The John Birch Society was overwhelmingly about two things - the dire perils of Communism and the threat of World Government as exemplified by the United Nations. Activism on other issues was very limited in comparison.
While there are echoes in what the JBS was warning about in the 1960s in today’s right-wing extremism, I think it’s a stretch to suggest that the JBS is a direct cause of what we’re seeing today. Even when it was most active, the JBS was viewed as extremist and a semi-joke, not a major player in politics. They tended to support Barry Goldwater but he got trounced by Lyndon Johnson in '64. Today, Goldwater would be viewed by the Republican right as a RINO or worse.
The JBS is still around, with a website and online publication (“The New American”). They seem to have dialed back on the Communist Menace and are flogging the same themes as a ton of other right-wing groups - immigration, “Covid overreach”/vaccine dangers, election fraud, the Deep State and so on. The closest I could find to anti-Semitic propaganda was ranting about unnamed “globalists” who are controlling international trade for nefarious reasons.
I caught that interview on the radio this morning, too-- chilling! Talk about deja vu all over again. The Birchers and the Tea Party were a match made in heaven hell. And we’re living with the issue from that unholy union.
A half century ago, the JBS were widely regarded as being cranks worthy of a wink and an eyeroll, but what’s most disturbing now is how the same sorts of conspiracy theories that were their bread and butter back in the day are making their way into the mainstream dialogue and sharing equal footing with more sane thinking.
When I was a junior or senior in high school, the school sponsored a debate for candidates for the school board. One of our teachers wanted us to attend. I did.
One of the candidates was Henry Waxman (running IIRC for his first elected office). He was intelligent and non-smarmy. I was impressed.
The other guy (not remembering his name at all) was weird and creepy, and he had an equally creepy sidekick who gave off seriously bad vibes. Turned out those two were Birchers.
Bob Dylan wrote “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoia Blues” to mock them and wanted to sing it on Ed Sullivan in 1964 where he was booked. The network refused the song, Dylan refused to sing a different song and so a probable historic TV event (like The Beatles on Ed Sullivan) never happened.
I remember in the 1960’s in our neighborhood on Halloween, our local John Birchers were handing out their fascist political pamphlets instead of Halloween treats.
This is probably accurate. What I would say is that there is a ongoing political core of populist regressive fascistic conservatism that exists in this country (and others), and that core gets tapped by different movements through time. So it isn’t so much that the Bircher’s lead to the Trumpers, but that the Bircher’s, Know Nothings, McCarthyits, Moral Majoritarians, Tea Partyists, and Trumpers, are all outbreaks from the same reservoir of disease.
I read this biography of John Birch when it came out a few years ago. TL : DR - he would probably have spun wildly in his grave, wherever it is, had he known what would happen to his name in the decades following his death. His apolitical but devoutly religious mother actually joined the John Birch Society in large part because it was named after him.
Bumping this because I just really learned about the JBS (aka MAGA) from a recent Malcolm Gladwell podcast. I need to dig into this more, but it seems the long shadow is very relevant today