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Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
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About This Book
How a notorious far right organization set the Republican Party on a long march toward extremism At the height of the John Birch Society's activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, "Birchers" believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society's extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump. Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States.
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"In addition to Dallek's scrupulous research, he knows how to tell this story with a clarifying elegance and restraint."
"A timely, critically important contribution to the history of our present political and constitutional crisis."
"Dallek's dearth of sociological data...makes it difficult to evaluate his insistence that the GOP didn't need to placate the Bircher base ..."
"Dallek argues convincingly that despite the end of the cold war, amid which the Birchers were born, its antipathies and suspicions continue to animate and inflame."
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