The John Birch Society, alive and well?

Based on my memory of where we lived at the time, remembering our living-room as the site, in 1973 I hosted a meeting of the John Birch Society (JBS). I only did that once, and my reasons for never doing it again, never participating again, had more to do with a lack of moral courage than anything about them. In my youthful and naive political state, I felt they were on to the right messages, but that I would be stigmatized by belonging and participating. For a brief while I had a bumper sticker supporting JBS, but when my older brother Steve snickered at it and me, it went away.

First, a brief history of JBS from Wikipedia. Surprisingly, it is littered with usual suspects and spook markers. The Society, founded in 1958, was named after John Birch, the “first American casualty of the Cold War.” During World War II, he was a military intelligence officer under General Claire Chennault. He was part of the “Doolittle Raid,” a subject that rings a bell but is off-topic here. In 1942, Birch, who spoke Chinese, became an Army Intelligence officer. In 1945, Birch was promoted to Captain and worked for the OSS, Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. He led confrontations against renegade groups of Chinese Communists ordered to surrender. In one such confrontation, Birch was ordered to give up his sidearm, and refused. He was beaten and then shot, and his corpse was bayoneted.

It does not read well, as at every level Birch is part of Military Intelligence, and then OSS. He is an admitted spook. His death and that of an aide were supposedly witnessed by his men, who were later released. The entire affair is covered in the following footnote:

McGowan, Sam, WWII History Magazine (September 6, 2016). “For God and Country: The Story of John Birch”. Warfare History Net. Retrieved March 10, 2021.

By chance, that document is footnote #33, and that number appears ten times in the two paragraphs of the description of the man whose name the organization adopted.

In searching for his image, Wikipedia shows only a painting of him as shown to the left. I looked for other images, and a photos of him is shown in a collection at DuckDuckGo search engine, but oddly, there seems to be only one pose. It is used in the painting, and in all the other images. It is shown to the right. It is suspicious due to the darkness under the chin, a shadow that would allow placement of a head on a body in a darkroom, but I am by no means certain of that. It is odd that the entire right side of his face is darkened, with a dark outline on the left. It is looking odder and odder as I view it, and note that if you go to the DuckDuck link and find this photo, the officer next to him does not suffer the same effect.

My conclusions? No certainty, to be sure, but I suspect the following in order of likelihood:

  1. There was no John Birch. He was an invented character.
  2. There was a John Birch, but he was military intelligence, and he faked his death and assumed new duties.
  3. There was a man whose appearance is that of the painting and photo shown here, but we have no idea his true identity.
  4. The whole story of John Birch is true as told by Sam McGowan, above. (McGowan? McGowan?)

That is a bit of a diversion. What was JBS, and its mission? First, let’s look at its founders.

  • The primary one was Robert W. Welch, Jr., who in case you don’t know, was the man behind the candies Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. I always assumed he was behind Welch’s Grape Juice and Jelly,, but there is no mention of that at Wiki. It is said that Welch retired a rich man in 1956.
  • Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder of the Allen-Bradley Company, maker of factory automation equipment, eventually sold to Rockwell International.
  • Fred C. Koch, founder of Koch Industries. Yes, that one, father of David and Charles, who were said to be JBS members who left before 1970.
  • Robert Waring Stoddard, President of Wyman-Gordon and a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Worcester, MA.
  • Revilo P. Oliver, professor of classical philology, Spanish and Italian at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Oliver speculated that JFK had been killed by Soviet agents, and was called to testify before the Warren Commission. Communists were the second earliest rabbit hole after Lee Harvey Oswald in that event.

So JBS was founded by industrialists and one academic, Revilo, who would later edit American Opinion, the official magazine of JBS. He sounds more like a hire. The others are juiced to the gills. What was up?

I am going to go through a chronological list of all JBS causes here, so get ready for MEGO, my eyes glaze over. I assure you that I, the writer, have that same effect.

  • Get US Out! of the United Nations, saying that the “real nature of the UN is to build a One World Government.
  • Anti-communism, for which the Society provided grassroots lobbying, educational meetings (one at my house, mentioned at the opening), petition drives and letter-writing campaigns.
  • Impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. I remember billboards to that effect.
  • Opposition to Xerox Corporation sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN.
  • Advocacy of the position that the war in Vietnam was part of a communist plot to take over the United States.
  • Opposition to water fluoridation.
  • Split support (within JBS) over support of Barry Goldwater for president, and Richard Nixon (who was not running).
  • Opposition to the US Civil Rights movement, saying it was not infiltrated by Communists, but rather created by them. It was really in favor of creation of a “Soviet Negro Republic” in the Southeastern US. JBS opposed passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  • Opposition to sex education in the schools.
  • “Could Eisenhower really be a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes.” (Robert Welch, unpublished statement in 1954.
  • Accusations that, in response to a free-speech case in Chicago caused by a  young man killed by police, that part of the Communist conspiracy was to merge all police agencies in the country into one large force.
  • Opposition to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
  • Opposition to establishment of diplomatic ties to the People’s Republic of China.
  • Opposition to transfer of the Panama Canal from American to Panamanian control.
  • Opposition to passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
  • Promotion of laetrile as a cure for cancer.
  • Opposition to ratification of the Genocide Convention.
  • Calls to Bring Our Troops Home in every US conflict.
  • Opposition to UN Agenda 21.
  • Allegations that Bill Clinton was part of an Anglo-American conspiracy ruled through the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
  • “Trumpism” is essentially Bircherism.” (Trump advisor Roger Stone said that Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a financier of JBS and friend of Robert Welch.)
  • Trump is a “John Birch Society President.” (Alex Jones)

Sidebar: Larry McDonald: Once head of JBS, this congressman from Georgia was a staunch anti-communist. He is thought of as a “martyr” by many conservatives, as it is reported that he was aboard Korean Airlines Flight 007 that was shot down by Soviet interceptors on September 1, 1983. McDonald, if still alive somewhere, would be 85.

So take a look at the list above. What do you see? Other than on the Equal Rights Amendment (which I never understood – it was an idea, sex equality, something that needed a popular movement rather than an amendment), and with the Genocide Convention, not ratified by the US until 1988, I see the following with this outfit: Lose, lose, lose. They have not succeeded in anything of note. Every position they advocated got away from them. It is as if failure was anticipated, internalized, and accepted as a necessary part of success … that would never arrive.

If only it were that simple. What to make of an organization founded and funded by wealthy industrialists that cannot seem to tie its own shoes? Could there be some other purpose? I think this question is answered in the lose lose lose pattern of behavior. Perhaps it was meant to lose. In looking over its list of activities and causes over the decades, I see in there many good things.

For instance, fluoride is an industrial waste product that is not good for humans. But when the Birchers got involved, it became a “Communist plot,” and attempts to stop its use, real attempts by real people, were stigmatized. Fluoride is now all around us.

Support for Barry Goldwater … I wonder if he even wanted it. It certainly helped the cause of Lyndon Johnson, though in retrospect he didn’t appear to need any help.

As can be seen by the unveiling of power around Covid-19 on March 11, 2020, the United Nations on that day uncloaked a one-world government. That has always been its goal but they had to work quietly, behind the scenes, to put all of the parts in place prior to 3/11/20. JBS operated as a distraction, saying that the UN was a Communist conspiracy rather than one of raw industrial and aristocratic power. Being against the UN on the basis that it was a plan to install one-world government was stigmatized by the Birchers. Now that it is fait accompli, Birchers can say “See, we were right all along!” But their mission was to hinder opposition to the UN, not help it.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was surely a man worthy of impeachment because he led the official coverup of the fake Kennedy assassination. Because Birchers got out ahead and accused him of being a Communist, he was given political cover and served a full 16 years as Chief Justice.

A Communist plot to merge all police agencies in the US into one large force? I cannot know on this one, as I don’t know if the town of Belfry, Montana (population 218, and whose official school mascot is, yes, the Bats) has been so merged, but I suspect most police departments of any town of any size have been militarized now, and are under control of the Pentagon. After all, what is SWAT, which exists in every town of note, other than militarized police? Birchers stigmatized that issue and gave political cover while it was in the works.

As with every issue, go down the list above! We are looking at an organization that was founded to stigmatize legitimate movements, in effect, blackwashing the good people who have real and reasonable objectives, aligning them with crazy conspiracy theorists. Yes, that is all anti-Communism was, a crazy conspiracy theory used to hide a real and dangerous conspiracy of industrialists and aristocrats like Robert W. Welch and Fred Koch. (I know that the people of the USSR suffered under a brutal totalitarian regime, but it was not “Communist.” That was just a name tag. It was 1) brutal, and 2) totalitarian. At least part of the Bircher agenda had to have been to legitimize Communism as something real and dangerous, and which offered a nice contrast to the “good guys” of the Free World.)

The true art of control of the herd is misdirection. There is always a subset of the population that is more alert, more suspicious, maybe even more intelligent than average. When I was looking into 911 years ago, I got snookered by Dr. Judy Wood, who might easily have been a Bircher three decades earlier. Her goal appears to have been sophisticated misdirection rendering the stigmatism of tinfoil-hattery on true inquiry into the events of 911. That is my point, perhaps invoking Occam, that the more complicated an issue presented to small groups of erstwhile and open searchers for truth, the more likely it is to be misdirection.

17 thoughts on “The John Birch Society, alive and well?”

  2. Nice find, Mark, and solid analysis. I recall my dad, who agreed with many of their ideas, dismissing JBS out of hand, exactly as was planned.

    I got some ways down in the bio of JB before leaving it. It reads like the script for the unmade film, Forrest Gump Goes to China.

    As for Steve’s link about the symbols, I have shown that to folks as an example of infiltration and presence, and am met with “Meh. What’s wrong with geometry?” and the like.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. “Chief Justice Earl Warren was surely a man worthy of impeachment because he led the official coverup of the fake Kennedy assassination.”

    He also was in favor of forced relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps during the Second World War, although he later claimed that he “deeply regretted” his decision as California governor to allow it in his state. Not a hero, in my book.

    “He became a driving force behind the internment of over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans without any charges or due process.[47] Though the decision to intern Japanese Americans was made by General John L. DeWitt, and the internment was carried out by federal officials, Warren’s advocacy played a major role in providing public justification for the internment.”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Warren#Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

    Like

    Reply

  4. From 2008: https://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/ron-paul-and-freemasonry/
    “Ron Paul is also an unofficial member of the John Birch Society, which was founded by masons, funded by Nelson Rockefeller and run by Jesuit-trained Knights of Malta. In other words, the JBS is a gatekeeper organization, designed to control the opposition and make sure nothing substantial is ever done to impede the New World Order system which just keeps on rolling over humanity. How about the Jahbulon Bullshit Society for a more appropriate name?”

    In 2016, I read Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Warriors-Americas-Recovery-Yamashitas/dp/1844675319. There was much about the John Birch Society being involved in the money/gold laundering operation which involved the Black Eagle Trust and the M-Fund – ostensibly utilized to eventually fund the 9/11 project. I imagine there is disinformation/misinformation embedded in the book. It’s hard to tease out, but the role of the JBS is curious and should be noted, in my opinion.

    Following is an article I read a few years ago, “Roy Cohn’s Men: McCarthy, the Mafia, Trump, Murdoch, Roger Stone, Manafort; the John Birch Society and the Kochs”:
    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/roy-cohns-men-mccarthy-the-mafia-trump-murdoch-roger-stone-manafort-the-john-birch-society-and-the-kochs/. (Again, discernment is necessary when reviewing this information, as it can be a mixed bag of disinformation/intel.)

    “Roy Cohn was a member of the John Birch Society in the 1960s. Who else was a member in that period? The father of the Koch brothers, but also apparently Charles Koch himself. See: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-kochs-anti-civil-rights-roots-docs-expose-charles-kochs-ties-to-john-birch-society One can but wonder if father Fred Trump and father Fred Koch were members together?”

    Like

    Reply

        1. MT –

          This blog site (akamai tree) was taken down some time in the past couple years, but I had saved a few articles, as I typically gathered much information from the site. This particular article (much too long to copy and paste), “Deep Politics and Supranational Aspects of the Trump Era,” (link provided, but no longer active) referenced the JBS. I will provide herein a lengthy intro from the article to give some context:
          https://akamaitree.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/deep-politics-and-supranational-aspects-of-the-trump-era/

          “Every American president is covertly backed by a consortium of “deep political” factions and interest groups. These groups invariably wind up stacking the administrations they help parlay into power with members and associates of their clique. This factional quarreling and proxy activity is usually largely confined to the domestic sphere and in the United States almost always at its core runs along the lines of fundamental foreign policy differences. On the one hand, a liberal-internationalist-“globalist” wing supports multilateral foreign policy (the United Nations), typically restrains from interventionist misadventures (instead preferring to utilize soft power) and generally opposes increases in defense spending. On the other hand, a militaristic conservative-ultranationalist wing advocates unilateral foreign policy, is highly supportive of military intervention/rollback (hard power) and is fanatically in favor of increased defense spending and “national security” measures. Both of these viewpoints exist in both American political parties and along a gradation. The most important takeaway from this is that literally not a single American president has ever in any way been a “political outsider”. They virtually always have clandestine and/or open ties to foreign policy interest groups and think tank networks. From a deep political standpoint, domestic and economic policy is almost always an accessory to be used in the furtherance of some kind of foreign agenda.”

          “While many in conspiracy circles try to ascribe very abstruse, esoteric and sometimes almost occult-like or racial motives and beliefs to this war-hungry hard-right network, this is misguided. While certain bodies aligned with the American conservative defense establishment such as the hyper-shadowy, bizarre, extreme-right Le Cercle “black network” do have essentially unknowable motives, the foreign policy school of thought held by the hard-right faction in the United States (and Britain, to an extent) can be traced back to a school of thought in the development of systems analysis, operations research, applied science and war-gaming by the WWII-era Office of Scientific Research and Development and later the RAND Corp. under people like Albert Wohlstetter, Andrew Marshall (Office of Net Assessment), James Conant and Vannevar Bush (CPD & Raytheon). Author Craig Unger writes, “to join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy’s intentions and military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models, probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at RAND … Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency … If you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off, go to war now.”[9][10]”

          “. . . this American-Israeli hard-right/”neoconservative” national security apparatus is:”

          – Generally skeptical of the rules-based international order: multilateralism, international law and international diplomatic forums (particularly the United Nations) that facilitate cooperative strategies among world powers. Instead prefers unilateral/bilateral action and (wasteful) competitive strategies without regard for any kind of international or even transatlantic consensus. This applies to defense/foreign relations and often trade as well, which is itself closely related to the former. Tends to view international relations as a zero-sum game.
          – Always promotes continual military/defense build-up and employing hard power (direct, aggressive and usually preemptive military and covert actions) and militaristic “peace through strength” strategies over soft power (diplomatic maneuvering, economic and cultural co-opting) strategies. This advocacy for military expansion is one of the main reasons it receives so much support from the defense industry and the “military-industrial complex”. Generally expansionist and interventionist. Pro-rollback, pro-first strike/preemption, pro-SDI/”Star Wars”. Anti-containment, anti-detente and anti-realist/realpolitik.
          – Typically prioritizes the US-Israeli special relationship over transatlantic (NATO) and other relations, or at least elevates it to the same level. Although, despite sometimes being skeptical of NATO as an organization, it generally promotes US-led NATO expansion in line with its expansionism…
          – Has a penchant for using almost rogue-like American, pan-European and Israeli private intelligence/”parallel CIA” black networks to conduct covert operations in a manner both more deniable and more expedient than using official channels. Examples of these kinds of almost rogue-like private networks include Erik Prince’s Blackwater, BCCI, the Western Goals Foundation, Rupert Murdoch’s clandestine network, Ted Shackley’s renegade covert operations cliques (Le Cercle, 6I, Safari Club, etc.) and a whole bevy of private Mossad/Shin Bet/IDF spin-offs.
          – Because of its wide placement in the Pentagon-CIA-national security bureaucracy and ties to defense contractors, is deeply involved in “deep black”, usually unaccountable technical projects such as secret weapons systems, novel espionage technology and experimental energy sources. Large swaths of the Pentagon bureaucracy including the DIA, NRO and NSA are basically a permanent private playground for this group.
          – Highly supportive of domestic “homeland security” measures such as blanket mass surveillance, militarization of law enforcement, etc.

          What the article had to say on the JBS:

          “The right-wing foreign policy-centered axis described above is attached domestically to domestic policy/politics, media and economics think tanks and interest groups like the Council for National Policy (CNP), Heritage Foundation, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Olin Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Mont Pelerin Society, etc. “Old right” John Birch-style Christian conservatives, mainline moderate Republicans, neoconservatives, newfangled “alt-right” types and even many libertarians are all represented in this. However, this more intellectual, “movement”-oriented domestic group that more or less hijacked the previously Eastern Establishment-dominated GOP in the ’60s and dragged it rightward never really existed as an independent entity, as throughout history it appears to have always ultimately been run and funded by higher-level CIA/military intelligence and foreign policy/defense-centered networks essentially as a media and financing arm to combat the Eastern Establishment-dominated legacy media and bankroll favored politicians. Same goes for the so-called “New Left”, which is alternatively financed by liberal CIA “globalist” establishment groups such as the Soros, Ford, Carnegie & Rockefeller Foundations.”

          “Most of the above think tanks mentioned above (particularly the Heritage Foundation) are controlled and financed by the likes of Edwin Fuelner (ASC & Le Cercle) and wealthy legacy right-wing CIA financiers such as the Mellon-Scaife, DeVos, Bechtel, Coors, Hunt and Forbes families. The John Birch Society, World Anti Communist League and Liberty Lobby were completely controlled at the higher levels by American Security Council-tied CIA and military intelligence assets (Roy Cohn, John Rees, John Singlaub, Larry MacDonald, N.B. Hunt, etc.) primarily through the Western Goals Foundation, an intelligence clearinghouse for hard-right anti-communist operatives whose members were fed any intelligence they collected to the CIA, FBI and NSA and is widely believed to have received off-the-books CIA financing[11][12] . . . “

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

          1. On Larry McDonald (whom you aptly referenced) and the Western Goals Foundation https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Western_Goals_Foundation):

            “Many of these people, like John Rees and Congressman Larry McDonald, were members of the World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society, and similar organizations. These two men joined forces with Major General John Singlaub to form the Western Goals Foundation in 1981 . . . It also founded an offshoot, Western Goals (UK) which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics.”

            One notable of the Western Goals Foundation is Dr. Edward Teller: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Edward_Teller.

            There is plenty more to dig into (including the book Inside the League https://archive.org/details/pdfy-YAnJOkt3G0B4uEGh/page/n19/mode/2up), but I am not sure if you have continued interest, or if POM readers do . . .

            Like

            Reply

            1. As I just can’t help myself sometimes when the rabbits come passing by (to borrow from you) . . . One more JBS notable (and highly esteemed Bircher) is Nelson Bunker Hunt: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nelson_Bunker_Hunt.

              “Bunker was an early funder of the work of the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics.” Hmmm. Interesting.

              With Nelson Bunker Hunt, we also end up with John B. Connally (as can be read in the link above), and then, of course, we end up back at the JFK fauxsassination . . . For readers who have never watched this clip of Connally and his rendition of the event that day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-8SGil-aJg. (One of the very first crisis actors to be filmed?)

              Like

              Reply

              1. I love it! Nelson Bunker Hunt’s brother Lamar was owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and coined the term “Superbowl,” I believe. The famous upset of the Baltimore Colts by upstart New York Jets and Joe Willie Namath is now easily seen to have been rigged. The following year, Hunt’s Chiefs upset the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings. People could not understand how the Vikings could be so inept. It was not close. Thereafter, if memory serves (often does not), came the merger of the two leagues, building an empire. (I won $2 on the Chiefs/Vikings game. I just had a clueless hunch.)

                Yes, the first Crisis Actor! Nice find. The Parkland doctor made it a point to say that the bullet that hit Connally lodged in his leg, fueling the soon-to-follow magic bullet controversy. Connally in his hospital bed looks robust and healthy. As he leaves the hospital with arm in a sling, I cannot help but wonder if the shoulder pierced by the bullet must have healed by that time, as the sling would place inordinate strain on the shoulder. Just like on TV shows where people get shot but always fully recover, at 7:01 in the video, Connally has full use of right arm and shoulder.

                I remember Connallly being on a late night or daytime interview show one time, don’t remember the host, where he slumped over and broke down in tears. If you’ve seem Mike Myers’ Wayne’s World, when scenes like that were played, he would flash at the bottom “Oscar scene! Oscar scene!”

                Liked by 2 people

                Reply

            2. Many names popping up there that I am familiar with, like Dan Smoot, an “ex-FBI” agent who used to have a Sunday TV program that my parents watched. Taylor Caldwell wrote Captains and Kings which I read while still in college, and thought was not even loosely, but openly based on the Kennedy’s. As to “continuing interest,” you might say “lifelong but sporadic,” as I have so many irons in the fire at any given time. You might think of me as a water skipper. For example, just today I was listening to an interview with Tony Orlando (Tie a Yellow Ribbon), which reminded me of Freddie Prinze, as people around that time confused the two as lookalikes. Freddie was said to have acquired an interest in the JFK assassination, thinking that there were more than one gunman. He allegedly shot himself in the head at age 22.

              That is a standard covert operation, to allow a public figure to go off the reservation, and then have that person die under suspicious circumstances. That’s all they did with Bill Hicks. It accomplishes several purposes: It silences and intimidates real and honest critics, and it creates the suspicion that there is a malevolent force hidden in the shadows that knocks off people who get out of line, often using cancer as a weapon. Anyway, it is a rabbit running by. I know there is a Freddie Prinze, Jr., and I assume he is in contact with his father. A blog post is on the way, as I water skip.

              Thank you for bringing all of this to us. I found it intriguing. JBS rumored to be financed by Doug Trump, Rockefeller, CIA, etc., no surprise. I should have talked to you before posting, but the post would have become involved and very, very long. I’ll leave it there.

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply

  5. I suspect this kind of controlled opposition is what’s going on with Kennedy and the Children’s Health Defense that sucks up all the opposition talent and energy and redirects it toward a compromise with tyrants on the scamdemic. I think that’s what happened as well with the organized anti-GMO groups, who started off aligning with the opposition and then ‘settled’ for labeling. I also think Tesla is an invented character. And most of our science and history is bullocks. And, I think it’s really cool to be a conspiracy theorist! Thanks for your contributions, glad I found your work!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

Leave a comment