Speaker 1: Today, we're going to be speaking with Edward Miller, who's a professor at Northeastern
University, also author of the Book of Conspiratorial Life. Robert Welch, The John Birch Society
and the Revolution of American Conservatism. Really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's my pleasure, it's a great opportunity to discuss the book and to talk
with you. Speaker 1: Yeah. So to start with, you know,
we've been thinking a lot about this line in conservatism that got us to where we are
today and we could sort of start that story at a lot of different points in time. I think
an interesting place to start by might be if we go back to Robert Welch and the John
Birch Society to start kind of creating our understanding of how things got to be the
way they are. Who was Robert Welch? And talk about his relevance to modern day conservatism
a little bit. Speaker 5: Well, Robert Welch was a candy
manufacturer from the south, he was originally from North Carolina and he was a very successful
candy manufacturer. He created such childhood favorites as the sugar daddy and the junior
mints. And he he decided he was his career was done for making money, and then he decided
to get involved in anti-communist activity and establish an organization called the John
Birch Society. This organization tended to be of a conspiratorial, conspiratorial bent,
with the major highlight being that Welch believe that President Eisenhower was a communist,
which of course, is is ridiculous. But he continued to establish this John Birch Society
and in it, and it became the the most powerful anti-communist organization in the in the
early 1960s, late 1950s. And as I argue in the book, had influence even into the 70s
during the the the age of Reagan, of which we're probably still in.
Speaker 1: And when we think about the McCarthy era and and sort of that reactionary fear
mongering basis on which, you know, we need to be suspicious of people with certain ideologies
and we need hearings, et cetera, that paradigm in different forms has has really persisted
throughout the 20th century and into the 21st among the American right wing, has it not?
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely, the the the claims of treason that are that were echoed by McCarthy
that were echoed by William Jenner, he was another another senator that were echoed by
William Noland. These these kind of aspersions continue on into the Republican Party in in
the present. Speaker 1: It didn't have to go this way in
the sense that I mean, I think an interesting anecdote is William F. Buckley, who we don't
have to be fans of his or praise him or anything to recognize that Buckley's instincts were
very much antithetical to the idea of Welch. I think in my understanding and this kind
of red scare type stuff where Buckley seemed to think that the right was going to do better
by taking a sort of less reactionary approach, is that accurate and why? I mean, did did
that succeed for a period of time until it again reversed? Or what's the history of that?
Speaker 5: I think it succeeded for a brief period of time, but Buckley was an excellent
order and historian. He was a gatekeeper of the far right and he was also, I mean, this
was his pet project to create the conservative movement of the of the 20th century. And he
saw a threat to the conspiratorial behavior in the John Birch Society. And he concluded
that it was best that John Birch, that Robert Welch leave the organization or be settled,
as he said into the editorial room where he could do less damage. And for a for a long
time, we thought that historians, we thought that Buckley had excommunicated Welch, but
I began to take a look at what was going on and what the John Birch Society had done after
the period that they were traditionally known as being in exile. The period 66 to 68. But
I found that I found in my research that Welch changed the organization focused on ad hoc
issues through ad hoc committees and pushed pushed issues that became consonant with the
Reagan revolution. Issues such as abortion issues such as the Equal Rights Amendment,
anti taxation issues. These all became part of the part of the fabric of the Reagan revolution
and pushed there the Reagan revolution in that particular direction. In the 1970s, so
I found that Welch Welch was more significant than we thought.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that had the sort of Buckley wing one out you would not have
seen maybe the Tea Party, the Trump wave. Q And on even a lot of the kind of modern
outcroppings of this, the anti-vaxx. It I mean, I guess we can't say for sure, but it
seems that those movements follow much more from the conspiratorial Welch side than from
maybe what Buckley wanted. Speaker 5: Well, it's of course we can't we?
Historically, it's a tough yes, the tough. We can't determine with exactitude that that
would happen. Our conspiratorial thinking has become more popular in our in our culture.
Ever since Watergate in the 1970s, when when the church committee came out, as is when
the Iran contra affair occurred in the 1980s, when the you had figures like Alex Jones and
Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s pushing their their views. But I think it's true that if it was,
if it was just Buckley and Welch was not part of the part of the the scene, it probably
would have been a lot different. Speaker 1: I'm curious to what degree the
realities of media and the development of the internet had as as a role in all of this.
There's this book Waves of Rancor, which is sort of a look at, you know, the history of
how did talk radio and AM radio become right wing and the connection between churches and
like low power religious radio. You know, there are a lot of those nitty gritty stuff,
but it seems to me that the more conspiratorial Welch type thinking lent itself much better
to the radio space and media space than maybe what Buckley was more known for. And I wonder
to what degree the realities of media influence the direction of the American right?
Speaker 5: Oh, I think without a doubt, the the the influence of the of talk radio, especially
after the fact the end of the fairness doctrine. Well, you definitely see an increase in conspiratorial
thinking. If you if you take a look at how Rush Limbaugh phrases, you know, conspiratorial
thinking on his show, he would just allude to something in the facts, you know, and say,
Well, this is what I read in the facts to avoid libel or something like that. But he
did imply this conspiratorial thinking very, very casually, along with Michael Savage and
other other conservative radio hosts who had who had adopted that tradition, Glenn Beck.
So these figures are important as well. I'm not diminishing their role. But before all
this comes Robert Welch, who is setting up this this way of thinking this different way
of thinking. And he is joined by other radio folks like Dan Smoot, who is a a Dallas based
former FBI G-man who worked for H.L. Hunt, who comes to his own conclusion and concludes
that it was not a communist conspiracy per say that was driving things but a. but a globalist
conspiracy? Yes, that which is part of the. Part of the language that you see in Steven
Bannon's politics today, speaking of not of a not of a conspiracy of communism, but a
globalist internationalist and and Welch was speaking that language by the end of his life
as well. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do. Is it fair
to say that right now the American Right is as conspiratorial as it's ever been, as indicated
by, I mean, you know, recent polls of Republicans more than half believe Trump is actually the
winner of the 2020 election. The degree to which they question whether vaccines work,
whether COVID is real or, you know, however we define is is there any time at which the
bulk of the Republican Party believed things like this?
Speaker 5: I can't I can't in my in my knowledge of all of all the time in the 1980s and the
1970s, in 60s, I think the early 60s there was a significant belief in that particular
direction. The but I think that the pan, the combination of the pandemic and the UM, the
Trump's refusal to admit the reality that he lost the presidential election and his
willingness to tout this to his his base continue to tout it to his base has had a significant
impact. Speaker 1: So what can reverse the course
of a movement that is so committed to that type of thinking? I mean, I think, you know,
to some degree, if they start losing, they would probably be forced into rethinking it,
I guess. But I mean, what sort of forces can really turn around a movement like that?
Speaker 5: Well, I always but you know, I always. This is a great question, and I always
consider this myself when I'm encountered with somebody who has a different perspective
of from how I look at how I would look at something that I would see as not nefarious.
You know, I would just see it as the mistakes of individuals. Or let's take the loss of
the loss of China in the 1950s. In the 19th after 1949, many Republicans were blaming
the Democrats for the loss of China, and they were focusing on the treason of elected officials.
Dean Acheson and George Marshall, even even Harry Truman. And they were pinpointing Welch
included, where we're pinpointing that Truman was a traitor, or at least Acheson and Marshall
were traitors in this process. I'm more apt to see individual mistakes and the fact that
the Chinese people had decided on Chiang Kai shek in that particular case. So I look at
it as an opportunity each time to talk to people on a personal level and try to speak
to them about the history, their history of it and. You know, if that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: right, right, I mean, I think the question that a lot of people are kind of
grappling with in looking at the direction of the Republican Party over the last six
years in particular and then even even just a little bit longer is sort of like, what's
the kind of endgame here? And part of it may be that this is just an indefinite means like
there's there's not necessarily an end in the sense of, you know, earlier in the week,
we looked on the show at a clip of Glenn Beck recently interviewing James Lindsey, where
they talking in extreme like, it's almost like a modern red scare type language about
they're going to put us. If we're not in cages, we have to be ready to resist, and it's just
like it could be applied to anything. It's like, Are you talking about vaccines or Democrats
or China or like, what almost is just this universal language? That's not super clear,
but you're supposed to be very scared about it. And it seems almost like it's just a means
to its own self-preservation rather than to some end.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would agree, I think, and I listen to a lot of the, you know, the far
right shows because it's part of my job, and if you hear some of the things coming out
of my Glenda, all of the the pillow guy. Yep. For instance, he's he's still trying to overturn
the ballots. And yeah, I've interviewed him. Speaker 1: And I'll tell you, he seems to
be a true believer. I mean, in my conversation with him off air, he seems to really believe
this stuff. Speaker 5: Oh, OK, so you've talked with him?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Wow, that's fascinating. It was. It was. I would. Yes, I would put
him down as a true believer, and I would put Robert Welch down as a true believer. I have
notes after reading this book, I have no sense that this was done for histrionics. He wasn't
doing this to earn money. He gave he gave every cent of his of his millions to to fight
windmills. In a sense, he was the Don Quixote of of of the conservative movement. And but
there are still folks who are committed to this. Canard that we see is a canard and but.
How to deal with that, I think we're all wrestling with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it remains an open question for sure. The book is a conspiratorial life.
Robert Welch, the John Birch Society and the Revolution of American Conservatism. We've
been speaking with the book's author, Northeastern University Professor Edward Miller. Really
appreciate your insights today. Speaker 5: Oh, it was a great pleasure. I
very much enjoyed it.