Sam reviews a new book about the John Birch Society
Added 2023-03-25 16:15:01 +0000 UTC
Greetings Dearest Patrons -- I thought you all might enjoy this book review I just published at the Washington Post. It gets into some of the key historiographic questions we often encounter on the show: what is the relationship between "mainstream" and "fringe" in the conservative movement? How much continuity is there between the GOP of Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan and the GOP of Trump? Which tendencies in 20th century conservatism most significantly prefigure the rise of Trumpism? And so on...
At the very least, I thought it might prompt some discussion in the comments. Matt and I always enjoy the spirited dialogues set off by the episode posts.
Happy Saturday. With Love.
-Sam
Comments
Been re-listening to all y'all's patreon episodes during concussion recovery these past few weeks. developed an oddly parasocial urge to send y'all articles that come up in my youth organizing work "I bet matt and sam would like this". Lol. Anyways, this giant piece on polarization and democracy in the U.S. is amazing and, in my opinion, quite connected to y'all's conversations: https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/09/05/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-united-states-what-research-says-pub-90457
Alex Ames
2023-10-31 22:56:01 +0000 UTCInternationalism was the only way forward for modern thinking and these Birch
David Cox
2023-03-29 20:11:42 +0000 UTCSo many writers are looking for the missing link that led to the radicalization of conservatives because the fact is, the conservatives never had any goodideas. They were bound to find and succumb to factions like the Birchers. These 'conservative elites' that you refer to in the book -- we're only elites at a time when liberalism was a definitive part of our nationalism. During the cold war we had to be liberal, even the conservatives, to show that we did things better than the soviets. It was part of our exceptionalism. The bottom line is that a nation based on enlightenment liberal ideals isn't going to advance it's project on the back of conservatives ideas. What this writer is really doing, as so many of those suburbanites are/were looking for, are the adults of the past to tell them in a familiar voice what their national project and institutions were really supposed to be about. We need to cleanse ourselves of the memory of these rational conservative cold war patriots. They were conservative, and therefore the function of their ideas is outside the American project and that doesn't make them more realistic and/or necessary to it's survival.
Dan
2023-03-29 04:43:04 +0000 UTCMakes me want to read all the books. And inspirational-I'm just a YAF now, but it makes me want to go full Bircher.
Peter Hovde
2023-03-28 02:08:23 +0000 UTCCongrats, Sam, for your prominent mention in today's New York Times. Makes me feel like one of the in crowd for being a subscriber to your "au courant and lefty podcast."
Ward Keeler
2023-03-26 23:41:02 +0000 UTC"But like others in the booming cottage industry of 'explaining the right to terrified liberals...'" [side-eye, tugs collar, sweats slightly]
Bill Sallak
2023-03-25 22:27:37 +0000 UTCAbsolutely, an OC was often the destination.
Bill Spater
2023-03-25 22:13:06 +0000 UTCYeah, and a lot of white migrants coming into Southern California from the 30s onwards had rural roots in Oklahoma, Texas, etc. Darren Dochuk covers a lot of this in “From Bible Belt to Sun Belt.”
Martin W
2023-03-25 20:37:17 +0000 UTCI much enjoyed your review in the WP. I hope KYE will take up some of the matters you identified. In your review, you state, “But this familiar litany doesn’t explain how the archetypal conservative radical turned from a professional, suburban warrior to an unschooled, rural Trumpist.” If I might, Southern Los Angeles County, Orange County, and San Diego County, at the time the John Birch Society was founded, were, in fact, more rural than you might think. During the early sixties, a massive shift occurred to the professional/suburban side of life, particularly in southern Los Angeles and Orange County. My point is these environs were chocked full of people with rural roots; some worked in agriculture, and more were attached to the military-industrial complex while others were absorbed into the new aerospace economy and would stay. What had been a significant suburban agricultural presence disappeared under countless housing tracts, strip malls, and Disneyland; the farmers, country stores, and roadside fruit stands migrated. But for the brief moment that was the 60s, the presence of what we might identify as a rural Trumpist today roamed the streets, no less angry, alienated, or conspiratorial than their modern contemporaries. They weren't the brains, they were the foot soldiers, but they are the same people.
Bill Spater
2023-03-25 19:57:55 +0000 UTCGreat review, Sam. Sounds like Dallek is pretty weak sauce here compared to Miller and the others you mention. The Miller biography of Welch is excellent. There is a great discussion of it from On Point where you can get a good idea of it: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/07/13/the-history-of-far-right-populism-from-the-john-birch-society-to-qanon Notably, Welch was from an area of NC that had experienced slave revolts and became a civil rights hotspot, so his family was conspiratorial by nature. Turns out lots of others were too. I haven’t read McGirr’s book but it sounds a lot like Nickerson’s “Mothers of Conservatism” that you guys did an episode on. Maybe time for a revisit? I am still trying to get over what I learned from Dr. Nickerson, namely that the housewives who found themselves living perfect lives in paradise finally felt free to be the conspiratorial racists that they really were at heart. Very depressing.
Mark K
2023-03-25 18:35:26 +0000 UTC
