. . . and Its Relevance Today
By Rachel Tabachnick, on
Rachel Tabachnick is a PRA research fellow and member of the Public Eye editorial board. She researches the impact of the Religious Right on policy and politics in education, economics, the environment, and foreign policy.
The John Birch Society, Libertarians, and Nullification
Founded in 1958, the John Birch Society (JBS) fiercely opposed the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, the rise of the Tea Party and the ongoing “Ron Paul Revolution” have helped the JBS make a comeback as it attracts young people by re-branding itself as “libertarian.” The organization is a significant force behind promoting the nullification of federal laws, as described in the most recent issue of The Public Eye. The JBS has also helped provide fodder for accusations that President Obama, considered by most Democrats to have governed as a centrist, is a Marxist.
John Birch Society and Opposition to Civil Rights
While many Americans have been puzzled by the use of the term “anti-colonialist” within the context of such accusations, author Claire Conner has helped illuminate the historical and rhetorical linkages among the JBS, opposition to civil rights, anti-Communism, and accusations of anti-colonialism. Her recent book,Wrapped in the Flag, is an autobiographical account of growing up as the daughter of two of the organization’s earliest and most dedicated members. (See an interview with Conner by Theo Anderson, editor of The Public Eye.) Conner’s descriptions of the JBS’ opposition to the Civil Rights Movement are further supported by many primary sources, including the JBS’ own media campaigns. Examples include pamphlets republished as advertisements in newspapers in the mid-1960s, in which the Civil Rights Movement is described as a communist conspiracy to form a “Negro Soviet Republic,” as well as a pamphlet written by a member of the JBS National Council most famously known as the father of the Koch brothers. Both publications are described below:
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH CIVIL RIGHTS?”
The first example of the JBS campaign to oppose the Civil Rights Movement is an advertisement in the October 31, 1965 issue of the Palm Beach Post titled, “The John Birch Society Asks: What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?”
The half-page advertisement begins with the statement that nothing is wrong with civil rights, just with the Civil Rights Movement. According to the JBS, it constituted a communist plot to build a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the United States.
The Average American Negro
The “average American Negro,” according to the JBS in 1965, “has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases.”Moreover, “The pursuit of happiness enjoyed by the average American Negro has been far superior to that of any race or any people among at least ninety percent of the earth’s population.”
The ad continues, “So what is all the complaining about?” The problem, according to the JBS, is that communist agitators are beginning to see the results from “patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years.”The reader is informed that this Soviet strategy in the U.S. is a continuation of anti-colonialism fermented by communists in Africa and Asia and conducted by those who have no interest in civil rights. According to the John Birch Society, both the push for civil rights in the U.S. and anti-colonialist activism in Africa and Asia are a communist plot to destroy all that is good and holy—namely, capitalism.
Big Lie of Anti-Colonialism
The advertisement then seeks to expose the “big-lie” of anti-colonialism: “Its specific core of falsehood has been that the colonial peoples of Asia and Africa wanted and deserved their ‘independence’ from the nations of Europe which were oppressing and exploiting them. Actually, by 1926, the French in Indochina or Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Belgian in the Congo, and other ‘imperialistic’ powers, were giving their colonial subjects a very enlightened and benevolent rule.”
The next step in this communist plot, as stated in the ad, is the formation of a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the U.S. that would include the major cities of the South. JBS claimed this to be the real intent of American civil rights leaders. The ad continues, “A careful study quickly reveals that every part of the civil rights program has been designed, and is being carried forward, as a step in the Communist strategy for these purposes. And the current leaders of the nationwide civil rights campaign have such extensive records of affiliating with Communists, of being guided, trained, and supported by Communists, and of themselves supporting Communists agents and causes, as to make their real purposes as obvious a sunrise to anybody who will simply use honestly the intelligence that God gave him.”
American Negroes Don’t Want Civil Rights
The JBS authors close by stating that “American Negroes as a whole” did not plan this or want this and and “are no bigger dupes in yielding to the propaganda and coercion of the comsymps among them, than are the white people in the United States in swallowing the portions of that propaganda which are labeled idealism. “Comsymps” was JBS shorthand for communist sympathizers.
Across the bottom of the half-page ad is marketing of other JBS pamplets and books through American Opinion publishing, including It’s Very Simple and New York: Communist Terror in the Streets, both by Alan Stang. Stang published many works through the John Birch Society’s American Media, and also wrote widely on Christian Reconstructionism. Stang was a contributor to the Gary North-edited The Theology of Christian Resistance, one of many examples of the overlap between the JBS and theocratic Christian Reconstructionism.
If You Like Ron Paul, You’re Going to Love the John Birch Society
Stang passed away in 2009 and was eulogized in the pages of the JBS’ New American magazine. Yet other 1960s-era JBS leaders are again leading the charge in a contemporary state’s rights projects: nullification. Leaders who were involved with the organization in the 1960s include its current president, John McManus. McManus was the surprise guest speaker at the Ron Paul Rally for the Republic, the counter-rally to the Republican National Convention in 2008. In his remarks, he told the audience, “If you like Ron Paul, you’re going to love the John Birch Society.”
– See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/01/21/the-john-birch-societys-anti-civil-rights-campaign-of-the-1960s-and-its-relevance-today/#sthash.aB5kDPPN.dpuf
(read full article at PoliticalResearch.org)
Headings added

Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews May 1, 2013 "Prompted by the rise of the modern-day tea party, Conner writes of her experiences as the child of leaders in the radical right-wing John Birch Society. “My parents are back.” That was the author’s response to the rise of the tea party after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. In this memoir/history, she opens new insights into the conservative political movement, … Read more...

Library Journal
April 13, 2013 I know what extremism looks like," declares Conner in the preface to her memoir. Her parents were leaders of the ultraconservative John Birch Society (JBS). From early adolescence, she was expected to be part of her parents' JBS activities, doing everything from serving refreshments at recruitment meetings to writing letters to political figures. As Conner grew up, however, the … Read more...

Publishers Weekly
April 14, 2013 Conner’s memoir of being raised in a family whose political beliefs were shaped by the radical right-wing John Birch Society is an affecting portrait of late-20th-century America on the fringe. The eldest daughter of Stillwell “Jay” Conner, a national spokesman for the John Birch Society, Claire grew up in Chicago in a house of harsh discipline and even harsher political … Read more...

Tampa Bay Times
Review: Growing up on the right wing Colette Bancroft, Times Book Editor After Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election, college student Claire Conner said to a friend who proclaimed it would be "a cold day in hell" before another conservative was nominated, "'The whole right wing is kaput. My parents and the Birchers just became ancient history.' "Good … Read more...

Women’s Review of Books
Growing Up Right Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right By Claire Conner Boston: Beacon Press, 2013, 264 pp., $29.95, hardcover Reviewed by Kathleen Blee In Wrapped in the Flag, Claire Conner recounts the pain of growing up in a household in which “all reason went out the window,” as her parents slid further into the John Birch Society (JBS). … Read more...

Wrapped in Extremism, A Childhood in the John Birch Society by John Sheirer
Review of Wrapped in the Flag written for the Hampshire Daily Gazette by John Sheirer, author and political blogger August 10, 2013 Where did these people come from? Back in 2009, a friend saw a tea party rally on Fox News and asked me, “Where did these crazy people come from, the John Birch Society?” She was joking, but like all the best jokes, this one was grounded in reality. Wrapped in … Read more...

I Know What Extremism Looks Like
What separates Wrapped In The Flag from other critiques of the far right is my personal connection to the John Birch Society, which paved the way for the Tea Party. In my book, I open up about growing up in an ultra-conservative household and the beliefs that drive the radical right. This excerpt is reprinted here with the permission of Beacon Press. I Know What Extremism … Read more...

John Kennedy Smiled
. . . Five Minutes Later, He Was Dead From my book, Wrapped in the Flag, © 2013. With permission from Beacon Press. Texas Nice At 11 a.m. on Friday, November 22, 1963, I stood in the crowd on Main Street. The early morning rain had stopped and it was nearly seventy degrees. For a Chicago girl used to bundling up in November, that morning in Dallas was glorious. I stripped off my light jacket … Read more...

Civil Rights & the Radical Right
My parents had gotten their views about African Americans and the civil rights movement from Robert Welch, an old Southern boy [and co-founder of the John Birch Society]. He’d always thought the Negroes had it good in the United States, a view he explained in a pamphlet published in the early 1960s, Two Revolutions at Once. In it, Welch claimed that “educational opportunities [for Negroes] have … Read more...

Yikes! Textbooks Turn Children into Socialists
My parents had barely unpacked from their trip to Spain when they announced a new rule To my surprise, my parents had barely unpacked when they announced a new house rule: my brother and I were instructed to bring our schoolbooks home every day. “We want to know what you’re being taught,” Mother explained. “What do I tell Sister?” I asked. “We are only allowed to take workbooks out of the … Read more . . .

Meet the Koch Brothers, Billionaire Brothers Buying America
Let me introduce you to the Koch Brothers and their father, Fred, infamous John Birch Society founding member. This video is an outtake from my interview with Jen Senko, documentary filmmaker. Her new film, "The Brainwashing of My Dad" premieres on March 18, 2016. It is impossible to understand where the radical right got its mojo without knowing the Kochs. David and Charles are the architects of … Read more...

Old Radicals = New Radicals
I've spent a lot of time connecting the dots between old right-wing radicals, particularly John Birch Society radicals and today's new radicals in the Republican party. At first, I felt like I was the only one who realized that the GOP absorbed so much Birch thought that they had become nearly identical twins. The GOP doesn't like the comparison. The older establishment Republican types remember … Read more...

Meet the Koch Brothers, Billionaire Brothers Buying America
Let me introduce you to the Koch Brothers and their father, Fred, infamous John Birch Society founding member. This video is an outtake from my interview with Jen Senko, documentary filmmaker. Her new film, "The Brainwashing of My Dad" premieres on March 18, 2016. It is impossible to understand where the radical right got its mojo without knowing the Kochs. David and Charles are the architects of … More...

Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2013
Intelligence Report, Spring 2013, Issue Number: 149 Bringing Back Birch by Don Terry SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a hotel near the outer limits of California’s capital, just down the hall from the pain management conference and the baseball card show, three banquet tables along the back wall of the Cherrywood Room are covered with dozens of … Read more...

Growing Up in the John Birch Society
Growing Up in the John Birch Society A new memoir exposes the trauma of growing up in an extreme-right-wing family—and the way those traumas were visited, politically, on the rest of us. By Rick Perlstein August 6, 2013 Old Enough to Save the Country Claire Conner was about 13 years old when her parents handed her a John Birch Society membership … Read more...

The John Birch Society’s Anti-Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s
. . . and Its Relevance Today By Rachel Tabachnick, on January 21, 2014 Rachel Tabachnick is a PRA research fellow and member of the Public Eye editorial board. She researches the impact of the Religious Right on policy and politics in education, economics, the environment, and foreign policy. The John Birch Society, Libertarians, and Nullification Founded in 1958, the John Birch … Read more...

The New John Birch Society
by Robyn E. Blumner, Columnist/Editorial Writer If you've ever wondered what happened to the John Birch Society, author Claire Conner of Dunedin can tell you. The radical right-wing group that was briefly a player in national conservative politics in the 1960s is back, under a different name: tea party. She should know. Conner's new memoir Wrapped in the Flag: A … Read more...

Radicals Love Dictators
Make no mistake. Donald Trump would like to be America's dictator. Based on primary election results, a majority of the Republican party is okay with it. As of today, the GOP establishment, Evangelical Christians, Tea Party types, anti-government groups, and rank-and-file Republicans are falling in line with Trump. If you ever thought the GOP was conservative, it's time to stop. The GOP in 2016 … Read more ...