The John Birch Society ( JBS ) is a self-described conservative advocacy group supporting anti-communism and limited government. It has been described as a radical right and right right organization.
Businessman and founder of Robert W. Welch, Jr. (1899-1985) developed the organizational infrastructure in 1958 in various national chapters. Its main activities in the 1960s, Rick Perlstein said, "consisted of monthly meetings to watch movies by Welch, followed by writing postcards or letters to government officials linking specific policies with Communist threats." After the increase in membership and initial influence, efforts by them like conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review led JBS to be identified as a peripheral element of the conservative movement, largely in fear of the radicalization of American rights.
Originally based in Belmont, Massachusetts, now headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, with local branches throughout the United States. The organization has American Opinion Publishing, which publishes The New American .
Video John Birch Society
Value
It supports a limited government and opposes the redistribution of wealth and economic intervention. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, anarchism, and communism. This is against socialism as well, which it asserts is a US government administration infiltration. In the 1983 edition of Crossfire Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Georgia), then the newly appointed president, characterized the community as a property of a foreign right not a new right.
The public opposed the civil rights movement of the 1960s and claimed the movement made the Communists in a prominent position. In the second half of 1965, JBS produced a leaflet entitled "What's Wrong with Civil Rights?", Which is used as a newspaper advertisement. In the article, one of the answers is: "For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all the agitation that grows, the riots and bitterness, and the dangerous steps toward civil war, have not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now This has been deliberately and almost entirely created by the Communists patiently building up to this stage for more than forty years. "Society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming that they violated the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution United States and violates the right of each country to enact the civil rights law. The public also opposes the Equal Rights Amendment. Society opposes "a world government", and has a view of immigration reduction on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of ​​America (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue that the US Constitution has lost value in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged tendency is not deliberate. It mentions the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push toward the North American Union.
Characterization
Society has been described as "ultraconservative", "far right", and "extremist". Other sources consider the community as part of the patriot movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, lists the community as a 'Patriot' group, a group that "advocates or obeys [s] extreme anti-government doctrines".
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History
Origins
The community was founded in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 9, 1958 by a group of 12 people led by Robert W. Welch, Jr., a retired candy factory from Belmont, Massachusetts. Welch named the new organization after John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and military intelligence officer who was shot and killed by communist forces in China in August 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. Welch claims that Birch is an unknown but dedicated anti-communist, and the first American victim of the Cold War. Jimmy Doolittle, who met Birch after surrendering to China following the Tokyo Attack, said in his autobiography that he believes Birch "would not approve" the use of the name in particular.
Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder of Allen Bradley Company and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Fred C. Koch, founder of Koch Industries Robert Waring Stoddard, President of Wyman-Gordon, a large industrial company, is one of the founding members. The other is Revilo P. Oliver, a University of Illinois professor who was later excluded from the Institute and helped set up the National Alliance. A two-day Welch presentation transcript at the founding meeting was published as the Blue Book of the John Birch Society, and became the foundation of his conviction, with each new member receiving a copy. According to Welch, "both the US and the Soviet governments are controlled by the same cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers and corrupt politicians.If left unexpressed, traitors within the US government will betray the country's sovereignty to the UN for the New World Order collectivist managed by the 'one-world socialist government.' "Welch sees collectivism as a major threat to western culture, and American liberals as" secret communist traitors "that provide gradual protection of collectivism, with the ultimate goal replacing the nations of Western civilization with a one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but Communism is their supreme state, and they are all heading in that direction."
Community activities include the distribution of literature, pamphlets, magazines, videos, and other materials when sponsoring the Speaker Bureau, which invites "speakers who are very aware of the motivations that drive political policy". One of the community's first public activities is "Get the US!" (membership in the UN) campaign, which was claimed in 1959 that "the true nature of [the] UN is to establish a One World Government". In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to: "Join your local P.T.A early in the school year, invite your conservative friends to do the same, and start working to take over." One Man's Opinion , a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, renamed American Opinion, and became the official publication of the community. Society publishes The New American , biweekly magazine.
1960s
In March 1961, the community had 60,000 to 100,000 members and, according to Welch, "a staff of 28 people at the Headquarters, about 30 Coordinators (or Main Coordinators) in the field, paid fully for salaries and expenses, and about 100 Coordinators (or Leaders Section as they are mentioned in some areas), who work on a voluntary basis for all or part of their salary, or fees, or both. " According to Political Research Associates (a nonprofit research group that investigates the far right), the community "spearheaded grassroots grassroots, combining educational meetings, drive petitions and letter-writing campaigns.An initial campaign against the second meeting between the United States and the Soviet Union produced more than 600,000 cards posts and letters, according to the public.In the same year Welch offered $ 2,300 to students for the best essay on the "impeachment reasons" of Justice Warren, the ultra-conservative prime objective.Community campaign in June 1964 against Xerox's corporate sponsorship of the program, TV programs that benefit the UN produce 51,279 letters from 12,785 people. "
In 1962, William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of the major conservative magazine of the National Review, denounced Welch and the John Birch Society as "far from common sense" and urged the GOP to clean itself. Welch influence.
In the late 1960s Welch insisted that Johnson's government against communism in Vietnam was part of a communist plan aimed at taking over the United States. Welch demanded that the United States emerge from Vietnam, thus harmonizing the Society with the left. Society opposed to fluoridation of water, called "mass treatment", The JBS was quite active in the 1960s with many chapters, but rarely involved in building coalitions with other conservatives. It was rejected by most conservatives because of Welch's conspiracy theory. Philosopher Ayn Rand said in a Playboy interview in 1964, "I consider the Birch Society to be in vain, for they are not for capitalism but only against communism... I gather they believe that the current state of the world disaster this. caused by a communist conspiracy. This is childish naive and superficial. No country can be destroyed by conspiracy, it can be destroyed only with ideas. "
The former Eisenhower cabinet member, Ezra Taft Benson - a prominent Mormon - spoke in favor of the John Birch Society, but in January 1963 the LDS church issued a statement distancing itself from the Society. Antisemit, racist, anti-Mormon, anti-Masonic groups criticized the organization's acceptance of Jews, non-whites, Masons, and Mormons as members. These opponents accused Welch of harboring feminist, ecumenical, and evolutionary ideas. Welch rejected these accusations by his critics: "All we are interested here is against the progress of the Communists, and ultimately destroying all the Communist conspiracies, so that Jews and Christians alike, and Mohammad and Buddha, can again have a world that worthy in which to live. "
In 1964, Welch liked Barry Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination, but his membership was divided, with two thirds in favor of Goldwater and a third of Richard Nixon's supporters, who did not run. A number of Birch members and their allies were supporters of Goldwater in 1964 and some delegates to the 1964 National Convention of the Republic.
In April 1966, a New York Times article in New Jersey and the community voiced - in part - a concern for "an increase in the tempo of radical rights attacks against local governments, libraries, school boards, associate parents - teachers, mental health programs, Republicans and, most recently, the ecumenical movement. "This then marks the community as" the most successful and most respected radical self-help organization "in the country. It operates alone or supports other large extremist organizations, like Birchers, is an internal Communist conspiracy within the United States. "
Eisenhower Problems
Welch writes in a widespread statement, Politician, "Could Eisenhower really be just an intelligent politician, entirely without principle and hungry for glory, which is only a tool of the Communists?. "Regarding... Eisenhower, it's hard to avoid asking questions about deliberate betrayal."
The controversial paragraph has been removed before the final publication of The Politician .
The sensationalism of Welch's charges against Eisenhower prompted some conservatives and Republicans, the most prominent Goldwater and the intellectual circle of William F. Buckley, to escape or secretly avoid the group. Buckley, an early friend and admirer of Welch, considers his accusations against Eisenhower a "paranoid and silly fool" and tries unsuccessfully to clean Welch from Birch Society. Since then, Buckley, editor of the National Review, became a spokesman for intellectuals and conservative anti-Bircher organizers. Buckley biographer John B. Judis writes that "Buckley is starting to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right wing revival in this country will bring about a bad Fascist change, even leading to conservatism." > National Review has been promoted. "
This booklet has the support of Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture and the 13th President of the LDS Church. In a letter to the head of his FBI friend, J. Edgar Hoover, Benson asked, "how could a man [Eisenhower] seem so strongly to Christian principles and the basic concept of America so effectively used as a means to serve a communist conspiracy?" Benson personally struggled to prevent the bureau from condemning JBS, which prompted Hoover to distance himself from Benson. At one point in 1971 Hoover directed his staff to lie to Benson not to meet him on this issue.
1970s
The public was in the midst of a case of freedom of speech in the 1970s, after American Opinion accused Chicago lawyer Elmer Gertz, who represented the family of a young man killed by a policeman, became part of a Communist conspiracy to combining all the police institutions in the country into one great power. The result of a defamation lawsuit, Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. , reached the United States Supreme Court, stating that a country may allow private figures such as Gertz to restore the true damage of a media defendant without proving malicious, but a public figure must indeed prove a crime, in accordance with established standards at New York Times Co. v. Sullivan , to recover the alleged damage or punitive damages. The court ordered a retrial in which Gertz won.
The main causes of society in the 1970s included opposition to Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) and for the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. The community claimed in 1973 that Mao Zedong's regime had killed 64 million Chinese people that year and that was a major supplier of banned heroin to the United States. This led to a bumper sticker showing a pair of scissors cutting a hypodermic needle in half accompanied by the slogan "Cut The Red China Connection". The public also opposes the transfer of the Panama Canal from America to the sovereignty of Panama.
Communities were organized into local chapters during this period. Ernest Brosang, regional coordinator of New Jersey, states that it is virtually impossible for opponents of society to break through policy-making levels, thereby protecting them from "anti-American" takeover efforts. Its activities include the distribution of critical literature on civil rights legislation, warnings against the influence of the United Nations, and the release of a petition to indict US Supreme Court Justice, Earl Warren. To spread their message, members held documentary film shows and carried out initiatives such as "Let Freedom Ring", the national network of telephone message recording.
After Welch
At the time of Welch's death in 1985, the membership and influence of society has declined dramatically. Society continues to press for ending the United States membership in the United Nations. As evidence of the effectiveness of JBS's efforts, the community refers to a failed resolution of the Utah Law Firm that calls for the withdrawal of the United States, as well as the actions of several other countries in which membership of the Society has been active. Since its establishment, the public has repeatedly opposed US military intervention abroad, although it strongly supports the American military. It has issued a call to "Bring Our Troops Home" in every conflict since its founding, including Vietnam. The community also has a committee of national speakers called the American Opinion Speakers Bureau (AOSB) and an anti-tax committee called TRIM (Tax Reform Immediate).
The second head of the Union is Congressman Larry McDonald (D) of Georgia, who was killed on September 1, 1983, when the KAL 007 aircraft was shot down by a Soviet interceptor.
William P. Hoar has been active as a writer for the Society. He is best known for his powerful attacks against mainline politicians from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush. She publishes regularly on The New American and her predecessor American Opinion. He co-wrote The Clinton Clique with Larry Abraham alleging that Clinton is part of Anglo - American Conspiracies are said to be governing through the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. The Birch Society publication group, "The Western Isles" published his book Conspiracy Architects: A Stunning History (1984) and Huntington House Publishers publishes his book Handout and Pickpockets: Our Government Gone Berserk 1996).
2009-present
The public has been active in supporting audits, and aims to finally dismantle, the Federal Reserve System. JBS argues that the Constitution of the United States only gives Congress the ability to coin money, and does not allow it to delegate this power, or to convert dollars into fiat currencies not supported by gold or silver.
JBS is one of the sponsors of the Conservative Political Action Conference 2010, ending a decade-long exile from the main conservative movement. In 2012, the US Conservative Union council decided not to invite JBS to the conference.
JBS opposes modern efforts to call for a convention to propose amendments to the US Constitution.
Although membership numbers are kept private, JBS has reported members' resurgence during the Trump administration, particularly in Texas. Organizational goals in Texas include opposition to the UN Agenda 21 based on conspiracy theories that it would "establish control over all human activity", and the opposition to a bill that would allow undocumented migrants to pay state tuition for the state colleges of Texas.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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