Wow, I wrote some very profound material in this thread. I was just rereading some of my posts, and I forgot what good stuff is buried inside the noise of this very important thread. Perhaps there might be the odd-person still hanging on to hope here who might actually take a moment to review this thread in order to gain new insight. Just block out all the noise, as there is a lot of it.
The following is from "Judas Goats" by Michael Collins Piper, a Bible for understanding controlled opposition:
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Chapter Twenty-Two
The John Birch Society:
A Premier Case Study of The Judas Goat
Although William F. Buckley, Jr. and his fellow “responsible conservatives”
made many noises critical of the John Birch Society, founded by
Massachusetts candy maker Robert Welch in 1958—therefore leading
many to believe that the Birch Society and Buckley were, in some ways,
at odds in their approach to dealing with the problems of the day
(despite the fact that both the Buckleyites and the Birchers claimed the
mantle of “anti-communism” and “conservatism”)—there are many
intriguing elements surrounding the history of the John Birch Society
that have largely remained ignored by many Americans who believe the
Birch movement, in the balance, made a valuable contribution to the
anti-communist cause.
The truth is that Buckley’s attacks on the John Birch Society—
echoing much of the same rhetoric about the Society appearing in the
major media in America—effectively brought massive publicity to the
Birch movement that it would not have otherwise received. And the
very fact that the major media gave so much attention to the society is
an interesting point indeed. For the direct result of all of the attention
was that the Birch Society grew exponentially and effectively “corralled”
a very substantial group of American anti-communists into the ranks of
an organization which—as we shall see—was very suspect indeed.
The following essay is an account by the author of The Judas
Goats—The Enemy Within of his own brief journey into the strange
world of the John Birch Society. While highly personal in nature, the
essay reflects much of the thinking of many others who had their own
individual experiences as members—and ultimately former members—
of the JBS.The essay—originally published in the July-August 2005 issue
of The Barnes Review, the bimonthly historical magazine based in
Washington—speaks for itself.The essay was originally entitled “My One-
Minute Membership in the John Birch Society.”
Many questions about the John Birch Society (JBS) have
passed through my own mind since I first became aware
of the existence of the JBS when I was a sixteen-year-old
high school student. Honestly, I’m fully aware that there will be many
good people who will be utterly inflamed by my remarks, but let’s let
the chips fall where they may.
My first awareness of the JBS came at a time when I was becoming
embroiled (for better or worse) in political affairs. Having pretty much
determined (on my own,with no input from friends or family) that I was
some sort of “conservative,” I quickly began the process of trying to
learn as much as I could about various “right wing” political organizations.
That led me to my local libraries where I savored all the standard
conservative writings that were available.However, I did not restrict my
reading to literature that reflected my own point of view.Always openminded,
I was curious to see what “the other side” had to say.
As a consequence of that, I zipped through a wide variety of volumes
coming from what might be described as the “liberal-left” and I
continually came across references to a mysterious and controversial
“John Birch Society” and its founder, Robert Welch. In my own mind, I
said,“If the liberals consider the JBS and its founder to be so bad, then
they must be pretty good.”
No sooner had I made up my mind to try to find the address of,and
contact, the John Birch Society, than there—lo and behold—in my own
local public library—I spotted a copy of the JBS publication, American
Opinion, sitting right there on the shelf, alongside so-called “mainstream”
publications.
With great excitement, I began leafing through the professionallyproduced
JBS journal, thrilled to have access to the forbidden facts and
hidden information that I just knew I couldn’t get from Time or
Newsweek or even in the pages of the so-called “conservative”weekly,
U.S. News & World Report.
That particular issue of American Opinion had a chart that captured
my attention. It was an overview—country by country—of “communist
influence” (by percent, on a scale of 0 to 100) in the various
countries of the world.
I knew, of course, that communists were in control of the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe and that they also had widespread influence
throughout the West. I was acutely aware that communist influence, in
one form or another, had gained a stranglehold in my own United States
of America.
However, I was surprised to see that, according to the JBS, communist
strength in America was far more powerful than I would have
estimated. I don’t recall the exact percentage, but I recall that it was
extraordinarily high.
“Thank God,” I thought, as I studied the chart,“that there are a few
countries, such as Argentina and Chile, that are in the hands of anti-communist
military leaders.” But when I turned to those two republics, I
found that the JBS listed communist influence there to be in the range
of 70 to 90 percent. I was startled, needless to say.“Maybe they know
something I don’t know,” I thought. But I continued to read on.
Next I turned to the state of Israel. Based on my own earlier
research I knew that Israel’s economy was based on a strictly socialist model,
funded by billions in U.S. tax dollars. In addition, I was also aware
of the predominant influence of Russian and Eastern European Jews in
the worldwide communist movement and knew that many Jews of a
Marxist bent had been involved in establishing the Jewish state.What’s
more, I also knew that not only had Israel been strategically assisted, in
its founding years, with arms and support from the communist bloc, but
also that tiny Israel was the only nation in the Middle East with a freelyflourishing
communist party.
With all of this in mind, imagine how surprised I was to learn that
—at least according to the JBS in its American Opinion chart—communist
influence in Israel was hardly more than 10 to 20 percent!
At that moment—having only had a JBS publication in my hand for
the first time ever, for less than several minutes, in fact—I realized that
something was very much amiss.
Skimming the rest of the chart, I soon saw that, in the Birch worldview,
Israel was probably the only serious bastion of anti-communism on
the entire face of the planet. Not even the anti-communist regimes in
Argentina and Chile seemed to qualify.
It was then I knew, pure and simple, that those at the highest levels
of the JBS had fallen under the influence—perhaps the outright control—
of the insidious force of political Zionism.That was enough for
me. I knew then that the JBS was not for me. My “membership” in the
JBS, if truth be told, lasted little more than a minute.
Little did I know at that time, however, that I had learned, rapidly
and quite easily,what thousands of good,honest members of the JBS had
to learn with much more pain over a considerably longer period of time.
I had no idea that there were disillusioned former members of the JBS
all over the United States who had, in one way or another, figured out
what I had discovered on my own, without ever even having been a
member of the JBS.
The most notable among the former Birchers,perhaps,was the late
Dr.Revilo P. Oliver, an eminent classicist and former U.S. intelligence officer
who, for several years, was quite active in the JBS and very much
publicly identified with the group. However, Oliver quit the Birchers
precisely because he knew that Birch Boss Welch was determined to
carry water for the Zionist cause and Oliver wanted nothing to do with
it.
[...]
In any case, some four years later, when I went to work in
Washington for The Spotlight, I learned the full history of the Zionist
infiltration and manipulation of the JBS.At The Spotlight I gained access to
fascinating archives accumulated over the years, pointing to the
strange origins—and directions—of the JBS.There I discovered the facts
about the little-known “Rockefeller connection” to the JBS. In the August
1965 edition of Capsule News, Morris Bealle laid it bare. He wrote:
Robert Welch (and his brother Jimmy) received a
tremendous pay-off from the House of Rockefeller two years
ago, for organizing the John Birch Society and sitting on the
Communist lid for the past seven years.The total pay-off was
$10,800,000, less the value of the family candy company
which is reputed to be maybe $100,000 or $200,000.
On October 1, 1963, Rockefeller’s National Biscuit
Company announced the “purchase” of the James O.Welch
Candy Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Moody’s
Manual of Industrials, and in Standard-and-Poor’s
Business Index, NBC gave the alleged purchase price as
“200,000 shares of National Biscuit common stock.”
According to The Wall Street Journal for Oct. 1, 1963, NBC
common stock was selling for $54 a share on the New York
Stock Exchange.Today it is selling for $58. Thus the Welch
brothers were given $10,800,000 “just like that.”
Candy people say the whole family business, with
plants and five sales offices, was hardly worth $200,000.
Welch will tell those dopes who will believe him that
National Biscuit is not a Rockefeller concern.
Again, Moody’s Manual will trip him up. It lists as two
of the directors the names of Roy E.Tomlinson and Don. G.
Mitchell. [Both are] members of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Further, they are a pair of Rockefeller’s ‘professional
directors.’ Tomlinson is also a director of their
Prudential Life and American Sugar Refining.
It was American Sugar that was directly concerned
with the financing and embargoing into the hands of
Communist Russia of Cuba in 1959. They made the deal
with Castro which ended freedom on the island of Cuba and
made possible those Havana missile bases designed to wipe
out American eastern seaboard cities.
It also appears that the Rock Mob financed and promoted
the organization of the John Birch Society. How else
could it have gotten millions of dollars worth of newspaper
publicity by the phony “attacks” on Welch that came with
dramatic suddenness.
And, for the record, in more recent years, famed populist historian
Eustace Mullins, author of The Federal Reserve Conspiracy, The World
Order and other classics, has said publicly—more than once—that his
research led him to the conclusion that the Birch Society was indeed a
creation of the Rockefeller empire, based on precisely the same data
that led Bealle to reach his assessment. So Bealle was not standing alone,
by any means, in making these allegations.
In the matter of the privately-owned Federal Reserve banking
monopoly, the JBS took some mighty peculiar positions. In the
September 1964 issue of American Opinion, one of Birch’s favorite
economists, Hans Sennholz, wrote an article about the Federal Reserve
System.The article stated of the Fed as follows:
The control rests absolutely and undividedly in the
hands of the U.S. president . . . They [the people who run
the Federal Reserve System] are agents of the government,
not corporate officials with the proprietorship rights and
powers customarily of stockholders of corporations. The
Federal Reserve System is not, nor has it ever been, a ‘private
banking institution’ that is busily filling the pockets of the
bankers, nor is it the evil product of an international conspiracy
of foreign bankers . . . .
The late Norbert Murray, an outspoken Montana patriot who was a
career journalist in the mainstream media and a former New York publicist
for major business interests, succinctly described the article as a
“pack of lies” that “protected the fraud of the system.”
Publication of such an article could only mislead good members of
the JBS who were trying to sort out the myths—from the facts—about
the nature of the privately-owned and banker-dominated Federal
Reserve and of the powerful international banking houses that play
such a major role in the manipulation of U.S. foreign policy.
In any case, while working for The Spotlight, I did indeed learn
much more about the JBS than I would have ever imagined possible.
It was at that point—in the late 1970s and early 1980s—that the
JBS began actively promoting the interests of the state of Israel and hyping
spokesmen for its powerful lobby in Washington, discarding any
ambiguity about where the Birch Society’s controllers stood on the
issue of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Much to the dismay of longtime JBS loyalists, The Spotlight’s hardhitting
senior journalist, the legendary Andrew St. George, reported at
length and in devastating detail on the mysterious manueverings of one
John Rees, a Britisher by birth and one with quite a murky past,who had
squirreled his way into the inner circles of the JBS, establishing himself
as the real “power behind the throne” during Robert Welch’s declining
days. The Spotlight pinpointed Rees’ disturbing role in operating his
own intelligence and spying operation which was, in many respects,
quite akin to that of the Anti-Defamation League, the all-powerful
American adjunct of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.
For my own part, as a student of the JFK assassination, I discovered
the fact that like Robert Welch in his heyday, the John Birch Society—to
this day—endorses the discredited Warren Commission fraud that “one
lone nut” assassinated President Kennedy.
Morris Bealle pointed out early on (June 19, 1965) in his newsletter,
Capsule News, that Robert Welch had declared Bealle’s book, The
Guns of the Regressive Right—which pointed a finger in the direction
of the CIA—to be “all wrong” and told his followers that it was not the
CIA but Lyndon Johnson behind the JFK assassination.
According to Bealle,“We examined thoroughly all of his 1964 bulletins
. . . [which] were filled with attacks on Earl Warren and curious
expressions of hearty agreement with him on the myth that ‘a
Communist [meaning the Decoy Man Oswald] killed Kennedy.’”
In fact, as I pointed out in Final Judgment, my own book on the
JFK assassination,Welch played a major part in directing conservative
attention away from a possible role by the CIA in the JFK assassination
and in the direction of the Soviet KGB. This was the same propaganda
line of top CIA figure James J.Angelton, the CIA’s pro-Israel liaison to
Israel’s Mossad.
So while the Birchers think Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone-nut
communist under the direction of the Soviet KGB—the theory put forth
by the Mossad loyalist Angleton—they are very careful to avoid pointing
toward the culpability of the CIA and certainly never ever dare mention
that—as documented in my own book—the Mossad also played a critical
role in the assassination conspiracy.
On Nov. 21, 1988 the Birch Society’s New American magazine touted
the Warren Commission Report, saying that “evidence demonstrates
beyond a reasonable doubt” that Lee Harvey Oswald—one lone communist
nut—killed JFK.
In any case, however, the JBS acceptance of the obviously dubious
claim that one lone communist nut killed JFK remains in force. In 1995,
I sent a copy of the second edition of my book to a vast array of individuals
inviting them to debate the thesis of the book with me—on
radio or in any public forum or in writing. I gave them the opportunity
to refute the book in the manner they wished. One of those to whom
I sent a copy of the book was Bill Jasper, senior editor of the Birch
Society’s New American.To this day—more than ten years later, and following
the sales of almost 50,000 copies of Final Judgment to enthusiastic
readers around the world—I have yet to hear from Mr. Jasper.
My experiences with the JBS—as far as the issue of the JFK assassination
is concerned—were certainly instructive. But (years before) I
had already figured out that the Birch Society was somewhat dubious,
based on my research and that of others and on the study of Birch publications.
Certainly, there are many fine Americants who are supporters
of the JBS but my “one minute membership” was enough for me.
In closing this essay on the role of the Birchers in “shifting” the philosophy
of many good Americans, it seems appropriate to recall what
Richard Gid Powers, in his book Not Without Honor: A History of
American Anti-Communism, had to say about Robert Welch and the
John Birch Society:
The John Birch Society was, if truth be told,more in the
nature of a study club devoted to the reading and discussion
of Welch’s literary production than a threat to the country. .
. Welch’s notoriety was largely bogus, concocted by enemies
on the left and within the respectable elite.
They knew from past experience that a weird figure
like Welch, with his oddball turns of phrase, could be used
to discredit the anticommunist right and the entire anticommunist
movement. In 1961 the liberal Democrats . . .
needed someone like Robert Welch.
If Robert Welch had deliberately decided to reduce
everything valid anticommunists had ever said about communism
to an absurdity, to turn himself into a demonstration
of every ludicrous delusion that had discredited anticommunism
in the past, to make all anticommunists look
like dangerous fools, he could not have done a better job.
So while, on the one hand, self-styled “responsible conservative”
William F. Buckley, Jr. was denouncing the Birch Society, the American
“mainstream”media was providing massive publicity to the JBS and corralling
many Americans into this dubious movement.
There could be much more written. However, considering even
just what we have examined, can there be any real doubt that America
would have been much better off if Robert Welch had stayed in the
candy business and stayed out of politics?