What was most frightening/inspiring about the Birch Society was that, despite its flaky reputation, it worked. It was an ideological juggernaut, structured like a corporation, and filled with dues-paying members who were that rarity in sixties American politics: right-wing activists. One contributor to the 1964 anthology The Radical Right estimated that, at its peak, the JBS had more than four thousand chapters and a hundred thousand dues-paying members. (Exact figures are unattainable, as society membership lists have always been classified.)
Mass-mediated memories of the sixties always give prominence to the SDS, the Yippies, and other left-wing organizers and protesters, but the Birchers were out there too, banging on doors, organizing protests, and writing to their congressmen. And that wasn’t all they did. As it turned out, the Birchers weren’t playing by Dale Carnegie’s rules.
Welch once said, “It is one of our sorrows that, in fighting the evil forces which now threaten our civilization, for us to be too civilized is unquestionably to be defeated.” The answer, then, when fighting Communism, was to use Communism’s tactics. Like an underground army of Hugh Beaumonts, the Birchers collectively heard and obeyed. Through his monthly Bulletins, Welch taught his local chapters the finer points of fifth column activity. In order to better oversee the proper dispensation of education to America’s youth, members were advised to seize control of their local PTA. Members were also to infiltrate groups suspected of having socialist leanings and to attend and disrupt “pro-Communist” gatherings—which could mean anything from heckling a professor at a nearby university to protesting a Russian art exhibit. Also, as the JBS’s popularity began to wane, the head Bircher set up front groups and ad-hoc committees to lure those who wouldn’t be caught dead at a Birch Society cell meeting. Such fronts included the well-known Committee to Impeach Earl Warren, the innocuous sounding Freedom Club, the Realtors for American Freedom, and the double-dutch mouthfuls of the Committee Against Educating Traitors at Government Expense and the Committee to Warn of the Arrival of Communist Merchandise on the Local Business Scene. It was often possible for an everyday citizen to attend a Birch meeting without realizing it.
Birchers also took it upon themselves to flood newspapers, radio, and television stations, and local, state, and national government offices with barrages of letters and phone calls, whenever one or the other dared to act in opposition to Birch philosophy. Other psychological blitzkriegs literally brought the war home to the Birchers’ perceived enemies. Repeated anonymous late-night phone calls; false fire alarms; embarrassing and annoying classified ads featuring the mark’s home address—these and other “I didn’t order these pizzas”-level pranks filled the Birchers’ black bags.
