Kill a Commie for Christ
When I was in high school, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the country was as split politically as it is today, but the division was centered on a single issue: the war In Vietnam. I went to an all boys Catholic high school where the faculty was comprised of fairly liberal religious brothers, mostly Irish and raised in the Bronx, and male lay teachers, several of whom were either members of the John Birch Society or at least greatly sympathetic to the virulent anti-Communist obsession of that organization. This dichotomy led to many spirited political debates as the school fostered personal critical thinking and an openness to differing views that would shame today’s academic community and its rancorous debate about the meaning of freedom of expression.
The Birch Society was founded by candy magnate Robert Welch, the creator of the Sugar Daddy, and named for an American Baptist missionary who was killed by the nascent Communist government in China. Welch was determined to use his fortune to rid the country of the Commie plot to overrun the country and impose a Marxist ideology on the populace. In the 1950s, through its mouthpiece, American Opinion magazine, it “identified” major figures behind this broad-based conspiracy including President Dwight Eisenhower (the hero of D-day!), Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Th Birch Society opposed the United Nations, the civil rights movement and fluoridation of drinking water (as part of the plot to control our minds). We looked forward to the annual edition of American Opinion that contained a map of just how much of the world had turned “red.” I believe that around 1971, the U.S. was estimated to be 75–80% Communist controlled. The Birchers staunchly supported the war as a part of the necessary battle to prevent the “Domino Effect,” the fear that the fall of Vietnam to the Communist North would invariably lead to the takeover of the adjoining countries in Southeast Asia.
The Birch Society’s theories were deemed so ludicrous that arch-Conservative William F. Buckley tried to sever any connection between the organization and the mainstream Republican party in fear that it would contaminate the presidential prospects of Barry Goldwater (not to say that Goldwater didn’t share some of their wackier ideas). Buckley wrote in an April 1961 National Review column, that the left could “anathematize the entire American right wing.”
For many years, it seemed as though the Birch Society’s influence had faded to the point of non-existence. But, like all bad ideas, the concepts it preached, if not the organization itself, has made a comeback. At first, it seemed that the Birchian descendants were limited to deep red states, none redder than Texas, where Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Louie Gohmert personified the present day conspiracy theorists. But, as this strange and terrifying election comes to a close, it is evident that the entire Republican party has either fallen heads over heels for Birchian like warnings about a Communist plot or have for perceived political advantage acceded to the trope that every opponent is either a Marxist or a Communist.
It can seem comical that such mainstream figures as Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi are labelled as Communists, or the slightly less offensive “Socialist” or “Marxist.” But you cannot read a political analysis in any form of public media in which a Republican does not use such terms in referring to a Democrat. The head of the ticket, Kamala Harris, is an even easier mark, as the leap from her father’s career as a “Marxist economist” to her support for better child care and abortion rights as indicative of her Communist leanings is virtually seamless in the minds of Republicans.
There are many valid issues to debate in the upcoming election, not least the economy, immigration, inflation and women’s health, but to believe that Harris’s election will lead to the destruction of the world’s biggest and strongest economy and our principles of democracy is a distortion of massive proportions. But, hey, if you can buy that Dwight Eisenhower was a Commie, then I guess anything goes.
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