When I was a kid — I think 11 years old, about 1971, I had a teacher who talked about the John Birch Society quite a lot. They were crazy. They had wacky ideas. Everyone knew they were wrong. No one took them seriously. They were bad people.
I didn’t know anything about anything at the time. But I was thinking, they must be on to something to make this teacher so upset. I don’t recall that she made any effort to tell us anything about JBS but she clearly hated them.
Mentioning the JBS to most teachers was the equivalent of showing a silver cross to Dracula.