good evening. i'm tony clark from the carter library. 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 commie, you got to turn around and. it was just 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 things. but sometimes you should google chad mitchell trio and the the john birch society song, the billboards at the time, the highways would say things like impeach supreme court justice earl warren or get the us out of the u.n. so they were very well known back in the sixties, but by the end of the vietnam war, you didn't hear much about. but as you'll hear tonight, their influence carried carried much further. that influence did not disappear. matthew dallek is a professor of graduate to graduate school of political management at george

washington university. he is a political historian. he looks at social 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 frequent commentator on the news media, not politics. and history and public affairs. he is also a former speechwriter for our area, former house minority leader richard gephardt. and so we wanted somebody to talk to matthew about his book, and we couldn't have had anybody better than joseph crespino joe is the jimmy carter professor of history at emory university city. he's an expert in political and cultural history of the 20th century. and joe has written what?

he's published three books, including one that he was here to speak about. atticus finch, the biography, harper lee, her father, and the making of american icons. so please join me in welcoming joe and matthew. thank you. thanks so much. tony is always so much fun to be at the carter library and thank you all for coming out tonight to hear and to ask questions about this really exciting and timely and deeply researched and wonderful book. and matt, welcome to georgia. it's great to have you here this week. and it's so 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 the new york times. this week by michelle cottle. it was i don't know if some of you saw it, but it talked about the hot mess of the georgia republican party, and it talked

about it was amazing to read this article because it was all about how the trump supporters are in such conflict with our with the governor and there's this real, you know, tension between kind of the conservatives and the ultra conservatives. and lo and behold, your begins with a story in the california republican party around 1961 or 62. and there's a long time republic and party activist who is decrying the rise of these crazy john birchers who were ruining the republican party and turning it into a hot mess. so tell us who the john birch society was and and what it seems to be so similar, what was going on in the 1960s, what's happening today? so what are the similarities and what are the different? well, first of all, i want to thank you, joe, for doing this with me. it's wonderful to be here with you. and i want to thank tony and the carter library as well for

having me. it's really it's really an honor to be here. so, yes, joe was referring to patricia hitt, who is a loyalist to richard nixon, who was not exactly liberal and hit, was running for a local seat. and this just gives you a flavor of the birch society, a local seat on a republic and party county committee in southern california, and the birchers did not. members of the society did not see her basically as being conservative enough. she wasn't a true believer. and so they basically ran against her and they defeated her. and she describes in this amazing oral history what it was like to go up against them. and just to give you a couple of quotes, they started calling up everybody in her district and district, describing her as, quote, a socialist, a commie and a pinko. and and she said that she called

them an enormously destructive force. she said, quote, they were haters beyond anything i've ever seen in my life. and she really had a kind of visceral loathing for this group. and that kind of made me more intrigued, like, what was you know, what was she reacting to? so the versus sorry just to back up named after evangelist turned army intelligence officer who was murdered or killed ten days after world war two by mao's communist forces. and the brits from macon, georgia from macon, georgia. yep. macon, georgia. and john birch and his parents were very supportive at least initially, of lending his name to this organization. robert wells, the founder, wrote a book, a short biography of john birch in the 1950s, alleged that the us government, the crime was not necessarily that

mao's communist forces had killed him. it was that the us government had conspired to conceal the murder as part of this communist plot and so he was kind of seen as a martyr and and the first victim of world war three, you know, the birchers, the brief background is they started as in december 58, a group of mostly wealthy industrialists meeting at a very hush hush meeting in indianapolis. they decide to form a group. and the purpose really was, i think to operate outside of the two party system and to try to educate the country about the internal communist threat. and because in a way, they looked at the republican party, which was probably their natural home, and they thought that eisenhower's republican party was part of the left, it was part of the communist movement, essentially, and it was a bit hopeless. and the way to push back on this

conspiracy was to people about the nature of the threat. and so the grassroots mobilized in an education kind of shock people into a realization. anyways, they started to form chapters. they operated did. they had a home chapter based in belmont, massachusetts, but they operated 20 person chapters. once you hit that 20 person cap, you had to form a new chapter. the chapters were pretty secretive. they had kind of nondescript. they have like numbers or letters, but random, like excu wise and they were not supposed to communicate with one another. they were supposed to kind of be these somewhat distinct entities that would communicate with the home office, but not with each other. and robert, a former candy maker and the founder yeah, he wrote a ton of stuff including monthly bulletins and american opinion

magazine and he would essentially give chapters or marching orders now you know the chapters didn't necessarily go out in follow every word of his prescription but he suggested things like, you know, taking over your local pta, take over your school boards, see what kind of books are being offered in the library. and if they're not american as books, if they're kind of socialistic tracts, what you need to pressure the library essentially to put in is texts set up erect a billboard right as tony alluded to earlier, erect a billboard to support the impeach earl campaign. and actually, there's a character in my book, i don't even sure if i have his name is a birch member and he funded i believe it's in georgia, funded 20 billboards. so these in picture war billboards out his own pocket and you know so it had this kind of an the really one of the insights and from that i think a lot of birch perspectives one of

the beauties was that this was a group that allowed an empowered members. it enabled them to actually do something to take the fight to this alleged conspiracy in their communities. and so they could kind of filter to this conspiratorial brand, kind of anti-communism through, the perceived needs of of their localities. and that was, i actually a real insight that they had and you as i quote one person in here saying the birch society is quote the answer to every anti-communist prayer. and what i think he meant by that was that it allows us act. right. we're not just talking about how bad things are in the country. we can do something about it that a longish explanation but that gives you an overview of the society in terms of what's so look i argue that the birchers helped to form an alternative political tradition on the far and that they were

quick to subject subsequent generations a style but also ideas, isolationism, conspiracy theories, a more violent apocalypse like mode of politics, anti-establishment mode of politics and 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 this tradition challenged a lot of these sort of mainstream conservative, often republicans, not always people like patricia hitt, who i talk about in here, or we could argue in a contempt jury context, like the current governor, secretary of state of georgia and and them as much at times as the enemy, as their ally. and that we can see the kind of tensions, the divisions within the this broad conservative coalition or whereas, you know,

these mainstream conservatives are much they're electorally successful, they're much more pragmatic. and back in the day, in the 1960s and seventies, they're actually pretty effect is even though hit lost her campaign they're pretty effective about pushing them the birchers and their supporters to the edges and not allowing them to engulf their party and and to lead the party on some of the that the party was stronger. you know, they had more kind of carrots and sticks back in the day. it was a different country. well, so the cold war, which was constraining in some ways. but, you know, the biggest difference i would say today is that for a lot of reasons, some 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 then i like ike, right? i mean, sort of this all-american, really a hero. you know how and the other thing is that welch, who's so so robert welch wrote to his friends in the fifties a letter. he called a long letter and he charges that eisenhower, a dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy. what's interesting, though, is that lot of the other birch founders, when this becomes news in the early sixties, they distanced themselves from it and they say, well, it's not official. birch doc, i didn't agree. and in fact, actually, two of the birch founders were, one was well, they weren't in eisenhower's cabinet, but there were eisenhower appointees that were in the eisenhower administration. and one and i document this in

the book, it becomes a huge flap where eisenhower power says, oh, my god, this guy, bill grady, this is the man he's a birch founder. it's like, this is the man told me to appoint to the labor management. so this, you know, the founders especially are very mainstream. they're very rich. this guy grady is in particular, led the ymca and was milwaukee sentinel's man of the year. so what they say is that this was peculiar to bob welch. now know obviously some at least believed it. not everyone did in the society. the rage, though, i do think, gets back at a couple of things. one is the sense that eisenhower had destroyed or maybe even killed joe mccarthy, bob taft, and is true american is voices on the right or far right? who would return america to its more isolationist? anti-new deal ways and and welch

to get a sense of the rage that you're talking about he wrote to birchers and he said that bob welch i'd be sorry. bob taft the ohio senator, he died from a peculiar cancer and he may have been killed by radium tube that was implanted in the back of his leather chair in the senate seat. as has been so widely rumored. so, you know, basic, which i think is a wilder conspiracy than eisenhower's a communist, right. this one got onto the senate floor, put a radium tube in there that that would cause cancer over. i don't know how many. anyways, you get my point right. it's a little so but i think that captured the sense that there are heroes have been struck down. they've been cut down, they have been destroyed. eisenhower power and the eisenhower party was responsible for that. and we're losing the cold war

overseas to communists and we're losing it at home. and so i think the rage in part stems from the of the country was being lost. so, as i say, despite them being the especially the founders, their colossi, a striding the nation's most dynamic economy. and they are i mean, they're you know, this is a system that has made them right in a sense. right. mean they're they're incredibly prosperous and successful. you know, more successful than the vast of other americans. and yet there is this kind of rage at the direction over many decades. and eisenhower are, for some of them at least becomes the focal point of it at the question just right here. you said at the beginning that you started this book in part to seriously consider the arguments made or the philosophy of the john birch society. my question is do you think by

giving legitimacy see and taking these sorts crazy seriously you give them a legitimacy they don't deserve? well you know that's that's a really good question. i mean, i'm a historian, so, you know, i'm i guess in trying to analyze individual wills or movements or ideas that i think are impactful or influential, that's not a i'm not trying to, you know, you know, not a cop out it's just sort of a as opposed to making guess a political argument or or an ideological argument also. so one, you know, as a historical movement, i thought it was and important. i also thought it was interesting and important to think about how they were constrained at the time. right. how too far right organizations

get constrained. i don't know that they die per se, but how do they. and that's another question i ask a theme in the book. i was interested in trying to provide another other a lot of other people have given answers to this, but to try to understand the shifting character really of the conservative movement and how how do you get from, say, george w bush to donald trump or from ronald reagan to trump or nixon, you know, wherever you want to take it from eisenhower. and i thought that this was way into that. and i guess the the other thing is because, as you know, i do it, i guess, in a hopefully not like a political way, but like as a historian. and, you know, i can shed on what this movement was and. you know, as i said, look, the birchers maintained at the time and since that they were not anti-semitic, they were not racist, they weren't even really that much into conspiracy

theories. you know, i try to show like i have the goods. i mean, i did, you know, i looked at thousands of documents. and so hope the evidence kind of speaks for itself. and then, you know, most people can kind of judge them. so i think i would add that to having read the book. it's it's not that you their ideas legitimacy you're taking their ideas seriously they're or they're conspiracy theories they're what you're taking seriously is the fact that they were a key within conservative and right wing politics that weren't just crazies that people ignored at the time and didn't think anything. they thought the mainstream republican and conservatives thought a lot about them and spent a lot of time figuring out how to to address them publicly, how to get their money and their resources and their influence. so taking serious look where they fit within the broader landscape of the american right is different from seriously the idea that dwight was an agent of

the communist. yeah. you don't take that. no, no, no. i don't endorse, you know, any of ideas? yeah, absolutely. but no, i think you put it extremely well and. and thinking about, you know what of agency they have, like what kind of power do they have over, you know, political debate. they had a slogan, we're not we're a republic, not a democracy. let's keep that way. they're very explicitly, you know, another you hear? yeah, you hear it today. so. well, what is behind that? you know what, is behind sort of challenges to democracy from the right and and that that, you know, again, trying to understand. well, that is a serious within this coalition. so yeah so i think we have learned a lot about kind of why we are the way we are why are politics is the way and kind of the origins of it. the book is called birchers a couple of books has copies out in the lobby sale.

matthews is going to be signing them out there. so i would encourage you to to pick up a copy and pay for it. and let's let this last thing matthew and, joe, one more time. thank you so great with you. it