Origins The John Birch Society was established on December 9, 1958, in
Indianapolis, Indiana, at the conclusion of a two-day session of a group of 12 people led by
Robert W. Welch Jr. Welch was a retired candy manufacturer from
Belmont, Massachusetts, who had been a state
Republican Party official and had unsuccessfully run in its 1950 lieutenant governor primary. In 1954, Welch wrote the first book about
John Birch (an Army intelligence officer and Baptist missionary who was killed in a confrontation with Chinese Communist forces), titled
The Life of John Birch. He organized an anti-Communist society to "promote less government, more responsibility, and a better world". Welch alleged that a Communist conspiracy within the American government had suppressed the truth about Birch's killing.
John Birch John Birch was an
American Baptist who went to China as a
missionary in 1940 when the Japanese invasion had created suffering and chaos during the
Second Sino-Japanese War. He was a U.S.
military intelligence officer under Brigadier General
Claire Lee Chennault in China. Chennault commanded the "
Flying Tigers" and afterward
U.S. Army Air Forces units in China. In April 1942, Birch helped Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle and his flight crew, among other crews, a few days after they bailed out of their
B-25 bomber over Japanese-held territory in China during the
"Doolittle raid". Although he suffered from malaria, he refused furloughs.
Founding and beliefs The founding members of the JBS included
Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder of the
Allen Bradley Company and the
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,
Fred C. Koch, founder of
Koch Industries, and
Robert Waring Stoddard, president of
Wyman-Gordon, a major industrial enterprise. Another was
Revilo P. Oliver, a
University of Illinois professor who was later expelled from the Society. Koch became one of the organization's primary financial supporters. According to investigative journalist Jane Mayer,
David Koch and
Charles Koch, Koch's sons, were also members of the JBS; however, both left it before the 1970s. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as
The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new prospective member receiving a copy. Welch stated: Welch saw
collectivism as the main threat to
Western culture, and
modern American liberals as "secret Communist traitors" who provided cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with a one-world socialist government. He wrote: "There are many stages of
welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general, but Communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction." The JBS was organized to be, in Welch's words, "under completely authoritative control at all levels". It incorporated aspects of business hierarchies and also the Communist cells Welch opposed but whose discipline he admired. Chapters of 10 to 20 members each had a leader appointed from above, and were expected to meet twice a month. Members of chapters that grew larger than 20 members were expected to break off and form a new small chapter. The activities of the JBS include distributing literature, pamphlets, magazines, videos and other material; the society also sponsors a Speaker's Bureau, which invites "speakers who are keenly aware of the motivations that drive political policy". One of the first public activities of the society was a "Get US Out!" (of membership in the
UN) campaign, which claimed in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] UN is to build a One World Government". The society also alleged that Communists and UN supporters were conducting an "assault on Christmas" to "destroy all religious beliefs and customs". ''One Man's Opinion
, a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed American Opinion
. In 1965, Welch established a JBS-affiliated publication known as The Review of the News
, which was intended for a larger readership and covered news. In 1985, these magazines merged into The New American'', a biweekly magazine published by the Society.
Eisenhower issue For the first eighteen months of its existence, JBS "operated in relative obscurity"; though in 1959 it began to gain momentum as it started one of its earliest
front groups, the Committee Against Summit Entanglements (CASE), to oppose President
Dwight D. Eisenhower's
1959 summit with Soviet First Secretary
Nikita Khrushchev. The JBS viewed Eisenhower as weak, having surrendered to the Soviet Union. By raising money – in part from wealthy figures in business – in order to purchase advertisements in
The New York Times and over a hundred other newspapers, sending hundreds of thousands of postcards, as well as circulating a petition, CASE's cause gained the support of the right. The group's campaign was a success in terms of bringing Birch talking points into broader discourse. The controversial paragraph was removed before final publication of
The Politician. The
sensationalism of Welch's charges against Eisenhower prompted several conservatives and Republicans, most prominently Goldwater and the intellectuals of
William F. Buckley's circle, to renounce outright or quietly shun the group. Buckley, an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the Birch Society. From then on, Buckley became the leading intellectual spokesman and organizer of the anti-Bircher conservatives. Buckley's biographer,
John B. Judis, wrote that "Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism
National Review had promoted."
1960s In the 1960s, the JBS became known as a right-wing organization with an anti-Communist ideology. Some historians said the JBS had a large role in 1960s politics, and functioned much like a third party, forcing "the GOP, the Democrats, and conservatives of all types to respond to its agenda", in Jonathan M. Schoenwald's words. By March 1961, the JBS had 60,000 to 100,000 members and, according to Welch, "a staff of 28 people in the Home Office; about 30 Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who are fully paid as to salary and expenses; and about 100 Coordinators (or Section Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or part of their salary, or expenses, or both". According to
Political Research Associates (a non-profit research group that investigates the far-right), the society "pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives and letter-writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second summit between the United States and the
Soviet Union (which urged
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "If you go, don't come back!") generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the society. In 1961 Welch offered $2,300 in prizes to college students for the best essays on "grounds of impeachment" of
Chief Justice Warren, a prime target of ultra-conservatives. A June 1964 society campaign to oppose
Xerox corporate sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals." In the late 1960s, Welch insisted that the
Lyndon B. Johnson administration's war against Communist guerillas and North Vietnamese troops during the
Vietnam War, which was unpopular among liberals and leftists but not among conservatives, was part of a Communist plot aimed at taking over the United States. Welch
demanded that the United States get out of Vietnam, thus aligning the JBS with the left. The society opposed
water fluoridation, which it called "mass medicine" and a Communist effort to destroy American children. Former
Eisenhower cabinet member
Ezra Taft Benson—a leading
Mormon—spoke in favor of the JBS. In January 1963,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement distancing itself from the Society. Antisemitic, racist, anti-Mormon, anti-Masonic groups criticized the organization's acceptance of Jews, non-whites, Masons, and Mormons as members. These opponents accused Welch of harboring feminist,
ecumenical, and evolutionary ideas. Welch rejected these accusations by his detractors: "All we are interested in here is opposing the advance of the Communists, and eventually destroying the whole Communist conspiracy, so that Jews and Christians alike, and
Mohammedans and
Buddhists, can again have a decent world in which to live." In a 1963 report, the
California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities, following an investigation into the JBS, found no evidence it was "a secret, fascist, subversive, un-American, [or] anti-Semitic organization." In 1964, Welch favored
Barry Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination, but the membership split, with two-thirds supporting Goldwater and one-third supporting
Richard Nixon, who did not run. A number of Birch members and their allies were Goldwater supporters in 1964 It then characterized the society as "by far the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country. It operates alone or in support of other extremist organizations whose major preoccupation, like that of the Birchers, is the internal Communist conspiracy in the United States." The JBS also opposed the creation of the first
sex education curriculum in the United States through a division called the Movement to Restore Decency (MOTOREDE). Surviving MOTOREDE pamphlets date from 1967 to 1971. Additionally, the JBS advocated against other manifestations of social liberalism, including abortion. JBS membership peaked in 1965 or 1966 at an estimated 100,000. The JBS opposed the 1960s
civil rights movement and claimed the movement had Communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flyer titled "What's Wrong With Civil Rights?" and used the flyer as a newspaper advertisement. In the piece, one of the answers was: "For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been
infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly
created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years." The society believed that the ultimate aim of the civil rights movement was the creation of a "
Soviet Negro Republic" in the southeastern United States and opposed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states' rights to enact laws regarding
civil rights. Some prominent
black conservatives such as
George Schuyler and
Manning Johnson joined forces with the JBS during this period and echoed the Society's rhetoric about the civil-rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both the SPLC and the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith have ascertained the existence in the past of
antisemitic and racist elements, such as
Revilo P. Oliver and
Eric D. Butler. Many of these individuals later left or were expelled from the JBS because of these views. The JBS launched a "Support Your Local Police" campaign in the mid-1960s. The campaign openly advocated against the use of federal officers to enforce civil rights laws. At the organization's tenth anniversary celebration in 1968, Welch announced the creation of
John Birch University (now Robert Welch University), which it later described as an "alternative to the socialist/internationalist/atheist education afforded by the major government-controlled colleges and universities." John Birch University primarily served as a library and educational resource for decades, running summer youth camps around the United States.
1970s By 1976, the JBS had 90,000 members, 240 paid staffers, and a $7 million annual budget according to a paper written by the American
libertarian conservative tycoon
Charles Koch. The JBS was at the center of a
free-speech law case in the 1970s, after
American Opinion accused a Chicago lawyer,
Elmer Gertz, who was representing the family of a young man killed by a police officer, of being part of a Communist conspiracy to merge all police agencies in the country into one large force. The resulting
libel suit,
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., reached the
United States Supreme Court, which held that a state may allow a private figure such as Gertz to recover actual damages from a media defendant without proving malice but that a public figure does have to prove actual malice, according to the standard laid out in
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, in order to recover presumed damages or punitive damages. The court ordered a retrial in which Gertz prevailed. Key causes of the JBS in the 1970s included opposition to both the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and to the establishment of diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. The JBS claimed that
Nixon's visit to mainland China had "humiliated the American people and betrayed our anti-communist allies" and that it was the primary supplier of illicit heroin into the United States. The society also was opposed to transferring control of the
Panama Canal from American to Panamanian sovereignty. During the 1970s, the
Kuomintang in the Republic of China under
Executive Yuan Premier
Chiang Ching-kuo organized a
people's diplomacy campaign in the United States in an effort to mobilize American political sentiment in opposition to the PRC through mass demonstrations and petitions. Among these efforts, the John Birch Society worked with the KMT on a petition writing campaign through which Americans were urged to write their local government officials and ask them to "Cut the Red China connection." JBS played a key role in stopping the ERA's ratification – on par with
Phyllis Schlafly, herself a JBS member – and it organized opposition to it across the nation. A
New York Times review in 1977 found JBS and other far-right groups were involved in pro-laetrile campaigns in at least nine states.
1980s and 1990s After the
Vietnam War, the JBS's membership and influence declined. This decline continued through the 1980s and 1990s due to Welch's death in 1985 (at age 85) and the
end of the Cold War in 1991. By the mid-1990s, membership in the JBS was estimated between 15,000 and 20,000. While other anti-Communist organizations faded away following the Cold War's end, the JBS survived and experienced some growth in the 1990s. News reports said
President George H.W. Bush's invocation of a "new world order" during the 1991
Gulf War gave the society a new audience. The society consolidated its national office in Appleton, Wisconsin, the birthplace of
Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1984, three members of the
San Diego Padres, namely
Eric Show,
Mark Thurmond, and
Dave Dravecky, revealed they were members of the JBS. The society campaigned against the ratification of the
Genocide Convention, arguing it would erode U.S. national sovereignty. The JBS continued to press for an
end to United States membership in the United Nations. As evidence of its effectiveness, the society pointed to the
Utah State Legislature's failed resolution calling for United States withdrawal, as well as the actions of several other states where the society's membership was active. The second head of the JBS was Congressman
Larry McDonald (D) from Georgia. McDonald's first wife "estimated that, over the years, he had hosted 10,000 people in his living room for Bircher-inspired lectures and documentaries." In 1982, McDonald was appointed as national chairman of the Society. In 1995, the JBS campaigned against plans for a Conference of States; proponents said such a conference would reduce federal powers. The JBS feared it would lead to a
second Constitutional Convention.
2000–present In the mid-2000s, the JBS, along with the
Eagle Forum, mobilized conservative opposition to a so-called
North American Union and the
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. As a result of two organizations' activities, 23 state legislatures saw bills introduced condemning an NAU while the Bush and Obama administrations were deterred "from any grand initiatives." In 2007,
The New American published a special issue devoted to the topic; approximately 500,000 copies were distributed. The JBS also advocated for U.S. withdrawal from the UN. The JBS was a co-sponsor of the 2010
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), ending its decades-long distance from the mainstream conservative movement. It attended CPAC again in 2023 and 2024. In 2005, Robert Welch University, renamed from John Birch University in the 1990s, was approved as an online university by the Wisconsin Educational Approval Board, granting two-year associate degrees. On June 15, 2007, the university had its first graduating class. , the university states its two-year program is paused while it works to develop a four-year degree program. Although JBS membership numbers are kept private, it reported a resurgence of members in the 2010s and 2020s, specifically in
Texas. A 2017 article in
Politico describing the group's activities in Texas listed some of its stances as opposing the UN's
Agenda 21 based on a conspiracy theory that it will "establish control over all human activity", opposing a bill that would allow people who entered the United States illegally to pay in-state college tuition, pulling the United States out of
NAFTA, returning America to what the group calls its Christian foundations, and abolishing the federal departments of
education and
energy. With
Donald Trump's election in 2016, the JBS "saw many of its core instincts finally reflected in the White House." Trump confidant and longtime advisor
Roger Stone said that Trump's father
Fred Trump was a financier of the JBS and a personal friend of founder Robert Welch. Trump's former Chief of Staff
Mick Mulvaney was the speaker at the John Birch Society's National Council dinner shortly before joining the Trump administration. Former Congressman
Ron Paul (R-Texas) has had a long and close relationship with the JBS, celebrating its work in his 2008 keynote speech at its 50th anniversary event and saying that the JBS was leading the fight to restore freedom. The keynote speaker at the organization's 60th anniversary celebration was Congressman
Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who maintained a near-perfect score on the JBS's "Freedom Index" ranking of members of Congress. Right-wing conspiracy theorist
Alex Jones, who hosted Trump on his
InfoWars radio show and claimed to have a personal relationship with the president, called Trump a "John Birch Society president", and previously said Trump was "more John Birch Society than the John Birch Society." Former JBS CEO
Arthur R. Thompson stated, "The bulk of Trump's campaign was Birch". Trump's talk of a
deep state has been described as "repeating a longtime Birch talking point." The
Idaho Republican Party declined to endorse the resolutions, though the party elected a JBS member,
Dorothy Moon, as chair in July 2022. The JBS had been active in Idaho. In the early 2020s, the JBS campaigned against
carbon-capture pipelines in Iowa, arguing they threatened property rights. The JBS is affiliated with FreedomProject Academy, an online school "based on Judeo-Christian values." Between 2011 and 2020, its enrollment grew from 22 to 1,000 students. ==Officers==