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Shrike58's Reviews > Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
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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.
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