Posted on 04/11/2004 11:30:11 AM PDT by Ernie.cal
To inflate their credentials as an organization relying upon carefully documented and factual material, the John Birch Society (JBS) often cites as "experts", persons who have had some connection to the FBI --- either as former Special Agents or as Security Informants.
However, the FBI had very negative evaluations about the post-FBI endeavors of former informants or Agents who subsequently attached themselves to the JBS as members, endorsers, speakers, or authors. Examples include: Dan Smoot, W. Cleon Skousen, Julia Brown, David Gumaer, Gerald W. Kirk, Matt Cvetic, and Karl Prussion.
Often these folks were mentally unstable. A person seduced by Communism or extreme anti-Communism may have a pre-disposition to extremist views because of underlying personality problems rather than from any genuine ideological affinity. Consequently, that problem can easily migrate into their anti-Communist "career".
For example:
DAN SMOOT, a former FBI Special Agent, is a unique star in the Birch Society stable of "experts".
However, from the Bureau's perspective, Smoot's post-FBI endeavors wrongly sought to capitalize on his relatively brief FBI career. The Bureau thought Smoot was in the habit of making "unfactual" statements about national and international affairs. According to Bureau memos, shortly before his retirement Smoot was the subject of disciplinary action. One Bureau memo refers to Smoot's "antagonistic attitude and unsavory Bureau record" which made him undesirable for re-instatement.
KARL PRUSSION attempted suicide and claimed he was a target for assassination by Communists. Prussion was terminated as an informant by the FBI because he publicly disclosed his status even though he promised never to do so without prior Bureau approval.
MATT CVETIC was an alcoholic who was dropped by the Bureau for various indiscretions.
DAVID GUMAER became involved with militia-like vigilantes in Arizona as well as illegal arms sales and securities fraud.
JULIA BROWN was divorced 3 times, changed her opinions to conform to Birch dogma so as to derive monetary gain from her Birch-sponsored speaking tours.
The Birch Society routinely inflated the credentials of persons whose views conformed to its own conclusions. JULIA BROWN serves as an interesting case study of a JBS "expert".
The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI's Cleveland Field Office stated in a memo pertaining to Julia's desire to "go public" about her experiences as an FBI informant that:
(a) she was "financially ambitious" (i.e. prospects for speaking tours, articles for a national publication, or book, etc) and
(b) Julia, with only a 10th grade education, was not intelligent enough to write for publication, as she originally proposed.
In her book "I Testify" (which actually was ghost-written by Carleton Young), Julia gives a fictitious account of her marital history as well as false details concerning joining and leaving the Communist Party.
According to Julia, she married her first husband (Edward Harris) while she was a teenager but he died. Her next mention of marriage is many years later to Curlee Brown of Cleveland.
In reality, however, Julia divorced Ed Harris, then married Jack Latimer and divorced him, then married Fred Brice and divorced him the same year she married him, and then married Curlee Brown but considered divorcing him as well.
Julia's opinions about the civil rights movement, and prominent persons and organizations within it, underwent a stunning reversal after she associated herself with the Birch Society as a paid speaker.
When Carleton Young submitted two chapters of "I Testify" to Julia for review, she initally rejected the material. Julia told the Los Angeles FBI field office that Mr. Young was expressing HIS personal political views rather than her views and she described Young as an adherent of the "lunatic right" which she described as the "Birchers".
In her March 1961 Ebony magazine interview, Julia stated that Communists had "little or no influence" within the NAACP and she concluded that:
"I'm 100 percent with the NAACP and I think they are doing a wonderful job and so does the FBI. They are aware that the NAACP is legal and is working in the American way for first class citizenship for all Americans."
However, AFTER associating with the Birch Society, Julia claimed that the NAACP was "badly infiltrated" by Communists and she routinely denounced the NAACP during her JBS-sponsored speeches.
FBI Headquarters received an advance copy of Julia's Ebony interview which it reviewed for errors. In a January 16, 1961 FBI memo, the Bureau stated that Julia should limit her comments to what she personally observed and experienced in Cleveland because "she is not qualified to assert herself as a spokesman for what is happening in the CP across the country."
There is also a major discrepancy between Julia's public accounts in her book and speeches about how she came to join the Communist Party (CP) versus what she told the FBI when she first contacted them in December 1950.
She told the FBI that she joined the CP in December 1947 because she thought the Party was the answer to racial discrimination. However, in subsequent accounts (including her book) she claims that she did not know she was joining the CP. Instead, she thought she was just joining a civil rights group.
Additional information about this topic may be obtained from me at: Ernie1241@aol.com
You must have lived in a really lousy neighborhood.
I don't know how old you are, but part of my childhood was before the 1968 gun control act. Neither that act nor the subsequent morass of gun control laws has kept firearms out of the hands of felons, nor will it.
As for clear-cutting, a dead tree is a dead tree, and doing little to prevent flash floods. You want to keep the live, healthy ones in situ. Not just firewood on the hoof.
Fishing was done for food--in a tidewater estuary. The US Army Corps of Engineers channelization projects in the headwaters of the estuary wiped out more fish, crabs, and shellfish than all the fishermen could have.
A spanking is a spanking--NOT a beating. Children are still abused, others simply not disciplined.
The drivers remain more dangerous than the vehicles. People knew how to take care of their vehicle and did, with rare exception. Vehicle inspection had nothing to do with insurance, anyway. It was/is just another fee. If it is so safe, why are more people getting killed?
As for fear of consequence, it was there. If you killed someone you could get the gas chamber, not 8 years, serve two.
But those were the 1960's, before Government convinced us how much we need it. None of the problems have been solved. Not one. But now we have every pissant bureaucrat and functionary imaginable with their nose up our collective hindparts, taxing us for the privilege.
I would argue that the Birchers in their prime (1960s and 70s) accomplished much good. They were the foot soldiers who were responsible for getting Barry Goldwater's message out to millions. They distributed books like The Conscience of a Conservative, which was the first full introduction to modern conservatism many Americans read, and A Texan Looks at Lyndon, which revealed many of Lyndon Johnson's dirty dealings decades before Robert Caro's biographies of the former President made their exposure "respectable." Their campaigns against civilian police review boards, metropolitan governments, and the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were effective ones, thwarting liberal goals in these areas. Their campaigns against treaties that would limit American sovereignty, while not always successful, e.g., the Panama Canal Treaty, did arouse many citizens and legislators about the dangers of such international agreements.
The Birchers' support of George Wallace's presidential campaigns, based on "law and order," helped move the Republican Party into a more aggressive stance against street crime, a move that benefited Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1980 and 1984. By the early 1990s, even liberal Democrats like Bill Clinton and Ann Richards were advocates of the death penalty. Politicians seen as soft on crime like Jerry Brown, Mario Cuomo, Rose Bird, and David Dinkins were removed from office even in liberal jurisdictions during the 1980s and 1990s.
The "dark side" of the John Birch Society was their conspiratorialsm. How the Birchers evolved from "off the wall" anti-Communism, e.g., Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Estes Kefauver, etc., being Communist agents and dupes, into conspiratorialism is a subject worth reviewing. Robert Welch and his associates worried about numerous matters:
* America's drift into government centralized in Washington at the expense of states' rights and individual rights.
* Tax, labor law, regulatory, and (after 1970) environmental disincentives to businesses and wealthy individuals.
* Welfare state "cradle to grave" protection.
* Judicial triumph of equal rights to employment, housing, and public accommodations over the rights of free association and private property.
* Moral relativism (especially in sexual matters).
* Irrational thought, as expressed in abstract art, rock music, avant garde and (after 1970) mainstream entertainment, the beatnik and hippie subcultures, and "progressive education."
* Excusal of violent crime as being the fault of society, rather than the criminal.
* Failure to vigorously enforce laws against subversion and sedition after the censure of Senator McCarthy.
* What appeared to be constant accommodation to Communist nations, from Roosevelt's concessions at Yalta to the "no win" war in Vietnam.
This "laundry list," or most of it, would have concerned William Buckley, Frank Meyer, James Burnham, etc., or for that matter, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Robert Heinlein, etc. Mainstream conservatism (both neo and paleo), Objectivism, and libertarianism perceived a battle of ideas dating back to 18th Century philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Jean Jacques Rousseau rejecting pure reason or glorifying "natural man." (Some English Catholic authors like Hillare Belloc and G.K. Chesterton saw the Protestant Reformation as the beginning of the conflict. Ayn Rand saw the conflict as dating to the differences between Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece.)
Robert Welch, who had been a child prodigy, chose in early adulthood to pursue a career in business rather than academia, for which he might have been better suited. It was his brother, James O. Welch, who was truly responsible for the success of the Welch candy company. Unlike most political activists, Robert Welch did not enter the political arena until well into his middle age, through the Massachusetts GOP and the National Association of Manufacturers. Thus, Welch was not an academic, an activist, or a "idea person" for most of his life, as Buckley, Meyer, Rand, or von Mises had been, or as a number of his early associates like Medford Evans, Tom Anderson, Revilo Oliver, or Merrill Root had been. Many (including Welch) may sneer at the "ivory tower," but that is also the control tower that directs thought patterns over a society. It is hard to imagine the Protestant Reformation or the American War for Independence succeeding without the religious and philosophical underpinnings of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli in the former case and Locke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, and Jefferson in the latter.
More than any other writer, Robert Welch was influenced by Oswald Spengler, the German historian who, like Alfred Toynbee, saw long term patterns of rises and declines in all civilizations. According to a monograph on the John Birch Society from the leftist Web site "Public Eye," "Although critical of Oswald Spengler's intellectual snobbery, Welch agreed with Spengler's thesis in Decline of the West, of a 'cyclical theory of cultures,' but Welch argued that western European civilization was being prematurely put at risk by a conspiracy to promote the decay of collectivism."
According to the Public Eye monograph, the theme of an elite of businessmen, bankers, and politicians controlling both capitalism and communism was evident in The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, published in 1959 and in a book by Dan Smoot (a frequent writer for Birch publications), The Invisible Government published in 1962. But these theories were hardly novel. The idea that a business elite (usually Jewish or a combination of Masons and Jews) would promote Communism, internationalism, and immorality in order to destroy traditional civilization had a great deal of popularity, due to an apparent forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, circulated by the Czarist Russian secret police. The fact that Jews were disproportionately represented in the leadership of the Communist uprisings in Russia, Hungary, and Germany in the late 1910s gave credence to the premise of the "Protocols."
The widespread support given to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was evident when such important figures as Winston Churchill and Henry Ford publicly indicated their belief in them in the aftermath of the Bolshevik triumph in Russia. In America during the 1920s, Ford financed distribution of anti-Semitic writings through his automotive dealerships and the Ku Klux Klan promoted the same theories to its several million members. Many of the opponents of the New Deal and American intervention in World War II perceived the hands of "international Jewish" finance behind the policies of FDR - "Radio Priest" Charles Coughlin, pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh, and General George Patton being among the most prominent.
One area where the "Protocols" theories never went out of style was in the pre-World War II officer corps. Even generals not known to be anti-Semitic, such as Eisenhower and MacArthur, had numerous staff members that bought the theories. Albert Wedemeyer, Pedro del Valle, and Charles Willoughby, generals who became conservative political activists after World War II, believed in them as well. These men ran in the same political circles as did Welch and his early associates, using The American Mercury as their major mouthpiece.
If Robert Welch did indeed believe that "Zionists" were responsible for the Russian Revolution, as you stated could be found in his private correspondence, it would indicate that he was somewhat disingenuous when he (pre-1965) stated that he was fighting "Communists only" and that he (post-1965) did not ascribe a Jewish identity to the "Insiders" who allegedly controlled Communism. It would thus be the case that Welch's (and the JBS's) conversion to conspiratorialism was not triggered by the writings of Carroll Quigley, the Georgetown professor who alleged the existence of a secret network of Anglo-American bankers, the belief of ex-Communist Bella Dodd in a secret group that controlled worldwide Communism, and theories of such writers as Rose Martin relative to the British Fabian Socialists and Rene Wormser regarding tax-free foundations as being sub rosa political and cultural powers. The speculations of Quigley, Dodd, Martin, and Wormser were then only a pretext to justify Welch's supposed discovery in his "More Stately Mansions" speech of the "Insiders" conspiracy.
If this is the case, then Welch was merely recycling old "Protocols" rooted conspiracy theories, cleansed of most of their original anti-Semitism, for public consumption. That the Birchers' "graduate" level of conspiracy theory included the openly anti-Semitic author Nesta Webster may indicate that Welch and the JBS had something like a "hidden agenda" not unlike those of which Judaism, Mormonism, and Masonry are alleged to have regarding their doctrines.
Yet if this were the case, why did openly anti-Semitic figures like Revilo Oliver, Jack Mohr, and John Schmitz receive public repudiation by the Birchers? Several of the repudiated parties claimed that Welch and his society were pawns of the Jewish elite, the Masonic leadership, and the "Conspiracy." I do not know the answer to this question, unless Oliver, et. al., were not onto the possible deception were seen as "loose cannon."
In 2004, we must recognize that the Birchers and other members of the post-World War II opposition to liberalism are a dying breed. William Buckley, who is in his 70s, recently wrote a novel about how his National Review circle "normalized" two young activists back in the 1960s, one from a Birch-type background, the other a follower or Ayn Rand. For his part, John McManus, current president of the Birch Society, recently wrote a critical biography of William Buckley, accusing him of complicity in the Insiders conspiracy. (I don't know McManus' age, but I would suspect he is around 70.) In any case, both Buckley and McManus have probably had their final word about the post-World War II feuds within American conservatism.
Both the Left and its critics have written extensively about the history of the Left and its liberal, socialist, Marxist-Leninist, and anarchist subgroups. There has not been nearly the analysis done of the players and theories of the various segments of the Right - neo- and paleo-conserative, libertarian, conspiratorialist, and white supremacist. It is time that this deficiency be corrected.
Unfortunately, our academic community has not given serious attention to the JBS --- although, to be fair, the Birch Society's reluctance or refusal to accommodate outside researchers has made serious scholarship very difficult if not impossible.
I mentioned in a previous posting in this thread, that I've always wondered why it is that Birch members/adherents (who seem to have attended college in greater numbers than the U.S. average) never applied all their passionate conviction to writing definitive theses or dissertations (from a Birch perspective) on those subjects that so agitated them such as:
centralized government encroachment on individual freedom, United Nations dilution of U.S. sovereignty, improper income taxation, fluoridation or mental health proposals as "Communist plots", the civil rights movement as a "Communist operation", etc. etc.
As I'm sure you know, media accounts and popular books written about the JBS often caricatured the Society and frequently presented nothing more than a superficial portrait and analysis---which (in my judgment) was often wrong and driven by bias against anything right-of-center. Hopefully, in the future, the paucity of scholarly attention will be redressed.
I have two items to share with you.
1. PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY
Although Phyllis has denied it for 40+ years, she and her husband joined the Birch Society in 1959, shortly after attending a recruitment presentation in Chicago. (I have a letter she wrote to Verne Kaub acknowledging membership). Of course, there was also the comment by Robert Welch in the March 1960 JBS Bulletin wherein Welch refers to Phyllis as "a very loyal member of the John Birch Society."
2. ROBERT WELCH ON ZIONISM, BOLSHEVISM, and CONSPIRACY
This will be the first time I have shared this evidence in any forum. What follows is a major excerpt from a letter dated February 10, 1961 that Robert Welch wrote to Dr. Lawrence A. Lacey of Madison, WI:
To me it seems likely, Dr. Lacey, that in 1900 or 1905, at the time of the first Russian Revolution which was led by Trotsky, or in 1917, or even up to the middle 1920's, the Communist conspiracy was largely a child or a least a ward of the Zionist conspiracy. And for the reason Jews were preponderant in the top levels of the Communist hierarchy. But it seems equally clear to me that by 1937 or 1938, when Stalin had finally succeeded in taking into his own hands all of the reins of Communist power stretching out all over the world, the child had quite largely outgrown the parent--- as so often happens in the case of organizations as well as individuals. There followed a period where the Zionist conspiracy and the Communist conspiracy undoubtedly worked closely together, each one hoping and counting on 'using' the other, and coming out on top. But it seems equally clear to me today---and that this has been completed true for at least the past fifteen years---the Communist conspiracy has now absorbed into itself so many other leaders and elements, and has so outgrown the Zionist conspiracy, that it completely dominates the picture and that the Zionist conspiracy has itself become merely one of the tools of the top Communist command.
From this point I could go on into a long and needed discussion of the fact that there are today entirely too many people calling themselves Jews who are high up in the Communist conspiracy, just as there are too many people calling themselves Methodist preachers who also are really Communist and not Methodists at all..."
Frankly, Dr. Lacey, I think that blaming the whole Communist conspiracy today, or during the past decade, on the Jews is an extremely dangerous over-simplification of our problem, and exactly what the Communists (including those who pose as Jews) want us to do. And I simply cannot go along with."
I'll ask one more time......Why?
A person just does not decide to "correct the historical record" regarding any topic without some motivation.
What is yours?
Regards
J.R.
Facts matter. Accurate history matters.
Mistaken ideas usually have unpleasant consequences.
I refer you back to the comments by J. Edgar Hoover that I sent to you in a previous message.
Here is the key section and, this time, I have highlighted the primary concern in bold type:
"Too many self-styled experts on communism, without valid credentials and without any access whatsoever to classified factual data regarding the inner workings of the conspiracy, have engaged in rumor-mongering and hurling false and wholly unsubstantiated allegations against persons whose views differ from their own. This is dangerous business. It is divisive and unintelligent, and makes more difficult the task of the professional investigator."
1. Do YOU agree or disagree with Hoover's sentiments?
2. Now let's take a specific example from our history in the 1960's and consider how a mistaken idea disseminated by the JBS needlessly caused harm to our country. I am referring to JBS statements about the civil rights movement.
Here's a quick summary. The JBS maintained that the civil rights movement in our country was not just infiltrated by Communists but was actually created and controlled by Communists and served only their purposes.
In the November 1965 JBS Bulletin, Robert Welch wrote: "Fully expose the civil rights fraud and you will break the back of the Communist conspiracy."
In the June 1965 JBS Bulletin Welch wrote: "Our task must be simply to make clear that the movement known as 'civil rights' is Communist-plotted, Communist-controlled, and, in fact, serves only Communist purposes."
By contrast, here is the FBI's evaluation.
April 1965 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: J. Edgar Hoover referred to the civil rights movement as "a great and too long neglected cause of human rights."
In a December 12, 1964 speech by Hoover to the Pennsylvania Society and Society of Pennsylvania Women, Hoover warned against radicals who had no genuine interest in promoting civil rights, but, instead sought to exploit (and aggravate) legitimate grievances. Then Hoover said:
"Let me emphasize that the American civil rights movement is not and has never been, dominated by the Communists -- because the overwhelming majority of civil rights leaders in this country, both Negro and white, have recognized and rejected communism as a meance to the freedoms of all."
Overwhelming majority? Welch and the JBS couldn't even identify ONE prominent national leader or group not compromised by the Communists!
Now what, logically, could we expect to be the result of Welch's mistaken ideas?
Since, as Hoover said, the civil rights movement was a legimitate response against too-long-neglected injustice, then, obviously, those individuals and groups who sought to discredit the movement by denying that any real problems existed, OR who actively fought against corrective measures, were playing right into the hands of ALL radicals--including the Communist Party because the Communists certainly welcomed an opportunity to exploit the passions, anger, and discontent released by our indifference or outright hostility toward correcting genuine social problems.
Insofar as the JBS won converts to its cause and interfered with attempts to deal with sensitive, genuine social problems, our country was harmed.
In fact, one could even go so far as to consider JBS rhetoric and behavior to be pro-Communist (using the Birch Society's oft-repeated logic which claimed that actual motivation behind behavior is not important, only the end result is what matters--and people should be judged based upon that result--not their motivation.)
What would be interesting would be to determine if Robert Welch expressed theories of a Zionist conspiracy in other correspondence, or to read the collection of his communications with other associates on conspiracy theory.
Odd? Perhaps uncomfortable is more accurate given your unwillingness to answer.
Facts matter. Accurate history matters.
Absolutely.
Facts and accuracy are two items in extremely short supply.
What we have instead is a lot of writing ranging from opinion to outright inaccuracies masquerading as fact driven by concealed agendas.
Its not an odd question at all. I have this annoying habit of beginning at the beginning i.e. "what is the motivation"?
It goes with being an engineer. It goes with being objective. It goes with being coldly non emotional and rational.
Regards
J.R.
A year later than his letter to Kaub, Robert Welch wrote and the Birch Society published a tract called "The Neutralizers." In the tract, he said, "Actually there is a strong indication and considerable logic that Lenin himself forged the so-called Protocols 0f The Elders Of Zion, and planted them in the anti-Communist ranks to serve many long-range purposes." The tract goes on to denounce anti-Semitism as a dead end that diverts activists from focusing on the true enemy of Communism. Welch points out that none of the top world Communist leaders at the time were Jewish (although he identifies Charles de Gaulle as a Communist!). He also says that while there are Communists of Jewish background, there are also Communists who had been Methodists or Catholics.
There are some common threads between the Kaub letter and "The Neutralizers": an admonition against overemphasizing Jewish involvement in Communism, the pressure individual Jews endured to not become involved in anti-Communist causes, and the centrality of Communism as the main conspiracy in the world of that time. However, "The Neutralizers" does not mention, and implicitly denies, the existence of a conspiracy to rule the world by the Jews qua Jews. One can only conclude that either Robert Welch had a change of mind between his letter to Kaub in 1962 and the writing of "The Neutralizers" tract in 1963, or he had an "Outer Doctrine" and "Inner Doctrine."
The expulsion of active anti-Semites such as Revilo Oliver, David Gumaer, Jack Mohr, and John Schmitz occured after 1963. Additionally, Welch and his cohorts seemed to abandon their earlier position of "no enemies on the Right," as their publications denounced Willis Carto and Liberty Lobby, the Birchers' main rival on the conspiratorial Right. The changed attitude may have been a post-Goldwater event. Remember that the smashing defeat of Goldwater and the freight train speed of the Great Society legislation greatly demoralized conservatives. In January 1965, National Review dedicated most of an issue to denunciation of the Birchers, with the magazine's "big guns" like Russell Kirk and James Burnham taking shots at the organization.
Robert Welch desired to continue his national influence in an environment where demoralization and attacks from mainstream conservatism were more damaging to the John Birch Society than were those coming from the major media or the Left. The numbers of potential recruits and the money lay with the mainstream conservative movement. It may be that the dropping of the "no enemies on the Right" and the expulsion of vocal anti-Semites after 1963 or 1965 was a strategic move to maintain the Birch Society's viability rather than a change of heart.
However, the question of Welch's relations with anti-Semites and his belief (or lack thereof) in Protocols-based conspiratorialism is yet to be solved.
Once again you have provided provocative and well-reasoned analysis. A few additional thoughts:
Notice that in Welch's letter to Dr. Lacey (February 1961), he says that it is "clear to me today" AND "for at least the past fifteen years" (i.e. 1946-1961) that "the Communist conspiracy (has) outgrown the Zionist conspiracy" and "completely dominates the picture."
However, in his April 1962 letter to Kaub, the time-line changes. Welch states that the "relative importance" of a "Zionist conspiracy...has greatly decreased over the past three decades." (i.e. from the early 1930's).
Do you see any significance to that difference?
Your #148 message surmises that Welch must have become acquainted with "Protocols-derived theories regarding the existence of a Jewish elite devoted to world conquest" given Welch's "associates and allies".
You can rest assured that Welch was intimately familiar with those ideas.
In a letter dated April 24, 1962 to Gerald L.K. Smith, Welch tells Smith that he cannot cooperate with GLKS...
"as we try so hard to do with most other anti-Communist groups or leaders...because of basic disagreement between us as to the main sources of the strength of the conspiracy. I believe that I have probably read everything that you have, on the subject at issue, from the earliest disclosures of the Protocols of Zion, through Henry Ford's 'The International Jew' through the writings of Robert H. Williams and Conde McGinley and a great many more---including some of the leading writers in French and Spanish on the same subject---and I simply come out with a different conclusion. I know that there are plenty of Communists of Jewish origin who use their 'Jewishness' to promote Communist causes; just as, unfortunately, there are today too many Catholics who are using their Catholicism and even too many Protestant ministers who are using their Protestantism for the same purpose. But I simply do not believe that, at least since Stalin gathered into his own hands in about 1937 all the reins of Communist conspiratorial power all over the world, the Jews have played any such vital or preponderant part in the total conspiracy, or its management, as appears to you to be the case. My conclusions, arrived at from a lot of studying over a long period of time, are not for 'political' reasons, but are entirely sincere. I am willing to concede the same sincerity to yourself in your views...I have never gone out of my way to condemn, or take any 'cracks' at Gerald L.K. Smith and his views, because it simply is not my job or province to do so. I am, as I have said many times, fighting the Communists, and nobody else." ...
The development in the post-World War II era of non-Jewish (Zionist) and non-Masonic conspiracy theories and studies of the elite:
* 1954: Dr. Bella Dodd, a former legal counsel for the Communist Party, USA, who later left the party, wrote a book called School of Darkness, in which she claimed that that Communism was a hoax perpetrated by financiers "to control the common man" and to advance world tyranny. She claimed that the Communist Party, USA, leadership was told to deal with two very wealthy men who resided at the Waldorf Towers in New York City and that during World War II, Communists actually helped suppress labor unrest, to the benefit of the industrialists.
* 1956: C. Wright Mills, a sociologist, wrote The Power Elite. Although a liberal, he perceived that there was a "power elite" in modern societies, which command vast bureaucracies that dominate industrial societies. The power elite, in Mills' view, controlled the government, the military, and the economy. He did not regard the power elite as an evil conspiracy, but rather as the natural result of the centralization of power and authority in industrial societies.
* 1958: Rene Wormser, former general counsel to the Reece Subcommittee to Investigate Foundations, wrote Foundations: Their Power and Influence. In this book, Wormser investigated an unchecked elite with vast financial resources not subject to taxation. The scope of the subcommittee was initially to investigate Communist influence in tax-free foundations. However, Wormser worried about the influence of the foundations per se. As the author stated, "An unparalleled amount of power is concentrated increasingly in the hands of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group."
* 1962: Dan Smoot, a former FBI agent turned conservative activist who was closely aligned with the John Birch Society, published The Invisible Government. This was the first widely circulated book first widely available source book on the Council on Foreign Relations from a hostile, conservative viewpoint.
* 1962-68: Emmanuel Josephson, a Wall Street investment banker, wrote three books, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, The Truth About The Rockefellers: Public Enemy No. 1; Studies in Criminal Psychopathy, and The Federal Reserve Conspiracy and The Rockefellers: Their Gold Corner. These books discuss what the author perceives as close ties between the Rockefeller family and Communism.
* 1963: Gabriel Kolko, a historian, writes The Triumph of Conservatism, which is subtitled "Reinterpretation of American History: 1900-1916." In his book, Kolko expressed a revisionist view about the formation of government regulation in America. Instead of accepting the standard view that business regulation was inspired by the Progressive intellectuals and activist political leaders, the author shows that it was really inspired by the drive of businessman to limit competition and bring "stability" into the market. (Like Mills, Kolko's leanings are liberal. However, conspiracy theorists starting with Gary Allen in the late 1960s started using these sources.)
* 1966: Carroll Quigley, a diplomatic historian, wrote what would essentially re-direct Birch Society, as well as other right wing conspiracists that were not hard-core anti-Semites away from the Communist conspiracy toward blaming the Northeastern establishment, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. While Quigley stated frequently that his remarks were taken out of context, the following words in his tome that turned conspiracy theory on its head. "There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups and frequently does so." Within a year of its publication, Cleon Skousen, an activist closely aligned with the Birchers, published a book, The Naked Capitalist that served as a sort of Cliff's Notes version of Quigley's work. The Naked Capitalist widely popularized this non-Communist conspiracy theory.
* 1966: Rose Martin wrote Fabian Freeway, which identified the activities of social democratic groups, such as the Fabian Society and the League for Industrial Democracy, rather than outright Communists, in undermining the representative government and free market economy of the United States and Britain.
Neither the "Jewish" nor the "Communist" theories satisfactorily explained how powerful men as clearly non-Jewish and non-Communist as, say, Dean Rusk and Nelson Rockefeller, appeared to favor greater dependence on transnational organizations like the UN overseas and ever larger government at home. It is probable that Welch, criticised for statements about Dwight Eisenhower being a Communist agent from conservatives, even from members of the Birch Society's National Council, may have come to realize the implausibility of some of his rasher statements.
The bottom line is that Robert Welch may have been unsure of the very conspiracy theory (or theories) he advocated. Like Rush Limbaugh 30 years later, Welch liked to boast of his near infallibility. As with Limbaugh, his boasting may have masked some degree of self-doubt. For if conspiratorialism were false, then Welch and the organization he founded would have been the greatest of fools, regardless of the good they may have done respective to conservative activism. Welch and his later associates, notably Gary Allen, Alan Stang, Susan Huck, and Scott Stanley, may have been looking for a more plausible theory.
Your stated objective is to "correct the historical record".
The question remains: what is your motive for attempting to discredit the JBS by pursuing your objective?
While I disagree with the JBS position that there is an overarching socialist/communist conspiracy with centralized control the JBS take on the situation is generally correct.
Governments in the free world have been and still are infested with socialists and the free world is steadily sliding into socialism.
Remember Edward Mandell House in the Wilson admin.? How about Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and the rest in the FDR admin? Some of FDR's staff were Soviet spies, not just closet Fabian socialists.
JBS and Joe McCarthy were generally correct in identifying the fact that the socialists/communists were present in positions of power and influence.
For their trouble both JBS and McCarthy were falsely demonized as being: anti-semitic, racist, [you fill in the blank].
My objective is to defend the JBS from false accusations.
My motive is the fact that the only thing that really matters is individual liberty. Socialism in any form or degree is not compatible with individual liberty. JBS exists to expose the influence of socialism/communism.
Therefore I defend the JBS and will question the motives of anyone who attacks it.
Do you have anything to say in defense of Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and that group of misunderstood patriots?
Regards
J.R.
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