The Early Days of the John Birch Society: Fascist Templars of the Corporate State By Alex Constantine Part 7: Corporate Sponsorship & More CIA Connections In the wings of the Birch Society with its rejection of all things "collectivist" lurked its corporate-military sponsors and directors. In an address to the Cooperative League of the United States, T.K. Quinn, a former vice president of General Electric ‹ an "Insider" ‹ shared his view of the corporate sector that created the Society and supported it: "In forms of organization and control, these giants are essentially collectivistic, fascist states, with self-elected and self-perpetuating officers and directors, quite like the Russian politiboro in this respect. Their control extends directly over production, over tens of thousands of small supplying manufacturers and subcontractors, and over thousands of distributors and dealers. Indirectly, the control of these giant corporations influences legislation through paid lobbies in state capitals and Washington, and it is seen and felt in the magazines, newspapers, radio and television stations, all dependent upon these giants and their associates for their existence" (George Seldes, "Postscript: NAM and the John Birch Society," in Never Tire of Protesting, Lyle Stuart, 1968, p. 124). The ranking corporations were unified by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Robert Welch had been an officer of NAM. NAM and related organizations didn't score too badly in their lobbying efforts in a sample year: WON LOST PERCENT NAM 6 0 1,000 Committee for Constitutional Government 7 1 .875 U.S. Chamber of Commerce 6 2 .750 Other lobbying groups didn't fare so well. The American Federation of Labor won three lobbying campaigns and lost seven. The League of Women Voters was successful in one attempt to see legislation passed, but lost four. The Farmers' Union, 1-in-8. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, 1-in-5 (Seldes, pp. 124-125, from a Congressional Quarterly scorecard). Seldes observed that NAM, "the richest and most powerful lobby in the nation, got all the laws it sponsored passed by Congress." The Committee for Constitutional Government, "called 'America's No. 1 fascist organization' by Congressman Wright Patman, won seven in eight that it sponsored" (p. 125). Clearly, favoritism at the legislative level favored "collectivist," "fascist" corporate fronts. The Birch Society was an arm of NAM and its constituent corporations ‹ General Motors, DuPont, Sunoco, U.S. Steel and so on. "Another organization," Seldes wrote, "apparently founded with the intention of the Birch Society to unite reaction in a vast and powerful political weapon, calls itself Americans for Constitutional Action and unites NAM leaders, the owners of the Reader's Digest, and Birchites; it is reaction's answer to Americans for Democratic Action" (p. 121). Reader's Digest? This recalls another directorate locked into these groups ‹ the CIA. In the Eisenhower period, propagandists on the Agency payroll were featured on a regular basis in the pages of the Digest, including Allen Dulles, Carl Rowan, James Burnham, Brian Crozier and Stewart Alsop. The magazine remains a glib tool of CIA propaganda. Another is the National Review. In the first issue, released on November 19, 1955, William F. Buckley, another CIA propagandist, printed a "Publisher's Statement" in which he declared war on "the Liberals, who run the country." The Review, Buckley boasted, "stands athwart history, yelling Stop!" In March, 1956, John Fischer, editor of Harper's, wrote: "Last November, newstands throughout the country offered the first issue of a new magazine, National Review, with described itself as 'frankly, conservative.'" But the magazine's first half-dozen issues made it clear that the Review "was an organ, not of conservatism, but of radicalism ... [and] like most of the extremist little magazines, it seems to be aimed at an audience of True Believers." The magazine's readership were "emotional people who throw themselves frantically into a cause ‹ often to make up for some kind of frustration in their private lives. They form the hard core of many religious, nationalist and revolutionary movements: they have great capacity, in Hoffer's words, for 'enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance ... blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.' They are the opposite of conservatives" (Rusher, pp. 47-48). Dwight MacDonald, a staff writer for the New Yorker, opined, "NR seems worth examining as a cultural phenomenon: the MaCarthy nationalists ‹ they call themselves conservative, but that is surely a misnomer ‹ have never before made so heroic an effort to be intellectually articulate. Here are the ideas, here is the style of the lumpen-bourgeoisie, the half-educated ... who responded to Huey Long, Father Coughlin and Senator McCarthy.... These are men from underground, the intellectually underprivileged who feel themselves excluded from a world they believe is rulled by liberals (or eggheads ‹ the terms are, significantly, interchangeable in NR)" End of Part 7
