John Birch Society

:JBS is also an acronym for the Judd Band Showcase.

History

The JBS was established in Indianapolis on December 9, 1958 by a group of twelve "patriotic and public-spirited" men led by Robert Welch, Jr., a retired candy manufacturer from Belmont, Massachusetts. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as The Blue Book of the John Birch Society and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new JBS member receiving a copy. "According to Welch," writes Political Research Associates in its analysis of the Birchers, "both the US and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the US government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order managed by a 'one-world socialist government.' The Birch Society incorporated many themes from pre-WWII rightist groups opposed to the New Deal, and had its base in the business nationalist sector..."http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html

Related Topics:
Indianapolis - Robert Welch, Jr. - Belmont, Massachusetts - Political Research Associates - New World Order - New Deal

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Welch saw "collectivism" as the main threat to western civilization, and liberals as "secret communist traitors" who provide the cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction."http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html

Related Topics:
Collectivism - Welfarism

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JBS's objective was to fight communism using some of communism's own techniques -- organization of front groups, infiltration of other groups and letter-writing campaigns. One of the first public activities of the JBS was a "Get US out!" (of membership in the UN) campaign, which alleged in 1959 that the "Real nature of UN is to build One World Government (New World Order)." One Man's Opinion, a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed American Opinion and became the Birch Society's official publication. It has since been replaced by the bi-weekly magazine, The New American.

Related Topics:
UN - New World Order

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In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to "join your local PTA at the beginning of the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise, and go to work to take it over."

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By March of 1961, the Society had an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 members and, according to Welch, "a staff of twenty-eight people in the Home Office; about thirty Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who are fully-paid as to salary and expenses; and about one hundred Coordinators (or Section Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or part of their salary, or expenses, or both." According to its profile by Political Research Associates, JBS "pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives, and letter writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second Summit Conference between the US and the Soviet Union generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the Society. A June 1964 Birch campaign to oppose Xerox Corporation sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals."http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html

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The JBS was (and is) viewed by many mainstream journalists and politicians as an "extremist, wing-nut organization of conspiracy theorists." Much of its early conspiracism, according to Political Research Associates, "reflects an ultraconservative business nationalist critique of business internationalists networked through groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is viewed through a conspiracist lens as puppets of the Rockefeller family in a 1952 book by McCarthy fan Emanuel M. Josephson, Rockefeller, 'Internationalist': The Man Who Misrules the World. In 1962 Dan Smoot's The Invisible Government added several other policy groups to the list of conspirators, including the Committee for Economic Development, the Advertising Council, the Atlantic Council (formerly the Atlantic Union Committee), the Business Advisory Council, and the Trilateral Commission. Smoot had worked at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC before leaving to establish an anticommunist newsletter, the Dan Smoot Report. The shift from countersubversion on behalf of the FBI to countersubversion in the private sector was an easy one. The basic thesis was the same. In Smoot's concluding chapter, he wrote, 'Somewhere at the top of the pyramid in the invisible government are a few sinister people who know exactly what they are doing: They want America to become part of a worldwide socialist dictatorship, under the control of the Kremlin.'" Birchers elaborated on an earlier Illuminati Freemason conspiracy theory, imagining "an unbroken ideologically-driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of Marxism and Communism, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations"http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html. Unlike most advocates of the Illuminati-Freemason conspiracy theory, however, the Birch Society strenuously denies harboring any anti-Semitic ideation, and indeed claims many Jews among its membership.

Related Topics:
Council on Foreign Relations - Emanuel M. Josephson - Dan Smoot - Committee for Economic Development - Advertising Council - Atlantic Council - Business Advisory Council - Trilateral Commission - Dan Smoot Report - Illuminati - Freemason - Marxism - Communism - Anti-Semitic - Jew

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Republican mainstream unhappiness with the Birchers intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a ?conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy.? Welch went further in a book titled The Politician, written in 1956 and published by the JBS in 1963, which declared that Eisenhower?s brother Milton was Ike?s superior within the Communist apparatus and alleging that other top government officials were also communist tools, including ?ex president Truman and Roosevelt, and the last Sec. Of State John Foster Dulles and former CIA Director Allan W. Dulles.? Conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the JBS. Welch responded by attempting to take over Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization founded with assistance from Buckley.

Related Topics:
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Milton - Truman - Roosevelt - John Foster Dulles - Allan W. Dulles - William F. Buckley, Jr. - Young Americans for Freedom

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In October 1964, the Idaho Statesman newspaper expressed concern about what it called an ?ominous? increase in JBS-led ?ultra right? radio and television broadcasts, which it said then numbered 7,000 weekly and cost an estimated $10 million annually. ?By virtue of saturation tactics used, radical, reactionary propaganda is producing an impact even on large numbers of people who, themselves, are in no sense extremists or sympathetic to extremists views," declared a Statesman editorial. "When day after day they hear distortions of fact and sinister charges against persons or groups, often emanating from organizations with conspicuously respectable sounding names, it is no wonder that the result is: Confusion on some important public issues; stimulation of latent prejudices; creation of suspicion, fear and mistrust in relation not only to their representatives in government, but even in relation to their neighbors.?

Related Topics:
Radio - Television - Propaganda - Extremists

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In their early days, the JBS shared a common ideology and some overlapping membership with Fred Schwarz and his California-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade.

Related Topics:
Fred Schwarz - Christian Anti-Communism Crusade

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John Birch Society influence on US politics hit its high point in the years around the failed 1964 presidential campaign of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who lost to incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Welch had supported Goldwater over Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination, but the membership split, with two-thirds supporting Goldwater and one-third supporting Nixon. A number of Birch members and their allies were Goldwater supporters in 1964 and some were delegates at the 1964 Republican National Convention. The Goldwater campaign in turn brought together the nucleus of what later became known as the New Right, many of whom had been groomed by the Birch Society but whose more pragmatic members realized that the group's conspiracism was an impediment to electoral success.

Related Topics:
1964 presidential campaign - Barry Goldwater - Lyndon Baines Johnson - Richard Nixon - 1964 - Republican National Convention - New Right

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John Birch Society members and allies also authored several widely-distributed books that promoted conspiracy theories and mobilized support for the Goldwater campaign:

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• A Choice, Not an Echo by Phyllis Schlafly, which suggested that the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger banking conference, and whose policies were designed to usher in global communist conquest. "A Choice, Not an Echo" became one of Goldwater's campaign slogans.
• The Gravediggers, co-authored by Schlafly and retired Rear Admiral Chester Ward of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, claimed that U.S. military strategy and tactics were actually designed to pave the way for global communist conquest.
• None Dare Call It Treason, by John A. Stormer, sold over seven million copies, making it one of the largest-selling paperback books of the day. It decried "the concurrent decay in America's schools, churches, and press which has conditioned the American people to accept 20 years of retreat in the face of the communist enemy." Mr. Stormer also added, in his 1998 preface to the paperback edition: "Communism, which some believe (or hope) died in the Soviet Union, is alive and on the march in Asia, the Middle East, Central and Southern Africa and through guerrilla groups in Central and South America."
• A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley, a book containing a number of allegations of political corruption throughout the career of Lyndon Johnson.

In April 1966, the New York Times reported on "the increasing tempo of radical right attacks on local government, libraries, school boards, parent-teachers associations, mental health programs, the Republican Party and, most recently, the ecumenical movement The Birch Society is by far the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country. It operates alone or in support of other extremist organizations whose major preoccupation, like that of the Birchers, is the internal Communist conspiracy in the United States."

Related Topics:
New York Times - Republican Party

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Key Birch Society causes of the 1970s included opposition to OSHA and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. The organization claimed in 1973 that the regime of Mao Zedong had murdered 64 million Chinese as of that year, and further accused the country of being the primary supplier of illicit heroin into the United States, leading to its designing bumper stickers showing a pair of scissors cutting a hypodermic needle in half, accompanied by the slogan "Cut The Red China Connection". The society was also vehemently opposed to transferring control of the Panama Canal from American to Panamanian sovereignty, resulting in another slogan: "Don't Give Panama Our Canal - Give Them Kissinger Instead."

Related Topics:
1970s - OSHA - People's Republic of China - 1973 - Mao Zedong - Heroin - United States - Panama Canal

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The Birch Society was organized into local chapters, imitating Welch's understanding of Communist organizing techniques. Ernest Brosang, a New Jersey regional coordinator, contended that it is virtually impossible for opponents of the society to penetrate its policy-making levels. Its activities included distribution of literature attacking proposed civil rights legislation, warning of the influence of the United Nations, and distributing petitions to impeach liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. To spread their message, Birchers held Sunday showings of documentary films and operated initiatives such as "Let Freedom Ring," a nationwide network of recorded telephone messages. Some Birch members also helped organized the "Minutemen," a paramilitary group training to lead guerrilla warfare in case of a Communist take over.

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The second John Birch Society chairman, US Representative Dr. Larry McDonald, was killed in the 1983 KAL-007 shootdown incident. Society members suggested that McDonald had been the principal target of the Soviets in the attack upon the airplane.

Related Topics:
US Representative - Larry McDonald - KAL-007 shootdown

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By the time of Welch's death in 1985, the Birch Society's membership and influence had dramatically declined, but the UN's role in the Gulf War and President George H. W. Bush's call for a 'New World Order' appeared to many JBS members to validate their claims about a "One World Government" conspiracy. Growing right-wing populism in the United States helped the JBS position itself for a comeback, and by 1995 its membership had grown somewhat to more than 55,000, though that number is unofficial as the Society does not disclose its membership statistics.

Related Topics:
President - George H. W. Bush's - New World Order

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After that time period, the Birch Society started a campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for his connections with Chinese interests and on evidense of treason and bribery. Within months of the Society's call for impeachment, news of the Monica Lewinsky affair broke out and the Society's voice was drowned out by a sex-crazed media deluge. Clinton was eventually impeached, however not on the charges the Society had hoped to bring, nor was he convicted or thrown from office. The impeachment campaign's relative success bolstered the Birch Society and its membership, publication circulation, and finances grew further.

Related Topics:
Impeach - President - Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky

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During the 1990s (with a brief pause to work on the above mentioned impeachment campaign), and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Society has opposed 'Free Trade' agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the newly proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). CAFTA has since edged a narrow victory in the United States, though the Society points to the fact that the FTAA will have an even more difficult time.

Related Topics:
NAFTA - CAFTA - FTAA

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The JBS continues to press for an end to United States membership in the United Nations, an idea that has seen more support in recent days, and it points to the Utah legislature's recent resolution calling for the US to take such a step, as well as the actions of several other states where the Society's membership has been active, as evidence of the effectiveness of JBS efforts.

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The Birch Society generally opposes warmaking, though it is staunchly in favor of supporting the military. It has issued calls to "Bring Our Troops Home" in every conflict since, and including, Vietnam. The Society also has a national speaker's committee, called American Opinion Speakers Bureau (AOSB), as well as an anti-tax committe called TRIM (Tax Reform IMmediately).

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Literary References

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In his novel, The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon satirized the famously conservative society with his Peter Pinguid Society, an organization so anti-communist that they opposed capitalism because it led inevitably to communism.

Related Topics:
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

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