Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast. That's it.
Speaker 1: I've done my job. We're introduced. It's a podcast that's
Speaker 1: good work. Thank you. All right, I'm taking the day.
Speaker 1: Everybody take five? All right, cool, see you back next week. Okay,
Speaker 1: no talking about bad people, worst one history. He's all
Speaker 1: of that in our space right now, so we can't. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we might as well talk more about the
Speaker 1: John Bird Society with me again. Are Dan in Jordan's
Speaker 1: or George jan and Jordan's or Jordan's hosts of the
Speaker 1: Alex Jones focused podcast Knowledge Fight, which I will probably
Speaker 1: be listening to when I go on a run right
Speaker 1: after this um brag. Hell yeah, hell yeah, someone has
Speaker 1: an eyepaw I pod nano motherfucker's somebody is ambulatory. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the JBS. And there's a quote
Speaker 1: that opens the book on the John Birch Society that
Speaker 1: I've been using as one of the sources for this episode,
Speaker 1: The World of the John Birch Society, and the quote
Speaker 1: that opens the book is by a guy named Don DeLillo. Uh,
Speaker 1: A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It
Speaker 1: was a good quote to open a book about the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society with because I've been thinking about it
Speaker 1: a lot, not just while writing this episode about the JBS,
Speaker 1: but in general, while thinking about, you know, everything that
Speaker 1: the Birches wrought on American society, because what was actually
Speaker 1: happening during the period of the John Birch Society's rise
Speaker 1: to prominence was that a very fucked up world order
Speaker 1: was establishing itself in the wake of all of that
Speaker 1: post war promise. You know, people were broadly speaking kind
Speaker 1: of optimistic in sort of the wake of the Second
Speaker 1: World War that like maybe mankind had turned a corner,
Speaker 1: and that's why I fucked and had all those babies
Speaker 1: that we have to deal with out. That's yeah, we
Speaker 1: the everyone decided to fucking raise the worst generation that
Speaker 1: ever existed, right, bunch of for the for if you
Speaker 1: were going to write a new John Birch Society book,
Speaker 1: you could use a quote from me, which is like
Speaker 1: a bunch of dicks. Yeah, that's what That's what all
Speaker 1: used to open my book about the John Birch Society
Speaker 1: and about the Papa Sucker. So the era of the
Speaker 1: Birch Society's chief period of relevance was also the era
Speaker 1: in which the new deals started being slowly picked apart. Right, So, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have an economic collapse, we institute this
Speaker 1: very robust program of of like a social safety net
Speaker 1: and protections for workers. And then in the post war era,
Speaker 1: all these rich guys, many of whom were John Birch
Speaker 1: Society donors and sympathizers, dedicate their lives to tearing it apart. Now,
Speaker 1: this period of time was also the period in which
Speaker 1: the Cold War was that its most frightening. You know,
Speaker 1: the height of the Vietnam War happens during sort of
Speaker 1: the peak of the John Burt Society's relevance. Everything's kind
Speaker 1: of going wrong in America in this period and in
Speaker 1: this period right after things have been going really well,
Speaker 1: at least by the perspective of white people, and a
Speaker 1: lot of white people were like, what the hell happened? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like communism. Yeah, you got it. While he's causing
Speaker 1: all of the things that are bad to happen, he
Speaker 1: blames it on communism. Yeah, it's fucking smart, man. So
Speaker 1: because of all this innocence, innocence, it's smart. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: being terrible is it is a skill? You know? Definitely, man,
Speaker 1: it was turned timestables when he was four years old.
Speaker 1: He's clever. That's why again, you got to slow down
Speaker 1: the smart kids. You know, I'm not gonna say smart
Speaker 1: children deserve head injuries, but you know then don't well
Speaker 1: stop just yeah stop, just sort of there no no
Speaker 1: helmets for the smart kids, right? Can I ask? Are you?
Speaker 1: Are you saying that for periods of time you should
Speaker 1: deprive smart children of air? Yeah? Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's
Speaker 1: a nice, not legally actionable way of describing it. Make
Speaker 1: all children deep sea divers and have them deal with
Speaker 1: the bends every now and again. Yeah, don't don't forcibly
Speaker 1: restrict them from air, but make them do wreck diving
Speaker 1: and get nitrogen poisons. That's my that's how we fix society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you think about it, back during this time,
Speaker 1: they only used to paddle the kids who weren't succeeding
Speaker 1: in school. And now where are we if we had
Speaker 1: reversed it around. What if they paddled kids for doing
Speaker 1: too well at school? I think anybody would be ashamed
Speaker 1: of succeeding. But then that's how we should live. So um,
Speaker 1: because of all this, I actually think that Bob Welch
Speaker 1: was actually a different sort of conspiracy theorist from most
Speaker 1: of his followers. Uh. You know, the bulk of rank
Speaker 1: and file Bircher's were conservative Americans who had been brainwashed
Speaker 1: into an irrational fear of communism, and we're willing to
Speaker 1: believe that it was the cause of all of their
Speaker 1: problems when it, in general was not. Bob Welch and
Speaker 1: his inner circle, the guys who got to read the
Speaker 1: politician were the kind of rich and powerful men who
Speaker 1: saw any refusal of the people of the world to
Speaker 1: bow to their whims as communism. And when you think
Speaker 1: about it that way, Welch's hatred of Eisenhower makes sense
Speaker 1: because I wanted to live in a society and Bob
Speaker 1: Welch did not. He wanted to be a feudal lord, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of criticisms about Eisenhower, But Eisenhower wanted
Speaker 1: to live in a society that provided benefits for the
Speaker 1: people living inside of it, and Bob Welch said, funck
Speaker 1: that um. And meanwhile, the followers of the John Birch
Speaker 1: society were more of the why is our society sucks
Speaker 1: so bad? It must be the communists, not the people
Speaker 1: deliberately tearing it apart brick by brick probably like our leader.
Speaker 1: That's good, that would make sense. Yeah, it's the difference
Speaker 1: between the like consumer and the producer of the theory,
Speaker 1: like that disconnected that isn't clear to the followers necessarily
Speaker 1: of like what you're being what path you're actually being
Speaker 1: led down? Yeah. I think that's why Bill Gates has
Speaker 1: a podcast now so he can really clear things up.
Speaker 1: My coworker, Bill Gates in the podcast. I am excited
Speaker 1: to have him on the episode about Peter Teeal. That
Speaker 1: is gonna be some spicy conversation. See. Now, if you
Speaker 1: could get him on the episode about him, that would
Speaker 1: be a huge get. It would be fun to get
Speaker 1: Bill Gates on the podcast and then just scream at
Speaker 1: him about like Windows XP for an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: nothing about like the any of the actual crimes he
Speaker 1: committed as the CEO of Migrant just like really hammer
Speaker 1: him on XP. This was not intuitive software. Goddamnit. He's
Speaker 1: just crying by the end of it. Uh. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the
Speaker 1: United States. I shouldn't have said president was elected president.
Speaker 1: You know what? I mean JFK became the president in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. Yeah, he wasn't that famous. In the years
Speaker 1: before he was gunned down by Bernie Sanders. He enacted
Speaker 1: a broadly progressive at genda. Except for all the saber
Speaker 1: rattling at communists and hard workhold warrior ship. Most reasonable
Speaker 1: people can look at JFK's legacy and acknowledge that he
Speaker 1: did some reckless violent ship in the name of fighting communism.
Speaker 1: One of those reckless violence things would be getting us
Speaker 1: into Vietnam, which didn't work out super well. Some might
Speaker 1: say well with the smooth as as Dan likes to say.
Speaker 1: You know, Robert Welch looked at JFK, who again brought
Speaker 1: us to the brink of nuclear war and got us
Speaker 1: into Vietnam in order to fight communism. He looked at JFK.
Speaker 1: And because JFK was like, I guess we'll will give
Speaker 1: the civil rights movements some of what they want, Bob
Speaker 1: Welch was like, that motherfucker's a communist. Time that motherfucker
Speaker 1: is a communist. So this is not to say. And
Speaker 1: in fairness to Bob Welch, he did not think that
Speaker 1: JFK's opponent Richard Nixon was any better to Welch. JFK
Speaker 1: was a stooge of Walter Reuther, the leader of the
Speaker 1: United Auto Workers Association, while Nixon was a stooge of
Speaker 1: New Sin Rockefeller, then the governor of New York. Welch
Speaker 1: felt that the nineteen sixty election was just a referendum
Speaker 1: on whether Wreather or Rockefeller would be the boss of
Speaker 1: the United States under a one world international socialist government.
Speaker 1: Man that guy did not see Soros coming at all,
Speaker 1: swinging in to steal both those Yeah, yeah, Sori sorosn
Speaker 1: opening and he just whoa, yeah, it's very funny. It's
Speaker 1: very funny how scared people used to be of unions
Speaker 1: before they got destroyed. So Welch had organized his society
Speaker 1: into revolutionary cells in order to fight that's international socialist
Speaker 1: government he believed was taking over the United States. Their
Speaker 1: primary weapon was the force of perceived public outrage, which
Speaker 1: they wielded in a variety of ways. From the world
Speaker 1: of the John Birch Society quote, Welch had in mind
Speaker 1: for how the John Birch Society might resist the depredations
Speaker 1: of the communist conspiracy while awakening the apathetic and brain
Speaker 1: way American people to what was actually going on around them,
Speaker 1: including the use of front organizations, little fronts, big fronts,
Speaker 1: temporary fronts, permanent fronts, all kinds of fronts, he wrote,
Speaker 1: as well as the employment of petitions, massive letter writing campaigns,
Speaker 1: and other methods of exposure. It was time, Welsch believed,
Speaker 1: for an organization which has the backbone and cohesiveness and
Speaker 1: strength and definiteness of direction, to put its weight into
Speaker 1: the political scales of this country just as fast and
Speaker 1: as far as we could in order to reverse the
Speaker 1: gradual surrender of the United States to communism. But because
Speaker 1: Welch always saw the Birch Society as an educational organization
Speaker 1: as much as a political one, he also wanted to
Speaker 1: establish a speaker's bureau and a national network of reading
Speaker 1: rooms where the best anti communist books, including his own,
Speaker 1: could be purchased or consulted, and to expand the reach
Speaker 1: of conservative periodicals such as American Opinion, the Dan Smoot Report,
Speaker 1: and William F. Buckley Jr's National Review Until later, Until later,
Speaker 1: Yeah until later, Yeah, that's He was also one of
Speaker 1: the first backers of conservative radio broadcasters, which in that
Speaker 1: period was a guys called named Fulton Lewis and Clarence Mannion.
Speaker 1: But like he's very much on the cutting edge of
Speaker 1: like you can you can see what Welch is actually
Speaker 1: doing here as the first organized start of what became
Speaker 1: the right wing media sphere that's like now an entire
Speaker 1: galaxy unto itself. Bob Bursch is the first guy that says,
Speaker 1: number one, we need this and we need to be
Speaker 1: tying like radio broadcasters and conservative magazines and and right
Speaker 1: wing like books together. We need to be building places
Speaker 1: where right wing thinkers can gather and people can go
Speaker 1: and find their work. Like this is an important part
Speaker 1: of actually taking over society and twitter turning it he's
Speaker 1: described as turning it away from communism. But like he
Speaker 1: he he foresaw what needed to be done, and he
Speaker 1: was really the first guy to proceed with doing it.
Speaker 1: It's like, you do all this stuff because you know
Speaker 1: that whatever you're doing wouldn't pass muster at like a
Speaker 1: regular place publisher. You have to create your own industries
Speaker 1: because what you're doing is is ludicrous, uh, and you
Speaker 1: want to pass off this ludicrous ship. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: right wing always has an inherent advantage there whenever it
Speaker 1: comes to media because the ideas they want to consolidate
Speaker 1: thought into a single thing, whereas the left wing media
Speaker 1: is ostensibly about uh, I guess sharing ideas to see
Speaker 1: you who can do well. I don't know, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a way of creating a unified thought
Speaker 1: process for all of these right wing people's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good ship. And he's you know, he's a real
Speaker 1: good ship. It's either good ship or cult ship of
Speaker 1: the Oh you said cult ship. That's what I heard.
Speaker 1: It's a trail blazer. You gotta give him that, you know,
Speaker 1: he blazes a trail, a bad trail. It's a trail
Speaker 1: to like it's a trail to like one of those
Speaker 1: like somebody's septic tank has like flooded into a depression
Speaker 1: in the earth and created like a little lake of feces.
Speaker 1: Like it's a trail to a ship lake. But it
Speaker 1: is a trail that he is blazed. He had machete
Speaker 1: his way through some underbrush to get to that poop. Like.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things I loved about
Speaker 1: that quote you just read was the idea that he's
Speaker 1: talking about how they have to create all these front
Speaker 1: groups and you know like that in particular because I've
Speaker 1: read a bunch of John Birch materials and people who
Speaker 1: are associated with them, and one of the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: their accusations is that everything is a front group for communism,
Speaker 1: and they never prove any of it. It's always just
Speaker 1: everything as a front group. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that comes out of the like awareness of yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is the mentality that we have. We have
Speaker 1: to create front groups of people. Don't associate this with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a great ideas. Whenever you're like,
Speaker 1: we can't let anybody know about these, it's simultaneously a
Speaker 1: tactic and something that I think happens just it happens
Speaker 1: automatically when you're doing that. Like number one, it's a
Speaker 1: tactic because if you accuse people of what you're doing,
Speaker 1: it distracts and justifies your actions. But also if you're
Speaker 1: doing that sort of ship, you assume everyone else is
Speaker 1: because you don't want to you don't want to have
Speaker 1: your are we of the baddies moment, and also you
Speaker 1: want to think it's a good idea, so your enemy
Speaker 1: has to use the good idea. They can't be doing something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's objectively state exactly. The thing is like
Speaker 1: part of why I didn't push back normally when I
Speaker 1: read about one of my you know, bastards being a
Speaker 1: child prodigy, I pushed back because they're usually dumb as shit.
Speaker 1: This is a good idea, it works like it took
Speaker 1: a long time. It didn't happen in Bob Bocha's lifetime,
Speaker 1: but his plan worked very well. That's true. That's true,
Speaker 1: Like you happen to be you gotta give it up
Speaker 1: to the Somali pirates. Every ye, you just got to
Speaker 1: give it up to the Somali pirates. He didn't probably
Speaker 1: come up with a ton of all of this though,
Speaker 1: like he's yeah, you can figurehead of a lot of it.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of those early CEOs from the
Speaker 1: National Association of Manufacturers, probably I would suspect had a
Speaker 1: bit more to do with some of the crafting of
Speaker 1: these ideas. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say exact
Speaker 1: because the there obviously secret conversations between men plotting and
Speaker 1: secret um. None call that a conspiracy, None would dare
Speaker 1: call that a conspiracy. But I do think, like obviously,
Speaker 1: like the fact that welch, the fact that he got
Speaker 1: people together in a he got right wing moneyed interests together.
Speaker 1: Two incide in a concerted way. We have to forcibly
Speaker 1: tilt this culture right, and it's going to be a
Speaker 1: mix of tactics, including creating a propaganda empire that sounds
Speaker 1: oddly similar to some country I remember right around, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a country that Bob Welch probably would have been pretty
Speaker 1: happy and pretty course, you know, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's hard to say how much
Speaker 1: because like, obviously you get the like you look at
Speaker 1: Fred Coke, remember the John Birch Society. Fred Coke's kids
Speaker 1: go on to do more effectively what Bob Welch tried
Speaker 1: to do his whole life. Were they copying Bob Welch
Speaker 1: or were they copying their fathers? Who the guy who
Speaker 1: gave Bob Wot's the idea? We don't. I don't really know.
Speaker 1: But also Fred Cooke didn't stay around for all that
Speaker 1: long with no he made the best decision of his
Speaker 1: life and died. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I made
Speaker 1: the best decision of our lives. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: I remembered something of him, like trying to distance himself
Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, a number of Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: he did. When like it became well, we'll talk about that,
Speaker 1: like the John Birch Society, you know, reaches its sell
Speaker 1: by date. So the campaign against Justice Earl Warren convinced
Speaker 1: many pundits and politicos that the John Birch Society was
Speaker 1: just as bad as the totalitarian communists they opposed. An
Speaker 1: editorial in the Chicago Sun Times described the content of
Speaker 1: many letters sent by their followers his evidence of brainwashing,
Speaker 1: which it was, you know, they're they're flooding people with
Speaker 1: letters that all sound the same, that all include the
Speaker 1: same sound bites. And it's not because they're being like
Speaker 1: a lot of people think like, oh my god, they
Speaker 1: must have centralized a letter writing campaign. And I think
Speaker 1: it's more that all of these people are reading the
Speaker 1: same propaganda. You know. Um. Now, because the United States
Speaker 1: has always been the United States, there were those who
Speaker 1: are willing to stand up in public and defend the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society. South Carolina Democrat Mindel Rivers said they
Speaker 1: were justified because the Supreme Court's decision in Brown versus
Speaker 1: the Board of Education was effectively the death knell of
Speaker 1: the Constitution. No no, No, I'm just a simple Southan Democrat,
Speaker 1: but I think slavery is a great idea. If black
Speaker 1: people go to school, do we really have a country?
Speaker 1: So Welch was definitely a trail blazer in how to
Speaker 1: weaponize far right rage and the moral majority in its successors,
Speaker 1: like the Tea Party essentially used John Birch tactics in
Speaker 1: order to get off the ground. You can see variants
Speaker 1: of these tactics and the far right's use of social
Speaker 1: media today. The idea behind it all remains the same.
Speaker 1: You try to popularize a fringe idea by setting off
Speaker 1: a blizzard of generated outrage that has the effect of
Speaker 1: making your cause seem more popular than it is. You know,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen six these it's get thousands of John
Speaker 1: Berger's to write letters to the same handful of politicians.
Speaker 1: Nowadays it's flood comments sections and whatnot with like you know,
Speaker 1: hot takes and ship It's it's swarmed people on Twitter
Speaker 1: or whatever. But it's the same idea, um and if
Speaker 1: you just repeats something loud enough and often enough enough,
Speaker 1: people will believe it's true that you can move forward
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, it's the reason that human society is
Speaker 1: destined to go increasingly better places. Yep, so uh. Welch
Speaker 1: was also a trailblazer when it came to infecting the
Speaker 1: minds of children with his nonsense. In September of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty he started advising his followers to get elected to
Speaker 1: local PTA boards all around the country. That way they'd
Speaker 1: have a say in how their children were taught about
Speaker 1: history and politics, and then give them candy. Yeah, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: you want to Papa sucker, get on over here. You
Speaker 1: know who's trying to keep the Papa suckers away from you,
Speaker 1: Oh Joe Stalin. In August of nineteen sixty one, Welch
Speaker 1: announced a John Birch Society essay contest open to undergraduate
Speaker 1: students around the nation. The author of the best essay
Speaker 1: on why Earl Warren should be impeached would win in
Speaker 1: price money. Oh yeah, you really can't. And again, the
Speaker 1: fact that he hates Earl Warren more than he's hated
Speaker 1: anyone else in his life is just because of Brown
Speaker 1: versus the Board of Education. There's a there's a long
Speaker 1: chain and string and recurring theme that you'll always see
Speaker 1: throughout all this is like severe opposition to civil rights,
Speaker 1: just being created around is against communists. You can make
Speaker 1: an extremely strong case that the entire modern right wing
Speaker 1: was born out of a desire to stop black people
Speaker 1: from going to write white schools, because the Moral Majority's
Speaker 1: primary founding goal was to stop Oral Roberts University from
Speaker 1: having to take black students. Like that was like the
Speaker 1: main reason that the Moral Majority started. Like it's all
Speaker 1: it all comes back to, why can't we just have
Speaker 1: white people in our rich kids schools? Good stuff. So,
Speaker 1: but Welch told The New York Times his goal was
Speaker 1: to quote stir up a great deal of interest among
Speaker 1: conservatives on the campuses of the dangers that faced this country.
Speaker 1: And you can see this as essentially a precursor to
Speaker 1: something like turning point USA right. He felt that US
Speaker 1: colleges were filled with Marxists and he wanted to try
Speaker 1: and encourage conservative thinking among young college dudes. So he
Speaker 1: started like giving people thousands of dollars to write essays
Speaker 1: about white Earl Warren as the devil. So it's a
Speaker 1: racist to the bottom. If you only if only he
Speaker 1: hadn't got Frankfurter, if I like, everything could have been
Speaker 1: different if you just had a different professor that he
Speaker 1: didn't fight with a man. Another reason. Hot dogs make
Speaker 1: me feel sick. Come on, now, come on, here we go.
Speaker 1: So do you have a rimshot sound? She wouldn't even
Speaker 1: give me air horns anymore. So, uh yeah. The good
Speaker 1: news about Welch's plan to infect the minds of college
Speaker 1: students is that back in the nineteen sixties at least
Speaker 1: a few things about America were actually better. And he
Speaker 1: was met by stiff resistance from all sides for trying
Speaker 1: to infect the minds of impressionable children. So that's nice
Speaker 1: he actually push back on that's uh. I presume whenever
Speaker 1: they were like, well, we should not send our kids
Speaker 1: to colleges at all anymore and we should a home
Speaker 1: school them. Yeah, I think a lot of that has
Speaker 1: its genesis, and this to be honest. The president of
Speaker 1: the Bar Association condemned Robert Welch for the contests personal
Speaker 1: vilification of one of the chief officers of our government.
Speaker 1: Roscoe Drummond, and nationally syndicated columnist called the society radical
Speaker 1: and reckless. The early nineteen sixties were also a period
Speaker 1: in which the mainstream media increasingly turned its eyes towards
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society. Maybley's investigation had sort of opened
Speaker 1: the floodgates. In early nineteen sixty one, the Santa Barbara
Speaker 1: News Press published an investigation. The reporter Hans Eng wrote
Speaker 1: that the group had started at a cell in Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara the previous year, operating in semi secret existence and
Speaker 1: creating several chapters. Because most reporters have always been somewhat
Speaker 1: derivative things piece mostly focused on the politician and Welch's
Speaker 1: wacky theories about Eisenhower, because that was the stuff that
Speaker 1: was easiest to mock. Meanwhile, the more insidious work the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society did drew little attention to his credit.
Speaker 1: Ang did report that in September of nineteen sixty Welch
Speaker 1: advised his members to take over local p t A
Speaker 1: s The Post News as editor, A guy named Thomas
Speaker 1: Stork spent the next several months authoring a series of
Speaker 1: damning editorials about the society, stating that democracy suffers when
Speaker 1: fear of communism leads to irresponsible, unsubstantiated charges of treason
Speaker 1: or evil connivance against our political, religious, educational, or cultural leaders,
Speaker 1: and that traders should be dealt with by the courts
Speaker 1: not by vigilante groups. That's good. Did he end that
Speaker 1: with which we learned from ten years ago when McCarthy
Speaker 1: did it. We just did this guy, and we'll still
Speaker 1: be learning in twenty will go. Let's talk to John
Speaker 1: Birch Society members and let them loudly and lengthily explain
Speaker 1: their beliefs without any pushback. Yeah, yeah, let's pretend we
Speaker 1: haven't done this already. Put him on Rogan. Yeah. At
Speaker 1: least at this point in time, journalists were like, you know,
Speaker 1: critical of fascists. So so, Mr Welch, you you let candy.
Speaker 1: That's all you're known for, right, candy candy? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I offer you a junior mint. Time magazine wrote
Speaker 1: the most damning article about the Society in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, claiming that it operated under the hard boiled,
Speaker 1: dictatorial direction of one man, and pointing out that due
Speaker 1: to the Society's proven ability to organize its members and
Speaker 1: push them to considered action, they could not simply be
Speaker 1: dismissed as some sort of comic opera joke. Time magazine
Speaker 1: dubbed the politician Welch's mind comp and noted with fear
Speaker 1: that it's militant words and thoughts are barely a goose
Speaker 1: step away from the formation of goon squads. Time used
Speaker 1: to be Good magazine named Hitler man of the year.
Speaker 1: So what will come on, man? I mean he was
Speaker 1: the man of a couple of years. Like, let's be
Speaker 1: fairy here he was on the cover. The time is
Speaker 1: basically nazis. Yeah, so they should like the politician. Maybe
Speaker 1: they were saying this in a positive It is the
Speaker 1: politician the man of the year back in this time.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're saying that it's here in a complimentary way.
Speaker 1: Is the best seller? Finally the new mine cop Uh.
Speaker 1: While the campaign to impeach Earl Warren fizzled out without
Speaker 1: any sort of success, around nineteen sixty two, Fewer Over
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society sparked calls in Congress for an
Speaker 1: investigation into the group over fur over there, come on, now,
Speaker 1: get that get that sound effect, a little little, little,
Speaker 1: little fewer joke there. So this actually led several of
Speaker 1: uh like the fact that like all of this, you know,
Speaker 1: media comes out about the society forces several of its
Speaker 1: members who were highly placed in government, to go public
Speaker 1: basically to get ahead of news cycles, revealing that their
Speaker 1: secret John Birch Society members. One of these guys is
Speaker 1: Representative Edgar high Stand, Republican from California. Uh. He identifies
Speaker 1: himself as a member of the society in March thirty,
Speaker 1: and he outs one of his fellow Californians are Republican
Speaker 1: congressman named John Russelo as a member as well. Both
Speaker 1: men say that they're like because there's also calls to
Speaker 1: investigate the society in this period because a lot of
Speaker 1: people are freaked out, and rightfully so, and we as yeah,
Speaker 1: they're weird as hell, and both of these guys are like,
Speaker 1: we would love to be investigated. Please investigate us. Um.
Speaker 1: I think one of them actually jumped out of a
Speaker 1: window whenever he was caught at a twenty four person
Speaker 1: communist orgy. I'm pretty sure that's Isn't that how that
Speaker 1: one went to a h getting it in there? Dad,
Speaker 1: Like I would love this, Like there's hey, we're fine,
Speaker 1: anybody can investigate us, but I should tell you that
Speaker 1: anybody who does is probably going to be called a communist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's fun because like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are like, we should investigate these people, and the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society is like, yes, please investigate us. And then
Speaker 1: like the Rabbinical Council of America is like, they should
Speaker 1: be investigated, but not publicly because all you're gonna do
Speaker 1: is give them a big court platform to like let
Speaker 1: them ran to the country. Done, they will they remembered,
Speaker 1: let's say they remembered some ship that had happened like
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago ago. Hey, you know that thing that
Speaker 1: just finished happening. Maybe not, maybe we shouldn't let that
Speaker 1: happen immediately again. And thankfully, you know, there's not massive
Speaker 1: like they don't get their gigantic national platform in the
Speaker 1: way that they kind of hope there. So at that point, again, people,
Speaker 1: we're smarter about some things back then. Now, Throughout this
Speaker 1: whole period of time, the John Burt Society grew and grew,
Speaker 1: signing up thousands of new members each year. All the
Speaker 1: sunlight of attention did not eradicated. Interestingly enough, not the
Speaker 1: best disinfectant. After all, I thought it was going to
Speaker 1: do that to scientology, and here they still are. Huh,
Speaker 1: it turns out sunlight's actually not a very effective disinfectant.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a good disinfectant, yeah, four oh nine machetes,
Speaker 1: no yeah, is this podcast brought to you by four
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Speaker 1: your clothes when you vomited up. It is am on
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Speaker 1: That's gonna It's not a bit, that's just life advice.
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Speaker 1: a lot of people are willing to take a podcaster's
Speaker 1: advice on what pill you can take for your brains,
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Speaker 1: can drink. Ah, we're back and I just took a
Speaker 1: nice lukewarm sip of four oh nine. So back to
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society. Uh So Yeah, they they, you know,
Speaker 1: blow up in the media and like the early nineteen sixties, Um,
Speaker 1: they start getting all sorts of attention. Congressmen come out
Speaker 1: saying there with the John Birch Society, and suddenly they're
Speaker 1: kind of like on the verge of breaking into the
Speaker 1: main stream. And this is very exciting to the worst
Speaker 1: people on the right who suddenly have I feel like
Speaker 1: they have an excuse to be even shittier. Uh and
Speaker 1: it's very frightening for people on the left. One of
Speaker 1: those people is a little guy you might have heard
Speaker 1: of named Bob Dylan. In May of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: he wrote a song about the John Birch Society titled
Speaker 1: Talking about John Birch Society Blues. He planned that play
Speaker 1: the song on the Ed Sullivan show, which was going
Speaker 1: to be his first televised appearance anywhere, so like a
Speaker 1: big stone. Yeah, he was gonna be on and he this.
Speaker 1: He decides, I'm gonna play a song about how bad
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society is for my first moment Nirvana
Speaker 1: raped me on SNL moment. Yeah yeah, But CBS Standards
Speaker 1: and Practices worried that the song was controversial, and they
Speaker 1: told Bob Dylan he could know what. We don't know
Speaker 1: what offend the fascists. Yeah, we don't don't these guys
Speaker 1: who were basically Nazis. And I will say this for
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, in an act of actual courage, he refused
Speaker 1: to go on the Ed Sullivan Show at all rather
Speaker 1: than be censored. Um, so that's fun. Yeah, he turns
Speaker 1: down his first TV appearance because they're not probably worried
Speaker 1: about insulting or offending the fascist as much as they're
Speaker 1: aware that these people are also the heads of industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their boss is a member of the fascist in a way, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way. So for years after this point, Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan would play the song every time he did a concert,
Speaker 1: just as like a Now that's less. I don't think
Speaker 1: he does it anymore because most people be like, who
Speaker 1: the hell are you talking about? And He's like, the
Speaker 1: people who are running things now, you morons. Never like
Speaker 1: the title of that song. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: little clunky, but it is. It's not a great song.
Speaker 1: Like look, Bob Dylan has had an arc to his
Speaker 1: career and he was not his you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I'm not a giant Bob Dylan fan, to be honest,
Speaker 1: but I would prefer a Gordon Lightfoot cover of the
Speaker 1: John app That'd be a fun eleven minute interlude just
Speaker 1: singing the entire the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald instrumental
Speaker 1: breaks well. The story begins in China. Later, as money
Speaker 1: and members flowed into the John Birch Society, Bob Welch
Speaker 1: continued to experiment with new ways to make use of
Speaker 1: the instrument he had so successfully built. The letter writing
Speaker 1: campaign hadn't achieved its goal, but it had proven to
Speaker 1: him that he could effectively mobilize his followers to real
Speaker 1: world act, and following in that vein, he decided to
Speaker 1: embark on his most ambitious project yet, a massive crowdsource
Speaker 1: list of every communist agent in the country. He told readers,
Speaker 1: making lists of names is a great idea, crowdsourcing real
Speaker 1: democracy ship right there. You really don't want to vet
Speaker 1: any one of those names? Well, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: how you create the best list. Yes, it is also
Speaker 1: echoes of Bill Cooper in this, you know, echoes of
Speaker 1: his like a Caddy or whatever he called it, the
Speaker 1: citizens and Cadgy, the Citizens Intelligence, echoes of Alex Jones
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah, Welch told readers in the bulletin, we
Speaker 1: wished to build up and have available for all future
Speaker 1: research needs, the most complete and accurate files in America
Speaker 1: of the leading com simps communist sympathizers, socialists, and liberals
Speaker 1: on those who are trying to change the economic and
Speaker 1: political structure of this country so that it could be
Speaker 1: comfortably merged with Soviet Russia in a one world socialist government.
Speaker 1: And since we do not yet see any chance of
Speaker 1: putting a sufficiently sizeable staff to work on this job,
Speaker 1: we have decided to make use of the energy, knowledge libraries,
Speaker 1: pamphlet collections, determination and dedication of our members instead. So smart,
Speaker 1: that's so smart with these right wing conspiracies like you
Speaker 1: turn it into that augmented reality game like a game
Speaker 1: before they had any idea. Now we've got citizens Sleuth's
Speaker 1: dealing with the true crime podcasts. But it's fucking anti
Speaker 1: communist liars. So yeah, it's fucking awesome. And he estimated
Speaker 1: there about three hundred to five d thousand actual communists
Speaker 1: in the country and another million dupes, allies and sympathizers.
Speaker 1: Those numbers are not at all made up. He did
Speaker 1: not just pull them completely out of his asshole. As
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four came, the John Birch Society was at
Speaker 1: the apex of its power and influence. It was still
Speaker 1: widely reviled and condemned by most mainstream Democrats and Republicans,
Speaker 1: as well as basically all of the media, but its
Speaker 1: first six years of life had proved that there was
Speaker 1: a strong hunger for the outright fascist politics and violent
Speaker 1: anti left rhetoric of Bob Welch, and in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four elections, the nascent far right was about to
Speaker 1: get its first viable presidential camp at it in a
Speaker 1: fella named Barry Goldwater. He's good, he's good, he is
Speaker 1: a good dude. Well, I mean, what's wild is that
Speaker 1: he's basically a Democrat today but we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: at the right. Goldwater No, Barry Goldwater was an arch
Speaker 1: conservative senator from Arizona. He was elected for the first
Speaker 1: time in nineteen fifty two, and for an idea of
Speaker 1: the kind of spot he occupies in the conservative canon.
Speaker 1: Goldwater was directly succeeded in his job by John McCain,
Speaker 1: who praised Goldwater as the man who transformed the Republican
Speaker 1: Party from an eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground
Speaker 1: for the election of Ronald Reagan. I like that he
Speaker 1: uses credit to John McCain ground makes it sound as
Speaker 1: creepy and terrible as it is. Like I don't think
Speaker 1: he meant to use the right word there, but he
Speaker 1: didn't convey the right feeling. I want to. I want
Speaker 1: to congratulate this man on creating a cesspool of the
Speaker 1: best pa. He really, he really made like a bacterial
Speaker 1: tide pool of filth that Ronald Reagan congeald out of
Speaker 1: and vomited his way into the national consciousness. And I
Speaker 1: think that's great. I'm John McCain. I've crashed so many
Speaker 1: more planes than most people ever fly on and wives
Speaker 1: all right, Hey, So one thing that's important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind when we talk about the Republicans of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties is that the Deep South used
Speaker 1: to be a Democratic stronghold. It started to switch during
Speaker 1: lbj's time in office, and one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it switched was old Berry g When he announced his
Speaker 1: campaign in January of nineteen sixty four, Goldwater was literally
Speaker 1: in crutches from a recent bonespur operation. He made headlines
Speaker 1: for being one of the first, if not the very first,
Speaker 1: modern presidential candidates to launch a campaign from his house.
Speaker 1: The New York Times spent most of the page spade
Speaker 1: of its article of this discussing how his wife had
Speaker 1: prepped for the big day to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of where Barry stood on the issues. On October sixteenth
Speaker 1: of that year, he gave a speech in the Midwest
Speaker 1: where he stated, in his first major talk on civil rights,
Speaker 1: forced integration, it's just as raw misforced segregation. Hey, here
Speaker 1: we go, all right, what's really great is kind of
Speaker 1: lightly ignored segregation. That's the sweet spot in the middle.
Speaker 1: Right there, we have segregation, and removing it would be
Speaker 1: as bad as having it. So let's just keep having it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't throw the baby out with the racist bathwater. Come on,
Speaker 1: It's like showing up at the site of like a
Speaker 1: shooting while a paramedic is putting on a tourniquet and
Speaker 1: being like, hey, man, putting that tourniquet on the same
Speaker 1: as shooting a man. So from the New York Times quote,
Speaker 1: he called the busting of school children and other measures
Speaker 1: to in de facto segregation morally wrong and said that
Speaker 1: busting was an example of doctrinaire and misguided equalitarianism. I
Speaker 1: love the misguided you know, misguided equalitarian These people think
Speaker 1: that they want equality and they're just crazy about it.
Speaker 1: They're just those misguided fools. Their hearts are in the
Speaker 1: right place, I swear, Yuh. I know how Barry Goldwater
Speaker 1: made a bunch of his money. He invented underpants that
Speaker 1: had ants on them, called ants in my Pants. And
Speaker 1: I do know that. I actually do know that. I
Speaker 1: read that mark you did, but I I it's how
Speaker 1: can you think that that's true? Yeah, he invented novelty
Speaker 1: underpants in his younger days and made a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of money on him. And now I can't just say
Speaker 1: Trump is a psychopath because he's got a whole rule
Speaker 1: named after him. That's amazing. Yeah, the Goldwater because you
Speaker 1: can't psychoanalyze someone because they all called him crazy, which
Speaker 1: he was not. Um, he was just a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: It's just all the things he believed were no Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not. Though. If you're the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: got rich selling ants in your pants, the things like
Speaker 1: Barry Goldwater's country is going to make things better for
Speaker 1: you know, it's fair, it's just worse for everyone who
Speaker 1: didn't get selling ants pants. God, that's so fucking I
Speaker 1: know all of the people who like are the most
Speaker 1: gung ho about the free market are also the ones
Speaker 1: who have contributed the least impressive things to it. Right,
Speaker 1: But I mean you think it was it was a
Speaker 1: different time. Novelty underpants back then might have been revolutionary.
Speaker 1: That's possible. That's actually why nineteen sixte had so many
Speaker 1: protests and revolutions. It was ants pants. Maw never would
Speaker 1: have come to power without those underpants. It was I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just had to look this up just to be sure.
Speaker 1: It was antie pants. Was Jesus fucking Christ? Okay, as
Speaker 1: cute as very Goldwater Sophie God, I want I want
Speaker 1: visual No, I hate all these immediately. I want to
Speaker 1: see novelty underwear. Wait, no, I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. So I'm gonna quote now from Politico. Even
Speaker 1: though Welsh understood racism and bigotry would hurt his cause,
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society's opposition to the Civil rights movement
Speaker 1: attracted Americans sympathetic to racist paranoia. For example, it consistently
Speaker 1: published reports accusing civil rights leaders of communists aversion and
Speaker 1: alleging that people of color were plotting to divide the
Speaker 1: country and control the world. So, yeah, that Goldwater. He
Speaker 1: has to like thread a little bit of a needle
Speaker 1: here because the John Bird Society is too controversial even
Speaker 1: among Republicans for him to embrace them. But they have
Speaker 1: created an incredibly organized and effective like way of terrifying
Speaker 1: people on the right about communism and about civil rights,
Speaker 1: and so he can't ignore them either. Um, you don't
Speaker 1: want to become their enemy and then be called a communist.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you don't want people to
Speaker 1: think you're their champion. Yeah, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: Steve King. Yeah, you don't want to be You don't
Speaker 1: want to go full Steve King even at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Goldwater wrote a best selling book called The Conscience
Speaker 1: of a Conservative, and it can be seen is basically
Speaker 1: the blueprint for Reagan style conservatism, even Trump is um
Speaker 1: travelty book. If it was just empty, Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be a great thing to give for Christmas gift. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is. It is very vacant the actual morality,
Speaker 1: like for an example of the conscience that Barry Goldwater
Speaker 1: like says. One of the reasons how Barry Goldwater like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why he explains that like civil
Speaker 1: rights laws are immoral is because the government shouldn't infringe
Speaker 1: on the right of free association, um, which is the
Speaker 1: right to discriminate. You know, yeah yeah now uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So Goldwater publishes this book, it's like a surprise bestseller.
Speaker 1: Mainstream Republicans like start falling in love with this guy's rhetoric,
Speaker 1: which is basically just ten calmed down John Birch society rhetoric.
Speaker 1: Um and yes, yeah, yeah exactly. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: Goldwater is really kind of like the he's kind of
Speaker 1: like the typhoid Mary of of of of John Birch
Speaker 1: society philosophy. He brings it into the mainstream, um, cloaked
Speaker 1: in you know, ethical conservatism or whatever the fuss, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's great, And there were, in fairness to some
Speaker 1: of the Republicans at this time, there were Republicans in
Speaker 1: the period of time who like recognized what Goldwater was
Speaker 1: doing and condemned it openly. The Republican governor of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: described him as having a crazy quilt of dangerous positions, uh,
Speaker 1: including the use of tactical nuclear weapons for basically any reason.
Speaker 1: Why would anybody think that was crazy? Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a big like like Goldwater's big thing was
Speaker 1: that generals should be allowed to deploy nuclear weapons in
Speaker 1: the field. Um, because because if they can't, then everyone
Speaker 1: knows they can't make that decision and then where are Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we should he like Goldwater like, one of the
Speaker 1: things he would say about nukes is that they're just
Speaker 1: another weapon. They are not Barry, I'm sorry, did you
Speaker 1: miss everything that happened the last twenty years. No, I've
Speaker 1: got this button that sets off every volcano in the
Speaker 1: world at the same time, and that's just a normal
Speaker 1: everyday weapon, like a handgun. Yeah, you just have it
Speaker 1: right there. It's like a stick. Yeah, there's the caveman
Speaker 1: could have exploded all the volcanoes on the plane at
Speaker 1: the same time. They would have done. Okay. So, like Trump,
Speaker 1: Goldwater you know, comes in like like swings onto the
Speaker 1: political stage saying very very fringe and extreme things and
Speaker 1: gets condemned by a bunch of Republicans and everybody who's
Speaker 1: not a Republican. And also, like Trump, none of this
Speaker 1: stops his him from succeeding politically, and he defeats all
Speaker 1: of his more traditional conservative rivals, including Nelson Rockefeller um,
Speaker 1: and becomes the nominee in that year's Republican Convention. I
Speaker 1: put him on the like sort of the scale of
Speaker 1: like more successful than Ron Paul, but not as successful
Speaker 1: as Trump. Not as successful as Trump, but definitely and
Speaker 1: he's critical. He's the key to both Trump and Reagan
Speaker 1: having space. I think Bush both Bushes probably would have
Speaker 1: been able to win an election either way because they're
Speaker 1: kind of more traditional conservatives, which isn't a compliment but no,
Speaker 1: just kind of a fact about them both. Um, Goldwater
Speaker 1: is really a Reagan slash fucking um Trump style politician. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know the reason he beat all of his
Speaker 1: more traditional conservative rivals is that he was able to
Speaker 1: build a coalition of working class people. Uh. Most of
Speaker 1: his voters were Southerners, Midwesterners, and Libertarians who felt left
Speaker 1: behind by the GOP. He railed against Eastern elites, saying
Speaker 1: at one point, sometimes I think this country would be
Speaker 1: better off if we could just saw off the eastern
Speaker 1: seaboard and let it float out to sea, which you
Speaker 1: know is the same thing here today. Yeah. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: also add the West coast too, though, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1: They add the West coast, And I would only say
Speaker 1: do that to Florida and like bugs bunny. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: a little start on start on the east side and
Speaker 1: moved west and one of the Carolinas. But we can
Speaker 1: let him fight it out. One of you can stay.
Speaker 1: I just feel like we only need one Carolina. Raleigh's great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so well I know which side here? Backing then, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not so very Goldwater. Yeah yeah, So Goldwater succeeds,
Speaker 1: you know, more than any other extreme right politician ever
Speaker 1: had up to that point in American political history. And
Speaker 1: he was only able to succeed because the John Birch
Speaker 1: Society had paved the way. Um, he owed a lot
Speaker 1: of his early success in the fact that he won
Speaker 1: the party nomination to the machinery that the Society had
Speaker 1: put in place. Um yeah. Rick Perlstein, in a two
Speaker 1: tho one book on the Goldwater campaign, explained that Goldwater
Speaker 1: would take the line that Robert Welch was a crazy extremist,
Speaker 1: but that the society itself was full of fine, upstanding
Speaker 1: citizens working hard and well for cause of Americanism. The
Speaker 1: Goldwater Campaign made liberal use of the Society's large pool
Speaker 1: of dedicated and disciplined manpower, which now numbered more than
Speaker 1: ninety thousand. In effect, Robert Welch had spent years creating
Speaker 1: a nationwide grassroots movement for Barry Goldwater. The Society spent
Speaker 1: millions of dollars buttressing Goldwater support and spreading his and
Speaker 1: their ideas to whole new segments of American society. It
Speaker 1: worked to win Barry the nomination over men like Nelson
Speaker 1: Rockefeller the Jeb Bush of his age from Politico quote
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, Backing from the John Birch Society
Speaker 1: and Republican primaries such as California, secured the right wing
Speaker 1: backed candidate Barry Goldwater's Republican presidential nomination, all those little
Speaker 1: old ladies and tennis shoes that you called right wing
Speaker 1: nuts and cooks. Goldwaters organizational head reportedly told him about
Speaker 1: the campaign volunteers who appeared to be Birch sympathizers. They're
Speaker 1: the best political organization that's ever been put together. So
Speaker 1: for a few years, I think I think Rockefeller actually
Speaker 1: lost it immediately whenever he came out with his new slogan,
Speaker 1: which was just rock with an exclamation point. That was
Speaker 1: the one that got him Nelson. So Goldwater was a
Speaker 1: sensation on the right. His rallies drew unprecedented numbers of people.
Speaker 1: His followers were more like fans than political supporters. At
Speaker 1: one point, a supporter in Georgia famously created a soft
Speaker 1: drink based on the candidate, Goldwater, the right drink for
Speaker 1: the conservative tastes. Barry, a very blunt man, drink it
Speaker 1: in front of a crowded a rally and spit it out, saying,
Speaker 1: this taste like piss. All right, Now, there's one thing
Speaker 1: that I like about him. Five Yeah, that is pretty great. Great,
Speaker 1: that's pretty great, gold Water. I don't know, that's impolite.
Speaker 1: This guy made a soft drink for you. Barry just
Speaker 1: have the grace to be like it's good. Yeah, doesn't
Speaker 1: take like piss at all. That's why they like him.
Speaker 1: He tells it how it is, Dan, Do you know
Speaker 1: how much work goes into making a soft drink and
Speaker 1: a lot of that one not that much sugar. Goldwater
Speaker 1: regularly packed in a dozen rallies per day, flying around
Speaker 1: the country. In his Boeing seven seven, he framed himself
Speaker 1: as a law and order candidate, telling supporters something must
Speaker 1: be done and done immediately. To swing away from the
Speaker 1: subsessive concern for the rights of the criminal defendant, he
Speaker 1: told another audience that in order to defeat lawlessness, he
Speaker 1: would redress constitutional interpretation in favor of the public, presumably
Speaker 1: by appointing judges who didn't believe defendants had rights. One
Speaker 1: of Goldwater's more famous quotes can be seen as a
Speaker 1: precursor to both the kind of sociopathic libertarianism practiced by
Speaker 1: Charles Coke and the ideology of Ronald Reagan. Quote. I
Speaker 1: have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient,
Speaker 1: for I mean to reduce its size. I do not
Speaker 1: undertake to promote welfare, for I wish to extend freedom Oh,
Speaker 1: I was assuming that your quote was going to be
Speaker 1: something along the lines of like the thirteenth Amendment in
Speaker 1: the law all slavery. Guys. Come on, you know what
Speaker 1: that means. You know what I'm saying, Come on, guys.
Speaker 1: Slavery is really just an arrangement between an employer and
Speaker 1: an employer. When you think about it, and when the
Speaker 1: government doesn't allow that, that's the real slavery. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what it is. Yeah, because that makes the would be
Speaker 1: slaves and the would be a person who's enslavers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly to think about it. Ye. So you know, Goldwater
Speaker 1: didn't give Welch everything he wanted because he didn't like
Speaker 1: endorse that Eisenhower was a dirty communist, But he was
Speaker 1: basically the best candidate that the John Birch Society could
Speaker 1: have possibly had. He even offered qualified support of their
Speaker 1: campaign to impeach Earl Warren, and best of all, he
Speaker 1: was willing to new communists. So, you know, really like
Speaker 1: a great, great dude. Now, doesn't feel like you should
Speaker 1: only need one policy if your entire philosophy is just
Speaker 1: anti communism, shouldn't your one philosophy just be like new communists?
Speaker 1: And then we'll then we'll sort everything well, I mean
Speaker 1: literally and then metaphorically. That's kind of what this policies were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's good stuff. Um. Yeah. So Goldwater energizes
Speaker 1: a new Republican base that had never particularly felt like
Speaker 1: it had a voice in politics before, which was not
Speaker 1: really a good thing, and it terrified a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, the more intelligent observers at the time. One
Speaker 1: of the people who was fucking horrified watching the rise
Speaker 1: of Barry Goldwater was a young Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter
Speaker 1: was there at the nineteen sixty four R and C
Speaker 1: on assignment as a stringer together quotes from Republican politicians.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even like writing articles at this point. It
Speaker 1: was like that early in his career. He was just
Speaker 1: gathering quotes for his editors to use. But Hunter had
Speaker 1: an old friend who had got an attempt job as
Speaker 1: a pinkerton who was we're doing security for the convention,
Speaker 1: and Hunter's buddy gave him security credentials. So he was
Speaker 1: basically like hanging out in v I P Rooms drinking
Speaker 1: Barry Goldwater's liquor. Um. Uh, now he was he was
Speaker 1: pounding dexidrin at that point, Hunter was terrified. Hunter. Hunter
Speaker 1: was terrified of Goldwater, who he saw us a fascist
Speaker 1: with a real chance of winning election and you know,
Speaker 1: killing a lot of people. Thompson was well versed in
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society's talking points, and he was one
Speaker 1: of a few people in the country to foresee the
Speaker 1: dark right word lurch that the Republican Party was beginning
Speaker 1: to take. He was also mainlining huge doses of speed
Speaker 1: every day, and so he was pretty paranoid, uh, which
Speaker 1: is why he writes the next thing, uh that he
Speaker 1: writes about this. Yeah, so Thompson, you know, is there
Speaker 1: when Barry Goldwater gives his a speech, and his speech
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty four um RNC includes the quote
Speaker 1: I would remind you that extremism and defensive liberty is
Speaker 1: no vice. That's like the most famous Barry Goldwater quote.
Speaker 1: And he just has this like pounding, unreal effect on
Speaker 1: the audience. Um. Thompson writes later quote, uh, that he
Speaker 1: was actually feeling afraid because I was the only person
Speaker 1: not clapping and shouting, and I was thinking, God, damn
Speaker 1: you Nazi bastards. I really hope you win it, because
Speaker 1: letting your kind of human garbage flood the system is
Speaker 1: about the only real way to clean it out. Another
Speaker 1: four years of I would have brought on national collapse,
Speaker 1: but one year of gold Water would have produced a revolution. Uh, we've, we've.
Speaker 1: That might not be the Yeah, no, I think he
Speaker 1: was optimistic. Yeah, that might not do it. That might
Speaker 1: not do it. It might just turn out a lot
Speaker 1: of people are fine with fascism. I remember a lot
Speaker 1: of people saying that the lead up to that election. Ye. No,
Speaker 1: I think the sad story about all this is that
Speaker 1: Thompson was right about the danger of bury gold Water,
Speaker 1: but optimistic about Americans. Yeah. It's not something you usually
Speaker 1: hear about. No, optimistic to a fault. Uh you know
Speaker 1: who isn't optimistic to a fault? Do tell the good
Speaker 1: people who make four oh nine my new favorite happy
Speaker 1: time beverage. Four oh nine. Grab a glass of relaxation.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, we're back. So Hunter S. Thompson was not
Speaker 1: accurate about Americans, you know, getting horrified at a glimpse
Speaker 1: of fascism, But he was was right about the fact
Speaker 1: that Goldwater was not an outlier. Richard Nixon, the next
Speaker 1: Republican president, would turn out to be the most liberal
Speaker 1: Republican of the modern era. Every other Republican president who
Speaker 1: followed him was cut out of Barry Goldwater's mold, which
Speaker 1: means they were in fact cut from the same mold
Speaker 1: as the John Birch Society. Ronald Reagan, of course, gave
Speaker 1: a massively popular speech at the nineteen sixty four convention
Speaker 1: providing a full throated endorsement of Goldwater's foreign policy and
Speaker 1: his promise to shrink government. During his own run for
Speaker 1: president in nineteen eighty, Reagan directly aped Goldwater by stating
Speaker 1: that the most terrifying words in the English language were
Speaker 1: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. As
Speaker 1: a write up in history dot Com notes quote. By
Speaker 1: the dawn of the New Century, Tea Party members drew
Speaker 1: heavily on Goldwater's libertarian policies in shaping the Geo Peace platform,
Speaker 1: disparaging not only liberal elites but any fellow Republicans who
Speaker 1: still believed in the kind of compassionate conservatism preached by
Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush. The list of companies and industries
Speaker 1: that the government is crowding out and bailing out and
Speaker 1: taking over it continues to grow. The former GOP vice
Speaker 1: presidential candidate Sarah Palin told a two thousand ten gathering
Speaker 1: of Tea Party Republicans. Historian Alan Nevins of Columbia University,
Speaker 1: a student of American politics and history, and a two
Speaker 1: time Pulitzer winner for his political biographies, saw the writing
Speaker 1: on the wall. If Goldwater and his supporters stuck to
Speaker 1: their guns, there will be in effect a new Conservative Party.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened. Yeah, Nail's good stuff, right on, buddy,
Speaker 1: I I think you can take some smallest and getting
Speaker 1: a good I told you so in there before you're
Speaker 1: hung for being a leftist. Yeah, that's all right, That's
Speaker 1: that's the one upside you get to being a left Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what. Get a little bit of smugness before you're
Speaker 1: shot down by the Stapo. We don't get any power,
Speaker 1: but we get a nice exit line at a firing line. Yeah. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: the best exit lines at a The only people who
Speaker 1: really have good responses to getting shot by a line
Speaker 1: of fascists are yeah, you know what, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about. It's really interesting is that like in
Speaker 1: the earlier days, you know, like when the John Birch
Speaker 1: Society was all going and stuff, you'd have these, you'd
Speaker 1: have those elected representatives who would have to come out
Speaker 1: as members after they had already been elected, whereas like
Speaker 1: during the Tea Party, they actually got people elected full
Speaker 1: with full knowledge of like they are part of this,
Speaker 1: Like those people may not have gotten elected people known
Speaker 1: they were John Birch people to them. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: everyone's fighting over themselves to announce that they're a member
Speaker 1: of whatever the new most extreme sect of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is. Yeah, that doesn't indicate progress to me. Tragic
Speaker 1: tragic optimist Hunter S. Thompson really really got that one wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so, Yeah, the John Birch Society gave birth to
Speaker 1: Barry gold Water, who gave birth to a new Republican Party,
Speaker 1: the Party of Reagan, of George W. Bush and eventually
Speaker 1: of Donald J. Trump. But in nineteen sixty four, the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society's politics were still a tad to fringe
Speaker 1: for mainstream success. Lb J successfully painted Goldwater is something
Speaker 1: of a lunatic who would bring about nuclear apocalypse, which
Speaker 1: is part of why lb J won that election. Is
Speaker 1: very famous, daisy ad, you look it up. That's about
Speaker 1: like Goldwater is going to kill your children in nuclear
Speaker 1: hell fire. It wasn't wrong though it wasn't He was
Speaker 1: not wrong. He was wrong, and lb J did did
Speaker 1: win that election and went on to do nothing problematic
Speaker 1: or violent himself. So J yeah, yeah, come on, President
Speaker 1: of Peace, Civil Rights Act. We forget everything else he did.
Speaker 1: Come on, That's that's dick. He nicknamed his dick Jumbo,
Speaker 1: though he did in his famed slogan was no child
Speaker 1: ever had their skin burned off because of lb J.
Speaker 1: You know what, I don't know what he'd put when
Speaker 1: he'd wake up in the morning, He'd put Jumbo in
Speaker 1: his an UH rapid in there. The John Birch Society
Speaker 1: began to fade and influence and bleed members after the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four elections. UH. In nineteen sixty seven, The
Speaker 1: Saturday Evening Post published an article entirely focused around the
Speaker 1: society's decline. It's numbers, they said, had peaked in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five at ninety five thousand, and by sixty seven
Speaker 1: it was down to eighty thousand or so. Several high
Speaker 1: profile congressional members stepped back from their duties and resigned entirely.
Speaker 1: The Post noted the society has also been plagued with
Speaker 1: an internal crisis over anti Semitism, and it has been
Speaker 1: shelled from other sectors on the political right as an
Speaker 1: embarrassment to the conservative cause. Asked if the Birch Society
Speaker 1: weren't better than nothing as an anti communist roullying point,
Speaker 1: National Review editor William Buckley said, no, it's worse than nothing.
Speaker 1: William Buckley. Buckley was also like, and I hope they
Speaker 1: never invent something called the Internet, because that should will
Speaker 1: come right back. Yeah. Well, and it's the kind of
Speaker 1: it's funny because like Buckley is the good guy in
Speaker 1: this story because he realizes fairly early on that the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society are dangerous people and ex commune dicates
Speaker 1: them to the best of his ability. Also big backer
Speaker 1: of Rhodesia. No, the John people is a very very
Speaker 1: insane people. But I do believe in white nations. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, I think they are entirely White nations. Had
Speaker 1: common cause on that because they believe that the Rhodesia,
Speaker 1: you know, fighting for the apartheid state, there was defending
Speaker 1: the country against communism. Yeah, you know that there was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank god for that, otherwise we would never have gotten
Speaker 1: Elon musk Here, so some of the Society's earlier backers
Speaker 1: started to abandon it after the unsuccessful Goldwater campaign. One
Speaker 1: supporter complained, Welsh has turned what claimed to be a
Speaker 1: militant anti communist movement into a book selling operation. His
Speaker 1: notion that the Society is going to save America by
Speaker 1: getting people to read books is absurd. So they read
Speaker 1: all the books. What then there's no program? With crises
Speaker 1: erupting all around the world. Welch talks on and on
Speaker 1: about the difference between a republican and democracy. I saw
Speaker 1: no future whatsoever for the Birch Society, and so like it.
Speaker 1: This take was, however, shortsighted. Robert Welch was right to
Speaker 1: dedicate the majority of his efforts to writing fascist propaganda,
Speaker 1: and he was dedicated. Welch wrote every word of the
Speaker 1: Society's bulletin for years, which by nineteen sixties seven more
Speaker 1: more than a million published words. The Society spent tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars over the years putting out books
Speaker 1: and magazines filled with propaganda, and of course, one young
Speaker 1: boy who grew up on those books was Alexander Emeric Jones.
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck the most influential ideological founder of the Tea Party,
Speaker 1: was also raised on John Birch books. In addition to
Speaker 1: speaking fondly of the society, he urged his millions of
Speaker 1: viewers to read the work of Cleon scaus In, an
Speaker 1: anti communist ideologue who was a Bircher himself. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: a time, he was not fully Birch because too extreme
Speaker 1: for them at a Yeah, yeah he did. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get the feeling that they, you know, they had to
Speaker 1: walk so that he could leap off of a cliff. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Scows In, like Jones and like Beck, preached of a
Speaker 1: secret alliance between capitalists and communists to install a one
Speaker 1: world government under the guidance of David Rockefeller, which is
Speaker 1: not that far off from what fucking Robert Welch was saying.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a step forward, but not a
Speaker 1: wild leap. You know, broke, don't fix it right. The
Speaker 1: John Birch Society is still alive today, and according to
Speaker 1: some reports, it has grown in the Trump era. One
Speaker 1: of their modern propaganda videos is called The Dangers of
Speaker 1: Democracy and defines democracy as mob rule, emphasizing that the
Speaker 1: United States is a republic, not a democracy. The video
Speaker 1: ends on a quote attributed to Mausey Dung. Democracies inevitably
Speaker 1: lead to collectivism, which leads to socialism, which leads to communism,
Speaker 1: which leads to totalitarianism, which proves that both mausey Dung
Speaker 1: and Hunter S. Thompson are way too optimists. Yeah, good work,
Speaker 1: wild eyed Optimists Chairman Mao and Hunter Thompson. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting how right he was. Welch never lived
Speaker 1: to know it, but like you can see, like even
Speaker 1: the like every little one of his like reoccurring lines
Speaker 1: about like fucking we're a republic not a democracy. Now
Speaker 1: that ship gets like Senator Mike Lee of Utah repeated
Speaker 1: that line this year, like arguing why you know we
Speaker 1: shouldn't accept the results of the election. Um, it's he's
Speaker 1: right in a sense like he's we are a republic
Speaker 1: and not a democracy. I meant gold Water with his strategies.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Welch with his strategies like he's I don't
Speaker 1: think that it's like I don't think you could look
Speaker 1: at what happened and say he's right in terms of
Speaker 1: like this is a good way to make stable, competent
Speaker 1: political movement. But he accidentally created like and stumbled onto
Speaker 1: a really good idea about how to break people's brains
Speaker 1: and really make grifts right, really successful. Like he made
Speaker 1: that pattern really well. It is it is weird to
Speaker 1: think that there's a progenitor that's so recent. It's like
Speaker 1: with l Ron Hubbard, where you're like, you can't start
Speaker 1: a religion if you're if I know you, if you're
Speaker 1: like a hundred years old, that's that's too close. That's
Speaker 1: too close. It's the same way with this horrifying Republican Party.
Speaker 1: It should have been like thousands of years ago that
Speaker 1: we learned how evil these idiots are, and there's not
Speaker 1: the way. You know, one of the most one of
Speaker 1: the biggest bummers to me is that Andrew bright Bart
Speaker 1: was right about something important, which was his famous quote
Speaker 1: that politics flows downstream of culture um and Bob Welch
Speaker 1: is absolutely evidence of that because like like at the time,
Speaker 1: a bunch of his initial backwards like this is a failure.
Speaker 1: All you're doing is putting out books in propaganda. And
Speaker 1: then we like our present Republican Party is so far
Speaker 1: beyond what Bob Welch could have ever hoped for. Because
Speaker 1: of that, you know, it's so deeply inspired, whether they
Speaker 1: know it or not, by those works of propaganda that
Speaker 1: were put out by Welch and his his dick whole
Speaker 1: friends assholes. Yeah, it sucks, and we're not even going
Speaker 1: to get into like the like the Burt John Ver
Speaker 1: Society talked about the Illuminati a bunch. Robert Welch was
Speaker 1: a big bully, were in the Illuminati, which is there
Speaker 1: is a great speech that he gave sort of later
Speaker 1: in his career at Berkeley that you can find on
Speaker 1: YouTube that I would really suggest people look up because
Speaker 1: it's so funny. These kids are just laughing at him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's amazing. He's he's trying to be very
Speaker 1: serious and they are just clowning on him. Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's satisfying. And there there's there's still so like I
Speaker 1: found a fun political article about the modern John Bird
Speaker 1: Society and it talks about like a worksheet for one
Speaker 1: of the week's video lessons. Uh. And so there's a
Speaker 1: multiple choice question on it that asks you to identify
Speaker 1: the Illuminati. Is it a a myth, b an alien
Speaker 1: race of shape shifters, or see a group founded in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundred seeking world government. One of those
Speaker 1: seems very specific, almost as though they want you to
Speaker 1: choose one of those. You know. Also, all of those
Speaker 1: are right, depending on who you're reading, ending on who's
Speaker 1: judging the test. Yeah. Bob Welch died in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: but in the decades since his death, his ideology has
Speaker 1: conquered the Republican Party. The statements he was mocked for
Speaker 1: making in the nineteen fifties and sixties are now so
Speaker 1: popular that elected Republicans dare not push back against them,
Speaker 1: So that's good. One of the great irenies of this
Speaker 1: is that the man who was most responsible for acting
Speaker 1: as a vector of Birchie in ideology to the mainstream,
Speaker 1: Barry Goldwater, probably would have been horrified by what he
Speaker 1: helped bring into the world. Because near the end of
Speaker 1: his life in nineteen Barry Goldwater lobbied to allow homosexuals
Speaker 1: to serve openly in the military. He was a loud
Speaker 1: and full throated supporter of abortion rights, and he demanded
Speaker 1: legalization of medical marijuana. By the standards of Republicans. Now,
Speaker 1: Verry Goldwater was a fucking Democrat, like Goldie. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. Like when you read it like, oh,
Speaker 1: Barry Goldwater died in American terms a liberal. That's not
Speaker 1: a super inspiring thing. Either you either die a fascist
Speaker 1: or you live long enough to finally realize, Yeah, fuck it,
Speaker 1: let's smoke some weed. I'm Bury gold Water. Much like
Speaker 1: a Koke brother, Eventually you just say, hey, whoops, my
Speaker 1: bad guys, thanks for that coke. Yeah, well, anybody got
Speaker 1: plugables too. I'd like to a podcast. I would like
Speaker 1: that does not sound accurate. I'd like to plug my
Speaker 1: non uh endorsement of drinking solvents. What do you drink?
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you pound in decks? Um? We have
Speaker 1: a podcast, Knowledge Fight. We do. It's Knowledge Fight. You
Speaker 1: can find it if you search Knowledge Fight somewhere. And also,
Speaker 1: you have a book. I have a book. It's called
Speaker 1: The Quiet Part Loud. You can't find it if you
Speaker 1: search the Quiet Part Loud. It turns out somebody else
Speaker 1: wrote like little non vella with a similar titles. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on Amazon, and so I'm I'm screwed. And by
Speaker 1: the way, the Quiet Part is just choose. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it would be a very different name if I was
Speaker 1: a right wing psychopath. But yeah, you can find it
Speaker 1: at The Quiet part lot dot com. Uh, it is
Speaker 1: free to download. You can donate or whatever if you
Speaker 1: want to, or just read it and don't scream. Choose
Speaker 1: like I didn't, don't do don't wait that at all costs. Uh.
Speaker 1: Also listen to my podcasts. Yeah are we? Are we
Speaker 1: supposed to? For you? Is that part of this show?
Speaker 1: Did I forget the episodes finished? He can't plug? I
Speaker 1: don't I have? I have? I was, Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: Plugman's disease. I know the I know the feeling. We're done,
Speaker 1: goodbye America away. Don't drink it off the internet. No, no,
Speaker 1: pound some four o nine. It seems like it's going
Speaker 1: to be an interesting editing challenge. Well, what's really fun
Speaker 1: is when you get you get a half point of
Speaker 1: four o nine and a half pint of Windex and
Speaker 1: you do a forty decks. That's really if you really
Speaker 1: want to get tight, you know, really burn off some
Speaker 1: of that into the workday steam. Well that nope, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be hosting the show from now And I think
Speaker 1: drinking solvents the unproblematic beverage. Oh boy,