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A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism
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19/99
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26/99
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85/99
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34/99
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About This Book
The first full-scale biography of Robert Welch, who founded the John Birch Society and planted some of modern conservatism's most insidious seeds. Though you may not know his name, Robert Welch (1899-1985)—founder of the John Birch Society—is easily one of the most significant architects of our current political moment. In A Conspiratorial Life , the first full-scale biography of Welch, Edward H. Miller delves deep into the life of an overlooked figure whose ideas nevertheless reshaped the American right. A child prodigy who entered college at age 12, Welch became an unlikely candy magnate, founding the company that created Sugar Daddies, Junior Mints, and other famed confections. In 1958, he funneled his wealth into establishing the organization that would define his legacy and change the face of American the John Birch Society. Though the group's paranoiac right-wing nativism was dismissed by conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley, its ideas gradually moved from the far-right fringe into the mainstream. By exploring the development of Welch's political worldview, A Conspiratorial Life shows how the John Birch Society's rabid libertarianism—and its highly effective grassroots networking—became a profound, yet often ignored or derided influence on the modern Republican Party. Miller convincingly connects the accusatory conservatism of the midcentury John Birch Society to the inflammatory rhetoric of the Tea Party, the Trump administration, Q, and more. As this book makes clear, whether or not you know his name or what he accomplished, it's hard to deny that we're living in Robert Welch's America.
Reviews
"Miller is alert to the many stages of the American right's 'theme park journey': the careers of Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater and George Wallace; the conversion of blue-collar ethnic Catholics in the North and white supremacists in the South to a new model of Republicanism ..."
"Miller ends A Conspiratorial Life by warning that parts of the United States — filled with a cacophony of cable news pundits, talk radio hosts, and social media blowhards — have 'become Welchland.' Indeed, Welch could only have dreamed of having the president's ear, let alone of creating a conspiracy theory that would propel a mob through the doors and windows of the Capitol itself."
"Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, this is an enlightening study of an overlooked yet influential figure in American politics."
"sometimes tedious ..."
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