Intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents americas story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more, including charter communication. Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers and were just getting started. Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. Charter communications, along with these Television Companies support cspan2 as a public service. Good evening, im tony clark from the Carter Library and im really glad you all are here because i think this is going to be a fascinating evening because it kind of tells why we are in politics the way we are right now. You know, when i was growing up, folk music was a really big deal and there was a group called the chad mitchell trio that had a song called the John Birch Society with lyrics like if mommy is a commy, youve got to turn her in. And its really a funny, funny song. You know, and they would sing things Like Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the right and things, but sometime you should google chad mitchell trio and the John Birch Society song. The billboards along the highways would say Impeach Supreme CourtJustice Earl Warren or get the u. S. Out of the u. N. So they were very wellknown back in the 60s. By the end of the vietnam war you didnt hear much about them, but as youll hear tonight, their influence carried much further. The influence did not disappear. Matthew dallek is a professor at the graduate school of political management at George Washington university. Crises, political transformation, liberalism and its critics. And tonights topic, the evolution of modern conservative movement. He is he has authored or coauthored four books. Hes a coauthored fourmac books, a frequent commentator on the news media about politics and history and public affairs. He is also a former speechwriter for former House Minority leader richard gephardt. So we want somebody to talk to mathieu about his book and we could affect anybody better than joseph crespino, jimmy carter professor, an expert in political and cultural history of the 20th century and joe as written, hes published three books including one that he was here to speak about, the biography of harper in the making of america icon. So please join me in welcoming joe and matthew. [applause] thanks so much, tony. Always so much fun to be at the Carter Library and thank you for going out tonight to hear and ask questions about this really exciting and timely and deeply researched and wonderful book. And matt, welcome to georgia here its greatwe to have you he this week. Its appropriate to have you here this week as i was reading your book this week in preparation for tonight, i was also reading an oped that was in w the New York Times this week by Michelle Tolle here i dont know if some of you saw it but it talked about the hotness of the Georgia Republican party, and it talked about, it was amazing to read this article because its all about how the Trump Supporters are in such conflict with the governor andou theres this real tension between the conservative and ultraconservatives lo and behold your book begins with a story in the California Republican party around 1961 or 62 and thats a long time Republican Party activist who is decrying the rise of these crazy John Birchers who were ruining the w Republican Party and turning it into a hot mess. So tell us of the John Birch Society was and what it seems to be, seems to be so similar what was going on in the 1960s, whats happening today. I so what are the similarly what are the differences . First of all, i want to thank you, joe for doing this with me. Its wonderful to be here with you and you want to thank tony and the Carter Library as well for having me its really an honor to be here. Suggests, joe was referring to patricia hit, who was a loyalist to Richard Nixon who was not exactly a liberal. And she was running for a local seat this gives you a flavor of the Birch Society, a local seat on the Republican Party county committee in southern california, and the birchers did not, members of society did not say basically as big conservative enough that she wasnt a true leader. And basically ran against her and they defeated her, and she describes in this amazing oral history was like to go up against that there just to give it a couple quotes, they started calling up everybody in her district and described her as quote, a socialist, economy and the. Pinko. Cashback autonomy. She called them and numbs a destructive force. She said quote they were haters beyond anything ive ever seen in my life. She really had a kind of visceral loathing for this group here that kind of baby more entry, like what was she reacting collect the purchases i just about up named after an evangelist turned Army Intelligence officer who was murdered or killed ten days after world war ii by miles communist forces. John birch from macon, georgia,. Expansion very supportive initially of lending his name to this organization. Robert wilson found wrotejo a bk a or short biography of john birch in the 1950s alleging that the u. S. Government, for crime was that necessary that mao force that killed if it was used government had conspired to conceal the murder as part of this communist plot. So he was kind of seen as a martyr and the first victim of world war iii. The birchers, the brief background is, they started in december 58 a group of 12 mostly wealthy industrialists meeting in a very hushhush meeting in indianapolis. They decide to form a group and the purpose really was to operate outside of the twoparty system and to try to educate the country about the internal communist threat. Because in a way they looked at thee Republican Party and they thought that eisenhowers Republican Party was part of the left, part of the communist movement essentially enters a bit hopeless. And the way to push back on this conspiracy was to teach people about the nature of the threat so the grassroots mobilization and education kind of shocked people into realization. Anyways, they start to form chapters. They operated, they had a home chapter based in belmont massachusetts by the operator in 20 chapters. Once you hit the 20 cap you had to form a new chapter, and chapters were secretive. They had kind of nondescript, like numbers or letters but random like execute yz. And they were not supposed to communicate with one another. It was mostly kind of the somewhat distinct entities that would communicate with the home office but not with each other. And robert welch a former cheney maker and the founder, he wrote that kind of stuff including monthly bulletins and American Opinion magazines and he would essentially give chapters marching orders. The chapters didnt necessarily go out and follow every word of his prescription but he suggested things like taking over your local pta, take over your school board come to t kind of books are being offered in the library if theyre not american books, kind of socialistic traps, you need to pressure the library essentially completed americanist text set up, erect a billboard as tony alluded to earlier, erect a billboard to support the impeach award campaign. The detective a book, im not sure if i have an income hes a birch member and defended i believe in georgia funded 20 billboards out of his own pocket. It had this kindha of, and realy one of the insights from i think a lot of birch perspective one of the beauties was that this was a group that allowed it empowered members, enabled them to actually do something to take the fight to the selected communist conspiracy in their Community Spirit and so they could kind of filter this conspiratorial brand of anticommunism through the perceived needs of their localities. Thatat was i argue actually a rl insight that they had. As i quote one person in yourqu say Birch Society is quote the answer to every anticommunist prayer. And what i think you meant by that was that it allows us to act here we are not just talking about bad things are in the country. We can do something about it. Thats a long explanation but that gives you an overview of the society in terms of whats, so look, i argue that the birchers help to form an alternative political tradition on the far right, and that they were the subject generations of style but also ideals like isolationism, conspiracy theories, and more violent apocalyptic mode politics come antiestablishment motor politics, and that, you know, their ideas and tactics were picked up by subsequent generations. Its not like a perfect kind of line from one to the other, but that this tradition challenged a lot of these sort of mainstream conservative, often republicans, not alwaysub people like patrica hitt who i talked about in here, or we could argue any contemporary context like the Current Governor secretary of state of georgia. And see them as much at times as the enemy as of the ally. And that we can see the kind of tensions, the divisions within this broad conservativees coalition whereas these mainstream conservatives are much more electorally successful, much more pragmatic, and back in the day in the 1960s and 70s they are actually pretty effective even though that you lost her campaign, at putting their supporters at the edges of not allowing nonalignment in both the party and delete the party. Some of the reasons the party was stronger. They had a kind of carrots and sticks back in the day. A different country. We also have the cold war which was constraining in some ways. E of which we can get into, i think the successors to the Birch Society sort of this far right tradition or is if not mainstream, pretty close the mainstream, i think, of conservatism and the idea that one of the arguments that the ideas of the versus side have made what i think a lot of people have seen as a stunning comeback. So that piece that you referenced resonated because of these incredible tensions that actually feel familiar, albeit with a different setting and different circumstances. Yeah, right. Yeah. It is one of those interesting moments. Your first book was about conservative politics. Conservative. It was about the gubernatorial, the governorship of Ronald Reagan and kind of this kind of critical moment in his rise to national prominence. And i think one of the things that kind of you recognize when you do this work kind of professionally is that the the present is always shaping our understanding of the past. And for you and i, weve been working on the history of conservative for 20 years and a lot of the stuff that was written 20 years ago was kind of trying to take conservative ideas seriously to try to understand how conservatism conservatives kind of came to power from the 1960s through the 1990s. And it was it was about of the major establishment figures and these figures like the John Birch Society were seen, you know in that in that you know but now its like the present changes our understanding of the past and things look differently so so i mean, is it right to say that the kind of the present moment the american politics since 2016 essentially makes you think differently about the history of conservatism. Absolutely. I mean, you know, were sort of human and sort of being influenced by whats happening around us. And there are a lot of i think historians and many other people who have been trying to understand what they see is maybe a transformation in the conservative movement and know where did kind of the trumpian and the ideas come from. And so one of the things i wanted to do in this book is to actually take what i describe as these far right ideas, take them seriously, and take this far right, mobilize mass mobilization, the sixties, and take that seriously and because not just in recent years, but also at the time, whats really interesting is you go back to the birchers were often characterized well many respects they were either mocked or they were described basically as neo fascist and they were described as people who were going to start a civil war because they they said the enemy within. And so its an invitation to engage in civil war. They. They were seen, you know little old ladies in tennis shoes as well as one of the famous phrases it that you know they were kind of nuts right and you know the other song that was popular in the 1960s about the birchers or one of the other sons was the bob dylan song talking john birch, paranoid blues. And so paranoia became the sort of shorthand for the birchers. And theres a famous scene, of course in the Stanley Kubrick film. Dr. Strangelove. And the general is raving about bodily fluids and how the its a communist conspiracy. Thats a spoof on the Birch Society and fluoridation of the water supply. So it would explain what what was the thing the fluoridation. Well look with all these conspiracy theories, i have a chart which i showed you cant see it here, but you can see the conspiracy on this chart. Its actually a birch from the midsixties. Theyre very hard to pin down the conspiracy is but a fluoridation of water supply basically the birch birchers warned that it was quote, eight feet away for socialized medicine and sometimes they said that this was basically a a government step to control us. Right. To tell you what to put your body other times there were hints that it was actually a communist plot to kind of poison, which is the dr. Strangelove sort of image of it. So, you know, but but this i mean, basically its of a piece with this federal like even though it wasnt like really a federal thing but the heavy hand of a federal bureaucracy that basically doing the communist work for it and it was seen as part of the communist conspiracy. Im going to talk more about the kind of conspiratorial political movements and you might have some questions about that, but i you know, one of the things i think is important for people to realize is that the John Birch Society was a secret and explain why they were so intent on kind of maintaining secrecy and also, how were you able to research them if they were, you know, they were so jealous about guarding information . Well, they well, i think robert, the founder and some of the others argued early on that they wanted to keep a low profile because as they said it, they did not want the communists to know that they existed because the birchers, their conception of themselves was as the best, strongest and most aggressive anticommunist in the united states. So their thinking, of course, was that once a communist about us, theyre going to go to town and try to destroy us. And it gives an insight into the mentality right into the kind of us against them. And and so actually, welch, when he had this first meeting, he told his friends, invited 70 people. He said, look, i dont want you all staying at the same hotel. And if anyone asks you, you say you are here on business in indianapolis. We just dont want people to get wind of what were up to they were actually pretty for the first i would say two years at keeping under there were a series of news articles about him in 1960 and then they exploded early 61 and became you know what we call today, a feeding frenzy. I mean they were everywhere. So and at that point, you know, they said, well, the communists have basically come on to us, including in the media. And, you know, theyre just theyre trying to take us out. So it was part of that that attack. So and your other. Well, how was. Oh, yeah, how was that . So yeah. So the Birch Society has some papers that are at brown university, but apparently so. Its headquarters used to be a belmont, massachusetts. And when the Birch Society and the story is they they picked up and moved to appleton, wisconsin, and dumped all their papers in a dumpster behind, i think, near their headquarters. Someone found these papers and then donated them to brown and so there are these these papers are now organized and there is a finding aid, but theyre not like the papers in Carter Library. Of course, because, you know, there are big holes in it. Right. I mean, these were just taken out of the dumpster. So you know you dont really know what youre going to get. And i didnt go through every single paper there, but there are some really interesting, a lot of like messages from members who are writing in to headquarters. Those are actually the best because getting like a anecdotal but like a really great feel about what members from all around the country are thinking and what is kind of moving them. So its like a window into, you know, typical bircher. But whats amazing is that there are so many collection i was actually overwhelmed. So the league i have a whole chapter on the Antidefamation League they waged a quite effective spy campaign against the Birch Society infiltrating the far right and they have about 20 boxes at the American JewishHistorical Society in new york city. The adl papers on the birchers and those are great not just to look at how liberals are the berkshires and how theyre trying to undermine them, but theyre also a great window into the birchers themselves, because, you know, you have these like detailed memos about meeting experts meetings or about ind