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Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
How a notorious far right organization set the Republican Party on a long march toward extremism
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At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, “Birchers� believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump.
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Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States.
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At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, “Birchers� believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump.
Ìý
Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States.
Ìý
Ìý
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Published March 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 97 reviews
September 15, 2024
The John Birch Society founded in 1958 by right wing millionaires was considered too extreme for mainstream politics in the 1960s but its influence can been seen in the current Republican party. The John Birchers used conspiracy theories to discredit their opposition that included the civil rights advocates, New Deal Democrats, Labor Unions, and anyone that supported the US involvement in the United Nations. The John Birchers saw these enemies as leading America toward a totalitarian godless tyranny and were considered paranoid by most. You can see their tactics used today as Donald Trump rails against NATO and the UN, promotes conspiracy theories, tries to rescind the voting rights act. and sees the mainstream media as the enemy. The original Bircher's children like the Koch brothers and Alex Jones show the influence of this organization in their viewpoints especially Alex Jones saying the Sandy Hook massacre was a fraud. Matthew Dallek defends his viewpoint with solid documentation and research that I find credible in my opinion.
December 23, 2022
As someone who already had a good understanding of the history and impact of the John Birch Society, I found this book to be a wonderful resource for anyone who is interested in how and why the USA is in such a weird and awful place. This is one of those books that we'll point to for a long while and say "at least he understood what was going on".
This is a book that I'll for sure keep in stock in my store, and recommend to anyone interested in contemporary American politics,
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the advance digital copy of the "Birchers" in exchange for an honest review.
This is a book that I'll for sure keep in stock in my store, and recommend to anyone interested in contemporary American politics,
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the advance digital copy of the "Birchers" in exchange for an honest review.
February 11, 2023
An absolute must read for anyone interested learning about the John Birch Society. Dallek tells the history of JBS from its founding to how their beliefs are still echoed today in an informative and interesting way. Thank you to Basic Books and Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
May 12, 2023
If you're a devoted reader of political nonfiction or self-described scholar of right-wing extremism like me, this is the next book for you. Like many books I have read, I picked this one up after reading a related article by its author, in which he discussed the role of the John Birch Society in American politics. This is the most comprehensive history of the John Birch Society that I have read, and it provides a biography of founder Robert Welch that paints a detailed portrait of this influential figure. Tracing more than six decades of history, this book contains everything you need to know about the group that began what is now labeled the "radical right," decades before the Tea Party or the MAGA movement.
The author draws a distinction between the Republican establishment, the conservative right, and the Birch wing of the party that was to come, the latter of which shaped what became the Trump movement. This book could be alleged to have a liberal bias, but moderate Republicans and independents may get the most get the most out of this deep history, which showcases how the liberal Rockefeller wing of their party began to disappear. Still, the book's definition of "far-right" is broad and encompasses much of the conservative movement, and extends into a history of "the descendants of the John Birch Society" that becomes less defined or specific.
No book is perfect, and there are likely to be many moments as a reader where you too will wish for even more detail. Even so, it's hard not to view this book as incredibly comprehensive and well-researched. I was glued to it, getting through the whole thing in under forty-eight hours. For a deep dive into what this author dares call conspiracy (theories), give this a read.
The author draws a distinction between the Republican establishment, the conservative right, and the Birch wing of the party that was to come, the latter of which shaped what became the Trump movement. This book could be alleged to have a liberal bias, but moderate Republicans and independents may get the most get the most out of this deep history, which showcases how the liberal Rockefeller wing of their party began to disappear. Still, the book's definition of "far-right" is broad and encompasses much of the conservative movement, and extends into a history of "the descendants of the John Birch Society" that becomes less defined or specific.
No book is perfect, and there are likely to be many moments as a reader where you too will wish for even more detail. Even so, it's hard not to view this book as incredibly comprehensive and well-researched. I was glued to it, getting through the whole thing in under forty-eight hours. For a deep dive into what this author dares call conspiracy (theories), give this a read.
August 5, 2023
My issues with this book are not political, I just think that the author overstated his case in trying to trace the origins of MAGA to the JBS, mostly because it oversimplifies the complex web of different right wing movements and ideologies. It also felt like, if you were intending to trace the history of right wing extremism in American politics, you’d need to go further back. In particular, a lot of the early Birch positions seemed very similar to the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, but obviously racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and anti-government positions have always been part of the national discourse.
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money does a much better job explaining the right wing takeover of the entire Republican Party, and Rick Perlstein’s books about the 1970s and 1980s provide a much more engaging chronicle of the messiness of that period’s political realignment. But for earlier examples of right wing extremism intruding into mainstream politics in the 20th Century, Adam Hochschild’s American Midnight and Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the KKK.
At the end of the day, I would’ve been more interested in a book that just focused on the JBS in its heyday—those were the most interesting chapters. The rest of the story is better told elsewhere.
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money does a much better job explaining the right wing takeover of the entire Republican Party, and Rick Perlstein’s books about the 1970s and 1980s provide a much more engaging chronicle of the messiness of that period’s political realignment. But for earlier examples of right wing extremism intruding into mainstream politics in the 20th Century, Adam Hochschild’s American Midnight and Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the KKK.
At the end of the day, I would’ve been more interested in a book that just focused on the JBS in its heyday—those were the most interesting chapters. The rest of the story is better told elsewhere.
March 3, 2025
Just finished:
New York: Basic Books, 2022.
Sometimes you read a book so brilliantly argued and convincing enough that it changes how you think about it from the start to finish. Initially I thought Dallek's argument was built around presentism. The Birchers protested schools for what they taught, libraries for harmful books, against florid in the water (read COVID vaccine).
Before Trump got elected, the conventional argument went, members of the John Birch Society were pushed out into the wilderness by conservatives such as William F. Buckley. But that line of reasoning has been re-evaluated. Dallek argues that establishment conservative Republicans attempted to manage the Birchers while getting their support when needed. However the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't end their fear of communism, they looked for other issues.
Dallek argues that the Birchers won by losing and having the post-WWII internationalist foreign policy position breakdown due to the forever wars against Iraq and Afghanistan coupled with the financial crisis of 2008.
A book I'd highly recommend even if I didn't agree with everything in it.
New York: Basic Books, 2022.
Sometimes you read a book so brilliantly argued and convincing enough that it changes how you think about it from the start to finish. Initially I thought Dallek's argument was built around presentism. The Birchers protested schools for what they taught, libraries for harmful books, against florid in the water (read COVID vaccine).
Before Trump got elected, the conventional argument went, members of the John Birch Society were pushed out into the wilderness by conservatives such as William F. Buckley. But that line of reasoning has been re-evaluated. Dallek argues that establishment conservative Republicans attempted to manage the Birchers while getting their support when needed. However the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't end their fear of communism, they looked for other issues.
Dallek argues that the Birchers won by losing and having the post-WWII internationalist foreign policy position breakdown due to the forever wars against Iraq and Afghanistan coupled with the financial crisis of 2008.
A book I'd highly recommend even if I didn't agree with everything in it.
December 20, 2023
A good overview of an important and underappreciated element in the transition of the American right from practical, respectable Eisenhower Republicans to the craven, maniacal MAGA party we have today. You often hear people joke about the "Bircher mentality" as a bit of a joke, but this book ably charts how their ideas and values moved inexorably from the wingnut fringe to the absolute center of conservative American politics today, despite or even because of the ways the "establishment" in the Nixon, Reagan, and Double Bush Years tried and failed to sideline them.
Spends a little too much time in the first half of the book sharing every anecdote and primary source about the Birchers the author could find - I'm not sure why I need to hear about every "Mrs. Joe American" who hosted a Birch party in the early 1960s - but I get that that makes this book even more of an indispensable research resource for future scholars and writers. Things pick up when the Birchers seem to be "out in the wilderness" after the early 70s and Dallek demonstrates their inevitable weaving, via wretched libertarian types and moral majority blowhards, into the fabric of the Republican electorate. It's stunning and sad to see how many chances we had to stop the transformation, but feckless, cowardly Republicans did like feckless, cowardly Republicans do and just rolled over for it.
Worth a read for students of political science and all those interested in - and concerned about - how we got where we are. I also appreciated the details of the Birchers' organizational methods, and took heart from the idea that progressives can crib from and adapt such methods for our own benefit, minus the goggle-eyes conspiracism and overt bigotry that is absolutely endemic to every individual fiber of every layer of the right.
Spends a little too much time in the first half of the book sharing every anecdote and primary source about the Birchers the author could find - I'm not sure why I need to hear about every "Mrs. Joe American" who hosted a Birch party in the early 1960s - but I get that that makes this book even more of an indispensable research resource for future scholars and writers. Things pick up when the Birchers seem to be "out in the wilderness" after the early 70s and Dallek demonstrates their inevitable weaving, via wretched libertarian types and moral majority blowhards, into the fabric of the Republican electorate. It's stunning and sad to see how many chances we had to stop the transformation, but feckless, cowardly Republicans did like feckless, cowardly Republicans do and just rolled over for it.
Worth a read for students of political science and all those interested in - and concerned about - how we got where we are. I also appreciated the details of the Birchers' organizational methods, and took heart from the idea that progressives can crib from and adapt such methods for our own benefit, minus the goggle-eyes conspiracism and overt bigotry that is absolutely endemic to every individual fiber of every layer of the right.
June 19, 2023
5 â�. Nothing like starting the summer off with some light reading. Lol. If you're like me (and David Byrne), you may look around at the state of our nation and ask "how did we get here?" This book explains it very well. I didn't know anything about the Birchers before this, but after reading this book, I can clearly see that how their playbook for problematic, racist politics in the 1950s and 60s eventually morphed into the Tea Party platform, and now, here we are. Also, learning that some of the group's strongest chapters were in WI, it helps explain how this state became such a gerrymandered shit-show. As a small preview, I present a list of tactics/causes the Birchers vehemently supported in their heyday that may sound familiar to us now:
*Focusing on gaining control of local politics and school boards in order to dictate what can be taught in classrooms in an effort to keep teachers from indoctrinating students in anti-American sentiment
*Anti-union and anti-regulation stances in order to prevent working-class people from adhering to political policies that will be to their own advantage
*Seeing political losses as evidence of fraud, which further galvanizes the base
*Demand for unquestioning policies America-first, supporting police, etc
*Claiming to to motivated by protecting "freedom", when really meaning freedom for their ideas, not civil liberties for those who are not like them---in fact, as few freedoms for those people as possible
*Threatening the press
*Encouraging physical violence against opponents
*Over-the-top rage at and misinformation spread about any public health initiative (in the 1960s they were particularly against fluoride in the water)
*And of course, being ok with making baseless claims, and loudly and proudly being anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, racist, etc.
*Focusing on gaining control of local politics and school boards in order to dictate what can be taught in classrooms in an effort to keep teachers from indoctrinating students in anti-American sentiment
*Anti-union and anti-regulation stances in order to prevent working-class people from adhering to political policies that will be to their own advantage
*Seeing political losses as evidence of fraud, which further galvanizes the base
*Demand for unquestioning policies America-first, supporting police, etc
*Claiming to to motivated by protecting "freedom", when really meaning freedom for their ideas, not civil liberties for those who are not like them---in fact, as few freedoms for those people as possible
*Threatening the press
*Encouraging physical violence against opponents
*Over-the-top rage at and misinformation spread about any public health initiative (in the 1960s they were particularly against fluoride in the water)
*And of course, being ok with making baseless claims, and loudly and proudly being anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, racist, etc.
July 3, 2023
This book was an eye-opening look into U.S. far-right 20th-century politics. I found the first few chapters to be a bit dry, but once I reached the part about the ADL infiltrating and spying on the Birchers, things started to get interesting. If you’re into political history, I would recommend.
September 5, 2023
well researched. fred koch i will see you in hell
March 28, 2025
I was prepared to be very short and sharp with this book, as too many of the current-events books I've invested time in recently have displayed the shelf life of fresh milk, and turned out not to be worth the investment of effort.
Dallek though has produced a useful history outlining the steps it took to reach our current state of affairs in American politics. As while the adherents of the John Birch Society had no monopoly on conspiratorial thinking (that is as American as apple pie), no body of people worked harder to reject a reality that they just could not accept, to the point that their beliefs in regards to White Supremacy, "traditional" religiosity, and a singular unwillingness to come to grips with modern economic organization basically subsumed the operational practice of the Republican Party. The obsession with Communism was really just the icing on the cake.
The real meat here is in how Dallek lays out how the JBS practiced politics at the grass-roots level, and made themselves so useful to the mainstream Republican organization, that even though they would have preferred to sideline Robert Welch and his legions, the GOP was not a mass party without their participation. The trick was to promise to take their concerns seriously, while continuing to implement standard-issue Republicanism. The rise of Donald Trump is an illustration of how well that worked out.
If there is one particularly salient section in this book on that issue, it's that Dallek debunks the notion that William F. Buckley of the "National Review" was some great opponent of the JBS. Yes, he found Robert Welch to be an annoyance, what with Welch's propensity to smear GOP leaders with the term "traitor," but Buckley had nothing but admiration for the hard work at the precinct level these folks did on behalf of the party.
I found the portions of this work dealing with the heyday of the JBS to be the most useful, as the later half dealing with the subculture that outlived Robert Welch is something that is more like life experience for me. During that time when I worked at the spear-carrier level of GOP politics in the mid-to-late 1980s, I wondered at the blithe attitude that the "red-meat" social and racial conservatives could be exploited with there being no consequences.
Dallek though has produced a useful history outlining the steps it took to reach our current state of affairs in American politics. As while the adherents of the John Birch Society had no monopoly on conspiratorial thinking (that is as American as apple pie), no body of people worked harder to reject a reality that they just could not accept, to the point that their beliefs in regards to White Supremacy, "traditional" religiosity, and a singular unwillingness to come to grips with modern economic organization basically subsumed the operational practice of the Republican Party. The obsession with Communism was really just the icing on the cake.
The real meat here is in how Dallek lays out how the JBS practiced politics at the grass-roots level, and made themselves so useful to the mainstream Republican organization, that even though they would have preferred to sideline Robert Welch and his legions, the GOP was not a mass party without their participation. The trick was to promise to take their concerns seriously, while continuing to implement standard-issue Republicanism. The rise of Donald Trump is an illustration of how well that worked out.
If there is one particularly salient section in this book on that issue, it's that Dallek debunks the notion that William F. Buckley of the "National Review" was some great opponent of the JBS. Yes, he found Robert Welch to be an annoyance, what with Welch's propensity to smear GOP leaders with the term "traitor," but Buckley had nothing but admiration for the hard work at the precinct level these folks did on behalf of the party.
I found the portions of this work dealing with the heyday of the JBS to be the most useful, as the later half dealing with the subculture that outlived Robert Welch is something that is more like life experience for me. During that time when I worked at the spear-carrier level of GOP politics in the mid-to-late 1980s, I wondered at the blithe attitude that the "red-meat" social and racial conservatives could be exploited with there being no consequences.
July 28, 2024
A frightfully relevant book.
I, like millions more in our current time, have puzzled over the Donald Trump years. It’s hard to understand just how the United States could become so enmeshed with someone like Trump to the point that the man was ever a viable candidate for any elected office, let alone the most powerful in the world, and that he could become such again after his chaotic first term, his outlandish bungling and total failure at leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, most confusing of all, his malicious lying and fear-stoking that caused a mob to attack the Capitol Building on 6 January 2021, resulting in five deaths and a literal assault upon the ideals contained in the Constitution of the United States.
As many have said before, Trump did not create this moment, but rather emerged and benefited from a broader system of historical events, emotions, and anxieties. This is where Matthew Dallek’s book, Birchers, comes in. Dallek begins with the founding of the John Birch Society in 1958. It began as a group of wealthy businessmen who had become convinced of an insidious communist conspiracy trying to unravel American democracy. They self-funded the production of pamphlets and books and established bookstores to sell them, organized people to knock doors, and more, all in the name of defending a version of America they believed in. It just so happened that the version of America they loved had never existed. Consequently, they leaned heavily on conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, tribalism, and other hardline tactics to build their brand and assert themselves in American politics.
The JBS infamously went to work challenging and clawing at the political establishment, that they felt was the problem. They fostered and nurtured outlandish conspiracy theories—if you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove, you can thank the JBS for General Ripper’s theories that the fluoridation of public water is an evil plot. And over time, despite setbacks and changes in political coalitions, Dallek shows how the JBS (and other groups born at the fringes of society) mutated and took over the mainstream of the Republican Party.
Dallek offers an accessible, readable, informative, and keenly analytical look at what he calls the Bircher Years. He demonstrates how they were largely shunned by the Republican and Democratic establishments for decades, perhaps most famously when Nelson Rockefeller directly rebuked them at the 1964 Republican National Convention, while Governor George Romney of Michigan (and father of Senator Mitt Romney) was a perpetual thorn for the JBS. Dallek also shows how the JBS defied political gravity, gaining clout and influence even when they suffered humiliating defeats for their candidates in the 1960s and 70s. Each loss offered another grievance to voice and further proof the establishment was organized against “God’s Angry Men.� Given time, the JBS eventually posed a legitimate threat via primaries and gained leverage over the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan was able to divert and employ Birchers for his own ends, while Newt Gingrich galvanized them in the lead-up to the Republican Revolution in 1994. Dallek argues persuasively that the JBS gained traction throughout the 90s and were ready when the terrorist attacks happened on 9/11 to stoke nativist rage and promote political violence. By the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the seeds planted by the JBS were ready to spring forth, emerging as the Tea Party, the so-called “alt-right,� and now MAGA. Dallek shows that these strands of paranoia, anger, violence, fear, and so forth are old denizens of the American psyche, emerging and reemerging under banners such as “America First� and the sort.
The book is lucid and engaging, and at times hard to read for the clarity of insight it offers into our current moment. Yet there are some holes worth noting. Dallek sacrifices comprehensiveness in the name of accessibility, which is natural to a book like this. Some events are covered so quickly that if you aren’t more familiar or unwilling to google them you will miss some nuances. Moreover, Dallek offers too simple and totalizing an explanation for what underpins the JBS’s conspiracy mongering, that it was a group of white, wealthy, Christian men who feared they were being displaced in American society. I don’t deny that this motivates an enormity of political violence in the United States, both historically and today. However, I worry that if we take this as a given and apply it to people too readily, we oversimplify these issues and do some harm, driving such people further away because they feel judged, often in simplistic terms. I think more nuanced discourse and more compassionate responses could do us some good at maybe helping people be less angry and so mend some rifts in our polarized, fracturing society here in the USA.
Still, this is a strong and intriguing analysis of some root cause issues, presented by an astute historian. I’ll be thinking about and returning to Birchers as I continue trying to figure out what I can do and offer my neighbors as I try to combat misinformation and political aggression with my own version of what Gandhi called “soul-force�. I love my country and I’m trying to love my neighbors, and I hope through understanding I can achieve some good in this world.
I, like millions more in our current time, have puzzled over the Donald Trump years. It’s hard to understand just how the United States could become so enmeshed with someone like Trump to the point that the man was ever a viable candidate for any elected office, let alone the most powerful in the world, and that he could become such again after his chaotic first term, his outlandish bungling and total failure at leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, most confusing of all, his malicious lying and fear-stoking that caused a mob to attack the Capitol Building on 6 January 2021, resulting in five deaths and a literal assault upon the ideals contained in the Constitution of the United States.
As many have said before, Trump did not create this moment, but rather emerged and benefited from a broader system of historical events, emotions, and anxieties. This is where Matthew Dallek’s book, Birchers, comes in. Dallek begins with the founding of the John Birch Society in 1958. It began as a group of wealthy businessmen who had become convinced of an insidious communist conspiracy trying to unravel American democracy. They self-funded the production of pamphlets and books and established bookstores to sell them, organized people to knock doors, and more, all in the name of defending a version of America they believed in. It just so happened that the version of America they loved had never existed. Consequently, they leaned heavily on conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, tribalism, and other hardline tactics to build their brand and assert themselves in American politics.
The JBS infamously went to work challenging and clawing at the political establishment, that they felt was the problem. They fostered and nurtured outlandish conspiracy theories—if you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove, you can thank the JBS for General Ripper’s theories that the fluoridation of public water is an evil plot. And over time, despite setbacks and changes in political coalitions, Dallek shows how the JBS (and other groups born at the fringes of society) mutated and took over the mainstream of the Republican Party.
Dallek offers an accessible, readable, informative, and keenly analytical look at what he calls the Bircher Years. He demonstrates how they were largely shunned by the Republican and Democratic establishments for decades, perhaps most famously when Nelson Rockefeller directly rebuked them at the 1964 Republican National Convention, while Governor George Romney of Michigan (and father of Senator Mitt Romney) was a perpetual thorn for the JBS. Dallek also shows how the JBS defied political gravity, gaining clout and influence even when they suffered humiliating defeats for their candidates in the 1960s and 70s. Each loss offered another grievance to voice and further proof the establishment was organized against “God’s Angry Men.� Given time, the JBS eventually posed a legitimate threat via primaries and gained leverage over the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan was able to divert and employ Birchers for his own ends, while Newt Gingrich galvanized them in the lead-up to the Republican Revolution in 1994. Dallek argues persuasively that the JBS gained traction throughout the 90s and were ready when the terrorist attacks happened on 9/11 to stoke nativist rage and promote political violence. By the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the seeds planted by the JBS were ready to spring forth, emerging as the Tea Party, the so-called “alt-right,� and now MAGA. Dallek shows that these strands of paranoia, anger, violence, fear, and so forth are old denizens of the American psyche, emerging and reemerging under banners such as “America First� and the sort.
The book is lucid and engaging, and at times hard to read for the clarity of insight it offers into our current moment. Yet there are some holes worth noting. Dallek sacrifices comprehensiveness in the name of accessibility, which is natural to a book like this. Some events are covered so quickly that if you aren’t more familiar or unwilling to google them you will miss some nuances. Moreover, Dallek offers too simple and totalizing an explanation for what underpins the JBS’s conspiracy mongering, that it was a group of white, wealthy, Christian men who feared they were being displaced in American society. I don’t deny that this motivates an enormity of political violence in the United States, both historically and today. However, I worry that if we take this as a given and apply it to people too readily, we oversimplify these issues and do some harm, driving such people further away because they feel judged, often in simplistic terms. I think more nuanced discourse and more compassionate responses could do us some good at maybe helping people be less angry and so mend some rifts in our polarized, fracturing society here in the USA.
Still, this is a strong and intriguing analysis of some root cause issues, presented by an astute historian. I’ll be thinking about and returning to Birchers as I continue trying to figure out what I can do and offer my neighbors as I try to combat misinformation and political aggression with my own version of what Gandhi called “soul-force�. I love my country and I’m trying to love my neighbors, and I hope through understanding I can achieve some good in this world.
May 25, 2023
Great read! The way the history of the group was presented in a chronological order showed how membership ebbed and flowed throughout time as conservative ideologies radicalized. The parallels between the John Birch society and the fringe GOP now are very thought provoking.
January 24, 2025
YIKES. (But also an excellent help in understanding how America got to where we are)
February 21, 2025
The premise of this book sounded great. I never heard of the Bircher society. But this book reads like a very dry, very detailed textbook. Citing so many times in a page you feel like you're just reading quotes and pieces of someone else's text. I will still pursue this topic just not through this book.
July 12, 2024
A decent history of the John Birch Society. Is it slanted, or biased? Well, that will depend on how you think politics and society in general should function.
In the before times (before Trump, because since we entered the Trumpocene era which seems forever ago , EVERYTHING is actually always about Trump) respect for others, forbearance, compromise, good manners, where things that might be applied to even the rough and tumble world of Politics. That is NOT how the John Birch Society rolls. But really, everything reported in here that sounds horrible and mean to what used to be “normal� people, will actually seem great to a Bircher or a MAGA person. Because the John Birch Society shouted to the world they believed in wild conspiracies, like Eisenhower was a secret communist, or fluoridation was a communist plot to somehow hurt Americans.
So yeah, the author doesn’t view the Birchers sympathetically, BUT all he is doing is reporting on what they actually did, or wanted to do.
The society was created in the late 1950’s and while it is theoretically still around it mostly died out in the mid to late 1970’s. However with this book the author asserts that even though it’s reach was diminished, it solidified a winning style for ultra conservatives (now called just “conservatives�) which found that the special sauce of paranoia, meanness, self righteousness, and picking the right villains, was just waiting for the right time to be picked up my the next generation of right wing enthusiasts.
The language of violence pervaded society publications and rhetoric. Opponents were the personification of evil, anti-Americanism made flesh. The words pulsed with a raw vitriol � ‘labor bosses� where “tyrannical� : society members were exhorted to fight “the White House Defense Department clique.� The Bulletin characterized Birchers, in contrast as “a phalanx of tens of thousands of spears, which hurled simultaneously as one mighty weapon against any vulnerable spot on the Communist line.� Pg 58
What few people at the time realized was that even as the society faded from public view (in the 1970s), its tactics, ideas, and rhetoric was being taken up by a mix of right wing groups that thought Ronald Reagan was not going far enough in pursuing their goals. Pg 212
It was a bit of bad timing for while the Birchers were definitely Christian, they were not able to cash in on the modern advantage of multiple megachurches acting as an ultra conservative propaganda network. Not part of this book...the super charged religious element was a change that happened just after the Birch society started to fade. The change being the churches feared losing tax exempt status if they resisted racial equality in their schools. Church fear of losing money acted as an accelerant on the conservative movement’s fire once they wrapped the racism in abortion abhorrence (this bit is my speculation from other sources).
Still, the paranoia of the JBS was ideological leavening in the doughy world of conservative politics.
Conservative Christians evolved into the Republican Party’s largest, most dependable voting bloc. The Birch Society’s religious proclivities, its apocalyptic rhetoric and faith in the end times, spoke to Christian activists who were growing concerned that the nation’s moral fiber was rotting from within, and that communists had corrupted American children with satanic ideas.Pg 213
It may just be a natural outcome of the way politics, power, and money work in America, OR if it was selective reporting on the author’s part, but it was weird to see that some political names cross decades in the conservative campaign
Council for National Policy CNP, co founded by LaHaye, was Birch adjacent with had ties with Coors family, Koch daddy and Birch founder Fred Koch, Amway executive Richard DeVoss, and also had the support of James Quayle (father of Dan Quayle) pg 215
LaHaye (of Left Behind books fame), Koch, DeVoss, Quayle, and later Romney...hooo boy
Quick side note; over the years I’ve heard “normal� conservatives say The Birchers were pushed out of range by the republican elites like William F Buckley. Well if not complete hooey, maybe just mostly hooey. He and Goldwater thought the Eisenhower as a communist thing was nuts, but both of them wanted the rank and file on their side, and never called out the broader paranoia or conspiracism.
Buckley vowed "to make it absolutely clear that the National Review approves of the John Birch Society, while disapproving [of] Bob’s tendency to frame his entire position on he presumption endgame disloyalty" Pg 113
Now my nit picking ...Sometimes the author would have a bit is quotes, but then complete the story without quotes. Like he said, ‘Trump said “we will build a big beautiful wall� ...to keep brown people out�
So I think he was saying in effect the reason for the wall was to keep brown people out, but he tacked that on without explanation right after the quoted part, as if it was what he actually said.
And this part about James Baker’s role in the Gore/Bush Florida recount..
[about the Bush Gore count in Florida]� he brought in the ultimate pragmatist from his dad’s administration, James Baker, to get the job done. Within days of of the inconclusive election, a few dozen operative and congressional staffers descended on a ballot counting room in Miami-Dade County. Clad in blazers and button downs (hence the moniker “Brooks Brothers riot), they shouted, “Voter fraud� and “Let us in� and banged on doors and windows. One Democratic official caught in the melee said he felt that he was in physical danger. �.The aggressive tactics worked. Miami-Dade scrapped their recount. Pg. 247
So he implies James Baker was the one who thought out the “Brooks Brothers riot�, but some moderate Googling had interesting details, but nothing that said it was James Baker’s idea. So why even put that in there?
First off, I am no fan of the NRA, but this one seem really weird.
Birchers were early pro-gun activists, urging the society’s home office to partner with the NRA. In 1964, one year after Oswald had used a gun purchased through the NRA to kill President Kennedy, Bircher Michael Carlucci pushed the society’s leadership "to preserver the 2nd amendment" Pg 223
I Googled the heck out of that one�.Oswald bought the rifle through the NRA? WOW. But I could not find anything even close, other than the NRA really like guns at the time and Oswald also wanted a gun.
Those kind of things really detract from what I think is pretty solid reporting.
Oh one more thing, he had end-notes but included multiple sources in one end-note so you didn’t know which reference applied to which bit of reporting. So you say, “that is interesting� I want to know more...but the end-note has multiple links and the one I tried to look up I couldn’t find in any of the links.
IN CONCLUSION
The author assert the JBS laid the groundwork and figured out techniques that relied on paranoia, conspiracies, audacious bullying, even the threat of violence. All of which informed the modern conservative movement.
There was a JBS offshoot that points directly to justification taken up by the JAN 6 attackers.
[Donald Lobsinger formed Breakthrough]..Lobsinger echoed Bircher’s most potent messages. He lacerated the UN and the mass media (accusing them of “deliberate deceit of the American people�), and Breakthrough distributed a wanted poster offering $1,000 reward for a citizen’s arrest of moderate GOP governor George Romney, the perennial Birch nemesis. He told seven hundred sympathetic listeners at a Detroit area high school, “if it is going to take violence to save this country then violence it shall be� Pg 181
And with the Romney reference this shows how politics has echoes from then to today.
Trump benefited from the rhetorical and ideological legacy that Birchers had bequeathed to subsequent generations. He stood on the shoulders of far-right wing giants... Pg 272
It was a vicious cycle: radicals drew still more radicals, and conspiracies attracted more extremists. Pg 281
I heard some political talking head recently analogize The John Birch Society to the scene with Marty McFly in Back to the future where he goes overboard with the hard rock guitar-ing for the 1950’s teen audience and says� "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it."
In the before times (before Trump, because since we entered the Trumpocene era which seems forever ago , EVERYTHING is actually always about Trump) respect for others, forbearance, compromise, good manners, where things that might be applied to even the rough and tumble world of Politics. That is NOT how the John Birch Society rolls. But really, everything reported in here that sounds horrible and mean to what used to be “normal� people, will actually seem great to a Bircher or a MAGA person. Because the John Birch Society shouted to the world they believed in wild conspiracies, like Eisenhower was a secret communist, or fluoridation was a communist plot to somehow hurt Americans.
So yeah, the author doesn’t view the Birchers sympathetically, BUT all he is doing is reporting on what they actually did, or wanted to do.
The society was created in the late 1950’s and while it is theoretically still around it mostly died out in the mid to late 1970’s. However with this book the author asserts that even though it’s reach was diminished, it solidified a winning style for ultra conservatives (now called just “conservatives�) which found that the special sauce of paranoia, meanness, self righteousness, and picking the right villains, was just waiting for the right time to be picked up my the next generation of right wing enthusiasts.
The language of violence pervaded society publications and rhetoric. Opponents were the personification of evil, anti-Americanism made flesh. The words pulsed with a raw vitriol � ‘labor bosses� where “tyrannical� : society members were exhorted to fight “the White House Defense Department clique.� The Bulletin characterized Birchers, in contrast as “a phalanx of tens of thousands of spears, which hurled simultaneously as one mighty weapon against any vulnerable spot on the Communist line.� Pg 58
What few people at the time realized was that even as the society faded from public view (in the 1970s), its tactics, ideas, and rhetoric was being taken up by a mix of right wing groups that thought Ronald Reagan was not going far enough in pursuing their goals. Pg 212
It was a bit of bad timing for while the Birchers were definitely Christian, they were not able to cash in on the modern advantage of multiple megachurches acting as an ultra conservative propaganda network. Not part of this book...the super charged religious element was a change that happened just after the Birch society started to fade. The change being the churches feared losing tax exempt status if they resisted racial equality in their schools. Church fear of losing money acted as an accelerant on the conservative movement’s fire once they wrapped the racism in abortion abhorrence (this bit is my speculation from other sources).
Still, the paranoia of the JBS was ideological leavening in the doughy world of conservative politics.
Conservative Christians evolved into the Republican Party’s largest, most dependable voting bloc. The Birch Society’s religious proclivities, its apocalyptic rhetoric and faith in the end times, spoke to Christian activists who were growing concerned that the nation’s moral fiber was rotting from within, and that communists had corrupted American children with satanic ideas.Pg 213
It may just be a natural outcome of the way politics, power, and money work in America, OR if it was selective reporting on the author’s part, but it was weird to see that some political names cross decades in the conservative campaign
Council for National Policy CNP, co founded by LaHaye, was Birch adjacent with had ties with Coors family, Koch daddy and Birch founder Fred Koch, Amway executive Richard DeVoss, and also had the support of James Quayle (father of Dan Quayle) pg 215
LaHaye (of Left Behind books fame), Koch, DeVoss, Quayle, and later Romney...hooo boy
Quick side note; over the years I’ve heard “normal� conservatives say The Birchers were pushed out of range by the republican elites like William F Buckley. Well if not complete hooey, maybe just mostly hooey. He and Goldwater thought the Eisenhower as a communist thing was nuts, but both of them wanted the rank and file on their side, and never called out the broader paranoia or conspiracism.
Buckley vowed "to make it absolutely clear that the National Review approves of the John Birch Society, while disapproving [of] Bob’s tendency to frame his entire position on he presumption endgame disloyalty" Pg 113
Now my nit picking ...Sometimes the author would have a bit is quotes, but then complete the story without quotes. Like he said, ‘Trump said “we will build a big beautiful wall� ...to keep brown people out�
So I think he was saying in effect the reason for the wall was to keep brown people out, but he tacked that on without explanation right after the quoted part, as if it was what he actually said.
And this part about James Baker’s role in the Gore/Bush Florida recount..
[about the Bush Gore count in Florida]� he brought in the ultimate pragmatist from his dad’s administration, James Baker, to get the job done. Within days of of the inconclusive election, a few dozen operative and congressional staffers descended on a ballot counting room in Miami-Dade County. Clad in blazers and button downs (hence the moniker “Brooks Brothers riot), they shouted, “Voter fraud� and “Let us in� and banged on doors and windows. One Democratic official caught in the melee said he felt that he was in physical danger. �.The aggressive tactics worked. Miami-Dade scrapped their recount. Pg. 247
So he implies James Baker was the one who thought out the “Brooks Brothers riot�, but some moderate Googling had interesting details, but nothing that said it was James Baker’s idea. So why even put that in there?
First off, I am no fan of the NRA, but this one seem really weird.
Birchers were early pro-gun activists, urging the society’s home office to partner with the NRA. In 1964, one year after Oswald had used a gun purchased through the NRA to kill President Kennedy, Bircher Michael Carlucci pushed the society’s leadership "to preserver the 2nd amendment" Pg 223
I Googled the heck out of that one�.Oswald bought the rifle through the NRA? WOW. But I could not find anything even close, other than the NRA really like guns at the time and Oswald also wanted a gun.
Those kind of things really detract from what I think is pretty solid reporting.
Oh one more thing, he had end-notes but included multiple sources in one end-note so you didn’t know which reference applied to which bit of reporting. So you say, “that is interesting� I want to know more...but the end-note has multiple links and the one I tried to look up I couldn’t find in any of the links.
IN CONCLUSION
The author assert the JBS laid the groundwork and figured out techniques that relied on paranoia, conspiracies, audacious bullying, even the threat of violence. All of which informed the modern conservative movement.
There was a JBS offshoot that points directly to justification taken up by the JAN 6 attackers.
[Donald Lobsinger formed Breakthrough]..Lobsinger echoed Bircher’s most potent messages. He lacerated the UN and the mass media (accusing them of “deliberate deceit of the American people�), and Breakthrough distributed a wanted poster offering $1,000 reward for a citizen’s arrest of moderate GOP governor George Romney, the perennial Birch nemesis. He told seven hundred sympathetic listeners at a Detroit area high school, “if it is going to take violence to save this country then violence it shall be� Pg 181
And with the Romney reference this shows how politics has echoes from then to today.
Trump benefited from the rhetorical and ideological legacy that Birchers had bequeathed to subsequent generations. He stood on the shoulders of far-right wing giants... Pg 272
It was a vicious cycle: radicals drew still more radicals, and conspiracies attracted more extremists. Pg 281
I heard some political talking head recently analogize The John Birch Society to the scene with Marty McFly in Back to the future where he goes overboard with the hard rock guitar-ing for the 1950’s teen audience and says� "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it."
April 13, 2023
When John Birch first started the Birchers it was more like a cult but through grassroots efforts they have slowly gained momentum and is now an influential political power in Matthew Daleks book The Birchers he tells the story of how they went from a joke to a serious contender in a political party as far as political non-fiction books go I really enjoyed this one and love that the author didn’t write the book in a slanted way letting you know his opinion but told the story and lets the reader decide I find one reading nonfiction books whether political or not it irritates me for someone to try and sway my opinion whether I agree with or down and I think the author did a great job telling this crazy story and letting the reader decide. It’s amazing what a seemingly no one can accomplish when they convince others to follow them. I received this book from NetGalley is the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.
August 25, 2023
I'm about one month removed from finishing this book but I want to say this book was a big disappointment. The book does a great job covering the Bircher movement up to the late 60s but after that time period it falls apart. Once you get to the 70s the author's overall theory about the Birchers is lost and he attempts to thread a needle from that time frame to today's politics. He hits all the right boogie men too, Koch Brothers, Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, honestly surprised they didn't throw Lee Atwater into the mix. I think the author mentions MTG in the prologue which should have raised a red flag, what does a two term congresswoman have to do with this movement that's been around for 70 years. Could the Birchers have created MTG, maybe, but to say it is the source is a big stretch. Smart people can and do believe in dumb ideas, the ideas of the Birchers were at times fringe but some of those ideas held water with the masses. Birchers thought Eisenhower was a commie, yeah a ridiculous idea but because people express or believe those opinions doesn't mean it allows future thoughts to run rampant. Are we going to say the Birchers created RFK Jr. because he believes the CIA killed is uncle and dad?
January 27, 2024
Chilling and thoroughly researched. The only thing I didn't like, as someone who learned her Latin pronunciation in Roman Catholic school, was when the audiobook narrator pronounced sui generis as "suey generous." That hurt my brain.
May 20, 2024
i would directly equate this book’s rating with with Perlstien’s Before the Storm. but thankfully this is like half as long.
it’s fine! i think at the end of the day, Dallek successfully proved the links between 1960’s Bircher extremism to the modern GOP and explains exactly how that happened. so that’s a win.
i think this is a clear example of “oh i had the source material so im gojng to write about it�. not everything needs to be cited in your book!! it will get boring!! (i’m looking at you, daily staff reports about various no name Bircher and employees that did nothing to further the book)
on the whole, solid. time for me to take a break from reading about old white men being freaks and maybe enjoy my life for a bit. but who knows I do have a new watergate book on the shelf i’ve been meaning to read.
it’s fine! i think at the end of the day, Dallek successfully proved the links between 1960’s Bircher extremism to the modern GOP and explains exactly how that happened. so that’s a win.
i think this is a clear example of “oh i had the source material so im gojng to write about it�. not everything needs to be cited in your book!! it will get boring!! (i’m looking at you, daily staff reports about various no name Bircher and employees that did nothing to further the book)
on the whole, solid. time for me to take a break from reading about old white men being freaks and maybe enjoy my life for a bit. but who knows I do have a new watergate book on the shelf i’ve been meaning to read.
May 17, 2023
What are the best tools to combat [Insert Made Up Boogeyman Topic] according to the John Birch Society? Yep you guessed it, Christian Fascism and White Supremacy.
February 12, 2024
Compared with, say, Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland, this felt a bit turgid, especially in the middle. However, it's a very clear and cogent description of how what used to be fringe views held by the John Birch Society are now mainstream Republican views.
May 16, 2024
Fascinating history of the John Birch Society marred by every attempt to cast the modern day ills of the conservative party as monocausal (it was the Birchers all along!). Dallek citing Birchers as the singular reason for government distrust in the 90s without bothering to bring up Ruby Ridge or Branch Dividian is a good example of the selective memory he employs to propose a grand theory of everything Republican. I don't read political books written after Trump because it's all too close. I broke that for Birchers because I was looking for something Goldwater-adjacent after Nixonland and King Richard. It did an admirable job, but definitely the lesser of the three.
May 17, 2023
If you wonder who wrote the playbook for the lunatic fringe in today’s Republican Party, look no further than the John Birch Society. Established in 1958, the Society terrorized moderate and liberal Republicans as well as Democrats in the 1960s and early 70s. Its founder, Robert Welch (1899-1985), had called President Dwight Eisenhower “a conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy.� And the organization’s best known campaign targeted the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, erecting billboards nationwide calling for support to “Impeach Earl Warren.�
In Welch’s addle-brained illogic, even the fluoridation of water represented a communist plot. These were signature issues in Right-Wing extremism in the era of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.
But in fundamental ways, the agenda of the Republican Far Right today is nearly identical to that of the John Birch Society in its heyday. And in tracing the history of Right-Wing extremism in the United States, Matthew Dallek demonstrates how its activities beginning six decades ago laid the foundation for the hyper-partisan politics that afflicts American society today.
SIXTY YEARS OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Dallek’s thesis is clear at the outset. “You will see,� he writes, “in COVID denialism, vaccine disinformation, America First nationalism, school board wars, QAnon plots, and allegations of electoral cheating, a movement from the 1960s, long thought dead, casting its shadow across the United States.�
Each of these threads in the cloth of today’s Right-Wing extremism has its analogue in the agenda and the violence-prone style of the John Birch Society. Although the organization flourished only in the early- to mid-1960s and early 70s, its legacy comes to light on social media, television screens, libraries, and schoolrooms today.
THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE MODERN RIGHT-WING MOVEMENT
Media coverage of today’s Right Wing emphasizes the working-class base on which the movement is grounded. Although many contemporary accounts also point to the ultra-wealthy donors behind it, they still describe the Republican Party today as largely populated by low- and moderate-income people with a high school education or less.
But working families have drifted Rightward into the Republican Party only in recent decades. And forgetting that fact obscures the role of the wealthy men—they were all men—who first set the movement’s agenda . . . and the motives that drove them. And so it is today as well. It’s difficult for me to believe that, for most of the ultra-wealthy donors behind the present-day Republican Party, economic motives aren’t still paramount despite their support for the Right-Wing social agenda.
But in 1958 it was even more obvious. Robert Welch and nearly all the eleven men who joined him in setting up the John Birch Society were manufacturers. Six of them, including Welch himself, had served on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). And their true agenda, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, was to reverse government regulation of their businesses and lower their taxes. They cloaked their motivation in “anticommunism� and an early version of today’s conservative Christian social agenda.
A SHARED CONTEMPT FOR UNIONS AND CIVIL RIGHTS
As Dallek puts it, “NAM ultimately enabled the future Birch founders to combine their shared contempt for unions, communists, liberals, and the mainstream news media into a cohesive anticommunist philosophy with pro-free-market undertones.� Dallek might have added that most of the founders also shared an animus toward African Americans. From the moment when it launched and throughout the years it was active, the John Birch Society outspokenly denounced the Civil Rights Movement as a communist plot. They were unalterably opposed to racial integration.
Dallek sums it up this way: “They sought to use the power of government to enforce white Christian identity in American culture while repudiating allegedly alien values like pluralism and tolerance.�
Just one year after founding the organization, the leadership of the John Birch Society actively considered forming a third party. They “discussed a platform that would abolish the federal income tax, eliminate foreign aid, thwart civil rights, ratify the isolationist Bricker Amendment, and return the United States to the gold standard.� However, they reluctantly chose instead to work within the Republican Party, which to their minds was the lesser of two evils.
A SMOKESCREEN OF “ANTICOMMUNISM�
Of course, the Cold War was intense in 1958, when the John Birch Society was established, and hysteria about communist plots was widespread in the United States. Although Senator Joseph McCarthy had been discredited and died the preceding year, the House Un-American Activities Committee was still aggressively pursuing “communists� everywhere they looked. In fact, it was exceedingly difficult for any politician, Republican or Democrat, to get elected without a commitment to anticommunism.
Ironically, the membership of the Communist Party of the USA had peaked in 1947 at about 75,000. By 1958, after Stalin’s death and Nikita Khruschchev’s “Secret Speech� revealing his crimes, membership had dropped to fewer than 10,000. And at least 1,500 were law enforcement officers who had infiltrated the party.
The Birch Society founders may even have believed what they said when they spoke about “communists.� But it was clear they knew little or nothing about Marxism-Leninism—or about the activities of the few real communists still active in the country. None of that mattered to them. Their real targets were the liberals in both parties who resisted their call to eliminate regulation of business, shrink government, and lower their taxes.
A PRIMER ON RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Viewed most broadly, today’s American Right Wing activists tend to share three characteristics. First, a commitment to shrink the federal government, sharply limiting or eliminating regulation of business and drastically reducing taxes. Second, an intense distrust of anyone who is not white, native-born, and Christian. And, third, a willingness to employ whatever tactics might be necessary to get their way, no holds barred. And in all three respects the John Birch Society set the Right on this course beginning in the 1950s.
In Birchers, Dallek traces the evolution of the Right-Wing agenda through the six decades since. Many of the issues—anticommunism, for example—have fallen by the wayside. New ones have risen to the fore, and the culture war has grown more prominent. But in fundamental ways the Right-Wing extremism that led to the mob attack on the United States Congress on January 6, 2021, is no different from that of the John Birch Society in 1958.
THE END OF CIVILITY IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Today we view the 1950s as a peaceful time in our history (the Korean War notwithstanding). A time when civility reigned in politics. But consider what Dallek tells us about the John Birch Society. “Birchers had a well-established, off-putting reputation for being highly aggressive and partial to intimidating tactics. They placed late-night calls, pinned labels like ‘com symp� on opponents, shouted down speakers, threatened lawsuits, and warned of unspecified consequences for those who crossed them.� Not much different, after all, from the tactics employed by Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and the “MAGA� forces behind Donald Trump. Today’s Right-Wing extremists have grown even more violent—but the pattern was set sixty years ago.
The John Birch Society “offered the far right a language, style, and ideology—confrontational, nationalistic, moralistic—that proliferated in subsequent decades until they finally became the norm within the American right. Its approach featured conspiratorial thinking and an antiestablishment, burn-it-down sensibility.� It would be difficult to find a more economical description of today’s Republican Right Wing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Dallek‘s surname may be familiar since he is the son of historian Robert Dallek, the award-winning author of numerous presidential biographies. The younger Dallek teaches history at the Graduate School of Political Management of George Washington University in Washington, DC. His bio on the university’s website describes him as “a political historian whose intellectual interests include the intersection of social crises and political transformation, the evolution of the modern conservative movement, and liberalism and its critics. Dallek has authored or co-authored four books including, most recently, Birchers.� He is a familiar figure in national news media, speaking on politics, history, and public affairs.
“Dallek earned a B.A. in history from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. Prior to joining GWU, he served as an associate director of the University of California Washington Center. He also worked as a speechwriter for House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Dallek lives in Washington with his wife and two sons.�
In Welch’s addle-brained illogic, even the fluoridation of water represented a communist plot. These were signature issues in Right-Wing extremism in the era of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.
But in fundamental ways, the agenda of the Republican Far Right today is nearly identical to that of the John Birch Society in its heyday. And in tracing the history of Right-Wing extremism in the United States, Matthew Dallek demonstrates how its activities beginning six decades ago laid the foundation for the hyper-partisan politics that afflicts American society today.
SIXTY YEARS OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Dallek’s thesis is clear at the outset. “You will see,� he writes, “in COVID denialism, vaccine disinformation, America First nationalism, school board wars, QAnon plots, and allegations of electoral cheating, a movement from the 1960s, long thought dead, casting its shadow across the United States.�
Each of these threads in the cloth of today’s Right-Wing extremism has its analogue in the agenda and the violence-prone style of the John Birch Society. Although the organization flourished only in the early- to mid-1960s and early 70s, its legacy comes to light on social media, television screens, libraries, and schoolrooms today.
THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE MODERN RIGHT-WING MOVEMENT
Media coverage of today’s Right Wing emphasizes the working-class base on which the movement is grounded. Although many contemporary accounts also point to the ultra-wealthy donors behind it, they still describe the Republican Party today as largely populated by low- and moderate-income people with a high school education or less.
But working families have drifted Rightward into the Republican Party only in recent decades. And forgetting that fact obscures the role of the wealthy men—they were all men—who first set the movement’s agenda . . . and the motives that drove them. And so it is today as well. It’s difficult for me to believe that, for most of the ultra-wealthy donors behind the present-day Republican Party, economic motives aren’t still paramount despite their support for the Right-Wing social agenda.
But in 1958 it was even more obvious. Robert Welch and nearly all the eleven men who joined him in setting up the John Birch Society were manufacturers. Six of them, including Welch himself, had served on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). And their true agenda, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, was to reverse government regulation of their businesses and lower their taxes. They cloaked their motivation in “anticommunism� and an early version of today’s conservative Christian social agenda.
A SHARED CONTEMPT FOR UNIONS AND CIVIL RIGHTS
As Dallek puts it, “NAM ultimately enabled the future Birch founders to combine their shared contempt for unions, communists, liberals, and the mainstream news media into a cohesive anticommunist philosophy with pro-free-market undertones.� Dallek might have added that most of the founders also shared an animus toward African Americans. From the moment when it launched and throughout the years it was active, the John Birch Society outspokenly denounced the Civil Rights Movement as a communist plot. They were unalterably opposed to racial integration.
Dallek sums it up this way: “They sought to use the power of government to enforce white Christian identity in American culture while repudiating allegedly alien values like pluralism and tolerance.�
Just one year after founding the organization, the leadership of the John Birch Society actively considered forming a third party. They “discussed a platform that would abolish the federal income tax, eliminate foreign aid, thwart civil rights, ratify the isolationist Bricker Amendment, and return the United States to the gold standard.� However, they reluctantly chose instead to work within the Republican Party, which to their minds was the lesser of two evils.
A SMOKESCREEN OF “ANTICOMMUNISM�
Of course, the Cold War was intense in 1958, when the John Birch Society was established, and hysteria about communist plots was widespread in the United States. Although Senator Joseph McCarthy had been discredited and died the preceding year, the House Un-American Activities Committee was still aggressively pursuing “communists� everywhere they looked. In fact, it was exceedingly difficult for any politician, Republican or Democrat, to get elected without a commitment to anticommunism.
Ironically, the membership of the Communist Party of the USA had peaked in 1947 at about 75,000. By 1958, after Stalin’s death and Nikita Khruschchev’s “Secret Speech� revealing his crimes, membership had dropped to fewer than 10,000. And at least 1,500 were law enforcement officers who had infiltrated the party.
The Birch Society founders may even have believed what they said when they spoke about “communists.� But it was clear they knew little or nothing about Marxism-Leninism—or about the activities of the few real communists still active in the country. None of that mattered to them. Their real targets were the liberals in both parties who resisted their call to eliminate regulation of business, shrink government, and lower their taxes.
A PRIMER ON RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Viewed most broadly, today’s American Right Wing activists tend to share three characteristics. First, a commitment to shrink the federal government, sharply limiting or eliminating regulation of business and drastically reducing taxes. Second, an intense distrust of anyone who is not white, native-born, and Christian. And, third, a willingness to employ whatever tactics might be necessary to get their way, no holds barred. And in all three respects the John Birch Society set the Right on this course beginning in the 1950s.
In Birchers, Dallek traces the evolution of the Right-Wing agenda through the six decades since. Many of the issues—anticommunism, for example—have fallen by the wayside. New ones have risen to the fore, and the culture war has grown more prominent. But in fundamental ways the Right-Wing extremism that led to the mob attack on the United States Congress on January 6, 2021, is no different from that of the John Birch Society in 1958.
THE END OF CIVILITY IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Today we view the 1950s as a peaceful time in our history (the Korean War notwithstanding). A time when civility reigned in politics. But consider what Dallek tells us about the John Birch Society. “Birchers had a well-established, off-putting reputation for being highly aggressive and partial to intimidating tactics. They placed late-night calls, pinned labels like ‘com symp� on opponents, shouted down speakers, threatened lawsuits, and warned of unspecified consequences for those who crossed them.� Not much different, after all, from the tactics employed by Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and the “MAGA� forces behind Donald Trump. Today’s Right-Wing extremists have grown even more violent—but the pattern was set sixty years ago.
The John Birch Society “offered the far right a language, style, and ideology—confrontational, nationalistic, moralistic—that proliferated in subsequent decades until they finally became the norm within the American right. Its approach featured conspiratorial thinking and an antiestablishment, burn-it-down sensibility.� It would be difficult to find a more economical description of today’s Republican Right Wing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Dallek‘s surname may be familiar since he is the son of historian Robert Dallek, the award-winning author of numerous presidential biographies. The younger Dallek teaches history at the Graduate School of Political Management of George Washington University in Washington, DC. His bio on the university’s website describes him as “a political historian whose intellectual interests include the intersection of social crises and political transformation, the evolution of the modern conservative movement, and liberalism and its critics. Dallek has authored or co-authored four books including, most recently, Birchers.� He is a familiar figure in national news media, speaking on politics, history, and public affairs.
“Dallek earned a B.A. in history from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. Prior to joining GWU, he served as an associate director of the University of California Washington Center. He also worked as a speechwriter for House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Dallek lives in Washington with his wife and two sons.�
April 24, 2024
Matthew Dallek has produced a fascinating story that explores a relevant and bold hypothesis. Does the toxic discourse of modern American politics stem from a fringe movement that was thought too extremist even 70 years ago? The short answer is kinda.
The book begins by charting how a small group of wealthy businessmen were able to form an organisation with an apocalyptic view of where America was being led. How that organisation began to subvert mainstream Republican politics culminated in 1964 with the unexpected rise of Barry Goldwater.
Dallek makes the case that although the actual John Birch society began to dwindle and disappear, its methods and some of its beliefs actually began to grow. Dallek argues that the ultimate culmination of the Birch legacy was the explosive rise of Trump.
The book is well-written and well-researched, but there is a fair bit of speculation at times. Dallek produces a clear narrative, and his line of argument is well-structured and compelling. What is fascinating about this book is how many of the major figures of the far right have had some brush with the John Birch Society.
The book does make assumptions about your knowledge of American history and the modern political scene in America. But I think with a few googles anybody could pick up this book and get up to speed.
My only criticism is that I feel that by immersing himself in the history of the John Birch Society, Dallek sees their influence in many things and although the book concedes that other groups contributed to America's lurch to the right, it seems that the book always puts Birchers as leading the charge. There is no doubt in my mind that a wide variety of groups were behind America's shift, John Birch Society included.
This is an excellent work from Dallek and I would certainly recommend this to anyone who is wondering how we got to where we are in American politics.
The book begins by charting how a small group of wealthy businessmen were able to form an organisation with an apocalyptic view of where America was being led. How that organisation began to subvert mainstream Republican politics culminated in 1964 with the unexpected rise of Barry Goldwater.
Dallek makes the case that although the actual John Birch society began to dwindle and disappear, its methods and some of its beliefs actually began to grow. Dallek argues that the ultimate culmination of the Birch legacy was the explosive rise of Trump.
The book is well-written and well-researched, but there is a fair bit of speculation at times. Dallek produces a clear narrative, and his line of argument is well-structured and compelling. What is fascinating about this book is how many of the major figures of the far right have had some brush with the John Birch Society.
The book does make assumptions about your knowledge of American history and the modern political scene in America. But I think with a few googles anybody could pick up this book and get up to speed.
My only criticism is that I feel that by immersing himself in the history of the John Birch Society, Dallek sees their influence in many things and although the book concedes that other groups contributed to America's lurch to the right, it seems that the book always puts Birchers as leading the charge. There is no doubt in my mind that a wide variety of groups were behind America's shift, John Birch Society included.
This is an excellent work from Dallek and I would certainly recommend this to anyone who is wondering how we got to where we are in American politics.
June 5, 2024
Great overview of the JBS and how right wing conspiracy theories were mainstreamed.
April 6, 2023
Essential reading for understanding the break down of the new deal consensus.
August 13, 2023
In the interests of full disclosure: I am a conservative, who used to be very involved in politics. In fact, there were attempts by the Birch Society to recruit me back in the 90s, but I rebuffed them because I knew my views did not align with theirs, and I knew them to be crazy. As a conservative who has never voted for Trump and doesn't know how someone like that could become a standard-bearer for a movement that claims the name conservative (but is, in fact, far from it), I eagerly bought this book hoping to learn what the hell happened.
This book does not deliver on that front. Ironically, given the number of times Dallek condemns guilt-by-association, this book is largely an exercise in just that:
* Even such standard GOP positions as supporting tax cuts are considered to be in alignment with Bircher goals.
* Dallek spends a paragraph implying an anti-forced bussing activist is at least Bircher-aligned, because (among other sins), she had planning meetings in her house, which he describes as a Bircher practice. (By that standard, is there any organization that can't be considered Bircher-aligned?
* Dallek easily ascribes GOP positions as being due to Bircher influence, but ignores that similar arguments could easily be applied to Democrats. For example, following the end of the Soviet Union, he claims the GOP had an isolationist wing that adopted the Bircher position against foreign interventionism, even though (at least to my memory), it was the Democrats, to a much greater degree than the Republicans, who were arguing for cuts to the military in the form of a "peace dividend." (In other words, the Democrats came closer to the Bircher position.) Also, in discussing the increased use of violent, apocalyptic rhetoric among the GOP, he fails to note that similar language, differing only slightly in who being attacked, is used among among many on the Left.
* In discussing claims by the Right of stolen elections, he neglects to mention the many claims by the Left that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by Republicans.
Many of the claims he makes are just as valid when applied to the Left, but this is clearly a cook whose thesis was decided before the research was even started. Any evidence gathered was used solely to prove that point, no matter how tortured the logic had to be to accomplish that.
Also, he makes a blatant factual error when he claims that when Phyllis Schlafly cancelled her National Review subscription in 1962, one of her suggestions was to send the cash balance of subscription to Pope John Paul. Pope John XXIII was Pope at that time. John Paul I would be two Popes and sixteen years later. If an error that obvious slipped through, what other errors exist in the book that I didn't know enough to catch?
There is definitely room for a good study of how the conservative movement came to be so twisted. Unfortunately, this book doesn't come close to answering that question, despite the promises made by its subtitle.
This book does not deliver on that front. Ironically, given the number of times Dallek condemns guilt-by-association, this book is largely an exercise in just that:
* Even such standard GOP positions as supporting tax cuts are considered to be in alignment with Bircher goals.
* Dallek spends a paragraph implying an anti-forced bussing activist is at least Bircher-aligned, because (among other sins), she had planning meetings in her house, which he describes as a Bircher practice. (By that standard, is there any organization that can't be considered Bircher-aligned?
* Dallek easily ascribes GOP positions as being due to Bircher influence, but ignores that similar arguments could easily be applied to Democrats. For example, following the end of the Soviet Union, he claims the GOP had an isolationist wing that adopted the Bircher position against foreign interventionism, even though (at least to my memory), it was the Democrats, to a much greater degree than the Republicans, who were arguing for cuts to the military in the form of a "peace dividend." (In other words, the Democrats came closer to the Bircher position.) Also, in discussing the increased use of violent, apocalyptic rhetoric among the GOP, he fails to note that similar language, differing only slightly in who being attacked, is used among among many on the Left.
* In discussing claims by the Right of stolen elections, he neglects to mention the many claims by the Left that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by Republicans.
Many of the claims he makes are just as valid when applied to the Left, but this is clearly a cook whose thesis was decided before the research was even started. Any evidence gathered was used solely to prove that point, no matter how tortured the logic had to be to accomplish that.
Also, he makes a blatant factual error when he claims that when Phyllis Schlafly cancelled her National Review subscription in 1962, one of her suggestions was to send the cash balance of subscription to Pope John Paul. Pope John XXIII was Pope at that time. John Paul I would be two Popes and sixteen years later. If an error that obvious slipped through, what other errors exist in the book that I didn't know enough to catch?
There is definitely room for a good study of how the conservative movement came to be so twisted. Unfortunately, this book doesn't come close to answering that question, despite the promises made by its subtitle.
January 15, 2024
Matthew Dallek gives readers an interesting contribution to the "how'd we get Trump" corpus. Dallek's main theory is that the rabidly anti-communist John Birch society tunneled its way into the Republican mainstream as the decades passed and came to the forefront of the party's efforts and rhetoric. Dallek's research is incredibly thorough, and he fills the book with all sorts of intriguing anecdotes and stories about Birchers and their movement. From William F. Buckley to Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party maintained a tenuous but connected relationship with the JBS. They were often on the outside and failed to elect many actual members of Congress but grew in influence through front groups, movements like opposing a summit with Soviet leaders, and supporting massive resistance to integration. While the JBS was almost always aligned with the GOP (at least somewhat, when they weren't spurning it for third party runs like John Schmitz's), Southern Dixiecrats and their successors like Congressman Larry MacDonald joined too.
One of the more interesting threads you get from the book is how the JBS began as a group of elite industrialists but gradually expanded its reach to working-class America. As the New Deal coalition unraveled, JBS' aggressive right-wing populism pushed this realignment along in its own way.
Dallek accordingly spends a few chapters exploring the group's makeup and relations with other groups. In one, he uncovers fascinating counter-operations by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which infiltrated the JBS and brought to light vile antisemitism and other forms of extremism. In another, he shows how women played a growing role in the group, especially when it came to "family values" crusades of the 1970s and 1980s.
Where he falls short of five stars is in connecting the JBS to more recent politics. Dallek sometimes tries to link social conservatism in general to the JBS, but doesn't provide the whole picture, which historians of the movement like do a better job of showcasing. This sloppiness in a few characterizations aside, I agree with his overall conclusion that the Birchers ended up having an outsized influence on the Republican Party. should be on your list if you want to read about the development of the American right.
One of the more interesting threads you get from the book is how the JBS began as a group of elite industrialists but gradually expanded its reach to working-class America. As the New Deal coalition unraveled, JBS' aggressive right-wing populism pushed this realignment along in its own way.
Dallek accordingly spends a few chapters exploring the group's makeup and relations with other groups. In one, he uncovers fascinating counter-operations by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which infiltrated the JBS and brought to light vile antisemitism and other forms of extremism. In another, he shows how women played a growing role in the group, especially when it came to "family values" crusades of the 1970s and 1980s.
Where he falls short of five stars is in connecting the JBS to more recent politics. Dallek sometimes tries to link social conservatism in general to the JBS, but doesn't provide the whole picture, which historians of the movement like do a better job of showcasing. This sloppiness in a few characterizations aside, I agree with his overall conclusion that the Birchers ended up having an outsized influence on the Republican Party. should be on your list if you want to read about the development of the American right.
February 7, 2023
Birchers by Matthew Dallak highlights the influence the extreme right has always had on the so-called mainstream right, in this case focusing on the John Birch Society.
This well researched work connects many of the dots that together make up the shift from a general right-wing way of thinking to an extremist sort of radical right which has now taken over the right in general and the Republican party in particular.
This is one of several books I've read over the past couple of years that trace the influence of fringe ideas on the trending of right wing thought toward exclusionary and hateful. The only subtle differences in these assessments seems to be how much resistance the writer wants to attribute the "traditional" or establishment conservatives. In other words, did the gradual shift occur grudgingly because the establishment needed some of the extremist vote, or did the establishment gradually work the ideas into their body of thought because to accept all of the rhetoric at once would alienate too many of their centrist voters? I lean toward the latter, but it is impossible to know with certainty what anyone, especially politicians, actually believe versus what they accept as part of compromise. But they seem to have consistently accepted these "compromises" with gusto, weaponizing them almost immediately upon inclusion.
This book, by using the Birchers as the focal point, offers a wonderful narrative to the more recent shifts in the political discourse from the right. While the reader will learn a lot, what will also be interesting is seeing things you knew about from a different perspective and within a very specific narrative. Very few of the events that might have seemed like isolated and unusual occurrences are really so isolated.
This is such a good read that even those who don't usually read political nonfiction will enjoy it. Granted, if you think all people are valuable and not just the ones who look or worship like you, you will like the book better. Those with misplaced and unjustified feelings of superiority and exceptionalism won't enjoy it so much, these people hate looking in the mirror, at least a mirror without a lot of distortion.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
This well researched work connects many of the dots that together make up the shift from a general right-wing way of thinking to an extremist sort of radical right which has now taken over the right in general and the Republican party in particular.
This is one of several books I've read over the past couple of years that trace the influence of fringe ideas on the trending of right wing thought toward exclusionary and hateful. The only subtle differences in these assessments seems to be how much resistance the writer wants to attribute the "traditional" or establishment conservatives. In other words, did the gradual shift occur grudgingly because the establishment needed some of the extremist vote, or did the establishment gradually work the ideas into their body of thought because to accept all of the rhetoric at once would alienate too many of their centrist voters? I lean toward the latter, but it is impossible to know with certainty what anyone, especially politicians, actually believe versus what they accept as part of compromise. But they seem to have consistently accepted these "compromises" with gusto, weaponizing them almost immediately upon inclusion.
This book, by using the Birchers as the focal point, offers a wonderful narrative to the more recent shifts in the political discourse from the right. While the reader will learn a lot, what will also be interesting is seeing things you knew about from a different perspective and within a very specific narrative. Very few of the events that might have seemed like isolated and unusual occurrences are really so isolated.
This is such a good read that even those who don't usually read political nonfiction will enjoy it. Granted, if you think all people are valuable and not just the ones who look or worship like you, you will like the book better. Those with misplaced and unjustified feelings of superiority and exceptionalism won't enjoy it so much, these people hate looking in the mirror, at least a mirror without a lot of distortion.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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