John Birch Society. The John Birch Society was founded in Indianapolis in 1958 by the former Massachusetts candy manufacturer and anticommunist conspiracy theorist Robert W. Welch (1899–1985). Named for an American Baptist missionary killed by communists in China in 1945, Welch's organization attracted a significant following of ardent anticommunist conservatives. Critics, including many conservatives, labeled Welch an extremist, pointing to the extraordinary accusations of treason and subversion in his writings. In a lengthy letter originally written in 1951 and eventually published as The Politician (1963), Welch denounced President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a conscious agent of the communist conspiracy. In The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (1959), he equated liberalism with collectivism and treason, charging that communists controlled, among other institutions, the federal government, organized labor, much of the nation's education system, and many religious organizations—not to mention most of Western Europe.

While many dismissed such thinking as beyond the pale, the John Birch Society was actually more mainstream than its critics realized. Welch's accusations were far from unusual during the early Cold War and in many ways reflected a long tradition of popular fears about foreign conspiracies and internal subversion. Welch insisted on opening membership to Catholics, Jews, and other groups that had been the focus of past nativist movements. He also claimed that African Americans were welcome. But in mixing legitimate concerns (in this case, over foreign conflicts in a nuclear age) with a reckless cultural nationalism that saw danger lurking in every shadow, Welch's movement helped perpetuate America's long‐standing xenophobic tendencies.

Welch's criticism of New Deal liberalism as “collectivist” was also neither new nor uncommon; indeed, the John Birch Society played a significant role in connecting the older conservatism of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to the new conservatism of Barry Goldwater, George C. Wallace, and Ronald Reagan. Goldwater and Reagan both found it convenient to quote Welch's anticommunist, antigovernment rhetoric, and the organization itself built a powerful grassroots network of conservative activists (perhaps as many as 100,000 at its zenith) who operated bookstores and reading rooms; waged local political struggles against gun control, high taxes, sex education in the schools, and other emerging conservative concerns; and worked tirelessly to elect like‐minded political candidates. Welch himself became increasingly paranoid and isolated after issuing even more bizarre conspiracy theories in 1964. The politics his organization nurtured, however, were just beginning to flourish.
See also Anticommunism; Fifties, The; House Committee on Un‐American Activities; McCarthy, Joseph.

Bibliography

Robert A. Goldberg , Bridging McCarthyism and Reaganism: The John Birch Society, in Grassroots Resistance: Social Movements in Twentieth Century America, 1991, pp. 116–40.

Leonard J. Moore

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY was founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, a retired Boston candy manufacturer who considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower "a dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy." According to Welch and other society members, coconspirators ranged from Franklin D. Roosevelt to the various chairs of the Federal Reserve Board. John M. Birch was a Baptist missionary and Air Force officer who was killed by Chinese communists in 1945, ten days after V-J Day. Welch never met Birch, but he named his society in honor of the man he called the Cold War's first hero. The society quickly emerged as perhaps the most well-known far-right anticommunist group in the United States. By the early 1960s, the group peaked after enlisting some ten thousand members, including hundreds who sat on school and library boards or held other civic offices. Headquartered in Belmont, Massachusetts, society activists ran campaigns calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and the United States' withdrawal from the United Nations. On a more regular basis, the Birch Society publishes a journal, American Opinion, and runs youth camps, book distribution services, and intellectual cadres of "Americanists" scattered throughout the nation. Its members have never advocated violence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Broyles, J. Allen. John Birch Society: Anatomy of a Protest. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

Hardisty, Jean. Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

KennethO'Reilly

See alsoAnticommunism ; Radical Right ; andvol. 9:The Blue Book of the John Birch Society .

John Birch Society ultraconservative, anti-Communist organization in the United States. It was founded in Dec., 1958, by manufacturer Robert Welch and named after John Birch, an American intelligence officer killed by Communists in China (Aug., 1945). The most prominent of the extreme right-wing groups active in the United States, the society was founded to fight subversive Communism within the United States. Its other objectives have included the abolition of the graduated income tax, the repeal of social security legislation, the impeachment of various high government officials, the end to busing for the purpose of school integration, the end to U.S. membership in the United Nations, and the nullification of the treaty that turned over the Panama Canal to Panama. In his book, The Politician, Welch charged to the effect that Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles had actively aided the so-called Communist conspiracy. The society has also contended that an elite international cabal—the U.S. branch of which supposedly includes the Council on Foreign Relations, for many years led by David Rockefeller—is seeking to establish a world tyranny.

Bibliography: See R. Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (repr. 1995); R. Vahan, The Truth about the John Birch Society (1962); J. A. Broyles, The John Birch Society (1964); B. R. Epstein and A. Foster, Radical Right (1967).