Part One: How The John Birch Society Invented The Modern Far Right

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M uh love podcasts. I don't ship. Is that? Are
we allowed to open a show that way? I don't know. Well,
we did it, I'll let you do it. I didn't.
God damn it. This is terrible the best I am.

(00:23):
I am so sorry to everybody. Ye I have well
as everyone can can hear now by by listening to
the tremendous failure that has just occurred in everyone's earballs. Uh.
This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people,

(00:45):
namely me. And my guests today are Dan and Jordan's.
That's us. If I if I just said Dan, or
if I just said Jordan's, I would have to be
more specific. But when I say Dan and Jordan's, I
think everyone knows that it's it's the knowledge fight. Guys.
Your identity has become subsumed into your podcast, so enjoy that.

(01:08):
It was inevitable. Yeah, it was going to happen. I
think a lot of people have taken to just calling
us Jordan capital j capital d. Yeah, sort of a
combined down. I feel like they could do better. Who could? Yeah,
can you danger? Because it would have to be like

(01:31):
Dan or something like that. But but Jorg Dan is
like I feel like it's really just like giving like
cloud to one name. But you're stressing that d pretty
hard right in the middle, and I can appreciate that.
I think it's I think it's great we're really getting
into the weeds of this since they're solving it once
and for all. You know, that's what people come here for,

(01:51):
you know what. With explanation, I'll let you have it. Guys.
All right, Jordan, are you ready to hear about some ship?
You bet? Robert yea post your podcast? So you know
what sucks many many many things? Uh? You know, I

(02:17):
would say, broadly speaking, the right wing in America, the
Republican Party, the looming uh fascist threat that has been
slightly weed whacked back, but is still threatening to encroach
uh and choke all of us to death uh forever.
That Yeah, Engines and dragons monster. When you put it

(02:43):
like that, it is basically a dungeons and dragons monster.
So this episode is about e Gary Guy Gaxe. This
episode is about so Gary Guy GaX invented dungeons and dragons.
This episode is about the man who invented the modern
Republican Party, by which I mean the Party of Donald Trump,
by which I mean you know the fascists, and his

(03:07):
name was Robert Welch. You guys know who Robert Welch is.
I don't know who Robert Welch is. I'm gonna I'm
gonna feign ignorance for about three quarters. You definitely look
at me, and did you know about Robert Welch. The
whole point of me is to not know about Robert. Well,
you know him by a different name. Yeah, yeah, you

(03:28):
you Jordan know him as the founder of the John
Birch Society. Oh I do know him as the candy Man. Yes, Oh,
I do know him as the candy Man. Oh shit, candy.
So if you haven't heard of the John Birch Society,
they're loosely speaking, why we got President Ronald Reagan, President
Donald Trump, and the whole ecosystem of right wing grifters

(03:51):
who make money off of convincing their fans that everybody
on the left is part of a Marxist conspiracy, like
the idea that Joe Biden is a is a Communist agent,
which are are good friend of the pod Alex Jones
brings up repeatedly, is a descendant of a John Birch
Society talking point or at least a family of those
talking points. So that's that's the guy we're talking about today,

(04:12):
Bob Welch, founder the John Birch Society. Yeah, dude, yeah,
I don't. I don't, I don't. I think, first off,
my my initial sign that he's not a good guy
is you're talking about him. So that's that's a red
flag right off the bat. And then Bob Welch, that's
just a that's just a right wing name. That's just
what it is. Yeah, Yeah, Bob Welch is is is

(04:36):
you'd guess that he founded some sort of society that
did something terrible. So Robert H. W. Welch Jr. Which,
by God, the more thorough you are with the name,
the worse it sounds. Was born on a farm. Why
do all these jerks have the initials h W two? Yeah,
he does, he does. He's got a real George Bush
fibe going on, what the hell? Well, I mean, that's

(04:56):
how the word white starts right in their world, white white, white.
I think that's what it is. I think Robert quite Welch,
that actually completely You might be right. So Whitey was
born on a farm in Choen County, North Carolina, on
December one, eighteen ninety nine. He was a brilliant child,

(05:18):
some might even say a genius. He could read by
age three, and he knew his multiplication tables by age four.
By age seven, he was studying Latin, and at age
twelve he enrolled in the University of North Carolina. He
graduated at age sixteen. Uh, and yeah, everything that happens
in the story should be taking his evidence for white
child prodigy should be dosed with paint chips. I think

(05:40):
that's yeah. I always feel like when I hear something
like that, and I hear like someone new multiplication tables
at four, I'd be like, who prove it? Yeah, I
would say prove it. And and if you can prove
that a kid is that smart, you gotta slow him
down somehow. I would write to be able to quiz
that four year old. I see how deep you're not
to the table is? Yeah? And I think if you're

(06:03):
a four year old with perfect knowledge of the multiplication tables,
take them out of school for two years, don't let
him read books, make them work on a farm. Did
you write a Kurt Vonnegut short story at us? What
just Happen? Look? Vonnegut was right. The problem is that
people are too smart these two fast. Give them braces,
take them down the notch. Yeah yeah, slow them down somehow,

(06:26):
just you know, put blinders on the kid, feed him lead,
whatever it takes, and then the versus true. If you're
not good at something, give them steroids and ship give
him all the drugs to make them smarter. I think
everyone who can't do the multiplication tables by age four,
mandatory steroids. Everyone who can illiterate farm in the Midwest.
I like it. That's my deal. Society in charge of children, Okay,

(06:55):
so uh yeah. Bobby Welch, child prodigy, entered the Naval
Academy at Annapolis in nineteen seventeen, a year when nothing
else of particular interest occurred. He resigned after just two
years when he decided that a military career was not
for him. Instead, he wanted to be a lawyer, so
he enrolled in Harvard Law School, but this didn't wind
up working out much better for him. Robert clashed regularly

(07:17):
with his professor's, particularly the hilariously named Felix Frankfurter, who
would grow up. It's a real guy, it's a real
guy's name. He went on to become a Supreme Court justice.
Of course, a lot of people have to overcome something
in order to do something great. And I think being
born with Felix, he had his handicap and it made

(07:40):
him great. Yeah, Justice, hot dog. Yeah, because that's the hardest.
If you want to be the hardest, it can be
too for other people to laugh at you become a
Supreme Court justice, because then everybody's got to be scared
one way or the other. You're gonna terrify half the
population if it pleases the hot dog. Oh god, oh god,

(08:03):
I'm so sorry. Please don't take away my reproductive health care.
In the case of Hines versus the United States, he's
gonna have to recuse himself. He cannot. He could not
rule on anything to do with the John Kerry campaign
for that reason. Um Frankfurter was a liberal Supreme Court justice,

(08:23):
which might explain why Robert Welch hated him so much.
Welch's biography, which is quite a text, says that the
young Robert Welch hated Felix Frankfurter because, quote, the young
man from North Carolina recognized hogwash when he heard it,
and a hogwash is spelled in all caps and also
spelled out with like a like a dash in between

(08:44):
each word. That's good, it's a fascinating publication. That's a
that's a Canterbury Tales level of bullshit right there. Yeah, magnificent.
Did someone who was with the John Birch Society right
this biography? Yes? Absolutely, yeah, no, A thousands like the
editorial style. It was written probably by Bob Welch. Yeah.

(09:09):
Welch left Harvard just a year before he would have graduated.
He decided that he'd learned enough and it was time
to make a shipload of money. And this wonder kin
had a specific plan for how he was going to
get rich. The motherfucking candy business. Hell yeah, hell yeah,
candies where the money is. Man. You know, that's the
thing about candy. You get older, it stays appealing to

(09:30):
people of the same age. I don't know why I
tried to I don't know why I tried to Fast Times.
Tried to Fast Times that one. So Bob's brilliant idea
was something called the Papa Sucker. The Papa Sucker, the
Papa Sucker. Yeah, speaking of Fast Times jokes, because it
is what it sounds like. What would happen when your

(09:51):
dad gets a blowjob. But it was actually a caramel
lollipop designed to not melt in the summer heat. That's
exactly like what would happen if your dad got a
blowjob right there. I'm pretty sorry. Yeah, And like your
dad's penis, it was filled with dangerous chemicals, which is
why it didn't melt in the summer heat. Probably that's
good stuff, not a good lying to keep. You take

(10:14):
the rough with the smooth, as they say, dangerous chemicals.
It's not melt especially when it comes to your dad's generals.
You got to take the rough with when it comes
to a Papa Sucker. Unfortunate, unfortunate. This is really gone
on the rails, but they're not great rails. So despite

(10:34):
the novelty of Bob Welch's Papa Sucker, his first business,
named the Oxford Candy Company, did not go well. Uh.
The cause seems to have again been the fact that
Bob Welch did not play well with others. He had
an increasing series of tins disagreements with his board of directors.
They had a fight over what he described as their
desire to reduce the quality of their products to improve profits,

(10:57):
Welch quit and again walked away. So getting a bit
of a theme, like everything all I want to do
is tortured children for morality tales. Yeah, he just keeps
getting into disagreements with people, be they his professors or
his business partners, and then piecing the funk out. That's
that's early life. Bob Welch not an easy guy to

(11:18):
get along with, So he's also not an easy guy
to dissuade from his sacred task of selling candy. Um.
He set up another candy company, this one in Berlin,
and money was tight because he had a couple of
kids by this point, so he took a second job
as a salesman for E. J. Brack and Sons, which
was one of the largest candy companies in the world.
They're the people who make candy corn, among other you know.

(11:41):
Oh so they're evil too, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Their
history's greatest monsters corn pumpkin. They make candy pumpkin's. Yeah,
the candy corn substances in a bunch of different shapes.
Oh yeah, yeah, you mean the little pumpkins that are
made out of candy corn. I do like the very
specific term substance. Whatever it's made of which you don't

(12:05):
know and neither. It's just a substance. Man tried to
convince me that like, candy pumpkins are better like candy.
Corn sucks, but candy pumpkins are good like No, it's
just more. It's the same. It's a larger piece of
the same terrible candies, just a ball. You know, it
is great. I have this, there's this. So the person
I lived with for a while is a is a

(12:27):
Chinese national, and she introduced me to this wonderful restaurant
in Portland that's like a Chinese street food restaurant and
have this dish that I've never had before that's just
corn and fried batter and green onions and cilantro and
it's fucking awesome. Oh it's so good, Like I don't
know how it's it does sound good, incredible. But you
know what, Bob Welch would really hate the idea of

(12:48):
you living with a Chinese national. He would hate everything.
As soon as I said Chinese, he would have started screaming,
ever the mouth this mouth. Well, I don't know if
I convinced him my friend was descended from Chang Kai check,
he'd probably have been all right with that. He was
a big chang head as that was all around. Yeah,
that would be that would be mouse sedgenation. Mao, Dan

(13:15):
are running. I feel like you had that one in
your head for years and then you hardened it into
a joke about Chang Kai check because if only I'm
tortured by new versions of that same shitty joke all day.
Jordan's made that joke fifteen times on the podcast. I've
just edited out every time. Yeah, you're wise to do that. So. Uh.

(13:38):
This second candy company didn't work very well because it
was the Great Depression and people didn't have disposable income
for candy. Probably was a bad time to start a
candy business. Uh, and his his new company fell apart
in nineteen thirty three. Fortunately, Bras was still making money
and he was doing well enough as a salesman that
they took him on as a full time employee, which
kept him afloat for the next year or so. In

(13:59):
nineteen thirty four, he started his third candy company, the
Midwest Candy Company of Attica, Indiana. Uh And unfortunately his
candy was as bad as his company's name, and Welch's
third enterprise failed. So he said, how's that doing. Was
he still selling the papa suckers? No, he he had
to give the leave the Papa sucker behind when he
had a fight with his business partners. So all the

(14:19):
papa suckers that are getting sold, yeah, they're keeping the loss.
That's the worst loss right there. He's not getting a
dime from any of the papas that are getting sucked
these days, which is a real shame. So, yeah, three
failed candy companies. In a ninety five Bob Welch files
for bankruptcy, which is, you know, pretty on brand for him.
It's the financial equivalent of like running away when you

(14:41):
get into an argument. So so far everything scans. He
returns to Boston and he gets a job working for
his younger brother, who was also in the candy business
and a lot more successful than his older brother. The
James O. Welch company was a success, and this is
what finally brought Robert Welch the wealth he desired. He
was made VP in charge of sales and advertising, and
as the company grew, this meant Roberts spent years traveling

(15:03):
across the country to offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston,
Los Angeles and Seattle. Now a wealthy man, he began
racking up positions on government boards, the Boston Chamber of Commerce,
the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and eventually a role as
a national counselor for the US Chamber of Commerce. Is
anything thats you into a right wing lunatic more than
getting rich off of somebody else's work? Yeah, especially your

(15:26):
brother's work. Yeah right, a regular right wing thing? Is
that how they all get to where they are ahead? Sorry?
Just he takes a lot of credit for the company's success,
but judging by the fact that he had three failed
candy companies and only succeeded when he latched onto his brothers,
I'm gonna guess the James was the talent and the
family might be the case. Yeah, if I recall correctly.

(15:48):
Didn't they make some like pretty like memorable candies? Yeah? No,
the James O. Welch Company has made some some of
the all time great candies. Uh they all sound weird
when yeah, and some sort of weird sugary rope thing.
I don't know, like they made a bunch of candy candy. Yeah,
it's not like it's not like the god fearing modern

(16:09):
candy that we have today. It was all strange and
terrifying and involved four pounds little nibbles, those little so
you can't even sell kids something with horror in the name.
Now it's just social justice warriors. Yeah, cancel cultures, run
them buck And now we can't have our horehound candy.
Why can't I buy a fox stick today? Why can't

(16:32):
I go to any candy shop I want to and
buy a fox stand. I wanted a fox, a fox
stick and a Papa sucker. Come on, So, I just
like it's sugar Mama's Sugar Mama's Jesus way to be
a misogynist day. But I think, but isn't like sugar
Daddy and sugar Baby aren't sugar. They have junior Mints,

(16:53):
sugar Daddies, sugar babies, sugar Mama's Welch is fudge, welch
is Freppe and pom poms. Wow. I finally understand the
popularity of incest porn on the Internet. I think it
all comes from there. It's all the Papa suckers and
the sugar model starts there. I see it. It's all
made making sense. Now, Yeah, you know you say that

(17:16):
Jordan's It makes the Welch company motto suck on a
Mama make a lot more sense. Yeah, that does sound right.
That that all is starting to scan now. So, like
all men who get rich through a mixture of blind
luck and family ties, Robert Welch decided to write a book.
The Road to Salesmanship was about exactly the book you'd
guessed that it was. I found a copy of it

(17:38):
on Amazon today for three ninety nine and the product
description text is wonderful. Uh, just gonna read you the
Amazon description text, which is a little bit off the
beaten path, but it it's quite funny. The Road to
Salesmanship Brackets Pamphlet Robert Welch Robert not capitalized, Welch capitalized
ninety one raring out of print, Collector's item limited available.

(18:00):
The Road to Salesmanship Pamphlet and Brackets by Robert Welch,
this time capitalized. This is a document and then new
sentence that was written by the founder of the John
Birch Society, but written decades before he founded the John
Bridge Society. Now they start calling the John Bridge Society.
This is not about the John Bridge Society or any projects.
Rinciples of the john Bridge Society. This is a unique

(18:22):
look at the early thoughts of Robert Welch, long before
he founded the john Bridge Society. And I enjoyed that.
M hm. So I looked through the book a bit.
I found it online. There's also a free copy. Don't
don't pay Amazon for this fucking book, um, so I
I and don't read it also it's not worth reading.

(18:42):
But I skimmed a couple of chapters just to see
if there was anything entertaining about it, because I was
hoping that like it was filled with I don't know,
a bunch of crypto fascist nonsense, and it's it's it's
even too boring for that. It seemed to have been
mostly folksy and anecdotes about his sales experience and in
inoffensive advice on how to sell stuff. He does start
the he does. I enjoyed that He starts the book

(19:02):
by noting that unlike like loser jobs like bricklaying and lumberjacking,
being a salesman is a true profession, like being a doctor. Specifically,
throw ship on brick layers and lumberjacks. Any idiot can
do those jobs selling ship. That's hard. Salesman do occupy

(19:22):
the same rarefied territory as doctors nowadays. You know, you
think about a used car salesman, you're like, that guy
is a surgeon the same level of quality. Yeah, just
a used body salesman. I mean you think when the
coronavirus first hit, our first responders were the doctors, the nurses,
and the candy salesman. Yeah. Absolutely. Also, I really do

(19:44):
think the candy sells itself. Yeah. I don't know, it
doesn't take much. I'm not impressed by a candy salesman.
I mean, as long as it's not a disastrously gross candy,
or as long as it's not called the Papa Sucker. Yeah,
but it'll be all right. You're gonna be all right.
Eminem's ever needed an ad campaign, yeah, because they absolutely have.
But it's just they had a long one every Christmas,

(20:07):
great ad campaign, but they didn't need them. They would
have sold their chocolate with or without them. Yeah. Meanwhile,
I think the only job that Robert Welch did was
was the Papa Sucker. Suck on your Papa, Oh boy. Yeah,
I didn't expect us to go down anyway for this episode.
Apparently he ends the book on a series of final

(20:31):
don'ts for Salesman, which include and these are. The actual
text of all of these is more boring than you'd expect.
But the don't there funny a knife can have two edges.
Everybody knows that drum is hollow. People rent offices to
do business in remember the future, and professors belong in classrooms. Wait,

(20:52):
those are the don't Those are the don'ts. So don't professor. Yeah,
don't be unless you're unless you're in a classroom. Don't
teach people about candy when you're trying to sell to
That's a good point. Oh, I get you now, especially
don't be a liberal candy prefersior. Oh, you can't do that.
They like to imagine that the knife has two edges.
Thing is is a reference to the many knife fights

(21:13):
that candy salesman got into in the nineties. Wouldn't surprise
my brutal business is dangerous work. You saw what happened
to the Augustus gloup Kid. Yeah, and that that Robin
Williams movie The Candy Man. So the impression that I
got from my limited reading of this book is that
young Bob Welch was something of a pampus know at all, um,

(21:34):
but I got no hint that he was particularly unhinged
or unreasonable, like it's not there's nothing like like. There's
no hints as to what he became in the book.
He just seems like kind of a dick um, which
I guess is one hint, but not not much of
one compared to what happens next. So, during World War Two,
Welch served on the War Production Board. If it seems
odd to you that a candy man would be appointed

(21:56):
to help manage national military production during a global battle
for survival of democracy, yes, yes it does, but that
is what happened. Uh bullets, But Eminem's yeah, just another
kind of Papa sucker. We have a long history of
giving people jobs are not qualified for in this country.

(22:17):
It's it's a creative strength. So, as a result of
his work in the War Production Board, Welch spent more
and more time in Washington, d c. During the forties.
He also became chairman of the National Confectioners Association's Washington Committee.
In nineteen seven, he received the candy industry's highest honor,
the Kettle Award, from Candy Industry Magazine. So he's really

(22:37):
he's arrived. You can't top the kettle award if you're
a candy man for for for what did he receive
this award forgetting all those kids to suck on their
papa's But I mean, like high sales. Was he a
good candy creator? Was he just around win World War Two?
Why did he get this award? He's honestly, I think

(23:00):
ink and this is this isn't written anywhere, but reading
between the lines from everything I read about his his
earlier life, I think his real talent was that he
was very good at getting other rich businessman to like him.
And I like, that's why you'll notice the thing that
he really does best. He wasn't a particularly good business
owner or candy salesman, but he was great at being

(23:20):
on the board of big candy industry companies because rich
guys liked him. It's like, I think that was his
talent that I'll take you a long way in America. Yeah,
I mean. The analog is like people who get a
lot of stuff through networking, Like maybe not they're intrinsic skills.
They might get more gigs or shows or stuff because
of the ability to schmooz and stuff. And Robert Welsh was.

(23:42):
From everything I could tell, it seems like he was
pretty pretty good at that. That's how you get a cattle. Yeah, yeah,
that's how you get a cattle. You get you get
a cattle. Nobody's trying to take the Man's Cattle Award. Sure,
he fucking brought us closer to fascism than any other
living or any other American he's ever lived. But he
won that kettle. Here in the kettle I allowed. Did

(24:03):
you know the weekend is freaking out because he didn't
get the kettle? Do you know that Tom Hanks won
kettle two years in a row, both of them for
his Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates.
That was the best thing that ever happened to the candy.
And okay, you're right, we need we pulled throughout the

(24:24):
next year the Academy award two years in a row.
Cattle two years in a row. Very impressive. All right,
all right? I thought it was because of Philadelphia, but
he doubt he eats Reese's peanut butter cups in Philadelphia.
I don't know if that's true. Yeah, that Tom Hanks
is actually the only man to get the egot k yeah, okay,

(24:46):
So Welch's real gift seems to have been in organizing
people in businesses. He had a genius for managing teams
and forgetting again rich people to like him. In nineteen fifty,
he was appointed to the board of directors for the
National Association of manufact Jurors. He held this job for
a while and through it was in regular contact with
wealthy and powerful people in a bunch of different industries.
And is at this point that I'm going to start

(25:07):
quoting from the World of the John Birch Society by D. J. Malloy,
which is a real fun book about a bunch of
terrible ship Welch first became involved in politics in nineteen
forty six, when he volunteered to work on Republican Robert
Bradford's successful campaign to become governor of Massachusetts. He was
appointed vice chairman of the state's Republican Finance Committee. Two

(25:28):
years later, in nineteen forty nine, Welch went a major
step further, however, when he announced his intention to become
the next Lieutenant governor of the Bay State. Like many
other conservatives and businessmen of the time, reducing government interference
in the economy, and turning back the creeping collectivism of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal were among Welch's principal concerns,
as he made clear in an interview with Courtney Sheldon

(25:49):
of the Christian Science Monitor on the eve of the election.
Our first and most important job, Welch explained, is to
keep us from going any further than we have already
gone in the extension of government ownership of business, operation
of business, interference with business, control of business, and control
of the details of our daily living. He was also
very strongly opposed, he said, to socialized medicine at the

(26:10):
national or state level, to federal aid to education in
any shape, manner, or form, and to federal housing plans.
So nineteen forties, Bob Welch is like, not only funck
the New Deal, fuck the concept of state paid healthcare,
Fuck the concept of federal aid to education, and funck

(26:31):
federal housing. Um he was really ahead. Doesn't know how
to ground how to grow the candy business. You make
dental care free for everyone, candy goes out of the roof,
Come on, man, and the long term business strategy. That's
actually a good plan. I think it is. It is
and if all those don't have to pay Jesus, you

(26:52):
get a second kettle for that you give, you give
poor families their rent for free, They're going to buy
a lot more candy for those kids. True still is
right about education being a real barrier to the candy industry.
Though you want people as dumb as hell if you
want to meet in enough candy. Any kind of nutritional
information in schools is going to be a hindrance. Yeah,

(27:13):
So from the late nineteen forties it was kind of
clear the guy that Bob Wolk was going to turn into.
In a speech in May nineteen forty nine, he argued
that it was no secret that there was a war
going on in the United States between collectivism and individualism.
He described this war as occurring on many fronts. In
the field of commerce and industry, the battle is between
free enterprise and state socialism, he said. In politics, it

(27:36):
is between the people's ownership of the government and the
government's ownership of the people. In sociology, it is between
self reliance and dependence on a welfare state. In international relations,
it is between a brutally aggressive tyranny and the remains
of an independent civilization. So that's I wish, I wish
rich people would just be like, I want more money,

(27:56):
Like I would at least be able to engage with that.
But that's a whole longest of fake bullshit. Leave me alone,
just say you want more money. And what's what's impressive
about it is that it's the exact same rhetoric that
you hear out of the like mainstream Republican Party today.
So like like we which really uh, like the thing
that he predicted more than anything was like the way

(28:17):
to kind of frame this battle, um, but because like, yeah,
that there's a fight between in the in this period,
the like the late nineteen forties and fifties, when like
the government has just finished a long stint of cracking
down brutally on left wing organizing, defining like this is
a battle between free enterprise and state socialism, Like that
was the thing he was doing, was was not just

(28:37):
attacking socialism, which Americans have done for a while, but
defining like the mainstream Democratic Party as socialists and refusing
to deviate from that line. Like that was really kind
of one of Welsh's big innovations. Branding your enemies as
opposed to yourself. Yeah, and also the idea that no,
we're we're not. This is not you know, politics is

(28:58):
not some sort of grand bait between you know, two
sides with different opinions on how things might work, trying
to figure out the way to make a better society.
It is a It is a fight between tyranny, uh
and any hope of survival, and like the other side
is nothing but pure tyranny, evil stuff. Yeah, Like like
our ahead of the Federal Elections Commission said, yeah, it

(29:21):
fucking rules. Yeah. Well described the battle between liberals and
conservatives in the United States as a war that would
determine whether we are going to leave our children and
our grandchildren a world at least as good as the
one we have inherited, or one that has already plunged
into the incipient shambles of a new dark Ages. So
he was right in the inverse, I suppose. Yeah, I
mean he did help bring us into a new dark Ages. Um,

(29:45):
so good on you, Bob. You know who else is
going to bring us into a new dark age? CBS? Yeah,
I mean they're gonna try, but they're gonna do it
with the help of the products and services that's support
this podcast. I made no sense that our products and

(30:06):
services are going to plunge the world into a new
dark age. Know that they're going to help CBS do it.
I think they might. Is it a mask singer on CBS?
Who is the masking? Do they have the same masked
singer every time? Absolutely not. The whole point is guessing
who's behind the mask? Okay, I've never seen it. They

(30:27):
have celebrities and costumes and then they sing and then
a panel of Judge's gas who's behind the mask? All right,
Well that's worse than Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. At
least Sarah Palin was on it. Of course she was.
Never mind, it's today only second to Bill Gates and
Rashida Jones. We're back and we're talking about the masked

(30:49):
singer and how it's almost certainly evidence that the United
States has in fact slid into a new dark age
through which there is no escape. Doctor Drew was on it. Yeah. See,
that's the kind of thing like if if aliens came
down and I had to like defend the continued existence
of human civilization, I think I could do a pretty

(31:10):
good job. Until they brought up clips from that show,
Like I think I could defend us from like war
crimes charges and stuff, but not not that. Here's this
guy who's on the radio giving medical advice to teams
for twenty years. Uh, he's dressed like a hippopotamus, singing
a song poorly. Yeah, you know what, you know what,
what are you going to use? A virus? Big lasers? Like,
just just just do it, just be quick about it.

(31:33):
If the first questions Aliens ask is, was Sean Spicer
a good dancer? We're gonna be in real trouble there.
But you know who wasn't on the mask singer Sean
Spicer Robert Welch. Ye, Bob Welch was not, although he
would have hated that show and called it evidence of
a communist conspiracy. So Bob Welch's appetite had been, you know,

(31:54):
pretty sufficiently stirred by the nineteen fifties, and again he had,
you know, he'd kind of climbed his high as the
candy industry would get him. So like what you see
in the late forties is he reaches the heights that
a candy man can hit and he immediately starts screaming
about how communists are going to have infiltrated the Democratic
Party and are going to destroy democracy. Um like a

(32:15):
normal career check. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that eminem
Mars was run by Marxist collectivists. Yeah, I assume it
was because he didn't have a Wonka vater. You know,
he could only go, I'm gonna make so many more
fucking Willy Wonker reference. Oh it's not just I do
not have trouble seeing Bob Welch is a lot like

(32:35):
Willie Wonka, to be honest, because I think they both
believe business owners should be able to kill children. Yeah,
I agree, and enslaved people. Yes, he is so Bob Welch.
You know, in the nineteen fifties starts getting way more
into politics. Now it's it's unclear precisely when his terror

(32:56):
if the left began. Again. When you read this guy's background,
the stuff that wasn't just written by the Jahn Birch
Society decades later, it kind of comes out of left field,
like he's just a candy man, and then boom, he's
screaming about the New Dark Ages. But however it started,
it was in full form by July of nineteen fifty
when he wrote this in a fundraising letter for a
politician quote. The strategy of the socialists divide and conquer,

(33:20):
call all businessmen crooks so that nobody will speak up
for them, and strangle them with controls and taxation. Brib
all the farmers with their own money into a selfish
pressure group for more bribes. Infiltrate the labor unions and
convert them into political tools. Discredit the medical profession until
the rest of the public clamors for government medicine. Attack
every segment of our population with tactics with which alienate

(33:41):
the support of all other segments. The forces on the
socialist side amount to a vast conspiracy to change our
political and economic system. Wow, your face changed, It was
almost you went deep into that channel, Bob Dark there's
a odd I love. They're including the idea that socialists

(34:02):
were going to discredit the medical profession in order to
convince people to demand government medicine. It's like, No, what
discredited the medical profession was people going to the e
er and getting a forty dollar bill for a three
hour visit. Uh, I'll do it. Yeah, there are two
ways to go on on that thought process. There. So,

(34:25):
this was the first time Bob Well used the word
conspiracy in a public statement, and it would not be
the last. Tragically, wich is increasingly unhinged. Rants about socialism
did not translate into success at the ballot box, probably
because a lot of Americans in nineteen fifty had directly
and recently benefited from massive social welfare projects. Really really,
that's when you actually feel the effects of government working

(34:47):
for you, and you're like, oh, maybe this isn't an
evil thing, you know, And then yeah, but millions of
us didn't starve because of the civilian conservation, you know, project.
I don't think that's a bad conspiracy, to be honest. Yeah,
is the conspiracy that we didn't starve to death during
the depression? Because I like that. Yeah, Yeah, that was
a good one. Yeah. So yeah. He lost the race

(35:10):
for Lieutenant governor by a margin of more than a
hundred thousand votes, which in nineteen fifty was like most
of the country. Yeah with the question, Yeah, so it
was not a close election. Still, it is worth noting
that nearly sixty thou Americans had cast their votes for
Bob Welch and his giant left wing conspiracy. After his defeat,
he wrote about his hopes that this corps of supporters

(35:32):
would in the next year's grow into quote a far stronger,
more militant, and more effective force of political strength than
other campaigns to come. He insisted, this crusade has just
started because it's always a good thing when right wing
idealogues describe what they're doing as a crusade. That that
always it really gets it really gets white men all
hot and bothered whenever you give him the opportunity to

(35:54):
go on a crusade against anybody who's not a white man.
So that I mean, you know, my mom, Jordan's ABC baby,
always be a crusadan. That's what you gotta do. If
I'm not, it's yeah, okay. So Welch tried his hand

(36:18):
at politics again two years later when he attempted to
be elected as a delegate for Senator Robert Taft's run
for president. Yall, remember when Bob Taft ran for president,
William Howard, you are thinking about the first Taft, although
I assumed they were both would have had problems with
the White House bathtubs. No, this was this was Taft

(36:41):
the sequel, or the attempted sequel to taft Um, And
like most sequels, it was not as good as the
original to teot Domes. Okay, Uh, so Taft was actually
running to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was
also running for president at that time. Um. And at
that point, for you know, understandable reasons, Dwight Eisenhower was

(37:04):
probably one of the most beloved men on the entire planet.
The whole highway thing. He hadn't done the highways yet,
but he had helped beat the Nazis. Um he was
for me lately, that's what I'm asking, Okay, he was
even Eisenhower at this point was even actually pretty popular
with a lot of Soviets, including Marshall Zukov, the most

(37:26):
prominent commander of Soviet forces during World War Two. Um.
It's actually, it's actually kind of a fun story that
Marshall Zukov, who again is like the main Soviet general
who beat the Nazis, Like he and Eisenhower were like
real good buddies, and Eisenhower gave him a tackle box
filled with a bunch of hand carved fishing lures, and
Zukov kept it with him until the day he died.

(37:47):
It was right next to him when he died. Really,
that's very cute, Yeah, isn't that. Yeah. I mean, admittedly,
both guys are responsible for the deaths of millions, so
there is yeah. Also but hen that's fair, that's fair,
and other people. But as funny, if Zukov didn't fish, yeah,

(38:09):
he just really loved them Luis. Yeah, it's very thoughtful.
So anyway, the fact that Eisenhower was, despite being a
pretty hardcore Cold warrior himself, capable of seeing communists as
human beings, enraged Bob Welch. And Bob Welch was further
enraged by the fact that Eisenhower supported taxing people to
spend money on things that would benefit the public good

(38:31):
like highways. Back to Bob Welch was Marxism. I don't
need roads. Yeah, you gotta think all all all rich
people are basically like, uh, Doc Brown, like, we don't
need roads. Yeah, exactly where we're going. We just all

(38:53):
just dirgibles for the rich and everyone else as a
mud farmer. That's the glorious dream of Bob Welch. I
do like any alternate universe where dirigibles factor heavily in
the future, I love it. I can't. I can't imagine
Bob Welch getting his way and they're not being thousands
of dirigibles and giant mechanical spiders. Oh yeah, yeah, you're

(39:15):
gonna have some yeah yeah. Yeah. So obviously Ike won
that election. He's kind of hard to beat. Again, if
you really want to win an election, beat the Nazis,
it'll do. Yeah. If Biden, If Biden defeats the Nazis,
I will vote for him a second time. First, if
Biden had if Biden had sacked Hitler's Berlin, yeah, I

(39:38):
think people would have he would have he would have
had a more commanding lead. What Hitler's Berlin in South Carolina? Now,
is that where it's out or yeah? Uh So the
final delegate count in that uh in that convention between
Eisenhower and Taft was a blowout, eight hundred and forty
five to two eight um most so. Again the final

(39:59):
one not particular close, but the first count of delegates
had been much narrower, with five nine for Eisenhower and
five hundred for Taft. It was a contentious and ugly
uh contest between the two men. Um. Eisenhower's people accused
tafts people of stealing delegates. There were a number of
different votes before they got to the final count, and
there were ugly floor fights, and while I did prevail

(40:19):
clearly in the end, a lot of Taft supporters were
left feeling that they'd been cheated. There was kind of
a stop the steel thing, and Bob Welch was like
the main architect of it. Um was Roger Stone like
a baby. Yeah, I mean I think he was a
baby at the time. Yeah, yeah, first, yeah, you can

(40:42):
kind of honestly, the best, like the best way to
describe it might be it seems sort of like what
happened with Bernie Sanders in two thousand and sixteen, at
least in terms of how his his supporters felt. You
had this like candidate who had a strong base of
fanatical supporters who were like, the party leadership has fucked
us out of of winning. And that's probably the case.
It does seem like the Republican Party leadership like tipped

(41:06):
the scale for Eisenhower at the same time, hard to
imagine Taft doing better than Eisenhower at the time. Robert Welch,
who was infuriated, called it the dirtiest deal in American
political history, A new one, yeah, a famous deal that

(41:29):
he was mad about not long ago. Nothing made him
angrier than Taft getting screwed, Robert. That's a Papa sucker
for you. The Bernie Sanders of not wanting people to
have healthcare. So Eisenhower went on to electorally pants his
Democratic challenger in one of the most overwhelming landslides in

(41:51):
the US political history. Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, would
go on to do absolutely nothing of note, but that
is that was ix pp. Most Americans were fine with
more or less everything that went on, And really the
whole fight over Taft being you know, cheated out of
the nomination didn't did not become a major national story.

(42:12):
The early nineteen fifties were a time of broad political
consensus among the nation's white supermajority. Uh So, like again,
people were pretty happy. The Eisenhower years are generally referred
to by again white folks as like a golden era
in America. Um, because most we get to eat alone, right, guys,
we all get to eat alone. This is pretty great.

(42:32):
I love this country. We get to buy terrible houses
in the suburbs. You know, look like me, You look
like me, You look like me. This place is great.
I just love this club. I just bought a house
for eleven dollars and I got a negative four percent loan.
They're paying this house for buying this house. Yeah, I

(42:55):
accidentally fell landed on a fucking uh. What's the what's
the thing that people don't get anymore that they used
to get pension? I forgot what pensions were because they
don't exist anymore for most of us unless you're a cop.
So yeah, again, most Americans, at least most of the Americans,

(43:17):
who again were white and thus the kind of people
who got asked about things at that time. We're pretty
happy with Eisenhower's victory, but not Bob Welch. Taft's defeat
was something of a black pill for him, convincing him
that party politics was hopeless and that party politics could
never save the United States from the looming specter of communism.
Nineteen fifty two was also the year that Welch published

(43:37):
his first political book, May God Forgive Us, which is
solid title give it to the Man, you know, Yeah,
that's that's sinners. Sinners in the hands of an angry
God was already taken at that point, I believe, so
he couldn't use that one. His first book is basically
the title is like it's too late. Yeah, you're fucked ship, Sophie.
Remind remember, remind me to pitch You're fucked to I

(43:59):
don't know, penguinners. Somebody figure out. We'll figure out what
it's about. Later on the Art of rat Fucking his
salesmanship book Zen In the Art of rat Fucking, a
Guide for hard nosed Buddhist political Operators. I would read
that book. That actually sounds great fun, that does so fun. Yeah,

(44:23):
so what one hand? Rat fucking? So may God forgive
us was a full throated condemnation of US foreign policy
in Asia, which Welch saw as the government basically handing
an entire continent over to the commies. He blamed it
on the quote almost unbelievable combination of trickery, chicanery, and
treason of the Harry Truman administration. Truman, as far as

(44:47):
Welch was concerned, was basically a Communist. Now, the fact
that Harry Truman had literally dropped two Adam bombs in
order to scare the Soviet Union didn't seem to change
Welch's political calculus at all. He was a communist far left.
For me, it was an act man. Can't see through
the bullshit. It was actually the deep state who launched
those nuclear bombs. So Truman was, no, don't do it.

(45:11):
He was a hardcore Trotskyist. Yeah, yeah, it was Peter
Struck actually dropped their nukes, if I recall correct. So
Bobby was most distraught by what he saw as the
abandonment of nationalist warlord Chang Kai check to communist war
lord mousey tongue. Uh, that's that's where we get our

(45:32):
Chang Kai Check reference. I always love to have some
good I like to throw in some red meat for
the Chang gang you know. Yeah, universal basic income. Yeah,
the whole thing. Yeah, Mauser C ninety six is that
firep slugs all the good Chinese warlord stuff. So it
was during the research for this book that Welch first

(45:53):
came across a name that would come to define the
rest of his lives work, John Birch. You'll know who
the actual John Birch was. He does. He explained it
to me, and I'm I'm so good at remembering exactly
where the original forgotten. Yeah. I do know one thing
about him, which you will almost certainly say here very shortly. Well,

(46:13):
I actually don't think I think he's bluffing. I think
Jordan's bluffing. I will tell you. I will tell you this.
What's the one thing you know I know that I
remember specifically from you is, according to his friend John Birch,
would have hated the John. Yes, yeah, that is what
I does. Seem fair, although there's debate about that, but
that is one account that you can find for sure. Okay,

(46:35):
we'll talk about his life and you can tell me
how you think after that. Okay, So there's one thing
skimmed about John Burt. Okay, skimmed is even generally. Yeah,
there's one thing that you overheard about John Burt. She
didn't happen to remember hearing this information. And now you
understand my knowledge base. Yes, So the actual John Burch

(46:56):
was born in India in nineteen eighteen to parents who
are Christian mission areas in a three year mission trip
that ended in frustration and disappointment, presumably because most of
the people they met were fine with the gods they
already had. Atlantic writer Thomas Mallon notes that quote evangelical
zeal conflicted with the more material progress being pursued by
the missionary Sam Higginbottom, their boss at the Allahabad Agricultural Institute,

(47:18):
In other words, John Burch's parents wanted to be like,
you know, Super Jesus e with people, and their boss
was more about improving people's material needs and hoping that
inspired them to find Christ. So they got tired of
that we should give you food, and the other guys like,
what if we told him they were going to hell?
That would we work to right? What if food was
contingent the accepting Christ. Yeah, So the guy who cared

(47:42):
about helping people stayed in India helping people, and the
Birch family moved back to Georgia. So that's where John
was born in India, but he grew up in Georgia,
and it would be fair to describe him as growing
up a religious fundamentalist, Like he was not just a
religious man, but by the standards of the time, a fundamentalist.
He went to Mercer Universe City and was described by
a biographer later in life as obstinate, passionate, and headstrong.

(48:05):
I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic here. He hat the
most professor Felix Frankfurt. The most notable state side episode
of his brief life involved participating in a thirteen member
student group against five professors whose theological views they deemed heretical.
The accusing students were decided minority on the Baptist campus,
and charges against the faculty were dismissed after a ten

(48:26):
hour hearing. Birch went on to graduate at the top
of his class, but found himself shunned by a portion
of its members. He began to feel that he had
been used, provoked into the fight by some of Macon's
towny Baptist ministers. So again, he's very hard core religious
and is like willing to accuse a bunch of professors
of heresy. But then after the whole situation shakes out,
he starts to feel as if he's been manipulated by

(48:48):
like ministers in the area, and he kind of like
he kind of has an awakening. And after this point
most degree became less extreme religiously, Like it seems to
have realized he was being manipulated. Why do I feel
like two percent of that debate was entirely about whether
or not Jews were people, Like, yeah, right, there was
a j Q in that. Yeah. So yeah, John was

(49:13):
smart enough to realize he'd been manipulated, and he left
that school. He went to a Bible institute next run
by a popular evangelical radio preacher who suggested that Burt
should travel to China as an evangelist. John arrived there
in September of nineteen forty, in the middle of a
long and almost impossibly bloody war between China and Japan
and a civil war in China. It was a rough
fucking place to be in, not an easy time to

(49:36):
be anywhere really in China. Um So John actually traveled
closer to the danger and moved almost two hundred miles
from where he had initially moved in China to the
city of shang Grau, which was very close to the
front line. Now, while he was a foreigner in China
to sell people on Christianity, it does seem like he
legitimately fell in love with the culture. He learned to

(49:56):
speak fluent Mandarin in just a year, which is not
something you would Yeah, he's he's really very gifted with languages.
Um and yeah, that's probably not the kind of thing
you do if you didn't have some appreciation for the culture. Uh.
The Atlantic notes that this exceeded to tell them their
dirty commies. That's what I need to tell them, their commies. Um. Yeah.

(50:18):
It's also noted by his biographer that he recognized his
own racial prejudice, which was obviously a product of growing
up white and Georgia. She was struggling to overcome it
in the nineteen forties. So it seems like a guy
who like grew up in a pretty regressive background, but
was making significant strides to be a better person, open
to new ideas and new people and new cultures. Definitely

(50:40):
not a villain, would be fair to say. By nineteen
forty two, Birch had become discouraged by the bureaucracy of
the missionary effort in China, feeling as if it distracted
from the more important work of providing meaningful aid for
a nation that was riven by war and starvation. He
volunteered to serve in the U. S. Military mission to
China as a chaplain. Before he got an answer, he
wound up helping to rescue of me Dolittle's raiders who

(51:01):
had just bombed civilians in Tokyo is revenge for Pearl
Harbor and had landed in China. As Birch's biographer notes, quote,
they saw a gaunt Western man with several days growth
of beard, and one of the airman exclaimed, well, Jesus Christ.
The missionary replied, that's an awfully good name, but I
am not. He so to him, all right, a little,
you little clever bastard, shut just say God, you gotta

(51:25):
you gotta, you gotta, you gotta throw out something good there.
You gotta have it like I would have gone with,
that's my dad's name. That's the way you do that.
That would have been a funnier remark if only John
Burch had done more stand up sets, if only Jordan
was around back then to do punch up yea on
social responses. One note, John, one note, Let's take it

(51:50):
one more time. Let's take it from the top. You
can't imagine if you were him giving that response that
like what seventy years later some dicks would be like
arguing about whether or not it was funny on a podcast. Yeah,
I I imagine I would. I would like that. I
would like seventy years from now somebody to be like,
it's pretty good that one time, that's worth of life.
That one time Jordan's responded to someone saying hi to

(52:12):
him was not funny enough. There seventy years from now,
behind behind the bastards where they just go through old
episodes of my podcast and punch it up, correct my mispronunciations.
But you know what, it will be funny. Still, you're
a great transition. Not to most people. Capitalism is not

(52:32):
gonna last that long. Nothing's gonna last that long. But
you do need to do another. Okay, here's a product.
We're back that was a good one. Hey, what do

(52:54):
you what do you? I don't need I don't need
this ship. I don't need don't need this. Seventy years
from now, people are going to be like Robert was
really being bullied by Sophie that one time when he
talked about the John Birch Society that was most noteworthy
thing that happened before World War Three. Let's give them
notes on it, even though none of them survived the

(53:16):
initial nuclear exchange. Anyway, I'll start the Robert Evans Society. Yeah,
I'm gonna wind up being the first victim of space communism.
So Birch would go on to play a minor role
in helping do Little's raiders escape. He was commissioned in
the military, and he worked in the military for a
few years. And you know, at this point US military

(53:38):
mission in China. Broadly speaking on the right side of
things because they're against Japan who was killing millions and
millions and millions of people. So yeah, he's he's not
a completely unproblematic guy, but not a bad guy. Uh
And yeah, his goal after leaving the service was to
do more missionary work. He was going to move to Tibet,
but he never got the chance to do that. Birch

(53:58):
was physically and mentally wreck both from a terrible war
and from repeated doubts of malaria. He got his final
military assignment in August, which was just after the Japanese
surrender was announced. And you know that, like when Japan surrendered,
the Chinese nationalists in the Chinese Communist forces started fighting again,
and Birch was with the U. S. Military Unit and
again sick, and everyone who was round up the time

(54:20):
notes that he was like showing increased signs of paranoia.
He was going through PTSD. He was not in a
good mental place. And the group he didn't have hydroxychloroquin.
Yeah that that actually would have helped because it's an
anti malaria um so Virch's party. The guys he was with,
like the U. S. Military Unit, who's with ran into

(54:41):
a group of Communist soldiers and they ordered the Americans
to disarm. Birch got angry and insulted people, and like,
we don't exactly know what happened, but there was a
fight and Birch was shot dead. So if he had
never learned Chinese, he wouldn't have been able to piss
him off as much. Yeah, the the lesson here is
never learned another another language, you will get murdered in

(55:02):
a field in China by red army soldier. I think
That's what I think. That's what I'm gonna take away
from this. Yeah, quit, quit your Spanish lessons today and
save your own life. This podcast is not brought to
you by Duo Lingo. Yeah, so, uh, Mause Dong actually
apologized for the killing of John Birch to an American
general who was like in charge of the US mission

(55:23):
in the country at the time. Um, but mal kind
of walked away from that meeting really angry because the
American general seemed to be insistent that he could be
should be able to send American troops anywhere inside of
China without like informing the Chinese ahead of times. So
it was a whole it was a whole big deal
and it. It just kind of seems like a tragedy.
Like Birch that probably was being a dick but also

(55:45):
was sick and struggling with PTSD and doesn't seem to
have been a bad guy. It's just a bummer. It's
you know, the war. That war sucks. Yeah, Um, it
would be fair to call him a complicated man, but yeah,
definitely not a villain in death, though his like a see,
was really really simplified thanks in large part to Robert Welch.
He turned John Birch into a symbol because to Robert Welch,

(56:08):
John Birch was the first American to die fighting Communism,
even though he hadn't really been fighting Communism. That actually
been like broadly speaking, trying to help China and they
just got new an argument with some Communist soldiers and
everyone was probably drinking. He was trying to apply nuance
to a situation where there's only good guys and bad guys,
and how dare you ever consider the bad guy's human beings?

(56:31):
That's crazy? Yeah, yeah, Welch does not see any nuance
in this. To him, John Birch is a martyr who
like gave his life to destroy communism. Um, and yeah,
he starts turning him into basically like the John the
Baptist of capitalism. Like that's that's kind of Bob Welch's
goal here, Um, which, yeah, I don't. I never knew

(56:53):
John Birch, obviously because he died decades before my birth.
But reading about the guy, you kind of get the
feeling he'd be a little bit bummed. Yeah, you know
who else didn't him? Fucking Robert Welch. And Robert Welch
did not know him though, not even a little bit.
In nine, Welch started work on what would become one
of his most consequential books, The Politician. He was inspired

(57:13):
to write it during a car ride in New York
with a friend. Basically, he's in a car with a
buddy of his. They're on like a driving to New York,
and he starts ranting about Dwight Eisenhower and talking about
how he's a Communist agent. And after hours of this
one has to assume his friend is like, Hey, why
don't you like shut the funk up and just write
a book about this. That's every time I've been on
the road as a comic. You know, you should write

(57:37):
a book which is a classy way of saying please
stop talking. Um, Welch does not take this as a
classy way of saying please stop talking, and he actually
writes a book. Um. I don't think please stop talking
is something he respected very much as a as a
way of life. Not a real please guy nor a
stop guy. Is the decision to write this book. Yeah,

(58:00):
it's not a great I guess the Leviathan was taken,
so he had to go with the politician. And may
God forgive us was already I've already been taken. May
God forgive us again. May God forgive us? Yeah, may
God forgive us five She's all being forgiven by God.

(58:26):
May we be forgiven? Tokyo drift. It's fun. So Welch started,
you know. So he has this conversation with a friend.
He's like, just write a fucking book about Eisenhower the Communist.
So Welch starts by writing a letter which outlines his
feelings on Eisenhower, and he revises it over the years.

(58:46):
In nineteen fifty six and again in nineteen eight and
basically every year he sends out a new draft of
this letter to anyone who would listen to him, and
he calls it a letter, but by the third revision
it was eighty thousand words long, which you might know.
This is not a lever a letter. Did he just
write I want more money, over and over and over again. Yeah,

(59:08):
though about what he wrote, I feel like some of
my relatives, like holiday letters, might end up being about
that long. I feel like I don't have word counts
on it. But if they feel would see there was
at least one recipe in there, right, there had to
be one recipe for Papa suckers to make a good
old fashioned I mean, I would be really angry if

(59:32):
any of my friends are loved one sent me an
eighty thousand word letter like that one. I would happily
get that one. Other than a letter that I was
supposed to actually read. I mean I would read it.
That's why it goes in the garbage. Thanks for sending
me that letter. That's great letter. Yeah exactly, dear uncle,
I have thrown your letter in the trash. Thank you

(59:54):
for sending me such a heavy package. Uh so yeah. Um.
Since by the third revision it was more than eighty
thousand words long, Welsh decided to start calling it a
book The Politician, as he titled It became the underground
secret text of what became a small cult like following
of friends and admirers who increasingly believed that Bob Welch

(01:00:15):
was something of a prophet. In February of nineteen fifty six,
Welch launched his first magazine, One Man's Opinion. He later
renamed it American Opinion, which really like actually reveals a
lot about his thought process, Like I think this, No
America thinks this. That that idea of the subjective actually

(01:00:37):
being the objective. Yeah, yeah, that's how the artist thinks.
Yeah it is. It is pretty telling. So he left
the Welch Company at the start of nineteen fifty seven
and began preparations to turn his circle of followers into
a formal political advocacy group. Now, by this point, Welch
was convinced not just that Eisenhower was a crooked politician,

(01:00:58):
but that he was a secret comunist agent in the
White House, Like that that Eisenhower was actually a communist
and was was attempting to manipulate the United States into
socialism from the White House. So crazy that that stuff
used to happen in the past. Yeah, it's just like
it's just like how could you be in that headspace
where something like that happens. It's crazy. Imagine looking imagine

(01:01:24):
looking at Dwight Eisenhower and being so far right that
you're like that fucking Marxist. Imagine looking at Biden. Yeah. Yeah,
Like he's the kind of person who, like everyone is
a Marxist if they don't think he should be able
to skeet shoot with poor people like that's that's that's
Bob Welch's politics in a nutshell. Um. Yeah. And Welch

(01:01:48):
wasn't just convinced that Ike was a communist. He believed
that the majority of both the Republican and Democratic parties,
most of their elected leaders at least, were communists and
communists sympathizers. So, uh, Bob Welch, in order to kind
of uh spread this warning about encroaching communism, turned to
the massive rolodex of wealthy industrial magnates that he built

(01:02:08):
up over years in the candy world. He invited all
of these guys to a hotel in suburban Indianapolis in
December of nineteen fifty eight, and he asked them to
stay for two days. He didn't tell them what it
was about or why he was inviting them to a
hotel for two days. Um, and gentlemen, it is a
murder mystery. He kind of. He just said it was
a matter of utmost importance. So he's very cloak and dagger,

(01:02:32):
very secretive and of like the seventeen guys that Bob
Welch invites, eleven of them show up to see what
he has to say. And I'm gonna quote from politics,
real cool characters among those eleven. Yeah, Yes, at least
one Bastard's pot alumni. Yeah. After exchanging firm handshakes in
the breakfast room of a sprawling Tudor style house in

(01:02:53):
the Tony Meridian Park neighborhood, Welch explained why he had
brought this group together. The United States faced an existential
threat from an international communist conspiracy hatched by an amoral
gang of sophisticated criminals. The power hungry, god hating government
worshippers had infiltrated newsrooms, public schools, legislative chambers, and houses
of worship. They were frighteningly close to total victory. Welch

(01:03:14):
felt it in his gut. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to
make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of
enslaved robots in which every civilized trait has been destroyed.
Welch wrote in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society,
the organization's founding history, that would really sound unhinged to
me if he weren't proven one correct on every point there, right, Yeah,

(01:03:36):
I mean I think you got it. I think you
nailed it. There's definitely a group of cunning megalomaniacs who
seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human
race reduced to robotics servitude. But you know, it's Jeff Visas,
it's Peter Yeah, yeah, these guys who would have been
in the John Society exactly. Yes. So the chosen few

(01:03:58):
gathered here would form the vanguard of a new political movement,
an army of brave American patriots dedicated to preserving the
country's Christian and constitutional foundations. Welch christened the group the
John Birch Society, named in memory of a US soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know the guy. Um Yeah. And their goal at
the beginning was destroying the quote Communist conspiracy, or at
least breaking its grip on our government and shouting its

(01:04:20):
power within the United States. So I love I love
guys who are like, oh, there's a conspiracy to kill everybody,
and then they create what is essentially the Knights Templar, Like,
what are we doing? There's a conspiracy? We have to
create a conspiracy to fight We're gonna be a secretive
group of crusaders fighting against communism. What's what's weird and
conspiratory about that? It's the same thing you hear now, Like,

(01:04:43):
you know, there's a there's a coup going on in
our government, so we have to form a counter coup,
of course, and then they're going to form a counter
counter coup against our counter coup. Yeah, yeah, it's like,
what what are we even doing? This is just like
one of those dolls inside a doll or an onion. Well,
it's just it's one of the most effective ways if
you're trying convince people to do something that's blatantly evil
and horrible, the best way to do it is to

(01:05:04):
convince them that the people you're going to be harming
are doing the same thing to you. That's the like
we should have martial law because Biden's gonna put in
martial law, or like that trailer park was going to
gear up in their Forerunners and drive through my neighborhood
firing out the window. So I have to get in
my Forerunner and drive through their trailer park shooting into trailers.

(01:05:25):
There's no other option. They forced me into it also,
by the way. Yeah, so all eleven of the rich
dudes that Welch invited to his meeting became founding members
of the John Birch Society. We're gonna talk about these guys.
Oh yeah, We're gonna talk about these guys a little bit.
One of them was T Coleman, Andrew's former commissioner of
the I R S. Another was the personal aid former

(01:05:47):
personal aid for General Douglas MacArthur, who attempted to nuke
both China and North Korea. Um, good guy. And another
of them was Fred Coke founder father, father, while and
founder of the infamous Coke bro There's yeah, yeah, those
are those are the three that I found worth naming.
There's but Revelo p Oliver wasn't he there too? I think? So?

(01:06:08):
Who's Revelo p Oliver? You know that you know these people?
He was. He was a guy who ended up inspiring
William Luther Pierce writing his his works. Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah,
he became a big fascist guy. I think he was
there at that first he was one of the founding members. Yep,
you're right, you're right, you're right. He's a he's a

(01:06:29):
real thinker of the crypto early fascist Oh yeah, classics
professor from the University of Illinois found it. Yeah, and
one of the Holocaust denial movements leading lights. What a
great meeting to have been a fly on that wall. Cool,
cool people. A lot of a lot of real casual

(01:06:50):
anti Semitism, like like a collection of actual like demons,
not in the way that you like demonize like you,
not in the way you do manize your enemies and
all that stuff. Those guys, even if you're like broadly
in agreement with what they believe, you should look at
that meeting and go get the funk away from me.
You guys are terrif. The ripples are almost astounding even

(01:07:12):
just thinking about like the the idea that Fred Koke,
the father of the Koch Brothers, is in the same
room with Reveal op Oliver, who like inspired and helped
facilitate the writing of the Turner Diaries. Yeah, it's just insane.
It's insane the tendrils. It makes sense, though, because one
of the fun things to do with the far right

(01:07:33):
and with the normal right is to play like the
Kevin Bacon game with the Turner diaries, Like how how
like how? How? How can you tie back a Republican
politician to the Turner diaries generally less than four steps? Um? Yeah,
thanks to the Koke Brothers. Hey, good guys, Good guys.
At least they apologize later on. Yeah, God, I want

(01:07:58):
to I want to funk up the world badly enough,
but also be in a position where I can just
be like Oopsy Tootles. Hey, guys, I'm gonna I'm gonna
be honest. This one's on me. My bad, My bad.
You know, big enough a man to admit when I've
destroyed the entire world, and this is that time for me.
I fumbled. Yeah, Hey, we all make mistakes. We all

(01:08:18):
make mistakes. One for three. One for three is the
best baseball players. In order to make this right, I
have purchased a Poe Buddy's Nerfect shirt and I wear
it for the next four days. Anyway. Sorry to everyone
who's lost leved ones. So from the beginning, Welch patterned

(01:08:40):
the John Birch Society off of the revolutionary communist movements.
He's so despised, which is again another like so you're
saying these people are like the the epitome of all evil,
and you're also deliberately framing your group out of after
them like scared because they're good at it. They are
good at it, like obviously Alex Alex and Alex Jones.

(01:09:01):
I don't know if you know this. We do a
little bit about him, uh he uh. He just put
out like, hey, what we need to do is get
all the truck drivers together and let them strike in
a unified front. And you're like, do you not hate unionization?
Now you want to use withholding of labors and means
of political action interest there's nothing wrong with that? Not

(01:09:25):
well for us, yeah, him, there's something wrong, yes, yeah,
Like you shouldn't be. It's the same thing with like
police unions. It's like you people use fire hoses on
striking workers. You don't get to unionized. Like so from
the beginning, Welch patterned the John Yeah, he patterned them

(01:09:46):
off of revolutionary communist movements. Uh. In his initial like
founding documents, Welch wrote that he wanted the John Birch
Society to be a monolithic body operating under completely authoritative
control at all levels. In other words, he would be
the MAO or the style and of his own counter
communist movement. The Society would be organized into cells of
ten to twenty members, formed after the revolutionary cadres that

(01:10:08):
were common in underground communist movements, Like you read about
the Khmer Rouge and like the founding of that, And
it's like the same basic organizational strategy as you're trying
to avoid, like infiltration, and it works. Yeah, yeah, I
mean it is. Yeah, it works pretty well. There's a
reason he patterns off of this, even though it is ironic.
Welch informed his followers that he had considered a republican

(01:10:28):
form of organization for their society, but that while it
had certain attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions, it
failed under quote less happy circumstances. The United States, Welch insisted,
was beset by less happy circumstances, and the extent of
socialist infiltration in American society made any republican system open
to infiltration, distortion, and disruption. Robert Welch was, in short,

(01:10:52):
creating an underground fascist political party. His disdain for anything
that even smacked of democracy was quite clear. Welch told
his follower is that democracy was quote merely a deceptive phrase,
a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud. So I
want more and I don't want people to be able
to vote that I should give more money. Yeah, I

(01:11:13):
do not want people to be able to vote for
anything really, because they will vote for socialism. Yeah. I
mean it's the same ship that you see today. It's
there's nothing new here. Uh, well it was new here
that like, that's what's interesting about this is that he
was like, like, now we have it's shocking to a
lot of people that we have all these mainstream elected

(01:11:33):
Republicans saying openly like we're not a democracy. Democracy is bad.
We don't want democracy when there's this much socialism going around.
If you let people choose things, they'll choose dangerous socialism.
And Bob Welch was the guy fucking sixty years before
that who was being like, this is exactly the way
we should be framing things. That question is do you

(01:11:55):
think he is he a believer? Do you know what
I'm Yeah, I think so he is he's not the
same kind of right wing grifter we're used to seeing
all over the place. I don't think he's a grifter.
I don't think he's a grifter. He's already rich for
one thing, and yeah, well, like rich people don't continue
the grift. I think there is an element of a
grift in what he's doing, but he's not. He's not.

(01:12:17):
It seems to be like there's a grit, isn't the focus.
There's people who serve the scam and then there are
people who are like, no, his ideological. I think he's
more on that side. Well, all right, I think he's
an ideologue. I think he believes in what he's doing
reasons Well, of course, don't don't worry about that. He's not.
He's not just in it for the money, right. He

(01:12:39):
wouldn't be doing this if it was just to sell
like pills, pills. He's not a pill guy. Um. So
I'm gonna quote now from the World of the John
Birch Society by D. J. Malloy. Quote. All in all,
it was a hierarchical structure derived not just from the
many years Whilch had spent in the world of business,
but also from his openly, if perhaps surprisingly expressed admiration

(01:12:59):
for the organist national tactics of his communist foes, acknowledging
the similarity between Lennon's notion of the Dedicated Few and
his own plans with the John Birch Society. In the
Blue Book, for example, the always capitalized founder explained that
he was willing to draw on all successful human experience
in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve
any sacrifice of morality in the means used to achieve

(01:13:20):
an end. If I'm if I'm in that room, I'm like,
he's going to be removing people from pictures pretty soon. Yeah,
he's he's gonna be erasing us from history. I don't.
I don't trust that guy. He's going to be relying
on everyone's wife to some letters to people while the
men get drunk and yell about commies. So membership is

(01:13:43):
one of the Dedicated Few was not free. Monthly dues
were twenty four dollars from men and twelve dollars for women,
which probably says something unfortunate. Life memberships cost a thousand dollars.
There were monthly chapter meetings for the first two years
of the John Birch Society. Things went along smoothly enough.
Word of the Society was past to mouth, and cells
of Birches sprang up all around the nation. Welch addressed

(01:14:04):
them all monthly in the Society's bulletin, which he wrote
every word of It was not always easy to get
freedom loving Americans to sign up for an organization that
was fundamentally undemocratic, monolithic, and authoritarian instructure. Welch spent a
lot of his time explaining to members why such a
strict and unbending hierarchy was necessary. He told them that
the US was a shoreline of beautiful houses threatened by

(01:14:25):
a rising flood. You can assume the floods non white people.
The Birches in their ilk were lonesome boys with brooms
trying to sweep it back. What they needed, Welch insisted,
was a dynamic boss to get them organized by barking this.
This is again from one of his writings. This is
like so he's like, he's describing like the US as
a bunch of beautiful houses and there's this flood threatening it,
and were brooms beating it back. And all those boys

(01:14:49):
need is a boss who's willing to shout this, hey,
you guys, all of you drop those pretty brooms. You
fellows down there on the end, start running for empty bags.
You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those
bags with sam And you men here, all of you
start looking those bags of sand to put on this wall.
The communists have busted up so badly. You fellows over there,
all of you get the heaviest clubs you can find.
Spread yourselves out along the whole length of this wall,

(01:15:11):
and don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs
you find monkeying with it. Don't even hesitate to break
the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall
if you were sure of their evil intentions. So is
set up perfectly, and it's the best country that has
ever existed. But there are circumstances that are happening right
now that really we need a dictator. Yeah, I'm afraid.

(01:15:31):
So there's just nothing. It's just it's impossible to avoid
the circumstantial. We need a dictator, otherwise people are gonna
spend all their time swinging brooms and not beating people
in the head making sandbags. I find it fun that
this starts as like a metaphor for trying to organize
people to deal with what is presumably like a tsunami

(01:15:51):
or a flood condition, and instead turns into beating communists
with sticks. There's a flood coming, punch the water. Don't
do anything to help it. I mean, every year or
so I go out to the coast and get into
a fight with the ocean, and I I think that's
why we have not had a major tsunami on the

(01:16:12):
West coast of the United States and years I just
get drunk and scream, you think you're bigger than that
because of me. I beat the ship out of the ocean.
Every couple of years. Georgian has seen me. Sophie Jordan
does talk like you have to if you don't, if
you don't, like, if you don't stand up to bodies
of water, they're gonna walk all over you. Literally, we're

(01:16:32):
all nodding like very stoic nods. Fight the ocean. That
could go into the that could go in the don'ts
of the art of salesmanship right there, I think, yeah,
I would have started John Birch Society. That's just themed
at getting people to fight the ocean. Fight various forms
of nature yeah, well mostly oceans, punch trees. All of

(01:16:59):
what Birch was preaching was good enough to earn his
society the membership of one of my favorite Bastards Pod characters,
Philish Laughly. She and her husband some guy joined in
nineteen fifty nine. Uh so, yeah, that's Goodishly, I thought
Jordan was going to bark at that. Yeah close. Not
a schlaer as as we used to call ourselves, not

(01:17:22):
on the schlaugh squad. So that same year, same year
Schlaughlely and her husband joined the John Birch Society, Robert
Welch launched a crusade to recall newly installed Supreme Court
Justice Earl Warren. Justice Warren was a liberal who had
written the majority opinion for a decision that overruled state
and local segregation laws. We're talking brown versus the Board
of Education here, um. Robert Welch did not like Brown

(01:17:46):
versus the Board of Education? Why not not wild about
the fact that black people got to go to the
same schools as white people now and Welch's eyes, Earl
Warren's opinion on this case meant that he was a communist.
Welch insisted in letters that Warren had violated his oath,
and he harangued his most gifted followers to turn the
effort to recall the justice into a movement. Privately, Welsh

(01:18:08):
wrote that frankly, with the left wing control now so strong, insidious,
and ubiquitous in Washington, I am not deceiving myself that
we have very much chance of really bringing about the
impeachment of Earl Warren. Although we might, but I don't
think that is really as important as dramatizing to the
whole country where he stands, where the Supreme Court now
constituted under him, stands, and how important it is to

(01:18:28):
face the facts about the road we are now traveling
on so fast. So that's really interesting to me because
in all of his public like publications he makes it
clear that this is a real effort to recall Earl Warren,
and I think we have a real shot and we're
going to get this guy out of the Supreme Court.
And his private letters he's like, we're never going to
do this. It's all about making people angry. It's about
the rhetoric. It's about the idea of the fight, yeah,

(01:18:51):
which is not like anything else that's happened since no
A lot of size on this episode when he passed
in the future compared Trailblazer. Yeah, so you get a
feel for Bob Welch by reading his letters. I'm gonna
read you now an excerpt from when he sent to
T Coleman Andrews, who's the former commissioner of the I
R S let her start with I mean kind of.

(01:19:17):
It begins with yeah, that's what I hear out of
all of his writings. The letter begins with Welch's regret
that Andrews turned down an opportunity to spearhead the effort
against what Welch refers to in all caps as the
movement to impeach Earl Warren. He calls it that in
all caps every time he types about it. He's a
caps guy, So you do well on Twitter. Is Frankfurter

(01:19:38):
not on the Supreme Court anymore? Or I think he's
dead at this point? Okay, I was gonna say, because
you gotta go for him first, you know, he's your guy.
So uh yeah. He starts the letter by being like,
it's a bummer that you don't want to help me
impeach Earl Warren. He goes on to discuss gathering storms
in the South, which is a reference to the Civil
rights movement, which Bob Welch stated he thought was directly
caused by the Communist party. Quote if blood does flow there,

(01:20:02):
which I agree is entirely likely, it will definitely be
because the Communists planned it that way. They have schemed
for so long to be in position to fan little
fires of civil disorder into a huge conflagration of civil
war if and when they need such a horror in
their moves to take us over. And John Birch, though
a minister devoted to peace, was entirely ready to fight
for a cause which he considered worthy of sacrifice. So

(01:20:24):
devoted to peace, devoted to piece. This guy something, well,
he's he's referring to John Birch, who he did not
in saying that, like, we have to be like John Birch,
who was devoted to piece but was willing to get
into a drunken argument with communists soldiers get shot to death.
That sounds like most right wing heroes, like Colonel Travis
he was a drunk. I don't know that he was drunk.

(01:20:46):
He may just have been drunk on malaria. I'm just
assuming everyone in the forties was wasted at all times.
That's a good idea. John Birch hated Earl Warrant. That
is actually a little known fact that I found that
in the right. This up nonsense. Yeah, so uh. Welch
portrayed the John Birch Society's work not as part as

(01:21:07):
an activism but as an attempt to unite all Americans
under an anti communist banner. In the nineteen sixty issue
of The Bulletin, he wrote, it is of vital importance
to the communists to split Americans into all kinds of
groups snarling at each other. And so he said, the
Society would not seek to split up Americans. We are
fighting communists period, nobody else. They put people into all

(01:21:28):
these groups, and I don't think that we should have
black people, Jewish people, Chinese people, liberals, the LGBTQ community.
I don't think we should have any of those people
those specific groups that I have chosen to deny as
people see left as evil. Yeah, they're defighting us by
allowing people who aren't like me to exist. Yeah exactly.

(01:21:51):
So um yeah. Welch by the mid nineteen fifties had
grown increasingly convinced that the entire US government was basically
Communist all the way down. And one of the main
triggers for this was when Congress voted to censure Senator
Joe McCarthy in nineteen fifty four. Um, so he like time,
by the way, right right on time. Yeah, they got

(01:22:13):
to him quick. So yeah. And because Eisenhower was a
big part of finally censuring Joe McCarthy after letting Joe
McCarthy be Joe McCarthy for years. Uh, Welch, you know,
I saw this as more evidence that Ike was a
secret communist. Is kind of on the wall. Yeah, there

(01:22:34):
he after just two whole red scares he stepped in.
So the politician Welch's book about Ike remained largely a
secret work. He circulated it among his most loyal inner circle.
He handed it out to like leaders in the movement,
but regular members didn't get to know. It was kind
of like they're Zeno. Like when you get high enough
up in the Birch Society, you learned that Eisenhower is

(01:22:55):
a communist. Um, Welch noted about his book and one
private letter quote are rather extreme. Precautions with regards to
this document are not due to any worry on my part.
As to what might happen to myself, But many of
my best informed friends feel that having the manuscript get
into the wrong hands at the present time might do
far more damage than good to the whole anti communist cause. Yeah,
it's it's it's Alex Jones, I mean, and Alex Jones,

(01:23:17):
as a little bit of a spoiler, was grew up
on John Birch material, so not a kwinkie dink So
for the Bircher rank and file, Eisenhower was just a
crooked politician who was much too friendly with foreign leaders.
At one point in nineteen sixty, Ike agreed to attend
a summit with Nikita Krushchev, British Prime Minister Harold McMillan,
and French President Charles de gaul Welch considered all three

(01:23:40):
of these men to be card kerry and communists, which
just fair. With Khrushchev, I'll say that, yeah, famous communist
Charles all right, Yeah, didn't he do rituals and dance?
And I don't know, I can't remember. I mean, he
was pretty problematic in a lot of ways himself, but

(01:24:01):
communist is not an accurate was a very problem Yeah,
so was McMillan. For that matter. Um. Yeah, So Welch
considered again all these guys to be communists, and he
had the John Birch Society send a heavily publicized message
to President Eisenhower. If you go, don't come back. Um.
The slogan was sent out in a blizzard. Yeah, you

(01:24:24):
will be exiled, yeah for hanging out with famous communist
Charles de gaul If you go. What a great threat.
If you go to that meeting, the conference room will
be your elbow. So the slogan was sent out in
a blizzard of postcards, letters, and telegrams, and within the
society it was actually quite controversial, since many normal Birchers

(01:24:45):
were not as a rational as the group's founder. Nationwide,
it sparked curiosity for this strange, semi underground organization. One
curious individual was Jack Mabley, an investigative reporter and columnist
for the Chicago Daily News. So, hey, hometown here out. Yeah,
maybe a technically candyman is a hometown hero for Chicago too,

(01:25:06):
But that's different both hometown heroes to Chicagoans. It's the
only way to stop a bad Chicago Chicago. Uh so, yeah,
maybe starts looking into the John Birch Society. He went,
he like kind of finangles his way into attending a meeting,
and he talks with a number of its members, and
by hook and by crook, he comes into possession of

(01:25:27):
a copy of The Politician. Uh yeah, so it's it's
made its way out of the society's inner circle and
into the hands of a journalist. Now, unfortunately Robert Welch's
prophecies are come true. Yeah, people are going to know
what they're crazy. I'm gonna quote now from DJ Malloy's
book on the John Birch Society, writing about Mayble's you know,

(01:25:48):
the article he writes about The Politician. Quote, this fantastic document,
maybe reported accuses President Eisenhower of treason. It flatly calls
him a communist, and for three d and two pages
attempts to document at the charge. And he provided an
exact quote from the book to prove his claim, one
that would haunt Welch in the Birch Society for years
to come, but which was mysteriously although understandably absent when

(01:26:09):
the book was officially published in nineteen sixty three. It
was well, I too think that Milton Eisenhower, the President's brother,
is a communist and has been for thirty years. This
opinion is based largely on general circumstances of his conduct.
But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated,
conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an
accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable. But

(01:26:30):
it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any
reasonable doubt through some violation of confidence. Someone who had
been sent the letter in nineteen fifty eight had passed
on to Mablee, and the journalist had naturally selected for
quotation the most extreme statements he could find, without the
benefit of any explanation or modifying import of the context
around them. Violation. He's like, hey, can I take a

(01:26:51):
look at your copy of that? Yeah, sure, violation. Well
it's like and and I love the idea that that's
out of context. Yeah, that's the thing they gets, that
thing people say about like Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones
like that. The defenses they always make is that you're
just taking us out of context. Um, and that's what
fucking Welch in the John Birch Society do with this document.
They claimed that he was like, well, I said, I

(01:27:12):
didn't say that Eisenhower was a communist agent. I said
that I thought he was based on evidence that i'd seen.
That's different saying he's a communist. Yeah. The rest of
those eight thousand words are the stone cold dead to
rights evidence that's journalist quote unquote is not taking into

(01:27:33):
account and that is really malpractice exactly. Yeah, So most
people did not buy Welch's defense. In fact, a Saturday
Evening Post reporter who wrote about the John Society in
nineteen seven stated that it's members spent most of their
time talking to outsiders answering questions about Welch's Communist Eisenhower conspiracy.
So like this kind of dominates the public perception. They

(01:27:55):
become a bit of a joke to a lot of
Americans because you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, they got their revenge,
didn't they. So this did not stop the John Birch Society,
although it did draw attention to the group for the
first time. This may have helped as much as it harmed.
Tens of thousands of Americans continued to flock to the

(01:28:15):
John Birch Society, eventually growing to ninety five thousand members
in nineteen sixty five. Welch's stated goal was a million
American Bircher's, and as the nineteen sixties got rolling, it
looked like he might actually achieve it. And that's part
one of the John Birch Society. What a Dick an
erotic novel. I don't think he's a good guy. No,

(01:28:41):
I think he sucks and I think so and I
need a papa sucker at least soothed me. Gonna go
suck on a papa while we take a quick break.
You guys want to plug your plug ables before we
roll out. We got a podcast. Think people can find
that you wrote a book. I did write a book.
You always have to remind me to actually tell people that.

(01:29:01):
It's the Quiet Part Loud. You can get it at
the Quiet Part loud dot com. That's where for free
check out Knowledge Fight, check out the Quiet Part Loud,
and check out nothing else. If you do anything else
on the internet, you have you have offended and harmed
me personally and I and my forthcoming for vengeance. Uh,
God doesn't need to forgive us. God what my podcast

(01:29:27):
out

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: How The John Birch Society Invented The Modern Far Right