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It describes itself as "a membership-based organization dedicated to restoring and preserving freedom under the [[United States Constitution]]." It states that its members come from all walks of life and are active throughout the 50 states as part of local chapters. The Society invites all Americans to explore its website, learn more about the John Birch Society, and consider joining with it in its mission to achieve "Less Government, More Responsibility, and – With God's Help – a Better World." Its current headquarters is in [[Appleton, Wisconsin]].
The Society was named after [[John Birch]], an [[United States|American]] [[military intelligence|intelligence]] officer and [[Baptist]] [[missionary]] in [[World War II]] who was killed in [[1945]] by armed supporters of the [[Chinese Communist Party]] and dubbed "the first American victim of the [[Cold War]]" by the Society.
The John Birch Society was organized into local chapters, imitating Welch's understanding of Communist organizing techniques. [[Ernest Brosang]], the New Jersey regional coordinator, contends that it is virtually impossible for opponents of the society to penetrate its policy-making levels. Its activities included distribution of literature attacking proposed civil rights legislation, warning of the influence of the United Nations, and distributing petitions to impeach liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. To spread their message, Birchers held Sunday showings of documentary films and operated such as "Let Freedom Ring," a nationwide network of recorded telephone messages. ▼
It claims to strenuously defend what it sees as the original intention of the U. S. Constitution. The group promotes the idea that America is founded on Christian principles and supports a strong Christian influence in culture and government. It is anti-leftist, particularly anti-socialist and [[anti-communist]]. The JBS has a conspiratorialist view of history. It is also anti-globalization and for immigration reform. JBS advocates the abolition of [[income tax]], and the repeal of [[civil rights]] legislation, which it sees as being communist in inspiration.
At one time,
== History ==
The JBS was established in [[Indianapolis, Indiana|Indianapolis]] on December 9, 1958 by a group of 12 "patriotic and public-spirited" men led by [[Robert Welch, Jr.]], a retired candy manufacturer from [[Belmont, Massachusetts]]. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as ''The Blue Book of
Welch saw "[[collectivism]]" as the main threat to western civilization, and liberals as sympathizers who provide the cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of [[welfarism]], socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction."[http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html]
JBS's objective was to fight communism using some of communism's own techniques -- organization of front groups, infiltration of other groups and letter-writing campaigns. One of the first public activities of the JBS was a "Get US out!" (of membership in the UN) campaign, which alleged in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] [[United Nations|UN]] is to build One World Government ([[New World Order (conspiracy)|New World Order]])." ''One Man's Opinion'', a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed ''American Opinion'' and became the
In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to "join your local [[Parent-Teacher Association|PTA]] at the beginning of the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise, and go to work to take it over."
By March of 1961, the Society had an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 members and, according to Welch, "a staff of twenty-eight people in the Home Office; about thirty Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who are fully-paid as to salary and expenses; and about one hundred Coordinators (or Section Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or part of their salary, or expenses, or both." According to its profile by [[Political Research Associates]], JBS "pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives, and letter writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second Summit Conference between the US and the Soviet Union generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the Society. A June 1964 John Birch Society campaign to oppose Xerox Corporation's sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals."[http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html]
The JBS was (and is) viewed by many mainstream journalists and politicians as an extremist organization of conspiracy theorists. Much of its early conspiracism, according to Political Research Associates, "reflects an ultraconservative business nationalist critique of business internationalists networked through groups such as the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] (CFR). The CFR is viewed through a conspiracist lens as a puppet of the Rockefeller family in a 1952 book by McCarthy fan [[Emanuel M. Josephson]], ''Rockefeller, 'Internationalist': The Man Who Misrules the World''. In 1962 [[Dan Smoot]]'s ''The Invisible Government'' added several other policy groups to the list of conspirators, including the [[Committee for Economic Development]], the [[Advertising Council]], the [[Atlantic Council]] (formerly the Atlantic Union Committee), the [[Business Advisory Council]], and the [[Trilateral Commission]]. Smoot had worked at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC before leaving to establish an anticommunist newsletter, the ''[[Dan Smoot Report]]''. In Smoot's concluding chapter, he wrote, 'Somewhere at the top of the pyramid in the invisible government are a few sinister people who know exactly what they are doing: They want America to become part of a worldwide socialist dictatorship, under the control of the Kremlin.'" Birchers elaborated on an earlier [[Illuminati]] [[Freemason]] conspiracy theory, imagining "an unbroken ideologically-driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of [[Marxism]] and [[Communism]], the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations"[http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html]. Unlike most advocates of the Illuminati-Freemason conspiracy theory, however,
Republican mainstream unhappiness with the "Birchers" intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy.” Welch went further in a book titled ''The Politician'', written in 1956 and published by the JBS in 1963, which declared that Eisenhower’s brother [[Milton Eisenhower|Milton]] was Ike’s superior within the Communist apparatus and alleged that other top government officials were also communist tools, including “ex president [[Harry S. Truman|Truman]] and [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Roosevelt]], and the last Sec. Of State [[John Foster Dulles]] and former CIA Director [[Allan W. Dulles]].” Conservative writer [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]], an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the JBS. Welch responded by attempting to take over [[Young Americans for Freedom]], a conservative youth organization founded with assistance from Buckley.
In October 1964, the ''Idaho Statesman'' newspaper expressed concern about what it called an “ominous” increase in JBS-led “ultra right” [[radio]] and [[television]] broadcasts, which it said then numbered 7,000 weekly and cost an estimated $10 million annually. “By virtue of saturation tactics used, radical, reactionary [[propaganda]] is producing an impact even on large numbers of people who, themselves, are in no sense [[extremism|extremists]] or sympathetic to extremists views," declared a ''Statesman'' editorial. "When day after day they hear distortions of fact and sinister charges against persons or groups, often emanating from organizations with conspicuously respectable sounding names, it is no wonder that the result is: Confusion on some important public issues; stimulation of latent prejudices; creation of suspicion, fear and mistrust in relation not only to their representatives in government, but even in relation to their neighbors.”
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In April 1966, the ''[[New York Times]]'' reported on "the increasing tempo of radical right attacks on local government, libraries, school boards, parent-teachers associations, mental health programs, the [[United States Republican Party|Republican Party]] and, most recently, the ecumenical movement. … The Birch Society is by far the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country. It operates alone or in support of other extremist organizations whose major preoccupation, like that of the Birchers, is the internal Communist conspiracy in the United States."
Key John Birch Society causes of the [[1970s]] included opposition to [[OSHA]] and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the [[People's Republic of China]]. The organization claimed in [[1973]] that the regime of [[Mao Zedong]] had murdered 64 million Chinese as of that year, and further accused the country of being the primary supplier of illicit [[heroin]] into the [[United States]]. The society was also vehemently opposed to transferring control of the [[Panama Canal]] from American to Panamanian sovereignty.
In the 1990s and early twenty-first century, the Society has opposed Free Trade agreements such as NAFTA and the proposed Free Trade Association of the Americas (FTAA). It continues to press for an end to United States membership in the United Nations, and it points to the Utah legislature's recent resolution calling for the US to take such a step as evidence of the effectiveness of JBS lobbying.
▲The Society was organized into local chapters, imitating Welch's understanding of Communist organizing techniques. [[Ernest Brosang]], the New Jersey regional coordinator, contends that it is virtually impossible for opponents of the society to penetrate its policy-making levels. Its activities included distribution of literature attacking proposed civil rights legislation, warning of the influence of the United Nations, and distributing petitions to impeach liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. To spread their message, Birchers held Sunday showings of documentary films and operated such as "Let Freedom Ring," a nationwide network of recorded telephone messages.
By the time of Welch's death in 1985, the Birch Society's membership and influence had declined, but the UN's role in the Gulf War and President Bush's call for a '[[New World Order (political)|New World Order]]' paralleled Birch Society claims about the goals of the internationalist One World Government conspiracy. Growing right-wing populism in the United States helped the JBS position itself for a comeback, and by 1995 its membership had grown again to more than 55,000.
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