Matthew Dallek

I was prepared to be very short and sharp with this book, as too many of the current-events books I've invested time in recently have displayed the shelf life of fresh milk, and turned out not to be worth the investment of effort.

Dallek though has produced a useful history outlining the steps it took to reach our current state of affairs in American politics. As while the adherents of the John Birch Society had no monopoly on conspiratorial thinking (that is as American as apple pie), no show more body of people worked harder to reject a reality that they just could not accept, to the point that their beliefs in regards to White Supremacy, "traditional" religiosity, and a singular unwillingness to come to grips with modern economic organization basically subsumed the operational practice of the Republican Party. The obsession with Communism was really just the icing on the cake.

The real meat here is in how Dallek lays out how the JBS practiced politics at the grass-roots level, and made themselves so useful to the mainstream Republican organization, that even though they would have preferred to sideline Robert Welch and his legions, the GOP was not a mass party without their participation. The trick was to promise to take their concerns seriously, while continuing to implement standard-issue Republicanism. The rise of Donald Trump is an illustration of how well that worked out.

If there is one particularly salient section in this book on that issue, it's that Dallek debunks the notion that William F. Buckley of the "National Review" was some great opponent of the JBS. Yes, he found Robert Welch to be an annoyance, with Welch's propensity to smear GOP leaders with the term "traitor," but Buckley had nothing but admiration for the hard work at the precinct level these folks did on behalf of the party.

I found the portions of this work dealing with the heyday of the JBS to be the most useful, as the later half dealing with the subculture that outlived Robert Welch is something that is more like life experience for me. During that time when I worked at the spear-carrier level of GOP politics in the mid-to-late 1980s, I wondered at the blithe attitude that the "red-meat" social and racial conservatives could be exploited with there being no consequences. show less

Birchers by Matthew Dallak highlights the influence the extreme right has always had on the so-called mainstream right, in this case focusing on the John Birch Society.

This well researched work connects many of the dots that together make up the shift from a general right-wing way of thinking to an extremist sort of radical right which has now taken over the right in general and the Republican party in particular.

This is one of several books I've read over the past couple of years that show more trace the influence of fringe ideas on the trending of right wing thought toward exclusionary and hateful. The only subtle differences in these assessments seems to be how much resistance the writer wants to attribute the "traditional" or establishment conservatives. In other words, did the gradual shift occur grudgingly because the establishment needed some of the extremist vote, or did the establishment gradually work the ideas into their body of thought because to accept all of the rhetoric at once would alienate too many of their centrist voters? I lean toward the latter, but it is impossible to know with certainty what anyone, especially politicians, actually believe versus what they accept as part of compromise. But they seem to have consistently accepted these "compromises" with gusto, weaponizing them almost immediately upon inclusion.

This book, by using the Birchers as the focal point, offers a wonderful narrative to the more recent shifts in the political discourse from the right. While the reader will learn a lot, what will also be interesting is seeing things you knew about from a different perspective and within a very specific narrative. Very few of the events that might have seemed like isolated and unusual occurrences are really so isolated.

This is such a good read that even those who don't usually read political nonfiction will enjoy it. Granted, if you think all people are valuable and not just the ones who look or worship like you, you will like the book better. Those with misplaced and unjustified feelings of superiority and exceptionalism won't enjoy it so much, these people hate looking in the mirror, at least a mirror without a lot of distortion.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Great read on the early Reagan

The John Birch Society was "a group funded by wealthy businessmen and organized at the grassroots level who changed the Republican Party" and led to the rise of modern conservatism. From Michael Kazin on the back cover.