years after your first appearance, thank you, sir. >> thank you very much for having me. >> be up-to-date in the latest in publishing with book tv's podcast about books with current releases plus best seller lists, as well as trends insider interviews. you can find about books on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> c-span shop.org is c-span's online store. browse our latest collection of c-span products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. there's something for every c-span fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operation. shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org. >> weekends on c-span2 are an

intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including charter communication. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers and we're just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. >> charter communications, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> good evening, i'm tony clark from the carter library and i'm really glad you all are here because i think this is going to be a fascinating evening because it kind of tells why we are in politics the way we are right now. you know, when i was growing

up, folk music was a really big deal and there was a group called the chad mitchell trio that had a song called "the john birch society" with lyrics like if mommy is a commy, you've got to turn her in. and it's really a funny, funny song. you know, and they would sing things like fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the right and things, but sometime you should google chad mitchell trio and the john birch society song. the billboards along the highways would say impeach supreme court justice earl warren or get the u.s. out of the u.n. so they were very well-known back in the '60s. by the end of the vietnam war

you didn't hear much about them, but as you'll hear tonight, their influence carried much further. the influence did not disappear. matthew dallek is a professor at the graduate school of political management at george washington university. ... crises, political transformation, liberalism and its critics. and tonight's topic, the evolution of modern conservative movement. he is he has authored or coauthored four books. he's a co-authored fourmac books, a frequent commentator on the news media about politics and history and public affairs. he is also a former speechwriter for former house minority leader richard gephardt. so we want somebody to talk to mathieu about his book and we

could affect anybody better than joseph crespino, jimmy carter professor, an expert in political and cultural history of the 20th century and joe as written, he's published three books including one that he was here to speak about, the biography of harper in the making of america icon. so please join me in welcoming joe and matthew. [applause] >> thanks so much, tony. always so much fun to be at the carter library and thank you for going out tonight to hear and ask questions about this really exciting and timely and deeply researched and wonderful book. and matt, welcome to georgia here it's greatwe to have you he this week. it's appropriate to have you here this week as i was reading

your book this week in preparation for tonight, i was also reading an op-ed that was in w the "new york times" this week by michelle tolle here i don't know if some of you saw it but it talked about the hotness of the georgia republican party, and it talked about, it was amazing to read this article because it's all about how the trump supporters are in such conflict with the governor andou there's this real tension between the conservative and ultraconservatives lo and behold your book begins with a story in the california republican party around 1961 or 62 and that's a long time republican party activist who is decrying the rise of these crazy john birchers who were ruining the w republican party and turning it into a hot mess. so tell us of the john birch society was and what it seems to

be, seems to be so similar what was going on in the 1960s, what's happening today.i so what are the similarly what are the differences? >> first of all, i want to thank you, joe for doing this with me. it's wonderful to be here with you and you want to thank tony and the carter library as well for having me' it's really an honor to be here. suggests, joe was referring to patricia hit, who was a loyalist to richard nixon who was not exactly a liberal. and she was running for a local seat -- this gives you a flavor of the birch society, a local seat on the republican party county committee in southern california, and the birchers did not, members of society did not say basically as big conservative enough that she wasn't a true leader. and basically ran against her and they defeated her, and she describes in this amazing oral history was like to go up

against that there just to give it a couple quotes, they started calling up everybody in her district and described her as quote, a socialist, economy and the. pinko. cashback autonomy. she called them and numbs a destructive force. she said quote they were haters beyond anything i've ever seen in my life. she really had a kind of visceral loathing for this group here that kind of baby more entry, like what was she reacting collect the purchases i just about up named after an evangelist turned army intelligence officer who was murdered or killed ten days after world war ii by miles communist forces. >> john birch from macon, georgia,. >> expansion very supportive

initially of lending his name to this organization. robert wilson found wrotejo a bk a or short biography of john birch in the 1950s alleging that the u.s. government, for crime was that necessary that mao force that killed if it was used government had conspired to conceal the murder as part of this communist plot. so he was kind of seen as a martyr and the first victim of world war iii. the birchers, the brief background is, they started in december 58 a group of 12 mostly wealthy industrialists meeting in a very hush-hush meeting in indianapolis. they decide to form a group and the purpose really was to operate outside of the two-party system and to try to educate the country about the internal communist threat.

because in a way they looked at thee republican party and they thought that eisenhowers republican party was part of the left, part of the communist movement essentially enters a bit hopeless. and the way to push back on this conspiracy was to teach people about the nature of the threat so the grassroots mobilization and education kind of shocked people into realization. anyways, they start to form chapters. they operated, they had a home chapter based in belmont massachusetts by the operator in 20% chapters. once you hit the 20% cap you had to form a new chapter, and chapters were secretive. they had kind of nondescript, like numbers or letters but random like execute yz. and they were not supposed to communicate with one another. it was mostly kind of the

somewhat distinct entities that would communicate with the home office but not with each other. and robert welch a former cheney maker and the founder, he wrote that kind of stuff including monthly bulletins and american opinion magazines and he would essentially give chapters marching orders. the chapters didn't necessarily go out and follow every word of his prescription but he suggested things like taking over your local pta, take over your school board come to t kind of books are being offered in the library if they're not american books, kind of socialistic traps, you need to pressure the library essentially completed americanist text set up, erect a billboard as tony alluded to earlier, erect a billboard to support the impeach award campaign. the detective a book, i'm not sure if i have an income he's a birch member and defended i

believe in georgia funded 20 billboards out of his own pocket. it had this kindha of, and realy one of the insights from i think a lot of birch perspective one of the beauties was that this was a group that allowed it empowered members, enabled them to actually do something to take the fight to the selected communist conspiracy in their community spirit and so they could kind of filter this conspiratorial brand of anti-communism through the perceived needs of their localities. thatat was i argue actually a rl insight that they had. as i quote one person in yourqu say birch society is quote the answer to every anti-communist prayer. and what i think you meant by that was that it allows us to act here we are not just talking about bad things are in the country. we can do something about it. that's a long explanation but

that gives you an overview of the society in terms of what's, so look, i argue that the birchers help to form an alternative political tradition on the far right, and that they were the subject generations of style but also ideals like isolationism, conspiracy theories, and more violent apocalyptic mode politics come antiestablishment motor politics, and that, you know, their ideas and tactics were picked up by subsequent generations. it's not like a perfect kind of line from one to the other, but that this tradition challenged a lot of these sort of mainstream conservative, often republicans, not alwaysub people like patrica hitt who i talked about in here, or we could argue any contemporary context like the current governor secretary of state of georgia.

and see them as much at times as the enemy as of the ally. and that we can see the kind of tensions, the divisions within this broad conservativees coalition whereas these mainstream conservatives are much more electorally successful, much more pragmatic, and back in the day in the 1960s and '70s they are actually pretty effective even though that you lost her campaign, at putting their supporters at the edges of not allowing nonalignment in both the party and delete the party. some of the reasons the party was stronger. they had a kind of carrots and sticks back in the day. a different country. we also have the cold war which was constraining in some ways. e of which we can get into, i think the successors to the

birch society sort of this far right tradition or is if not mainstream, pretty close the mainstream, i think, of conservatism and the idea that one of the arguments that the ideas of the versus side have made what i think a lot of people have seen as a stunning comeback. so that piece that you referenced resonated because of these incredible tensions that actually feel familiar, albeit with a different setting and different circumstances. yeah, right. yeah. it is one of those interesting moments. your first book was about conservative politics. conservative. it was about the gubernatorial, the governorship of ronald reagan and kind of this kind of critical moment in his rise to national prominence. and i think one of the things that kind of you recognize when you do this work kind of professionally is that the the present is always shaping our

understanding of the past. and for you and i, we've been working on the history of conservative for 20 years and a lot of the stuff that was written 20 years ago was kind of trying to take conservative ideas seriously to try to understand how conservatism conservatives kind of came to power from the 1960s through the 1990s. and it was it was about of the major establishment figures and these figures like the john birch society were seen, you know in that in that you know but now it's like the present changes our understanding of the past and things look differently so so i mean, is it right to say that the kind of the present moment the american politics since 2016 essentially makes you think differently about the history of conservatism. absolutely. i mean, you know, we're sort of human and sort of being influenced by what's happening around us. and there are a lot of i think historians and many other people

who have been trying to understand what they see is maybe a transformation in the conservative movement and know where did kind of the trumpian and the ideas come from. and so one of the things i wanted to do in this book is to actually take what i describe as these far right ideas, take them seriously, and take this far right, mobilize mass mobilization, the sixties, and take that seriously and because not just in recent years, but also at the time, what's really interesting is you go back to the birchers were often characterized well many respects they were either mocked or they were described basically as neo fascist and they were described as people who were going to start a civil war because they they said the enemy within. and so it's an invitation to engage in civil war. they.

they were seen, you know little old ladies in tennis shoes as well as one of the famous phrases it that you know they were kind of nuts right and you know the other song that was popular in the 1960s about the birchers or one of the other sons was the bob dylan song talking john birch, paranoid blues. and so paranoia became the sort of shorthand for the birchers. and there's a famous scene, of course in the stanley kubrick film. dr. strangelove. and the general is raving about bodily fluids and how the it's a communist conspiracy. that's a spoof on the birch society and fluoridation of the water supply. so it would explain what what was the thing the fluoridation. well look with all these conspiracy theories, i have a chart which i showed you can't see it here, but you can see the

conspiracy on this chart. it's actually a birch from the mid-sixties. they're very hard to pin down the conspiracy is but a fluoridation of water supply basically the birch birchers warned that it was quote, eight feet away for socialized medicine and sometimes they said that this was basically a a government step to control us. right. to tell you what to put your body other times there were hints that it was actually a communist plot to kind of poison, which is the dr. strangelove sort of image of it. so, you know, but but this i mean, basically it's of a piece with this federal like even though it wasn't like really a federal thing but the heavy hand of a federal bureaucracy that basically doing the communist work for it and it was seen as part of the communist

conspiracy. i'm going to talk more about the kind of conspiratorial political movements and you might have some questions about that, but i you know, one of the things i think is important for people to realize is that the john birch society was a secret and explain why they were so intent on kind of maintaining secrecy and also, how were you able to research them if they were, you know, they were so jealous about guarding information? well, they well, i think robert, the founder and some of the others argued early on that they wanted to keep a low profile because as they said it, they did not want the communists to know that they existed because the birchers, their conception of themselves was as the best, strongest and most aggressive anti-communist in the united states. so their thinking, of course, was that once a communist about us, they're going to go to town

and try to destroy us. and it gives an insight into the mentality right into the kind of us against them. and and so actually, welch, when he had this first meeting, he told his friends, invited 70 people. he said, look, i don't want you all staying at the same hotel. and if anyone asks you, you say you are here on business in indianapolis. we just don't want people to get wind of what we're up to they were actually pretty for the first i would say two years at keeping under there were a series of news articles about him in 1960 and then they exploded early 61 and became you know what we call today, a feeding frenzy. i mean they were everywhere. so and at that point, you know, they said, well, the communists have basically come on to us, including in the media. and, you know, they're just they're trying to take us out. so it was part of that that

attack. so and your other. well, how was. oh, yeah, how was that? so yeah. so the birch society has some papers that are at brown university, but apparently so. its headquarters used to be a belmont, massachusetts. and when the birch society and the story is they they picked up and moved to appleton, wisconsin, and dumped all their papers in a dumpster behind, i think, near their headquarters. someone found these papers and then donated them to brown and so there are these these papers are now organized and there is a finding aid, but they're not like the papers in carter library. of course, because, you know, there are big holes in it. right. i mean, these were just taken out of the dumpster. so you know you don't really know what you're going to get. and i didn't go through every single paper there, but there are some really interesting, a lot of like messages from members who are writing in to

headquarters. those are actually the best because getting like a anecdotal but like a really great feel about what members from all around the country are thinking and what is kind of moving them. so it's like a window into, you know, typical bircher. but what's amazing is that there are so many collection i was actually overwhelmed. so the league i have a whole chapter on the anti-defamation league they waged a quite effective spy campaign against the birch society infiltrating the far right and they have about 20 boxes at the american jewish historical society in new york city. the adl papers on the birchers and those are great not just to look at how liberals are the berkshires and how they're trying to undermine them, but they're also a great window into the birchers themselves, because, you know, you have these like detailed memos about

meeting experts meetings or about individual birchers or about speeches that birchers gave that would have been lost to history library. congress has a ton of stuff, surprisingly related to the birch society. you can find letters from fred koch. you know, the patriarch, the koch family, who was one of the original founders, the birch, you know, their letters from him about, you know, how great the birch society is. so and then, you know, you can go around the great a greedy who was like robert welch, one of his right hand people. they both came out of the national association of manufacturers. he's got some great papers in wisconsin. he's a wisconsin industrialist. and and his papers are really revealing as well so, you know, just kind of keep going and, you know, pretty soon you have more archives than you can actually go through. one of the things you talk about in the book is the defeat. and one of the things you trace over the course of the book is

the division between kind of mainstream conservatives and what you call ultra conservatives in the john birch society or, you know, these ultra and the story traditionally is is that at this period in conservative history, you have mainstream morgan like national edited by william f buckley jr that is starts 1955 and buckley who comes represents a kind of more intellectual wing of. the party is able to kind of buckley and certain people in the establishment conservative room are able to kind of police the boundaries of the movement. right. and able to kind of say, no, we're going to draw a line here that we don't, you know, in robert welch and his ilk on the outside of it. right. and and barry goldwater does this as well to a certain degree. so i wonder, you know, how did they do that? well, so what did they say?

yeah, well, yeah. so one of the things i argue is that, you know, buckley, is that totally a myth. but it's mostly, you know, no one person had the ability to to keep the gatekeeper, you know, the birchers were first. there are 60 to 100000 of them. a lot of them very wealthy. and buckley just as an example, he had a lot of ties to a lot of birch leaders and some of his readers were either in the society or they were in in the members, but they were supportive of it and so it was very hard to kind of disentangle. so buckley wrote a couple of editorials in the early sixties denouncing robert welch's conspiracy theories. right. welch had argued that eisenhower was a commie, and buckley said, you know, you know, that's too much, too far. and then later in five, especially as the birchers really kind of went more radical on the vietnam war, buckley did a bigger thing against him. he really kind of denounced him.

but, you know, when buckley ran for mayor of new york city in 1965, even though, a lot of birchers were angry at him, he still had some birch society, some birchers who supported his mayor. right. so it was very hard to what i was interested in, though, is that the mainstream name like goldwater types, they both kind of wooed the birchers and their ilk. they tried to bring them into the fold times, but then they they didn't want the tape, so they wanted the money, the votes, the energy. but you know, i think they understood that electorally. if got especially after goldwater lost in 64 and the landslide where he famously declared extremism in defense of liberty is no vice which was seen really as a start to the birch society and other radical groups. i think a lot of the line in his 1964 acceptance speech, 1964 at the carol palace in san

francisco, a famous line and it the moderate but what is moderate in defense of a virtue of virtue no moderation, a pursuit of justice extremism, defense of vices, no virtue, yeah. moderation in a pursuit of justice is no vice. yeah, yeah. something along those not yeah, yeah, something like that. yeah. anyway, it's so personal. you're summarizing it, but so, you know, goldwater who had did have a lot of birchers who liked him there were efforts that he made in late four and afterwards to try to distance himself from the birchers. and he actually -- some of them. very much so. and some actually accused him of kind of like toeing the communist. and what i was interested in, though, is trying to, again, some of the tensions between, again, what joe, you put it, these ultras and and these more

mainstream types. i don't think anyone ever pushed out the ultras se. i mean, they were part of the conservative coalition but i also argue that they were not really on top, right? they were not dominant for the most part. and in fact, in the story, you know, the person as an organization only kind of fade in the late sixties, early seventies. right. you know, are talking that much about them. and they've actually become sort of fed organizationally and just as a name, like they become an epithet. so william rehnquist, when he's appointed in 71 or 72 to the supreme court, there's a story it's actually a rumor that he was a john bircher in arizona and he actually has to issue a statement saying, i have not, i never was. and i am not now a member of the john birch society and, even ted kennedy. at one point, the senator from

massachusetts came to rehnquist's aid and basically said that is is a smear him. you know, you should you know, it was seen such an epithet, so so, you know, the birchers as a society were fairly well contained for a lot of reasons. but you know, i think the ideas lived on other kind of picked up the ideas kind of kept the, you know, presidential candidates like pat buchanan of ron paul for father of rand paul. you know, they adopted a number of ideas that, were very familiar to the birch society. and that's partly why, you know, someone like ron paul actually had you know, he said a lot of nice things about birch society and and even just as a random aside, when one of his constituents died, bequeathed property to the birch society and ron paul and kind of split it so they were part of the coalition also getting at those

tensions i thought was a really interesting to sort of think about the conservative coalition. yeah. so give us a little sense of the the the organizations born in 58 it kind of really pretty much ends in the middle 7074. so what's it like sketch out that period what are the high watermarks and then and then how do why do they go away. yeah, well i should say that the society still exists it's in appleton, wisconsin, so as an organization i have a website, they actually have a website says myths and facts, you know, where they try to dispel myths about themselves. but, you know, as i argue by again, the early seventies are really a shadow of their former self. they have actually a lot of, i would say, high or depending on your perspective, low watermarks, a you know, in picture a warren i mean that was a that was a pretty big deal. you know it shocking in context

of the early 1960s for this group to put up billboards ads to impeach really you know seen by many americans as one of the great justices of the 20th century and a former republican governor of california, former governor, republican governor of california, seen seen as someone really as incredibly upright, a member of the establishment, deeply american. right. and they want to impeach him, which had not been done. right. it i mean, impeachment was not talked about in the that it is today. but that was a i argue you know, i argue that the birchers again and again. another insight they had is that they won by losing. so as welch said, he said, you know, we realize we're not actually going to impeach earl warren like we're going to get to the congress. but as he said, that by the time we're done, enemy will know we're there, right? the enemy will know we're there. and so the idea one of the ideas is to put these ideas into the

bloodstream of of the politics to get attention, to draw members and and energy behind these things. and so what they had is a series of front groups that, again, could be a high or low watermark that was one support your local was a movement and an important movement a lot of police officers supported that movement as well which was we are defending the police again basically these communists orchestrated riots in the cities and they had a decent amount of support for that. and actually it was of the areas where they actually some real overlap where goldwater and ronald reagan in the mid sixties talking about law and order, you know, pro blue right this is one of those parallels to like black lives matter. blue lives matter. yep. you know, that's in our recent history, this has had predecessor in the support your

local police was a real thing and in their magazines they would publish photographs of police officers who were beaten like badly bludgeoned by you know supposed communist or supposed communist writers, you know, visceral stuff. and and so they had a series of these things committee against summit and tangled since when eisenhower was going to meet with khrushchev, the soviet premier. they launched this a case committee against them some entanglements sent, i don't know, many thousand of postcards to members of congress. it got a lot of play. they ran newspaper ads on one of the interesting moments here in the book, i think for me was after john f kennedy's assassination mission in dallas. dallas was a hotbed of bircher ism. and so initially there were some birchers who thought another bircher did it. a bircher killed kennedy, or

maybe like someone allied with them, and i quote someone in here saying, it's the end of the birch society because it was someone on the far right. well turns out it wasn't. and what i try to trace out is how were able to weaponize the assassination nation and use it to mobilize to basically is evidence that look, you know, we were actually on to something, right? a communist killed kennedy and we were the saying the communists were never mind that they had called kennedy, a communist to begin with. so why a communist would want to kill another communists. but, you know, whoever let logic get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. so but they were able to they put ads in papers. they a lot of their leaders, various conspiracy theories and, you know, the theories are why but also you can see at least some people respond ending to

them. and there's actually one guy, revell, oliver and, this guy actually goes too far for a lot of birchers because he spins this crazy theory that government officials were rehearsing kennedy's funeral a week before he was assassinated and his speech, i think, was called marx marksmanship in dallas. mark x and what i found were these letters from birch members from arizona and california saying, you know, oliver, who's one of the founders and a spokesperson for the cia, saying this guy, oliver, he's making a stink like he is. he is so the top. i can't we're going to take ten. it's going to take ten years for us to recover from this injury that he's that he's inflicted on us. and but you see a lot of other theories kind of coming out. and it mobilizes a lot of their supporters. so there were a series of ways

in which, you know, they didn't necessarily win. it's like you can't point to something and say, aha, you know, they achieved a legislative victory. i want to ask you a what's really an impossible question to answer and i want you to give me a short is okay. yeah because i know i that you all ask questions and i've got a lot more questions, but i'm going to i'm going to reserve i'm going to only restrict myself to this one. and that is this what is it that feeds conspirator morial political thinking. and i think it in our current political moment, where tend to associate it with the transformations of social media that have given voice to these pockets of bizarre ideas. and now people can connect through social media in ways. and it and these these communities of conspiratorial thought kind of feed on each other. and so it's really a kind of a prada out of, you know, a kind of technological moment, a

social media moment. but but what was but you see the same happening in the 1960s. and i wonder what were the social or cultural or technological conditions giving rise? i mean, it's a great question i don't have a great answer. i don't think technology is sufficient, though. i don't twitter is enough, in part because i was immersed in sort of you know, there were there were a lot of different conspiracy theories in the fifties, sixties. i do think that there are ways in which particular moments in particular developments like social and historical developments, can be can feed into, i mean, conspiracy theories always existed. right. but the question is, well, why do they get you know, why are they salient in some moments? well, for one reason, robert and a lot of his other supporters, they looked at republican party and they saw eisenhower as basically a new dealer or a

communist. they saw two of their heroes, joe mccarthy and bob taft, midwestern senators who had basically pushed out and destroyed of the nomination for the robert welch call, that when taft lost the nomination for republican president in 52 and he called the dirtiest deal in american political history, so they saw a two party system that was they saw it in hock to this communist conspiracy control, essentially succumbing to the new deal, succumbing to internationalism, to the post-world war two international order, to progressive ideals and and so, again, it's just one example, but that was very powerful, i think, for a lot of the the birch that there was no kind of americanness at home within the political system where could where they could go

and they could have their ideas heard taken seriously and be on top. and and so now the other thing as well, of course, you know, the cold war could i mean, historians have a lot of different arguments about this, right? i don't want to get too into it, but sure, you know, the did commit conspiracies, right? or there were actual conspiracies. it's not like, look, the adl infiltrating the birch society, the birch society, you know, what's the line? even paranoids have enemies or. yeah, like, you know, there were actual conspiracies that existed. i think you know, there's a story who has argued that these government conspiracies have fed into the conspiracy theories. but i do think that conspiracy theorists have way of glomming on to certain events, whether it's 911 or the 2020 election in

or eisenhower powers dominance of the republican party. that seems so unjust to some and so inexplicable that. they they really empower conspiracy theorists. and then, of course, today they're supercharged in part by twitter and, other things. so i think that's one one thought. well, there are so many things about this book that are echoes of today and that give insight and depth on a day. i hope everybody will go buy a copy and buy two copies and give to your friends because it's really it's a it's a fantastic reading. thank you. congratulations. thank you. thank you, joe. i want to open it up to questions from from those of you who might want to ask. professor dallek, a question. when you were when you were talking about william buckley and the birchers being on

opposite sides, you brought up vietnam. what how the birchers respond to vietnam? well, so the birchers were very supportive of and getting soldiers back and they made an issue of. but but on the whole, they looked at the government and not just the us government, american allies who were supporting us in vietnam, part of nato's, let's say, or, you know, other allies in the cold war. and they believe that these were essentially communistic governments. right. that these were. and that the reason that america was not winning in vietnam was because it was being held back by our own government. that was part of this plan. i mean, that was the official at least line. and so in a way, they looked at the vietnam war as really rotten, like a deeply war,

because not, you know, if we could win it. sure, it would be okay. but they looked at the as wanting to lose, you know, losing on purpose. and so it gives you a sense of how jaundiced right they their view was of the conflict and and they did blame you know, they blamed a conspiracy in the us government for, for, you know, causing, causing our defeat. there's a question over here where if you wait for the. thanks. so you made a reference before about how the echoes of the john birch society are in a lot of modern day movements today. we can that through examples of where you mention the david being one of the founders of the john birch society. he was also principal in one of the founding, one of the funders for tea party for the the tea party, which in turn is also

fund. he also funded members such as richard spencer, milo yiannopoulos, whatever that little fascist kids on youtube's name is like right now. but they're. do you think there's evidence for a lot of these that goes to be reflect it in international politics? i looked into a lot of things like this, and i do see that there's echoes between how the tea party, the john birch society, the alt right or the boogaloo boys that are now being made the any one of these fascist parties outcroppings. they have a lot of echoes from the italian years of lead and the p2 lodge. there's a lot of echoes how the fascist movements were organized in argentina and indonesia and in south korea and south korea. and i'm curious to think if you had there was any kind of ties. there's even examples in before the john birch society in which the business plot was that was against. my mind. so i played, i apologize, but

there the business part was also a an organization that was founded by right industrialists. yeah. and i was curious to think if you had any suspicions of connections or if you found any kind of connections between those. it's a really interesting question. it's actually a bit of a hole in my book in that i thought i would find more international connections and more members of the birchers who were overseas. i only found really a handful. what explains that? i mean, i don't that the birch leaders did identify with some, i think a thought. terry, in you know maybe allies in the us right the taiwan or south in the 1950s they saw as you know kind of strong strong men essentially. and and so there was, i think some support, some sympathy for that they were seen as like true

anti-communist. but i would say one difference between then and now is that now there is much, i think international consciousness among a lot of these movements on the far right. so you know the groups that you're describe the domestic ones, there's a real, i think international presence and awareness, right. i'm not saying that they all, you know, meet up at a confab or but but, you know, steve bannon, for example, has gone over to europe and and the le pen's in france or the what is it, the five star movement in italy, bonn. yeah, yeah, yeah. or orban in hungary. right. and tucker carlson. right. that the urbanization rate of the republican party. so i don't think that level of international consciousness existed among the far right in the sixties and i think one reason is that the birchers

really viewed themselves as an american movement. they looked at allies and the governments, as you know, also communist dominated. they said that the official war was that the us was like 60 or 70 or 80% communist dominated already. and so they had a very kind of nationalistic and also they did not want us i mean, they had the slogan, right, i have this here. someone gave me this it i was a politics and prose in dc and someone gave this bumper sticker, get the us out of the u.n., the un, out of the us. another famous slogan, you know, the birch society was very energy and an adventurous. they did not want the us. they repudiated. they thought the un was a communist, kind of dominated. they were very about a loss of american sovereignty. and so in that sense they were kind of retrenched saying and i think that they were really in that and that way to maybe a

more movement as opposed to today which i do think is is more international in its consciousness. and that drew on a long tradition of isolationism in american political life that, you know, specific to the right, you know, america first in the 1930s, right? yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. question right here. yeah, i am i wrong to remember the john birch society is anti-immigrant, racist connected and did that contribute to their downfall? and the second part of the question would be, would that be a way to expose conspiracy theories today to? maybe, you know, get some of that out of american politics. thanks. yeah. so, yeah, we didn't really touch on that. so immigration was not sovereignty was a big issue, but

immigration per se was not like a birch issue. but race, of course, was and civil rights was. and i argued that there was a more explicit racism in the birch society. there's a whole debate in the 1960s because the birchers insisted that we accept members of any creed, any race, religion, you name it, and they did have some a handful of jewish members and a handful of african american members. so you know, and they would and they would say, look, this is evidence that we're you know, we're tolerant. we're not bigoted. a couple of things. so, one is they put up a billboard all over, especially, i think in the south of martin luther king. and under it, they would say martin luther king, a communist training school, was really a school for labor. the highlander school. right for labor organizing. but, you know they branded and

actually one of the african-americans spoke people, a spokeswoman for the birch society, former fbi agent, did a speech entitled was the civil as a civil rights movement directed by the kremlin. okay. so, you know, essentially to me, it kind of echoed this charge that barack obama was not born in the united states. right. birtherism, bircher birtherism. you know, you can take what you want with the conspiracy, you know, but it did have that echo this idea, you know, in the civil rights era that a movement for an organic, homegrown movement for racial equality and social justice that that was a movement imported the kremlin. right. it was alien to the us and and so i think that a kind of explicit racism and then i would say on top of that there were just a lot of i would say racist and anti-semites who were either

in the movement or who saw the movement as an ally. and and, you know, i have a lot of evidence in the book for that. and i was not going into the book thinking that i would necessarily find that much. but you know it's funny. george wallace, one of his top aides, said wallace at one point he was he said, you know, you could pick a moderate vice president, right. not as your nominee, because, look, we already have we have the nuts in the country. we have the kkk okay, we have the citizens council and we got the john birchers. this will be great. you pick a moderate, you'll work one side of the street, the moderate or the other side, and and so, you know, even like a wallace aide was kind of lumping them. so it's a little bit curtis lemay. well well, first. well, after he tried to pick a moderate and then the birchers said, no. oh, yeah. so then he picked curtis lemay. so there was a lot of and the

last thing i'll say about this is that the person said he did at times try to police their own ranks. and it's really interesting for example. there's a letter from a member clearly anti-semitic. i mean, he's going on this rant about the jewish conspiracy and the root of evil is -- and then a birchers in headquarters is right to each other handwritten. is this guy anti-semitic or what and someone else writes, he's a wild man. drop him. and they had a file for anti-semitism. right, for anti-semites. so there were efforts, some efforts. but ultimately i argue they drew energy from the bigots because they first they didn't really police a lot of them. other questions right here? yeah. i'm kind of surprised to hear this maybe rage against like

except the new deal or something like the us federal government should only be 2% of the economy instead of 20. yeah, i don't know what. yeah. could you. yeah, well, it is a puzzle, right? it's a paradox. i mean, eisenhower, of course, the hero of d-day and then president of columbia university and and then president of columbia university and then i like ike, right? sort of this all-american, really a hero. the other thing is that welch, so robert welch wrote to his friends in the '50s a letter he called a long letter and any charges that eisenhower is a dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy. what's interesting is a lot of the other birch founders with this becomes news in the early '60s they distance themselves from him. they say it's not official birch

doctrine, i didn't agree and, in fact, actually two of the birch founders were, the more eisenhower appointees. there in the eisenhower administration and one at a document this in the book, it becomes a huge flap where eisenhower says oh my god this guy bill grady this is a man, a birch founder, this is a man who told me to point to labor-management committee? the founders especially on ver' mainstream, very rich, this guy grady is in particular led the ymca english milwaukee sentinel man of the year. so what they say is this was peculiar to bob welch. obviously some others at least believed that not everyone did in the society, the rage though i do think gets back at a couple of things. what is the sense that eisenhower had destroyed or

maybe even killed joe mccarthy, bob taft and these true american voices on the right outright who return america to its more isolationist, anti-new deal ways. and welch to get a sense of thet rage you were talking about, he wrote to birchers and he said that bob welch, i'm sorry, bob taft, the hi senator graham he died from a peculiar cancer and he may have been killed by arabian tube that was supplanted in the back of his leather chair in this in his senate seat. as has been so widely rumored. which imm think is a wilder conspiracy that eisenhower's economist, the summer got on the senate floor, put a radium tube in there that vin would cause cancer of item how many -- any

wisdom youin get my point, righ? it's a littlere -- but that captured the sense their heroest had been struck down, had been cut down, they had been destroyed. eisenhower and eisenhower party was responsible for that and losing the cold war overseas economies and losing it at home. so i think the rage in part stems from a distance of the country was being lost. so as i say despite them being especially the founders, the nations most dynamic economy and they are. this is a system that is made up since. they are incredibly prosperous and successful. more successful than vast majority of other americans, yet there is this kind of rage at the correction over many decades. eisenhower for some entities becomes the focal point of it. >> other questions?

>> you said atd the beginning that you started this book in part too seriously consider the arguments made or the philosophy of the john birch society. my question is do you think by giving legitimacy and taking the source of crazyzy arguments seriously you give them a legitimacy they don't deserve? >> that's a really good question. i mean, i'm a historian so i guess i'm interested in trying to analyze individuals or movements or ideas that i think are impactful or influential. i'm not trying to, you know, not a copout it's as opposed to making a political argument or an ideological argument.

also come one come as a historical movement i thought was interesting and important. i also thought it was interesting and important toin think about how they were constrained at the time. how far right organizations get constrained i don't know that the diaper say, but how do they -- and that's another question i asked, a theme in the book. i also was interested in trying to provide another, a lot of the people of different answers to this but you try to understand the shifting character of the conservativebu movement and how you get from t satan george w. bush donald trump, or from ronald reagan to trump or nixon, whatever you want to take comfort eisenhower. i thought that was one way into that. the other thing is because i do it i guess and hopefully not a political way but as a

historian, you know, i can shed light on what this movement was. as i said, look, birchers maintained at the time and since there were not anti-semitic, we were notir racist, they weren't even really that much of the conspiracy theories. t i have the goods. i looked at thousands of documents and so i hope the evidence speaks for itself and then most people can judge them. i think i would enter that having read the book, it's not that you give the ideas legitimacy or you're taking the ideas seriously or their conspiracy theories seriously. what you were taking seriouslyis is a fact that they were a key constituency within conservative and right-wing politics, that they just were not crazies who people ignored at the time and didn't eat anything of. they thought that mainstream republicans and conservatives thought a lotiv about them and spent a lot of time figure out how to address them publicly,

how to get their money and their resources and their influence. so taking seriously where they fit within the broader landscape of the american right is different from taking seriously the idea that dwight eisenhower was an agent of a communist conspiracy. >> yeah. i don't endorse anyny other ide, absolutely. but no, i think you put it extremely well, in thinking about what kind of agency do they have, like what kind of power do they have over political debate. they had a slogan, we're not -- were a republic not a democracy, let's keep it that we. they are explicitly disputed another here you here currently. >> so what's behind that? what is behind challenges to democracy from the right? and i can kinda agad that is a series movement within this coalition. >> i think we have learned a lot

about kind of why we are the way we are, why our politics is away and kind of the origins of it. the book is called "birchers." a cappella books has copies out and lobby forut super matthew wl be signing them out there so i would encourage you to pick up a copy and pay for it. and let's, matthew and joe one more time. thank you. [applause] >> if you're enjoying booktv than sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming programs, the discussions, book festivals and more. booktv every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at booktv.org, television for serious readers.