THE ROAD TO IRRELEVANCE: THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY IN MIDDLE AGETHE ROAD TO
IRRELEVANCE:
THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY IN MIDDLE AGE
By: Erik Jay
Ask ten different people about The John Birch Society and you will probably
get ten different responses, at least two or three of which will be some
variant of "I never heard of it." Among people familiar with the
organization, you would have to increase the sampling five- or ten-fold to
get a single positive comment.
This is a profoundly unpopular group, to put it mildly; a widely detested
one, to put it bluntly. But it is, quite frankly, even less understood than
it is admired. It is not, as most liberals think and most newspapers
dutifully parrot, allied with the Ku Klux Klan; in fact, the groups are
mortal enemies, and it was a Bircher who infiltrated the Klan for the FBI
and helped send six of its members to prison for the 1964 murders of three
young civil rights workers. It is not, as some conservatives and
libertarians believe, composed entirely of what "Liberty" magazine editor R.
W. Bradford terms "dimwit paranoids" (1) who mutter about the Illuminati or
the Zionists; there are any number of Birchers who are thoughtful,
discerning, and responsible people ‹ although the Society does have its
share of cranks, certainly.
Sadly, The John Birch Society ‹ named after a Baptist missionary killed by
the Chinese communists shortly after the end of World War II is not what
most of its members think it is, either. It isn't run by principled patriots
committed to a set of immutable "Americanist" goals, and it most certainly
is not worthy of the trust or respect its misled members deserve for the
millions of dollars they've poured into it over the years. In fact, The John
Birch Society always small but getting ever smaller, always wanting for
funds but now verging on bankruptcy, always on the fringe but now poised on
the brink of lasting obscurity is nothing more than a small, shadowy
assemblage of hypocritical moralists who don't want Americans to be free so
much as they want them to behave. Today, The John Birch Society's leaders
these men who claim to represent thousands of dutiful dues-paying patriots
while they actually pursue their own secret, self-serving agenda are
fighting a pitched battle for simple survival even as they continue to
posture as the "only real opposition" to the "enemies of freedom [who] mean
to establish total domination of the planet."
That claim by the Society's then-Chief Executive Officer, G. Allen Bubolz,
was part of a videotaped message delivered to JBS members in April of 1990.
The video, shown across the country at local Chapter meetings, was but one
of a series of endless videotaped, telemarketed, and mass-mailed appeals to
members for patience, for understanding, for resoluteness and, of course,
for more and more money. A generally aging, decidedly fractious, and
demonstrably dwindling membership is constantly harangued from JBS
headquarters in Appleton, Wisconsin (ironically, the hometown of one of the
Society's heroes, Senator Joseph McCarthy) for ever greater "sacrifices" in
the war to "save America." In Birch parlance, "sacrifice" means, in order of
importance, (a) sending money, (b) obeying directives, and (c) recruiting
new members who will do the same.
The number of dues-paying members reached a high of approximately 100,000
during Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign of 1964, in which the group's
minor, tangential, but well-advertised role presumably aided its recruiting
efforts. Never an official part of the Goldwater organization, much less the
national Republican Party machine, the Birchers nevertheless were active in
supporting the Arizona Senator's bid for the White House, as it was for them
a common cause "for God and country." Their major contribution to the
campaign ‹ their only measurable, mainstream success before or since, in
fact ‹ was the distribution through their American Opinion bookstores of
thousands of low-cost paperback editions of Goldwater's "The Conscience of a
Conservative".
Today, although reticent by dint of either embarrassment and/or
secretiveness on the subject of its size, the Society will occasionally cite
"tens of thousands and growing" (2) as a membership figure; several
employees terminated in the 1990's, whose positions made them privy to data
concerning membership, the Society's "Continuing Support Club," the
circulation figures for various publications, Chapter rosters, etc.,
estimate the number at anywhere from a low of 5,000 to a high of 20,000. But
whatever the correct number is, it is inherently misleading vis-à-vis the
Society's effectiveness.
For one thing, the structure of the Society severely limits individual
initiative; it would be impossible to calculate the amount of energy and
efficacy squandered because of the monolithic control exerted by JBS
Headquarters through its paid national field staff ("Coordinators," "Major
Coordinators," and "Fund Raisers"). For another, there is no distinction on
the JBS roster among active members, who man picket lines and county-fair
literature booths and show up at the Post Office every April 15th to
distribute anti-IRS pamphlets; mere dues-payers who attend monthly Chapter
meetings to watch a semi-professional video or two and endure incessant
"special [fund-raising] drives" to keep the Society afloat; and
non-dues-payers, who continue to be carried as members because of
connections at the Home Office, lousy record-keeping, or simple deceit.(3)
Of course, in The John Birch Society, as in any activist organization, there
is a hard core of truly active, sometimes even effective members but in the
JBS it is pretty much limited to the paid field staff, their sycophants, and
perhaps one or two go-getters per Chapter (the size of which can range
dramatically, from just three or four members to several dozen). But the
Society's numbers continue to dwindle, as do the proceeds from the endless
fund-raisers.(4) And, following two years of much-ballyhooed
"reorganization" whose major accomplishment has been the firing of dozens of
field personnel, headquarters employees, and magazine staffers(5), the
Society's self-serving leadership is unable to stop stories of its gross
incompetence from spreading throughout its crumbling empire.
After over 30 years of mishaps, mismanagement, and petty intrigues including
bitter, divisive, financially devastating power struggles that followed the
long decline and eventual death in 1985 of founder Robert Welch. The John
Birch Society has lost its ability to recruit or retain members, despite its
claims to the contrary. Worse than that, the JBS through obstinacy,
ineptitude, contempt for non-believers, and an inability to explain its
"historic mission" either succinctly or intelligibly has frittered away even
the marginal influence it exerted in conservative politics at its
mid-sixties peak. Worst of all, the group has wasted millions of dollars in
dues, pledges, and publishing revenues on ludicrously expensive severance
packages for former executives and favored employees, costly service
contracts for antiquated typesetting equipment that didn't even work, and
sundry other misadventures and malinvestments.
"I'm surprised it's lasted this long," says a former member from Las Vegas
who was booted out of the group for "not being a good little sheep." Now
active in the Libertarian Party, this Birch alumnus, who is too embarrassed
to be named, calls the Society's current leaders "professional liars and
schemers."
Throughout its entire history, The John Birch Society has operated on an
ever tightening budget that has generated ever more emotional pleas for
members, funds, and attention. Although F. R. Duplantier, former editor of
the Society's magazine, "The New American", marvels that the organization
has always seemed "to muddle through somehow," the Society's muddling days
may be numbered, as its loss of relevance to American political life is
paralleled by the loss of any coherent identity, a fatal inability to stay
staffed, capitalized, and directed, and a growing realization among members
that something is rotten in Appleton.
Next time: Part 2 of "The Road to Irrelevance"
FOOTNOTES
(1) "Liberty" magazine, June 1990
(2) An internal management memo dated January 21, 1991, states that an
"elementary and fundamental" JBS tenet is that "We do not publish or tell
anything about membership numbers (not even "tens of thousands)." In an
interview with Mark Lisheron for an article in the January 20, 1991 edition
of "The Milwaukee Journal", however, Birch CEO G. Allen Bubolz gave a figure
of 60,000.
(3) I paid dues for one year (1987) when I was still checking out the JBS. I
am carried as a member to this day, and still receive member publications,
`fund-raising pleas, and other mailings that most certainly are printed and
distributed at an unnecessary cost to the Society ‹ or the unsuspecting
members whose money keeps the Home Office operating at all, I should say.
(4) A particularly noisome 1990 drive that I was personally involved with,
aiming to raise $1.5 million for various media projects, came up 2/3 short.
(5) In early 1989, in the first wave of firings, old-timers were let go for
sheer incompetence; in 1990 and 1991, in successive waves, both old-timers
and newcomers were fired for precisely the opposite reason, a trend that has
continued to this day.
Mail this article to a friend(s) in two clicks!
Erik Jay is a composer, writer, and regular columnist for the Ether Zone. He
publishes "The Internet Journal of Contentious Persiflage" -- Erik Jay's
WHAT NEXT? -- erikjay.com, where you can contact him or suscribe to the
weekly e-column.
Published in the May 17, 2000 issue of Ether Zone.
Copyright © 2000 Ether Zone (http://etherzone.com).
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