Robert Welch

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

A new biography of Robert Welch traces the origins and history of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and provides historical perspective on the Trump era.

In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.

Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.

Six decades ago, leaders in the GOP backed away from the conspiracy theories peddled by the leader of the increasingly influential John Birch Society.

The American right doesn’t need the John Birch Society these days, but that is because it’s adopted the Birchers’ extremism wholesale.

In his history of the John Birch Society, Matthew Dallek says Republicans allowed the extreme fringe to “eventually cannibalize the entire party.”

Why it’s foolish to think the modern GOP will ever break with its lunatic fringe.

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it.

“Together with other ‘know nothing’ organizations scattered through the country, it represents a basic, continuing phenomenon in American society.”

Musk and Trump are capitalizing on decades of confusion and broken promises to lay waste to a crucial agency.

Reconsidering Earl Warren's place in U.S. history.

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

Fifty years ago, parents united to get the far-right John Birch Society out of their schools.

The decline of the John Birch Society offers possible strategies for containing the MAGA movement.

The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?

A new book shows just how porous the dividing line has been between the far right and mainstream conservatism.

Each time political minorities advocate for and achieve greater equality, conservatives rebel, trying to force a reinstatement of the status quo.

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.