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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe New John Birch Society..the Tea Party. Great column by Tampa Bay Times Robyn Blumner.
The new John Birch SocietyIf you've ever wondered what happened to the John Birch Society, author Claire Conner of Dunedin can tell you. The radical right-wing group that was briefly a player in national conservative politics in the 1960s is back, under a different name: tea party.
She should know. Conner's new memoir Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right is a fascinating inside look at the Birchers in their heyday and her story packed the house last month at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading at University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
True believers don't get any truer than Claire Conner's parents, who sacrificed their livelihood and even their relationship with their children in the name of the cause. Her father, Stillwell Conner, was a founding John Birch Society member in 1958 and its Midwest recruiter. As a child Claire was pressed into service and at 13 years old was the Birchers' youngest member.
....Eventually Conner, now a self-described progressive, realized "it's good when the government does things. Old people having health care (Medicare) is a good thing. Social Security is a very good thing," Conner said. Her parents didn't believe in either though they both accepted the benefits, of course.
Something I never realized until I saw this on Twitter this week.
The John Birch Society put out a wanted poster for JFK just before he arrived in Dallas.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)Yup, Fred Koch.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)FarPoint
(12,473 posts)Connecting the dots.....we just can't seem to put out the fire of hate....
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)with Fox and other right wing outlets of the Republican Noise Machine spouting hatred and lies.
TBF
(32,118 posts)If I could make a few changes in this country I would start with:
1) Repeal all the decreases in the capital gains tax of the past 30 years
2) Double minimum wage
3) Take FOX news (which is really bad entertainment - not news of any sort) off the air.
FarPoint
(12,473 posts)The New and Improved John Birchers....Tea Party. Along with Heritage Foundation.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... they fund a whole bunch of winger think tanks.
FarPoint
(12,473 posts)These brothers are terrorist. Their convictions, the unlimited wealth, their obsessive desire to control people to comply with only their beliefs....I say this behavior resemble that of Osama Bin Laden......Think about the comparison.....
ReRe
(10,597 posts)I call them traitors. "Terrorists" works too. They sure do like to hide like terrorists. Actually, the JBS is a whole lot like the KKK. The KKK hid right in plain sight. When they were on one of their night cross-burning rampages, they wore those hoods so nobody would know who they were. Back after the Civil War, they were the vigilante groups who worked only under the cover of darkness and took the law into their own hands. Don't get me started on the similarities...
FarPoint
(12,473 posts)from JBS and now evolving through Kochs......
Capt.Rocky300
(1,005 posts)INdemo
(6,994 posts)H.H. Hunt founder of Texaco
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)whole lot of ugly. My mother rarely cursed, but she always did when Birchers were talked about on the news back then.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Checking out where to order it. From someone who lived it...should be fascinating.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)In many cases with novels it saves almost 10 dollars. Doubt it will in this case.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Hardcover: 264 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (July 2, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080707750X
ISBN-13: 978-0807077504
Product Dimensions: 1 x 6.7 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
Looks like it was published in July this year. Going to try to order it and see.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)March 2014 - but another amazon page says it is in stock. So, I'll give it a try.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Good luck.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)but I found on another page that it was already in stock and I could order it right away
eppur_se_muova
(36,317 posts)grammiepammie
(59 posts)This book is great. I actually got it on my kindle from Amazon. It is a real eye opener. You will thoroughly enjoy it.
progressoid
(50,011 posts)She is a very kind person. She rarely got upset. The two exception that I distinctly remember was when she was watching the Watergate trials and when some Bircher propaganda came in the mail.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Now we know, beware what the mentally ill are capable of.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Deja vu all over again.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)SunSeeker
(51,787 posts)tavernier
(12,412 posts)for Thanksgiving, Maybe I should look up this brilliant lady!
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)She had speaking engagements at several Democratic functions around the Tampa Bay area. I wanted to attend, but was out of town.
I read her book, and it sounds like I grew up in a family just like hers.
http://claireconner.com/
tavernier
(12,412 posts)But perhaps even more intense since I was a refugee from a country that had been handed over to the communists after Yalta.
No love lost between my family and FDR back then.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I love the quote she posts from Frank Schaeffer. He of all people would understand her life growing up.
The John Birch Society had a huge impact on American politics. They were responsible for the lurch into insanity. The religious right, the Tea Party and the takeover of the Republican Party by extremists cant be understood unless you understand the paranoid xenophobia Birchers injected into America. This book is about a journey through and out of that Bircher netherworld. Its a vital piece of the puzzle to understanding the madness that overcame America and a moving story about one persons journey back to sanity.
Frank Schaeffer, Author of Crazy For God
http://claireconner.com/in-the-media/in-the-news/
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)was home to an avowed communist like Oswald. And out of a city of armed, anti-socialist, anti-civil rights, religiously intolerant baptists, the left wing guy with nothing to gain shoots the progressive President.
Maybe I don't drink enough.
JEFF9K
(1,935 posts)... dangerous. Shows what a difference thousands of hours of free false advertising from Fox News and talk radio makes.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Scary stuff.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)There wasn't RW radio and Fox then, so the JBS media outlets were pretty much billboards and pamphlets. I remember them. I'd say they weren't as big nationally as the Tea Party, but they did have pockets of regional support. They weren't taken very seriously, even by Republicans (who were about the same position on the scale as Third Way Dems are now). Ike would be more liberal than Obama. 1956 GOP platform:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25838
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)The Republican Party was formed 100 years ago to preserve the Nation's devotion to these ideals.
On its Centennial, the Republican Party again calls to the minds of all Americans the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln: "The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere."
Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."
Thanks for sharing.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Amazing how far right both Parties have moved since then....Democrats occupying about the 1956 Republican ground, and Republicans occupying about the John Birch Society ground. Although JBS was formed until a couple years later, in response to the "liberal" Republican establishment. Sound familiar? BTW, Chief Justice Earl Warren (much maligned by DU CTists) was a Republican appointed by Eisenhower who turn out to be uber-liberal. Many liberal rulings came from his Court.... Brown vs Board, Miranda, One Man One Vote, etc.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)"Democrats occupying about the 1956 Republican ground, and Republicans occupying about the John Birch Society ground."
Well said.
Triana
(22,666 posts)....her MIL was the meanest, evil damn witch she ever met. Abusive as hell and controlling as hell. Treated my aunt like SHIT and controlled her husband's every move -- including their money -- finding any way and means to send it to JBS.
The stories are hideous. These people are extremist. Fearful. Ignorant. Conscienceless. Single-minded. Narrow-minded. Severe. I mean totally fascist through and through.
I HIGHLY recommend Claire Conner's book (I have it on Kindle and have read it twice). Between it and my aunt's stories of her mother-in-law the John Bircher - that's enough for me to know these people are frankly SICK.
I'm one of those who is not completely convinced Oswald killed Kennedy. But I wouldn't put it past a JBS-er to have done it -- or had it done.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)You also might want to get another book "Gold Warriors", by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
A lot of the participants in this crime were Birchers. Guys like Lansdale, and company. A shows where a lot of their funding came from.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Looking forward to reading it.
FloriTexan
(838 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Seems like it has been long enough.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)I didn't realize the Koch brothers father was a founder of the John Birch Society - and that wanted poster is amazing.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)One of them is even going to run against our Rethuglican Governor because he allowed a state health care exchange to be created!!!
russspeakeasy
(6,539 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Interesting note...my son was at the JFK memorial in Dealey Plaza. He was thoughtful enough to bring me the Dallas Morning News Memorial edition they reprinted from 1963. Brings back lots of memories. Sad ones.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)Kicking so more DUers can see this. I did know that the Koch Bros dad was a cofounder (if not THE founder) of the JBS. I WAS NOT aware they were responsible for that poster seen along the route that day.
What I want to know is this: Do they have siblings that we haven't heard of? Do they have children, grand children and great grandchildren?
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)He's conservative, but nowhere near as bad as his 2 brothers. He even sued them one time for drilling on government and indian lands without permits, etc.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Thanks for sharing.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)... there's always a thin thread of hope, isn't there?
ANOIS
(112 posts)HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I never realized the hatred there toward Kennedy. I never saw that much of that in our area of Florida back then either. Today with the tea party in this area it is different. There is so much hatred.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)...In combination, they are a disease that has swept this country since that fateful day 50 yrs ago. So many have died in its path, and are dying still. If we don't find a political vaccine soon, someone else will.
Then we'll all be goners.
INdemo
(6,994 posts)JBS. Its founder was retired candy maker Robert H. W Welch.
By the early 60's the membership grew to over 100,000.
The JBS headquarters was in Dallas.The treason flyer was also an insert in a Dallas newspaper as one writer noted near the time JFK was scheduled to arrive. The book depository was owned by a good friend of H.H. Hunt (I think that is correct)
I believe that Nixon and other Republicans were very close to this organization in the 60's
I have never accepted the fact that Oswald acted alone, there are just too many open ends that does not back up this facts.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)Sarah fucking Palin...aka "Wolf-Killer from the North".
dem in texas
(2,674 posts)On Nov 22, the day Kennedy was killed, the Dallas Morning News ran a full page ad in section 1 of the paper criticizing the President. It was signed with a false a name and was later found to be paid for by the Birch Society. You can see the full page ad on display at the 6th Floor Museum. Dallas's hands are not clean in the matter of John Kennedy's death. Many of the richest people in Dallas were members and contributors of the John Birch Society. The owner of the Dallas Morning News was a super right wing and I read that he hated Kennedy and ran many editorials criticizing the president. A few years earlier, a group of republican ladies attacked LBJ and Lady Bird at a Dallas hotel, even spit on them. A few months before Kennedy was killed, some of the right wingers attacked Adlai Stevenson, hitting him over the head with a sign and also spitting on him.
The leaders of the city should have spoken out and condemned all the hate and bad behavior that was in the city, but they went along with it, even condoned it.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Glad to see they held a memorial to Kennedy in that very plaza Friday.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Her answrr was something like .. " If you don't know I can't help you"
Total Palin stupid bagger talk
but yep, they beat on Adlai a few months before in TX
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)How could we in other states have not known how much hate there was there? I recently heard it was then called the City of Hate. Had you heard that?
dem in texas
(2,674 posts)President Kennedy was warned not to go to Dallas, but he wanted to go to show the hate mongers he could go in their territory. I hope other cities and groups take what happened in Dallas that day as a lesson and not just sit back and let the fanatics take over the news and events. Good people need to stand up and speak out against hate mongering, it doesn't matter where it comes from; right or left. It cannot be tolerated or we will continue to have events like this one.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)I am not from/not in Tx
Was IL history of him as UN ambassador under JFK and yes it really happened in TX
I found this with a google to show you though she saaid she was pushed in this article but talks about spitting on him and arrests
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19631026&id=HUgNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LWwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7001,4201386
*Birchers hated UN - I do not know about teabaggers and UN now but would not surprise me as conservatives in general are often anti-UN like John Bolten who served under Bush II @........ the UN
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)That's stunning to me. I would say unfortunately that our area of FL is pretty doggoned close to that kind of hate in recent years.
cilla4progress
(24,791 posts)Direct line connection - family ties (Kochs) and all.
My parents were fine liberals back in the early- to mid-20th century. They detested the JBS and taught me to follow in their footsteps!
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Two of their main goals were to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren, and for the US to get out of the UN. Also, pretty much the Tea Party Platform, as the article states. I remember them from when I was a kid.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)It really was. And is. Here is a poignant story by Claire Conner about the day JFK was killed.
http://claireconner.com/2013/11/17/john-kennedy-smiled-at-me-five-mintes-later-he-was-dead/
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Somewhat similar scene as when I saw Kennedy. It must have been about 1960, during the campaign, in New Orleans. Huge throng of people. We were about 3 rows from the curb. I was a toddler, so my father put me on his shoulders so I could see. My parents were (and still are) Republicans, but more of the Eisenhower sort. I don't know if they voted for Kennedy or Nixon, but they certainly didn't hate Kennedy. I absolutely loved JFK, and just after learning to read in 1st grade the following summer I tackled reading the book about PT 109. That was a challenge for a 6 year old, but I finished it and comprehended what I read. Several months later JFK was killed. I was heartbroken....he was my first childhood hero.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)a member of the John Birch Society. She was furious about fluoridation in our water. We were very, very young and wrote her a letter as a joke. If there is a file on my somewhere, that letter is probably in it. We wrote it as a joke because the thought the woman was so crazy that she could not be taken seriously. We showed sympathy with her but made fun of her.
The people who fell for the John Birch Society propaganda were sort of idiot savants. They included professionals and wealthy people, but their rants made no sense at all. The woman we wrote to was, if I recall correctly (it's been a long time), the wife of a doctor. She could not have been all that stupid, but she actually believed the John Birch propaganda. They were so extreme it was funny. There was no balance in their beliefs.
Reagan precursors. It's going to take us a long, long time and a lot of work to heal the wounds they inflicted on our country.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)A couple of years ago, some tea-baggers convinced the Pinellass County (St Pete/Clearwater) Commission to remove flouride from the county water system. The following election, a couple of tea-bagger commissioners lost their seats badly, and a couple others switched sides and flouride was put back in. The general concensus of county GOP was "What the hell were we thinking?" It goes to show how a very vocal, but ignorant, minority faction can steer the train off course.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)...and I dated Robyn Blumner.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I love her columns. She really impresses me.
gopiscrap
(23,766 posts)sarchasm
(1,013 posts)My enemies have never been more clearly defined .. I never made the Fred Koch connection before.
... https://www.youtube.com/user/claireconner1/videos
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)It would have been easier to use her site than to search You Tube for each one.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017160859
jsr
(7,712 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)It was excellent as it took in an area I am familiar with and I had a mentally ill relative who was involved in all this crap
She answers a lot of questions for any exposed to their propaganda.
They had for years a flyer of MLK at a "communist training camp".
In the book she lets you know he was in that picture actually at The Highlander Folk School in TN known for labor organizing and later civil rights projects....
Right now I bet some kid exposed to tea party propaganda is looking at a flyer of Obama maybe visiting a Mosque in Africa or something and the flyer( or now days an email chain letter) that says here " He is at a terroist training camp in his home country" !
yep SOS
and the followers today are still racists or mentally ill or on medication
(how could you not be?)
Mojo2
(332 posts)I live in the same city as Mrs. Conner, she can be heard at many of the democratic functions in the area, as well as at the Dunedin Library. On a side note, if you ever have the opportunity to visit Dunedin, Florida, please check it out, it is the most liberal community that I have ever resided in. The city is right on the Gulf and has one of the best state parks in the USA, Honeymoon Island. In addition, Dunedin has numerous clubs that specialize in fresh brewed craft beer. The city is also bicycle friendly with tons of trails to ride, as well as having a vibrant arts community. It is quite common to be having a freshly brewed beer at one of the local breweries around 10:00 p.m. when out of nowhere you will begin to hear bagpipers coming down the rode playing Scotland the Brave in their kilts and armor. Dunedin is well worth a visit, plus you can probably find a educational session with Mrs. Conner on the far right wackos.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Nice place for the dogs to take a dip, have a few cocktails, and enjoy the sunset.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Talk about being surrounded by Tea Party types? Not that far from Dunedin yet another world entirely.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)I mean to order this book too.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)redstatebluegirl
(12,265 posts)JimboBillyBubbaBob
(1,389 posts)they come back as Tea Partiers!
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)indepat
(20,899 posts)anyone demonstrate conclusively that those responsible for this "Wanted for TREASON" ad were not, in fact, stochastic terrorists who directly prompted the assassination of JFK and also, that those who promote this type of hatred to this day are not likewise stochastic terrorists who are prompting others to act out violently on their hatred? If my assessment is correct, Houston, we have a problem.
pampango
(24,692 posts)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)Good to see you posting again. Don't Give Up!
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Good to see you. And Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.