Aren’t They All Dead? When I talk about my experiences inside the John Birch Society, people often tell me, quite emphatically, that the Birch Society has absolutely no influence contemporary politics. Republicans, in particular, can be really hostile when I suggest that GOP Senators, Representatives, and Governors sound very John Birch. “No way,” they say, “Birchers are all […]
The Extremist Flag Flies . . . Again
No One Left to Hoist the Flag When my mother died in 2007, I hoped that I’d heard the last of an international conspiracy, the New World Order, and America’s looming collapse. The evidence certainly pointed to that conclusion. The Cold War had been over for twenty years, my parents and their old radical right-wing friends were […]
Hate Came to Dinner
. . . Revilo Oliver–Holocaust Denier and John Birch Society Leader They’re All Dead I was in the first grade when I started walking to St. Timothy’s School, a Catholic grade school in my Chicago neighborhood. The four-block hike from my home on Maplewood took me down Devon Avenue, a busy commercial street lined with […]
New Right-Wing Power in Old Dixie
Bombshell In the summer of 1960, before the John Birch Society reached its 100,000 member milestone, disaster struck. A secret book that was never supposed to be read beyond a small, select group of men (like my dad, William Buckley, Fred Koch, and Barry Goldwater), became public. Robert Welch had written 300 pages analyzing the […]
They Are Coming For Us
I was raised in a radical right-wing family. For many years, people turned away when I talked about my father and his political views. No one was interested in a man they dismissed as a crackpot and a kook. When I finished the first draft of my book, a literary agent told me that she […]