John Birch Society

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Revision as of 03:04, 10 April 2009

The John Birch Society was founded by candy manufacturer Robert Welch in 1958 to fight the Communist menace to America. An early book by Welch, The Politician, became controversial after it became widely known that an early manuscript included the accusation that President Dwight Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy".

Contents

Who the f*** is John Birch?

The society was named after a missionary named John Birch. According to the society, John Birch was a missionary in China who joined the United States military during World War II. Despite helping the Chinese by fighting the Japanese there, after the war he was supposedly killed by the Communists[1], but the US government kept it quiet until Robert Welch discovered the truth and exploited the poor son-of-a-bitch's name for his own political agenda.

In the post-WWII world

In their early days the JBS was a somewhat respected institution. However, things soon moved in a more conspiricist and radical direction. For example the JBS at one point claimed that then President Dwight Eisenhower was a member of the American Communist Party (simply for talking to the Soviet Union as opposed to starting World War III). "Birchers", as they were known, wrote a lot of letters during their early years on various scare issues, such as opposition to summits between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and keeping fluoride out of water supply, from which it could enter our precious bodily fluids and corrupt our essence[2]. The Birchers were frequent promoters of moral panics on everything from the Panama Canal treaties to the nuclear disarmanent movement, all claimed to be part of the Communist movement to undermine American security, and shared cross-membership and tactics with early religious right groups like Billy James Hargis' "Christian Crusade". During the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign for President, Birchers mastered the tactic of mass distribution of cheap paperbacks. Three books in particular: None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer, A Texan Looks At Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley, and A Choice, Not An Echo by Phyllis Schlafly. You can find multiple copies of all three at your local thrift store, most of them still unread.

They did the same thing in 1972 with a little book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, which posited the conspiracy theory that the environmental movement, the peace movement, womens libbers, the mainstream media, international Soviet Communism, the United Nations, and the Book of the Month Club (no mention of water fluoridation though, surprisingly) were all in cahoots with the Rockefellers who sought to control the world through the Council on Foreign Relations. Somewhere around this point the Birchers morphed from being mostly concerned with militant anti-Communism into a group more concerned with exposing The Conspiracy. While keeping known anti-Semites out of their organization and refraining from explicit mention of the imagined "Illuminati" in favor of more prescient concerns about the Trilateral Commission, they did republish John Robinson's 1798 book about the Illuminati, Proofs of a Conspiracy, as part of their "Americanist Library" series. The Birchers' favored term for the "conspiracy" was the New World Order. Not surprisingly, their rapidly falling membership in the 70s and 80s turned around after 1990 when George H.W. Bush in an act of ill-advised stupidity used that very phrase in a speech. This gave the Birchers a new lease on life during the 90s. After the New World Order conspiracy theories took outlandish and bizarre directions during the 1990s ranging from tales of black helicopters to shape-shifting reptilians, the Birchers staked out a position of relative moderation among the lunatic fringe and warned against acceptance of these more outlandish theories while promoting the New World Order theory as laid out in Gary Allen's 1972 book as being a liberal-secularist conspiracy led by the Rockefellers and other high financiers to bring about a socialist world government.

Today

Their current whereabouts, alas, are unknown. File them in the "where are they now" pile next to Spinal Tap and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo.[3]

The John Birch Society does still exist. Today, they are most worried about threats to US sovereignty, most particularly the (never actually proposed) union between the US, Canada and Mexico. They are also adamently opposed to free trade, immigration, and the United Nations.

Footnotes

  1. Time Mag: "In the confusing situation," said Krause last week, "my instructions were to act with diplomacy. Birch made the Communist lieutenant lose face before his own men. Militarily, John Birch brought about his own death."
  2. You ever seen a commie drink water? Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it?
  3. Some can still be found in New Hampshire distributing "Larouche For President" leaflets, even in non-election years, and, in this season, campaigning for Ron Paul.

See also

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