John Birch Society
The John Birch Society, founded in December 1958 by Robert H. W. Welch, Jr., is a conservative organization aimed at combating what it perceives as a communist conspiracy in the United States. Named after Captain John Birch, a U.S. intelligence officer killed by communist forces, the society emerged from Welch's belief in a coordinated effort to undermine American values and governance. The society advocates for a reduction in government size and a return to a constitutional republic, opposing what it views as the pitfalls of democracy.
Throughout the 1960s, the John Birch Society sought to raise public awareness about its theories of communist infiltration, publishing literature and engaging in campaigns against figures and movements they labeled as communist, including civil rights leaders and various governmental institutions. At its peak, membership reached around eighty thousand, and while it garnered attention, it also faced significant backlash and was often dismissed as extreme. Over the years, the society's focus shifted from anti-communism to broader issues, including opposition to what it views as an overreaching government and declining moral standards, aligning itself with other far-right movements. The John Birch Society's legacy continues to influence some segments of the conservative landscape, particularly in discussions around governmental authority and individual liberties.
John Birch Society
A Far Right organization focused on spreading its anticommunist sentiments. This group is known for its assertions that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government and that communism gained support and membership from such people as General George Marshall, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Origins and History
The John Birch Society was founded in December, 1958, by Robert H. W. Welch, Jr., a wealthy businessman from Massachusetts. He named the organization after Captain John Birch, a U.S. intelligence officer killed by Communist Chinese troops just after World War II, whom Welch regarded as the first casualty of World War III. Welch gathered eleven of his friends and presented his ideologies regarding domestic and international affairs, emphasizing his belief in a communist conspiracy. He published his manifesto, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, after the meeting. His eleven friends, who represented several different states, agreed to take part in Welch’s war against communism and to help establish John Birch Society chapters across the nation. The society members, or Birchers, tried to recruit one million able-bodied American men whom Welch would lead in his war against communism, which he saw as a political and educational war rather than a military war.
The Birchers would not tolerate democratic representation because they thought that the nation’s forefathers gave them a republic not a democracy, and they regarded democracy as the worst form of government. The society also believed that the smaller the government, the better. In the 1960’s, the society focused primarily on releasing Americans from the communist conspiracy that its members thought was destroying the nation and secondly on eliminating U.S. support for communism. The Birchers believed that the communist takeovers that had been successful had been made with U.S. support, and once this support was withdrawn, the United States would win a significant battle in the war that would follow.
The John Birch Society sought to shock the American people into awareness of what it claimed was a communist conspiracy within the United States. It developed a number of ways to disseminate information, including a chain of bookstores and a publishing division. The society published the American Opinion monthly and The New American weekly. It also sought to establish reading rooms nationally, widen distribution of conservative periodicals, lead letter-writing campaigns, silence prominent “communist” speakers with questions at their lectures, supply anticommunist speakers nationwide, and introduce Bircher beliefs internationally.
Activities
Birchers launched many strategic strikes at their opponents. They exposed “communist” liberal, artistic elitists: authors, academics, and journalists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Fredric March, Mark Van Doren, and Carl Sandburg. Birchers attacked the Civil Rights movement, stating that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s communistic practices needed to be exposed. They denounced President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a traitor, accusing him of being a primary agent of the communist conspiracy. They demanded that Chief JusticeEarl Warren be impeached because he was a communist. Welch accused the Central Intelligence Agency of being part of the communist conspiracy and stated that 50 percent to 70 percent of the United States was under communist control.
Impact
Although Bircher membership grew to forty thousand in 1963, the organization’s main effect was to anger liberals and entertain those who were dispassionate toward its cause. Welch received a substantial amount of negative attention when he published the “black book,” a supplement to The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, in which he accused Eisenhower of being procommunist. He published an amended version in 1963 with the most insulting passages removed. In 1967, society membership reached eighty thousand, but the movement’s force had subsided. Subscriptions to the organization’s American Opinion fell to forty thousand, and the organization had to defend itself against charges that it was a fragment of the “kook right.” By the end of the 1960’s, fighting communism became less of a priority to the American public.
Welch’s original wealthy investors remained central figures in his crusade. Because of the society’s financial power, it briefly succeeded in gaining political representation when Californian John R. Rouselot was elected to Congress and explained Bircher ideology to the House of Representatives. For a limited time, Welch’s theories of communist infiltration as the root of social disorder in American society rang true with his audiences, but Welch’s extreme conspiracy theories unnerved his followers.
Subsequent Events
The John Birch Society’s literature and propaganda remained afloat throughout the 1970’s and mid-1980’s. Some former members founded or were active in other far right movements, including Gordon Kahl, a member of the Posse Comitatus; Willis Carto, who founded the Liberty Lobby; Robert Bolivar DePugh, who established the Minutemen; and Tom Metzger, who joined the California Knights and created the White Aryan Resistance.
The John Birch Society reappeared in the 1990’s, lending its support to the militia movement. The Society shifted its focus from fighting the communist conspiracy to battling an overbearing government that had created a welfare state and decrying the nation’s declining moral standards. The John Birch Society’s demands to keep the United States out of the United Nations and the United Nations out of the United States have been repeated throughout the militia movement.
Additional Information
See David H. Bennett’s The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement (1995) for a thorough account of the John Birch Society’s perspectives on the quelling of America and how this organization calibrates within far right movement history. Lavern C. Hutchins interprets and analyzes Bircher ideologies in The John Birch Society and United States Foreign Policy (1968). James Ridgeway discusses Bircher activities and traces members’ activities in other far right groups in Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture (1995).