Good evening. Im tony clark from the Carter Library. 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 commie, you got to turn around and. It was just 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 things. But sometimes you should google chad mitchell trio and the the John Birch Society song, the billboards at the time, the highways would say things like Impeach Supreme CourtJustice Earl Warren or get the us out of the u. N. So they were very well known back in the sixties, but by the end of the vietnam war, you didnt hear much about. But as youll hear tonight, their influence carried carried much further. That influence did not disappear. Matthew dallek is a professor of graduate to graduate school of political management at George Washington university. He is a political historian. He looks at social 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 frequent commentator on the news media, not politics. And history and public affairs. He is also a former speechwriter for our area, former House Minority leader richard gephardt. And so we wanted somebody to talk to matthew about his book, and we couldnt have had anybody better than Joseph Crespino joe is the jimmy carter professor of history at Emory University city. Hes an expert in political and cultural history of the 20th century. And joe has written what . Hes published three books, including one that he was here to speak about. Atticus finch, the biography, harper lee, her father, and the making of american icons. So please join me in welcoming joe and matthew. Thank you. Thanks so much. Tony is always so much fun to be at the Carter Library and thank you all for coming out tonight to hear and to ask questions about this really exciting and timely and deeply researched and wonderful book. And matt, welcome to georgia. Its great to have you here this week. And its so appropriate to have you here this week. As i was reading your book this week in preparation for tonight, i was also reading an op ed that was the new york times. This week by michelle cottle. It was i dont know if some of you saw it, but it talked about the hot mess of the Georgia Republican party, and it talked about it was amazing to read this article because it was all about how the Trump Supporters are in such conflict with our with the governor and theres this real, you know, tension between kind of the conservatives and the ultra conservatives. And lo and behold, your begins with a story in the California Republican party around 1961 or 62. And theres a long time republic and Party Activist who is decrying the rise of these crazy John Birchers who were ruining the Republican Party and turning it into a hot mess. So tell us who the John Birch Society was and and what it seems to be so similar, what was going on in the 1960s, whats happening today . So what are the similarities and what are the different . Well, first of all, i want to thank you, joe, for doing this with me. Its wonderful to be here with you. And i want to thank tony and the Carter Library as well for having me. Its really its really an honor to be here. So, yes, joe was referring to patricia hitt, who is a loyalist to richard nixon, who was not exactly liberal and hit, was running for a local seat. And this just gives you a flavor of the Birch Society, a local seat on a republic and Party County Committee in southern california, and the birchers did not. Members of the society did not see her basically as being conservative enough. She wasnt a true believer. And so they basically ran against her and they defeated her. And she describes in this amazing oral history what it was like to go up against them. And just to give you a couple of quotes, they started calling up everybody in her district and district, describing her as, quote, a socialist, a commie and a pinko. And and she said that she called them an enormously destructive force. She said, quote, they were haters beyond anything ive ever seen in my life. And she really had a kind of visceral loathing for this group. And that kind of made me more intrigued, like, what was you know, what was she reacting to . So the versus sorry just to back up named after evangelist turned Army Intelligence officer who was murdered or killed ten days after World War Two by maos communist forces. And the brits from macon, georgia from macon, georgia. Yep. Macon, georgia. And john birch and his parents were very supportive at least initially, of lending his name to this organization. Robert wells, the founder, wrote a book, a short biography of john birch in the 1950s, alleged that the Us Government, the crime was not necessarily that maos communist forces had killed him. It was that the Us Government had conspired to conceal the murder as part of this communist plot and so he was kind of seen as a martyr and and the first victim of world war three, you know, the birchers, the brief background is they started as in december 58, a group of mostly wealthy industrialists meeting at a very hush hush meeting in indianapolis. They decide to form a group. And the purpose really was, i think to operate outside of the two party system and to try to educate the country about the internal communist threat. And because in a way, they looked at the Republican Party, which was probably their natural home, and they thought that eisenhowers Republican Party was part of the left, it was part of the communist movement, essentially, and it was a bit hopeless. And the way to push back on this conspiracy was to people about the nature of the threat. And so the grassroots mobilized in an education kind of shock people into a realization. Anyways, they started to form chapters. They operated did. They had a home chapter based in belmont, massachusetts, but they operated 20 person chapters. Once you hit that 20 person cap, you had to form a new chapter. The chapters were pretty secretive. They had kind of nondescript. They have like numbers or letters, but random, like excu wise and they were not supposed to communicate with one another. They were supposed to kind of be these somewhat distinct entities that would communicate with the home office, but not with each other. And robert, a former candy maker and the founder yeah, he wrote a ton of stuff including monthly bulletins and American Opinion magazine and he would essentially give chapters or marching orders now you know the chapters didnt necessarily go out in follow every word of his prescription but he suggested things like, you know, taking over your local pta, take over your school boards, see what kind of books are being offered in the library. And if theyre not american as books, if theyre kind of socialistic tracts, what you need to pressure the library essentially to put in is texts set up erect a billboard right as tony alluded to earlier, erect a billboard to support the impeach earl campaign. And actually, theres a character in my book, i dont even sure if i have his name is a birch member and he funded i believe its in georgia, funded 20 billboards. So these in picture war billboards out his own pocket and you know so it had this kind of an the really one of the insights and from that i think a lot of birch perspectives one of the beauties was that this was a group that allowed an empowered members. It enabled them to actually do something to take the fight to this alleged conspiracy in their communities. And so they could kind of filter to this conspiratorial brand, kind of anticommunism through, the perceived needs of of their localities. And that was, i actually a real insight that they had and you as i quote one person in here saying the Birch Society is quote the answer to every anticommunist prayer. And what i think he meant by that was that it allows us act. Right. Were not just talking about how bad things are in the country. We can do something about it that a longish explanation but that gives you an overview of the society in terms of whats so look i argue that the birchers helped to form an alternative political tradition on the far and that they were quick to subject subsequent generations a style but also ideas, isolationism, conspiracy theories, a more violent apocalypse like mode of politics, antiestablishment mode of politics and 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 this tradition challenged a lot of these sort of mainstream conservative, often republicans, not always people like patricia hitt, who i talk about in here, or we could argue in a contempt jury context, like the current governor, secretary of state of georgia and and them as much at times as the enemy, as their ally. And that we can see the kind of tensions, the divisions within the this broad conservative coalition or whereas, you know, these mainstream conservatives are much theyre electorally successful, theyre much more pragmatic. And back in the day, in the 1960s and seventies, theyre actually pretty effect is even though hit lost her campaign theyre pretty effective about pushing them the birchers and their supporters to the edges and not allowing them to engulf their party and and to lead the party on some of the that the party was stronger. You know, they had more kind of carrots and sticks back in the day. It was a different country. Well, so the cold war, which was constraining in some ways. But, you know, the biggest difference i would say today is that for a lot of reasons, some 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