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A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism
Bottom of the pile
18
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
20/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Edward H. Miller
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Date:
February 21, 2022
This biography of Robert Welch, the candy magnate and white supremacist founder of the John Birch Society, documents how the man's paranoid philosophizing has continued to infuse right-wing politics in America. The John Birch Society was long seen as occupying the farthest reaches of the political spectrum but became central to Republican grassroots operations during the Reagan presidential administration, and its influence can still be felt today.
What The Reviewers Say
Miller’s study of Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, presents a plausible account of America’s slow descent from the 1950s into the abyss of post-truth politics.
... Welch’s white supremacy is addressed in direct terms, though the book’s discussions of his antisemitism are less clear.
Edward H. Miller’s eye-opener of a biography claims that reports of Welch’s banishment have been greatly exaggerated—at least when measured by the enduring influence of his thinking. Miller argues that today’s politics of fact-free conspiracies owe much to Welch, an interesting character who (paranoid conspiracy theories aside) was a serious player in conservative politics from the 1950s through to the 1980s. He emerges from Miller’s telling as an example of the symbiosis of anti-tax,
anti-regulation Main Street businessmen, anti-Communist ideologues and social conservatives who helped shape the modern GOP.
... [an] immersive biography.
