How does one sustain democracy and, at the height of the Cold War and in the shadow of World War II, Nazi fascist Germany, and the Holocaust?Īs you were researching, you came across a trove of historical internal documents from the ADL in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Those fears sparked a big debate about democracy. The Nation magazine wrote that Birchers essentially had given their followers an invitation to engage in civil war, guerrilla-style. Some Birchers ran for school board seats and protested at libraries.Ĭritics feared that the Birchers were a growing fascist or authoritarian group and that if they were not sidelined politically and culturally then the country could be overrun. They tried to ban certain books that they viewed as socialistic from being used in schools. They would form front groups such as Impeach Earl Warren or Support Your Local Police. They believed a mass education of the public was needed because traditional two-party politics was not going to be very effective at exposing the communist threat.
They sent out literature trying to give members roadmaps or ideas for what they could do. In its heyday, the group had about 60,000 to 100,000 members, organized into small chapters. Welch formed the John Birch Society to educate the American people about the nature of the communist threat. Its leader, Robert Welch, had argued at one point that President Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of a communist conspiracy taking over the United States. It didn’t have huge numbers, but it did penetrate the culture and the national consciousness. Mathew Dallek:The John Birch Society was a household name in the 1960s, becoming the emblem of far-right extremism. Who are so-called Birchers? Why do they matter? JTA: Before we get into the Jewish aspect of the book, meaning the chapter on the Anti-Defamation League’s relationship with the John Birch Society, let’s take a step back. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. He also examines how the Birchers’ mission to defend Christianity and capitalism morphed into a radical anti-civil rights agenda that groups like the ADL saw as an existential threat.ĭallek, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in Los Angeles, recently sat with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss the rise of the Birchers, how the ADL infiltrated their ranks and whether such tactics are justified in the name of fighting extremism. “Birchers” is a history of a group that at its height numbered as many as 100,000 members and “mobilized a loyal army of activists” in a campaign against what it saw as a vast communist conspiracy.
It examines the roots of today’s emboldened conservative movement in the United States. Published in March, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” is Dallek’s fourth book. The discovery of the Anti-Defamation League’s covert operation targeting the John Birch Society is the basis of a chapter in a new book by political historian Matthew Dallek of George Washington University.
#THE SECRET SOCIETY THE LEAGUE ARCHIVE#
( JTA ) - A historian leafing through files in an archive discovered how a Jewish organization helped bring down an influential far-right extremist movement in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s by going undercover and acting as self-appointed spies.
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