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
