WEBVTT - Part Two: How The John Birch Society Invented The Modern Far Right 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:09.959 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast. That's it. 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:17.239 I've done my job. We're introduced. It's a podcast that's 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.080 good work. Thank you. All right, I'm taking the day. 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.720 Everybody take five? All right, cool, see you back next week. Okay, 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.240 no talking about bad people, worst one history. He's all 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:31.080 of that in our space right now, so we can't. Well, 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:32.760 I guess we might as well talk more about the 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.520 John Bird Society with me again. Are Dan in Jordan's 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:42.320 or George jan and Jordan's or Jordan's hosts of the 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:46.320 Alex Jones focused podcast Knowledge Fight, which I will probably 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:48.840 be listening to when I go on a run right 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:55.840 after this um brag. Hell yeah, hell yeah, someone has 0:00:55.880 --> 0:01:05.920 an eyepaw I pod nano motherfucker's somebody is ambulatory. Congratulations. 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:10.320 So we're talking about the JBS. And there's a quote 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:12.480 that opens the book on the John Birch Society that 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:15.320 I've been using as one of the sources for this episode, 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:17.800 The World of the John Birch Society, and the quote 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.120 that opens the book is by a guy named Don DeLillo. Uh, 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.240 A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:26.680 was a good quote to open a book about the 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:28.800 John Birch Society with because I've been thinking about it 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.080 a lot, not just while writing this episode about the JBS, 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.840 but in general, while thinking about, you know, everything that 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.600 the Birches wrought on American society, because what was actually 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.200 happening during the period of the John Birch Society's rise 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:43.800 to prominence was that a very fucked up world order 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:45.920 was establishing itself in the wake of all of that 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.480 post war promise. You know, people were broadly speaking kind 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.800 of optimistic in sort of the wake of the Second 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.360 World War that like maybe mankind had turned a corner, 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.000 and that's why I fucked and had all those babies 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.480 that we have to deal with out. That's yeah, we 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.480 the everyone decided to fucking raise the worst generation that 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:12.240 ever existed, right, bunch of for the for if you 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:14.240 were going to write a new John Birch Society book, 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:15.760 you could use a quote from me, which is like 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.600 a bunch of dicks. Yeah, that's what That's what all 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:22.040 used to open my book about the John Birch Society 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.720 and about the Papa Sucker. So the era of the 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.760 Birch Society's chief period of relevance was also the era 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:32.400 in which the new deals started being slowly picked apart. Right, So, like, 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:35.400 you know, we have an economic collapse, we institute this 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.320 very robust program of of like a social safety net 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.399 and protections for workers. And then in the post war era, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.000 all these rich guys, many of whom were John Birch 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:49.280 Society donors and sympathizers, dedicate their lives to tearing it apart. Now, 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:51.280 this period of time was also the period in which 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.400 the Cold War was that its most frightening. You know, 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.000 the height of the Vietnam War happens during sort of 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:59.720 the peak of the John Burt Society's relevance. Everything's kind 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.880 of going wrong in America in this period and in 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.120 this period right after things have been going really well, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.400 at least by the perspective of white people, and a 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.040 lot of white people were like, what the hell happened? Well, yeah, 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:16.280 exactly like communism. Yeah, you got it. While he's causing 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.280 all of the things that are bad to happen, he 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.000 blames it on communism. Yeah, it's fucking smart, man. So 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:27.040 because of all this innocence, innocence, it's smart. Yeah, I mean, 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:31.960 being terrible is it is a skill? You know? Definitely, man, 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.200 it was turned timestables when he was four years old. 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.480 He's clever. That's why again, you got to slow down 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.480 the smart kids. You know, I'm not gonna say smart 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:46.720 children deserve head injuries, but you know then don't well 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:53.280 stop just yeah stop, just sort of there no no 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.040 helmets for the smart kids, right? Can I ask? Are you? 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.040 Are you saying that for periods of time you should 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.760 deprive smart children of air? Yeah? Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:08.360 a nice, not legally actionable way of describing it. Make 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.720 all children deep sea divers and have them deal with 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.520 the bends every now and again. Yeah, don't don't forcibly 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.320 restrict them from air, but make them do wreck diving 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:23.800 and get nitrogen poisons. That's my that's how we fix society. Yeah, 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:25.720 if if you think about it, back during this time, 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.400 they only used to paddle the kids who weren't succeeding 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.760 in school. And now where are we if we had 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.279 reversed it around. What if they paddled kids for doing 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.200 too well at school? I think anybody would be ashamed 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:42.560 of succeeding. But then that's how we should live. So um, 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.120 because of all this, I actually think that Bob Welch 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.320 was actually a different sort of conspiracy theorist from most 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.279 of his followers. Uh. You know, the bulk of rank 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.760 and file Bircher's were conservative Americans who had been brainwashed 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.880 into an irrational fear of communism, and we're willing to 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:59.400 believe that it was the cause of all of their 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.520 problems when it, in general was not. Bob Welch and 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:05.520 his inner circle, the guys who got to read the 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:07.680 politician were the kind of rich and powerful men who 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.200 saw any refusal of the people of the world to 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.680 bow to their whims as communism. And when you think 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.960 about it that way, Welch's hatred of Eisenhower makes sense 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.240 because I wanted to live in a society and Bob 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.200 Welch did not. He wanted to be a feudal lord, right, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.040 like a lot of criticisms about Eisenhower, But Eisenhower wanted 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.479 to live in a society that provided benefits for the 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.240 people living inside of it, and Bob Welch said, funck 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.400 that um. And meanwhile, the followers of the John Birch 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.120 society were more of the why is our society sucks 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.599 so bad? It must be the communists, not the people 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.799 deliberately tearing it apart brick by brick probably like our leader. 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.479 That's good, that would make sense. Yeah, it's the difference 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.640 between the like consumer and the producer of the theory, 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.240 like that disconnected that isn't clear to the followers necessarily 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.279 of like what you're being what path you're actually being 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.480 led down? Yeah. I think that's why Bill Gates has 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.080 a podcast now so he can really clear things up. 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.799 My coworker, Bill Gates in the podcast. I am excited 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.120 to have him on the episode about Peter Teeal. That 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:14.000 is gonna be some spicy conversation. See. Now, if you 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.520 could get him on the episode about him, that would 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:18.839 be a huge get. It would be fun to get 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.880 Bill Gates on the podcast and then just scream at 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:27.159 him about like Windows XP for an hour and a half, 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.480 nothing about like the any of the actual crimes he 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:33.840 committed as the CEO of Migrant just like really hammer 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:38.039 him on XP. This was not intuitive software. Goddamnit. He's 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:44.040 just crying by the end of it. Uh. In nineteen 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.080 sixty President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.640 United States. I shouldn't have said president was elected president. 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:51.640 You know what? I mean JFK became the president in 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:56.200 nineteen sixty. Yeah, he wasn't that famous. In the years 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:58.920 before he was gunned down by Bernie Sanders. He enacted 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.239 a broadly progressive at genda. Except for all the saber 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.040 rattling at communists and hard workhold warrior ship. Most reasonable 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:07.760 people can look at JFK's legacy and acknowledge that he 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.200 did some reckless violent ship in the name of fighting communism. 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.120 One of those reckless violence things would be getting us 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.160 into Vietnam, which didn't work out super well. Some might 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:22.320 say well with the smooth as as Dan likes to say. 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.840 You know, Robert Welch looked at JFK, who again brought 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:27.880 us to the brink of nuclear war and got us 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.120 into Vietnam in order to fight communism. He looked at JFK. 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.680 And because JFK was like, I guess we'll will give 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:36.840 the civil rights movements some of what they want, Bob 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:42.360 Welch was like, that motherfucker's a communist. Time that motherfucker 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:46.640 is a communist. So this is not to say. And 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:48.720 in fairness to Bob Welch, he did not think that 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.040 JFK's opponent Richard Nixon was any better to Welch. JFK 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:55.920 was a stooge of Walter Reuther, the leader of the 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.680 United Auto Workers Association, while Nixon was a stooge of 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.200 New Sin Rockefeller, then the governor of New York. Welch 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:05.760 felt that the nineteen sixty election was just a referendum 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.960 on whether Wreather or Rockefeller would be the boss of 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.480 the United States under a one world international socialist government. 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.280 Man that guy did not see Soros coming at all, 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:22.160 swinging in to steal both those Yeah, yeah, Sori sorosn 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:28.160 opening and he just whoa, yeah, it's very funny. It's 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.560 very funny how scared people used to be of unions 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:36.960 before they got destroyed. So Welch had organized his society 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.600 into revolutionary cells in order to fight that's international socialist 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:43.600 government he believed was taking over the United States. Their 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:47.160 primary weapon was the force of perceived public outrage, which 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:50.400 they wielded in a variety of ways. From the world 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.600 of the John Birch Society quote, Welch had in mind 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.120 for how the John Birch Society might resist the depredations 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.679 of the communist conspiracy while awakening the apathetic and brain 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.480 way American people to what was actually going on around them, 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.120 including the use of front organizations, little fronts, big fronts, 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.000 temporary fronts, permanent fronts, all kinds of fronts, he wrote, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.200 as well as the employment of petitions, massive letter writing campaigns, 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.600 and other methods of exposure. It was time, Welsch believed, 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.680 for an organization which has the backbone and cohesiveness and 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.000 strength and definiteness of direction, to put its weight into 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.760 the political scales of this country just as fast and 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.560 as far as we could in order to reverse the 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:31.199 gradual surrender of the United States to communism. But because 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.319 Welch always saw the Birch Society as an educational organization 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.680 as much as a political one, he also wanted to 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:40.199 establish a speaker's bureau and a national network of reading 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:42.880 rooms where the best anti communist books, including his own, 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.560 could be purchased or consulted, and to expand the reach 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.560 of conservative periodicals such as American Opinion, the Dan Smoot Report, 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:54.680 and William F. Buckley Jr's National Review Until later, Until later, 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:59.400 Yeah until later, Yeah, that's He was also one of 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:03.160 the first backers of conservative radio broadcasters, which in that 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.440 period was a guys called named Fulton Lewis and Clarence Mannion. 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.520 But like he's very much on the cutting edge of 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.280 like you can you can see what Welch is actually 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.680 doing here as the first organized start of what became 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:19.040 the right wing media sphere that's like now an entire 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.720 galaxy unto itself. Bob Bursch is the first guy that says, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:24.640 number one, we need this and we need to be 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:29.680 tying like radio broadcasters and conservative magazines and and right 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.679 wing like books together. We need to be building places 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.520 where right wing thinkers can gather and people can go 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:37.960 and find their work. Like this is an important part 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.240 of actually taking over society and twitter turning it he's 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.680 described as turning it away from communism. But like he 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:46.720 he he foresaw what needed to be done, and he 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.160 was really the first guy to proceed with doing it. 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.480 It's like, you do all this stuff because you know 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:55.000 that whatever you're doing wouldn't pass muster at like a 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:59.920 regular place publisher. You have to create your own industries 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.240 because what you're doing is is ludicrous, uh, and you 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.440 want to pass off this ludicrous ship. Yeah, and the 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.000 right wing always has an inherent advantage there whenever it 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.760 comes to media because the ideas they want to consolidate 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.480 thought into a single thing, whereas the left wing media 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:21.160 is ostensibly about uh, I guess sharing ideas to see 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.200 you who can do well. I don't know, but it's 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.040 it's a it's a way of creating a unified thought 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:31.080 process for all of these right wing people's yeah, yeah, 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:33.760 it's good ship. And he's you know, he's a real 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.160 good ship. It's either good ship or cult ship of 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.960 the Oh you said cult ship. That's what I heard. 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.800 It's a trail blazer. You gotta give him that, you know, 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.720 he blazes a trail, a bad trail. It's a trail 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:49.679 to like it's a trail to like one of those 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.559 like somebody's septic tank has like flooded into a depression 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.480 in the earth and created like a little lake of feces. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:58.360 Like it's a trail to a ship lake. But it 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.520 is a trail that he is blazed. He had machete 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:04.599 his way through some underbrush to get to that poop. Like. 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:06.800 One of the one of the things I loved about 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:09.160 that quote you just read was the idea that he's 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.520 talking about how they have to create all these front 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.880 groups and you know like that in particular because I've 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.520 read a bunch of John Birch materials and people who 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:19.920 are associated with them, and one of the hallmarks of 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.319 their accusations is that everything is a front group for communism, 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.280 and they never prove any of it. It's always just 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:28.360 everything as a front group. And I think a lot 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:31.120 of that comes out of the like awareness of yeah, 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.280 like this is the mentality that we have. We have 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:37.000 to create front groups of people. Don't associate this with us. Yeah, 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:39.360 it's it's a it's a great ideas. Whenever you're like, 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:43.120 we can't let anybody know about these, it's simultaneously a 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:47.280 tactic and something that I think happens just it happens 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.240 automatically when you're doing that. Like number one, it's a 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.480 tactic because if you accuse people of what you're doing, 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.800 it distracts and justifies your actions. But also if you're 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.199 doing that sort of ship, you assume everyone else is 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:01.960 because you don't want to you don't want to have 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:06.080 your are we of the baddies moment, and also you 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.800 want to think it's a good idea, so your enemy 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.360 has to use the good idea. They can't be doing something. 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:15.120 I mean, it's objectively state exactly. The thing is like 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.200 part of why I didn't push back normally when I 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.720 read about one of my you know, bastards being a 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:23.120 child prodigy, I pushed back because they're usually dumb as shit. 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.040 This is a good idea, it works like it took 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.880 a long time. It didn't happen in Bob Bocha's lifetime, 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.760 but his plan worked very well. That's true. That's true, 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.440 Like you happen to be you gotta give it up 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.800 to the Somali pirates. Every ye, you just got to 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.160 give it up to the Somali pirates. He didn't probably 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.280 come up with a ton of all of this though, 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:48.600 like he's yeah, you can figurehead of a lot of it. 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:50.800 But like a lot of those early CEOs from the 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:55.040 National Association of Manufacturers, probably I would suspect had a 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.040 bit more to do with some of the crafting of 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.679 these ideas. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say exact 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.000 because the there obviously secret conversations between men plotting and 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:07.200 secret um. None call that a conspiracy, None would dare 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.360 call that a conspiracy. But I do think, like obviously, 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.400 like the fact that welch, the fact that he got 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.920 people together in a he got right wing moneyed interests together. 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.520 Two incide in a concerted way. We have to forcibly 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.680 tilt this culture right, and it's going to be a 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:31.160 mix of tactics, including creating a propaganda empire that sounds 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:36.040 oddly similar to some country I remember right around, Yeah, 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.640 a country that Bob Welch probably would have been pretty 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:43.240 happy and pretty course, you know, yeah, I don't know, 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.200 you know, it's it's it's hard to say how much 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:49.280 because like, obviously you get the like you look at 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.960 Fred Coke, remember the John Birch Society. Fred Coke's kids 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.000 go on to do more effectively what Bob Welch tried 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.920 to do his whole life. Were they copying Bob Welch 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:00.480 or were they copying their fathers? Who the guy who 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:02.680 gave Bob Wot's the idea? We don't. I don't really know. 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.760 But also Fred Cooke didn't stay around for all that 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.880 long with no he made the best decision of his 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:14.560 life and died. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I made 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:16.960 the best decision of our lives. Yeah, I feel like 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.840 I remembered something of him, like trying to distance himself 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.640 at some point. Yeah, a number of Yeah, I believe 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:26.440 he did. When like it became well, we'll talk about that, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.960 like the John Birch Society, you know, reaches its sell 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:34.200 by date. So the campaign against Justice Earl Warren convinced 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:36.760 many pundits and politicos that the John Birch Society was 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.120 just as bad as the totalitarian communists they opposed. An 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.000 editorial in the Chicago Sun Times described the content of 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.320 many letters sent by their followers his evidence of brainwashing, 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.840 which it was, you know, they're they're flooding people with 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.120 letters that all sound the same, that all include the 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.320 same sound bites. And it's not because they're being like 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:56.000 a lot of people think like, oh my god, they 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:58.920 must have centralized a letter writing campaign. And I think 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:00.960 it's more that all of these people are reading the 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:05.320 same propaganda. You know. Um. Now, because the United States 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:07.240 has always been the United States, there were those who 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.080 are willing to stand up in public and defend the 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.800 John Birch Society. South Carolina Democrat Mindel Rivers said they 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.720 were justified because the Supreme Court's decision in Brown versus 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.280 the Board of Education was effectively the death knell of 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:23.800 the Constitution. No no, No, I'm just a simple Southan Democrat, 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.520 but I think slavery is a great idea. If black 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:28.920 people go to school, do we really have a country? 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.000 So Welch was definitely a trail blazer in how to 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.800 weaponize far right rage and the moral majority in its successors, 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.000 like the Tea Party essentially used John Birch tactics in 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.600 order to get off the ground. You can see variants 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.600 of these tactics and the far right's use of social 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.720 media today. The idea behind it all remains the same. 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:52.800 You try to popularize a fringe idea by setting off 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.920 a blizzard of generated outrage that has the effect of 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.600 making your cause seem more popular than it is. You know, 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.520 in the nineteen six these it's get thousands of John 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.320 Berger's to write letters to the same handful of politicians. 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.359 Nowadays it's flood comments sections and whatnot with like you know, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.119 hot takes and ship It's it's swarmed people on Twitter 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:16.160 or whatever. But it's the same idea, um and if 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.080 you just repeats something loud enough and often enough enough, 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.399 people will believe it's true that you can move forward 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:23.960 with it. Yeah, it's the reason that human society is 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:30.760 destined to go increasingly better places. Yep, so uh. Welch 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:33.000 was also a trailblazer when it came to infecting the 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:35.960 minds of children with his nonsense. In September of nineteen 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.560 sixty he started advising his followers to get elected to 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.880 local PTA boards all around the country. That way they'd 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:43.760 have a say in how their children were taught about 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:50.320 history and politics, and then give them candy. Yeah, hey, kids, 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:52.840 you want to Papa sucker, get on over here. You 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.840 know who's trying to keep the Papa suckers away from you, 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:02.480 Oh Joe Stalin. In August of nineteen sixty one, Welch 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:06.560 announced a John Birch Society essay contest open to undergraduate 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.480 students around the nation. The author of the best essay 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.480 on why Earl Warren should be impeached would win in 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:18.239 price money. Oh yeah, you really can't. And again, the 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:20.600 fact that he hates Earl Warren more than he's hated 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.080 anyone else in his life is just because of Brown 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:27.159 versus the Board of Education. There's a there's a long 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.560 chain and string and recurring theme that you'll always see 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:35.480 throughout all this is like severe opposition to civil rights, 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.560 just being created around is against communists. You can make 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:43.080 an extremely strong case that the entire modern right wing 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:45.800 was born out of a desire to stop black people 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.440 from going to write white schools, because the Moral Majority's 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.600 primary founding goal was to stop Oral Roberts University from 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.280 having to take black students. Like that was like the 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.440 main reason that the Moral Majority started. Like it's all 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:01.280 it all comes back to, why can't we just have 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:07.160 white people in our rich kids schools? Good stuff. So, 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:09.359 but Welch told The New York Times his goal was 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:11.640 to quote stir up a great deal of interest among 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.879 conservatives on the campuses of the dangers that faced this country. 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:17.480 And you can see this as essentially a precursor to 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.920 something like turning point USA right. He felt that US 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.160 colleges were filled with Marxists and he wanted to try 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.280 and encourage conservative thinking among young college dudes. So he 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.240 started like giving people thousands of dollars to write essays 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.320 about white Earl Warren as the devil. So it's a 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.159 racist to the bottom. If you only if only he 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:42.280 hadn't got Frankfurter, if I like, everything could have been 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:44.280 different if you just had a different professor that he 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.320 didn't fight with a man. Another reason. Hot dogs make 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:51.239 me feel sick. Come on, now, come on, here we go. 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:56.560 So do you have a rimshot sound? She wouldn't even 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:03.520 give me air horns anymore. So, uh yeah. The good 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.680 news about Welch's plan to infect the minds of college 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:08.880 students is that back in the nineteen sixties at least 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:11.639 a few things about America were actually better. And he 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:14.280 was met by stiff resistance from all sides for trying 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.360 to infect the minds of impressionable children. So that's nice 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.719 he actually push back on that's uh. I presume whenever 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:23.240 they were like, well, we should not send our kids 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:25.639 to colleges at all anymore and we should a home 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.200 school them. Yeah, I think a lot of that has 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.359 its genesis, and this to be honest. The president of 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:34.880 the Bar Association condemned Robert Welch for the contests personal 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.680 vilification of one of the chief officers of our government. 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.880 Roscoe Drummond, and nationally syndicated columnist called the society radical 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:45.800 and reckless. The early nineteen sixties were also a period 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.600 in which the mainstream media increasingly turned its eyes towards 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.040 the John Birch Society. Maybley's investigation had sort of opened 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.080 the floodgates. In early nineteen sixty one, the Santa Barbara 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.119 News Press published an investigation. The reporter Hans Eng wrote 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.199 that the group had started at a cell in Santa 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.679 Barbara the previous year, operating in semi secret existence and 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:08.520 creating several chapters. Because most reporters have always been somewhat 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.880 derivative things piece mostly focused on the politician and Welch's 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.320 wacky theories about Eisenhower, because that was the stuff that 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.159 was easiest to mock. Meanwhile, the more insidious work the 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:19.840 John Birch Society did drew little attention to his credit. 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.480 Ang did report that in September of nineteen sixty Welch 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:24.920 advised his members to take over local p t A 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.959 s The Post News as editor, A guy named Thomas 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:30.200 Stork spent the next several months authoring a series of 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.160 damning editorials about the society, stating that democracy suffers when 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:38.320 fear of communism leads to irresponsible, unsubstantiated charges of treason 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.520 or evil connivance against our political, religious, educational, or cultural leaders, 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:44.679 and that traders should be dealt with by the courts 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:48.159 not by vigilante groups. That's good. Did he end that 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.119 with which we learned from ten years ago when McCarthy 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.440 did it. We just did this guy, and we'll still 0:21:55.480 --> 0:22:00.280 be learning in twenty will go. Let's talk to John 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.960 Birch Society members and let them loudly and lengthily explain 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.679 their beliefs without any pushback. Yeah, yeah, let's pretend we 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.560 haven't done this already. Put him on Rogan. Yeah. At 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:13.359 least at this point in time, journalists were like, you know, 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:20.280 critical of fascists. So so, Mr Welch, you you let candy. 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:26.480