he meant collectivist. The charge's sensationalism led many conservatives and Republicans to shy away from the group. The book was slightly toned down in the published version with respect to the unpublished version. Welch later tried to distance himself with the work by saying that it was not originally meant to be published because it was a confidential letter among friends.
In the published edition that excises the section just quoted above, there is a footnote on page 278 (footnote 2) and its text appears on pages cxxxviii–cxxxix at the back of the book. That text is as follows:
There are many other passages in both the 1963 published edition and the 1958 unpublished version of The Politician wherein Welch makes clear that he considered Eisenhower to be a Communist and a traitor. Below are a few examples from the unpublished version (aka "private letter") which was mailed by Welch to friends and acquaintances in the summer of 1958.
By March 1961, the Society had an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 members and, according to Welch, "a staff of 28 people in the Home Office; about 30 Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who are fully paid as to salary and expenses; and about 100 Coordinators (or Section Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or part of their salary, or expenses, or both." According to its profile by Political Research Associates, an organization that tracks conspiracists on the Right, JBS "pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives and letter-writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second summit between the United States and the Soviet Union generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the Society. A June 1964 Birch campaign to oppose Xerox corporate sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals." [4] The Birchers' ad-hoc special issues committees have been effective in creating awareness about issues which they believe to be affecting the American way of life. Much of the Society's early views, according to Political Research Associates, "reflects an ultra-conservative business nationalist critique of business internationalists networked through groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)." Birchers elaborated on an earlier Illuminati/Freemason conspiracy theory, imagining "an unbroken ideologically driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of Marxism and Communism, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations"[5]. Unlike most advocates of the Illuminati-Freemason conspiracy theory, however, the Birch Society strenuously denies harboring any anti-Semitic or anti-masonic ideas, and indeed claims many Jews among its membership. At one point a key leader in the JBS, Revilo P. Oliver, resigned after a dispute over his veering off into antisemitic conspiracy theories in public.
Anti-Jewish, racist, anti-Mormon, anti-Masonic, and religious groups criticized the group's acceptance of Jews, nonwhites, Masons, the large number of Mormons in the Society (Ezra Taft Benson, a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, encouraged people to join it), and Welch's alleged feminist, ecumenical, and evolutionary ideas. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Ironically, John Birch had tried to convict a teacher at his Baptist seminary of heresy because of belief in evolution. The teacher was acquitted but soon afterward resigned from the seminary.
The Objectivist Ayn Rand said in a Playboy interview that "I consider the Birch Society futile, because they are not for capitalism but merely against communism." [11]
Republican mainstream unhappiness with the Birch Society intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a possible “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy.” Welch went further in a book titled The Politician, written in 1956 and published by the JBS in 1963, which declared that Eisenhower’s brother Milton was Ike’s superior within the communist apparatus and alleging other top government officials also were communist tools. Included were ex-president Truman, Roosevelt, the previous Secretary Of State John Foster Dulles and former CIA Director Allan W. Dulles. Conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the JBS. Welch responded by attempting to take over Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization founded with assistance from Buckley. The JBS now maintains summer camps which operate across the country and teach youth the ideas of its members.[12]
In October 1964, the Idaho Statesman newspaper expressed concern about what it called an "ominous" increase in JBS-led "ultra-right" radio and television broadcasts, which it said then numbered 7,000 weekly and cost an estimated $10 million annually. "By virtue of saturation tactics used, radical, reactionary propaganda is producing an impact even on large numbers of people who, themselves, are in no sense extremists or sympathetic to extremist views," declared a Statesman editorial. "When day after day they hear distortions of fact and sinister charges against persons or groups, often emanating from organizations with conspicuously respectable sounding names, it is no wonder that the result is confusion on some important public issues; stimulation of latent prejudices; creation of suspicion, fear and mistrust in relation not only to their representatives in government, but even in relation to their neighbors."
In their early days, the JBS shared a common ideology and some overlapping membership with Fred Schwarz and his California-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. John Birch Society influence on U.S. politics hit its high point in the years around the failed 1964 presidential campaign of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who lost to incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Welch had supported Goldwater over Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination, but the membership split, with two-thirds supporting Goldwater and one-third supporting Nixon. A number of Birch members and their allies were Goldwater supporters in 1964 and some were delegates at the 1964 Republican National Convention. The Goldwater campaign in turn brought together the nucleus of what later became known as the New Right, many of whom had been groomed by the Birch Society but whose more pragmatic members realized that the group's views were an impediment to electoral success.
John Birch Society members and allies also authored several widely-distributed books that promoted conspiracy theories and mobilized support for the Goldwater campaign:
In April 1966, the New York Times reported on "the increasing tempo of radical right attacks on local government, libraries, school boards, parent-teacher associations, mental health programs, the Republican Party and, most recently, the ecumenical movement. The Birch Society is by far the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country. It operates alone or in support of other extremist organizations whose major preoccupation, like that of the Birchers, is the internal Communist conspiracy in the United States." By then, a committee called the Movement to Restore Decency (MOTOREDE) was established to promote opinions about child-rearing; in particular, MOTOREDE pushed for a ban on sex education.
The Society wound up at the center of an important free-speech law case in the 1970s, after one of its magazines, American Opinion, accused a Chicago lawyer representing the family of a young man killed by a police officer of being part of a Communist conspiracy to merge all police agencies in the country into one large force. The resulting libel suit, Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., reached the United States Supreme Court, which said opinions cannot be false under the First Amendment (while nevertheless finding for the plaintiff, who prevailed upon retrial).
Key Birch Society causes of the 1970s included opposition to OSHA and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. The organization claimed in 1973 that the regime of Mao Zedong had murdered 64 million Chinese as of that year and that it was the primary supplier of illicit heroin into the United States. This led to bumper stickers showing a pair of scissors cutting a hypodermic needle in half accompanied by the slogan "Cut The Red China Connection." The society also was vehemently opposed to transferring control of the Panama Canal from American to Panamanian sovereignty, resulting in another slogan: "Don't Give Panama Our Canal — Give Them Kissinger Instead."
The John Birch Society was organized into local chapters, imitating Welch's understanding of Communist organizing techniques. Ernest Brosang, a New Jersey regional coordinator, contended it is virtually impossible for opponents of the society to penetrate its policy-making levels, thereby protecting it from anti-Americanist takeover attempts. Its activities included distribution of literature attacking proposed civil rights legislation, warning of the influence of the United Nations, and distributing petitions to impeach liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. To spread their message, members held Sunday showings of documentary films and operated initiatives such as "Let Freedom Ring," a nationwide network of recorded telephone messages. Some Birch Society members also helped organize the "Minutemen," a paramilitary group training to lead guerrilla warfare in case of a Communist take over but later left the Society, saying it did little but talk.
By the time of Welch's death in 1985, the Birch Society's membership and influence had dramatically declined because partly of the ending of the Cold War, but the UN's role in the Gulf War and President George H. W. Bush's call for a 'New World Order' appeared to many JBS members to validate their claims about a "One World Government" conspiracy. (See, for example, The New American February 26, pp. 22–23). Growing right-wing populism in the United States helped The John Birch Society position itself for a comeback, and by 1995 its membership had grown somewhat to more than 55,000 though that number is unofficial as the Society does not disclose its membership statistics.
After that time period, the John Birch Society started a campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for alleged connections with Chinese interests and on charges of treason and bribery.1 2 3 Within months of the Society's call for impeachment, news of the Monica Lewinsky affair broke, and the Society's charges were overshadowed by media coverage of Lewinsky and Clinton. The President was eventually indicted on impeachment charges but the charges were different than the Society had hoped to bring. Clinton, however, was not convicted by the Senate because of the tenuous nature of the charges and the lack of necessary votes. Nevertheless, the impeachment campaign's relative success bolstered the Society and its public knowledge, membership, publication circulation, and finances.
During the 1990s (with a brief pause to work on the Clinton impeachment campaign) and in the first decade of the 21st century, the Society has opposed free-trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the newly proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). CAFTA won a two-vote victory in the House (217–215), but the Society predicts the FTAA will have an even more difficult time.
In recent years, The John Birch Society has been just as critical of President George W. Bush as it has been of Democratic presidents, accusing the Bush administration of advocating and carrying out acts of torture against suspected terrorist leaders during the War on Terror. In a 2005 online poll, the organization's membership voted for President Bush's impeachment, [16] citing issues such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the proposed sell out of U.S. Seaports to Dubai Ports World [17], and recent allegations against the Bush administration concerning domestic telephone surveillance of suspected terrorists operating within the United States. These were cited as evidence of Bush's lack of regard for the Constitution.
The JBS continues to press for an end to U.S. membership in the United Nations. As evidence of the effectiveness of JBS efforts, the Society points to the Utah legislature's resolution calling for U.S. withdrawal, as well as the actions of several other states where the Society's membership has been active. The Birch Society repeatedly opposed overseas war-making although it is strongly supportive of the American military. It has issued calls to "Bring Our Troops Home" in every conflict since its founding including Vietnam (it wanted a quick win and exit there after the conflict had already started rather than a simple losing pullout). The Society also has a national speakers' committee, called American Opinion Speakers Bureau (AOSB), and an anti-tax committee called TRIM (Tax Reform Immediately).
The ''New American'' is a biweekly news magazine published by the John Birch Society, created from the merger of Review of The News and American Opinion.
The JBS's views made it a favorite target of political satire. For example:
The second John Birch Society chairman, U.S. Representative Dr. Larry McDonald, was killed in the 1983 KAL-007 shootdown incident. Many Society members suggested that McDonald had been the principal target of the Soviets in the attack upon the airplane.
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