Customer Reviews

Inside the John Birch Society

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This 1961 book was perhaps the first critical book written about the John Birch Society, which was founded by retired candy manufacturer Robert Welch in 1958.

Author Gene Grove is critical of Welch (whom, Grove says, "is by his definition a modernist fundamentalist Protestant"; pg. 73), whose writing "flits in rather superficial flashes from Santayana to Voltaire to Spengler to Tennyson" (pg. 35), and has "The tendency to confuse Moscow with Manila, Gus Hall with Leonard Hall, the Marshall Plan and the Five-Year Plans." (Pg. 44)

Grove with satisfaction notes Welch's 1961 admission that he came nowhere near his goal of 30,000 members and $1,000,000 by the end of 1959, and opines that "nor is he likely to approach another goal of 100,000 members by the end of 1961." (Pg. 82)

Civil rights was of course a major issue when this book was published, and Grove suggests that in the South, "in many cases (JBS) leadership is interchangeable with the leadership of the White Citizens' Councils" (Pg. 105) When JBS coordinator Tom Hill noted during a public presentation that there were some all-black JBS chapters, then was asked whether there were any integrated black/white JBS chapters, he replied, "That would be up to the local chapters themselves." (Pg. 138)

Grove notes that "Robert Welch decided long before Fidel Castro came to power that the Cuban leader was a Communist. This early and substantial accuracy causes many of his followers to look with greater favor upon his accusations against Dwight Eisenhower, Jawaharal Nehru, and John Foster Dulles, among others, while opponents feel this accuracy is offset by the fact that his contempt for Castro was strongly reinforced by Welch's wholehearted affection for the regime of Fulgencio Batista (the Cuban dictator overthrown by Castro)." (Pg. 149)

This book, though "early," provides a fascinating portrait of the early days of the JBS, as perceived by an "outsider."