A conspiratorial life Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the revolution of American conservatism

Miller (Northeastern Univ.) makes an important contribution to understanding how conspiracy theories have altered American politics in this biography of Robert Welch (1899--1985). Welch, who was the founder of the John Birch Society and is today a relatively forgotten figure, promoted conspiratorial ideas that moved far-right fringe conservatives into the mainstream of the Republican Party. An admirer of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Welch believed "'beyond any reasonable doubt'" that "[President] Eisenhower was a 'dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy'" (p. 242). Without evidence, Welch also promoted baseless accusations that the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Chief Justice Earl Warren were all part of the communist conspiracy. Challenged by William Buckley, who dismissed Welch's ideas as incompatible with conservatism, Welch nevertheless ignored his conservative critics, arguing that the real communist enemy was at home, not abroad, in the guise of liberalism and the radical Left. Although Welch died in 1985, Miller argues that his use of the "Big Lie" still resonates today, manifesting in the Tea Party's xenophobic anger; Donald Trump's election as president in 2016; and the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Jack Robert Fischel, emeritus, Millersville University

In this immersive biography, historian Miller (Nut Country) traces the roots of today's right-wing conspiracy theories to John Birch Society founder Robert Welch (1899--1985). Raised on a former plantation in North Carolina, Welch enrolled at the University of North Carolina at age 12 and, after losing his own successful candy company during the Great Depression, became wealthy working as the head of sales for his younger brother's candy firm. Miller carefully documents how Welch's opposition to the New Deal and "longing for a bygone era that government interference and rampant immigration had destroyed" evolved in full-fledged conspiracy mongering in the 1960s and '70s, when he accused President Eisenhower of being a Communist agent and alleged that the Illuminati were planning to "revamp the United Nations into a strong one world government." Though National Review editor William F. Buckley tried to marginalize Welch and the John Birch Society, Miller argues that Welch's lack of pretension appealed to grassroots conservatives in a way that the patrician Buckley never could, and that the rise of Trumpism and QAnon shows that "Buckley would win many battles, but Welch won the war." Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, this is an enlightening study of an overlooked yet influential figure in American politics. (Jan.)

The GOP may be Donald Trump's party--but at heart, this book argues, it's really the party of a revanchist John Birch Society. "We live in the age of Robert Welch--whether or not we know who he is, what he did, or why he matters." So writes Miller in a sometimes-ponderous but nevertheless meritorious life of Welch, a candy magnate whose conspiracy theorizing foreshadowed today's QAnon. Welch was an early champion of the isolationist "America First" movement, whose slogan Trump appropriated, and he fomented ideas that ranged from charging that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent to asserting that Sputnik was a hoax and the Vietnam War was run by the Kremlin to advance one-world government. As Miller documents, Welch was a brilliant young man who memorized thousands of volumes of poetry, literature, and history. Still, he descended into what historian Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style" of interpreting government. By the end of his life, Welch believed that it wasn't the communists after all but instead the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission that controlled the planet. Despite such bizarre views, the John Birch Society was successful in the age of Joseph McCarthy and even more so in the 1970s, when public trust in government plummeted, in part thanks to Richard Nixon, who espoused some of Welch's doctrines. Although, as Miller documents to sometimes tedious length, the John Birch Society fell apart thanks to infighting and insolvency, its worldview is alive and well in QAnon, the "truther" and "birther" movements, and the mainstream GOP, the last of which likely embraced it out of sheer cynicism. After all, Miller writes, "Welch was an eccentric, a conspiracy theorist who said zany things, but he had sincerity." Sincerity is scarcely something one would apply to the current run of right-wing politicians, from Trump on down, who seem to throw out conspiracy theories willy-nilly to see what sticks. Though sometimes a slog, a welcome contribution to the history of modern right-wing politics at its extremes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

We live in the age of Robert Welch--whether or not we know who he is, what he did, or why he matters. So shouldn't we know something more about a man whose worldview is absolutely everywhere? The day Joseph R. Biden took the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts and became the forty-sixth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump still had not conceded. Election fraud by the Democrats, Trump tweeted for two whole months, stole the election from him and the American people. But this claim was pure myth. Court after election commission after court found no evidence to support Trump's words. A full 75 percent of Republicans didn't believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, laying the groundwork for Donald Trump to incite an insurrection to steal it for real. The QAnon conspiracy theory--which holds that Democrats in the Deep State undermined Trump's presidency in order to cover up their child-sex racket, and claims Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene among its more prominent adherents--is favorably viewed by nearly one-third of Republicans, while polling shows that violent anti-democratic sentiment is rampant in the conservative movement. And when Republican lawmakers had a chance to draw a bright line between their party and the conspiracy theorists and the insurrectionists during Trump's impeachment trial, the vast majority voted to acquit. The QAnon conspiracy theory had no basis in reality. Trump's election fraud conspiracy theory had no basis in reality, but his supporters and some Republican leaders echoed the false charge. Trump's entire political career--and a great deal of his popular appeal--lay in conspiracism of a kind that owes something to Robert Welch... Who then was Robert Welch? To some, he was a genius: a child prodigy who was reading at age two. He attended the University of North Carolina when he was twelve. He created the Sugar Daddy and other childhood confectioneries. He founded the John Birch Society, the most successful anti-Communist organization in the history of the United States. To his detractors, he was at best a prophet of doom who predicted that the country was on the verge of a Communist conspiracy engulfing all aspects of American life--education, religion, the government. His star flew high but petered out by the late 1960s when the John Birch Society was no longer a force to be reckoned with. Many Americans first learned of the candy maker after March 20, 1961. That day, Senator Milton Young of North Dakota stepped up to the rostrum of the US Senate; read thirteen pages of Welch's book, The Politician ; and reported that Welch called former president Dwight David Eisenhower a Communist. Now in most periods of American history, Welch's bizarre thesis would have made him a pariah. Welch would have been pitied as somebody suffering a pathology. He would have been disqualified as an irresponsible purveyor of unreasonable ideas. But these were not usual times. The Cold War was at its height, and Americans were very anxious. They were stocking food and building bunkers. They were getting ready to "duck and cover" in the event of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union that might come any moment. Times were tense. Thus, Welch was not just seen as unreasonable. He was considered a danger to the country. After all, he was calling the man who planned D-Day, defeated Hitler, and won World War II a Red. Welch embodied extremism and the body politic, according to the consensus. He became associated in the public mind with the Ku Klux Klan, the racist White Citizens' Councils, and even George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazis. The Anti-Defamation League called him a covert anti-Semite. Others said there was nothing covert about him. Welch's problem was that most of what he said about Communism seemed absurd. His analysis sounded delusionary and made all anti-Communists appear ridiculous. Welch's early life helped make him a conspiracist. He was born in a postbellum South that was very suspicious of the North. His ancestors feared the loss of their social status, the loss of their slaves, the loss of their jobs, and the decline of their White supremacy. And even after he had left the South, as a young candy manufacturer working in an industry without patents and fearing that his latest confectionery invention could be pilfered by the competition, Welch was always in a state of hypervigilance. That Welch's original business was unsuccessful contributed to his insecurity. And after he went into business with his brother, James, whom he'd taught everything he knew about the candy business, he discovered James never considered him a business partner but simply an employee who deserved a daily wage but no more. In the early 1950s, Welch watched with great interest Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into Communist infiltration of government. Welch came to echo and even amplify the allegations of treason from McCarthy and other Republican public officials, such as Senator William Jenner. Secretary George Marshall was one of the most honorable men in the country, but Senator Jenner called Marshall "a front man for traitors" and suggested that Marshall tricked the American people into World War II. Jenner set the stage for McCarthy's attacks on the army, which set the stage for Welch's assaults on the former head of the army--Dwight David Eisenhower. Amid numerous allegations of espionage, McCarthy attacked Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Marshall as part of "a conspiracy on a scale so immense so as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man." Daily calls for Acheson's resignation became the norm for the Republican Party... In the long run, Welch's kind of conspiracy has grown only stronger. More people believe extreme theories. It used to be that Welch's commitment to conspiracy theory made him, as well the John Birch Society, easy to dismiss; this may be why no historian has written a full-scale biography of Welch. Pieces of the story are included in the scores of books on American conservatism, but they tend to focus on the Society's marginalization and its waning importance to postwar conservatism after 1966. When Donald Trump won the presidency, historians began revising the standard narrative of American conservatism. That standard narrative holds that the Welch conspiratorial style waned when the patron saint of American conservatives, William F. Buckley, kicked him out of the conservative movement in the early 1960s. Other journalists and academics wrote off the John Birch Society and Welch as irrational and paranoid. Because of his penchant for conspiracy theory, Welch threatened the America that Buckley wanted to build. Historians largely embraced Buckley's vision that making conservatism "intellectually respectable" was absolutely necessary to its success: Buckley purged extremists, and these excommunications made possible the rise of the age of Reagan. According to the usual narrative, Welch and the Society became particular liabilities to the Republican Right after Barry Goldwater's tremendous defeat in the presidential election of 1964. But Welch was a far more flexible and important a figure to the Republican Party than historians have realized. Excerpted from A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism by Edward H. Miller All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.