For at least the several years in the late ‘90’s/early ‘00’s when I was a member, the JBS had hands down the best conservative news magazine available: the New American (formerly American Opinion). I haven’t followed the goings on in the society since then, but there appears to have been a shakeup of some sort, as now William Norman Grigg, one of its best writers and reporters, is gone. I glanced through a couple of recent issues of the magazine and it unfortunately appears to be something of a shadow of its former self--not terrible, but not like what it was there for awhile.

Anyone know what happened? I know there have been differences in the past over ideological purity and whatnot. Was this more of the same?

This is pretty much the first I am hearing of the JBS in a positive light. My only knowledge of them until now was that they were some reactionary, anti-semite, anti-everyone who is not white Anglo-saxon.

I guess that was mostly propaganda.

Thanks for the support Justin.  Even a couple of writers here at Taki made some snide remarks about the JBS soon after WFB’s death.

To gp:  Youre right, that was pretty much propaganda.  When people find out I am a Bircher, I have to explain it though.

The JBS certainly did have some nutty ideas, and I don’t think Justin (or Ron Paul for that matter) is or was endorsing them. Still their brand of anti-communism confused all shades of socialist, statist and ‘liberal’ opinion with the reds.

In a sense, it is certainly fun and deservedly discomforting to bundle all these statists together in one big red pot. But red baiting, or maybe “red potting” is historically and politically inaccurate. Worse it may have backfired. And blinded many right wing anti-statists to the threats to liberty coming from out of the blue pot.

i have always considered Buckley a British neo-liberal imperialist type.

I checked out the JBS website recently.  Not a hint of the alleged racism famously attributed by WFB. 

Then again, I have also searched the public writings and memorialized speeches of Joseph Sobran and Patrick Buchanan without finding a trace of the anti-Jewishness that WFB charged them with.

More and more, I think the WFB was the architect of the presently (but ever so briefly) ascendant Neo-Conservative Movement, not the modern “Conservative Movement.”

Indeed, the whole point of National Review seems to have been to appropriating the word “Conservative” for otherwise liberal anti-Communist, Zionists while marginalizing the Old Right in public opinion.

Reading None Dare Call it Conspiracy 33 years ago changed my life in 1975.  I had no idea that the book had anything to do with the JBS and all I “knew” about the JBS at the time was the general cultural imprint that they were some kind of Klan-like group that was hated by liberals and commies.  I’ll never forget getting to the part at the end where Gary Allen says something about how you can learn more about this stuff at the John Birch Society.  At that moment my heart sank because I instinctively knew that despite all of the fascinating things I had just read, that it must have all already been thoroughly dismissed by the establishment by that point.

But I didn’t let that scare me and used Allen’s book and much of its source material for a “Communism vs. Americanism” paper that we were all assigned for my high school “Problems of the American Democracy” class.  Sure enough, the hated pompous authoritarian retired Army Colonel who taught the class (who was actually pretty interesting compared to the civilian teachers at this public high school) smeared red ink all over my paper that I had worked so hard on.  All I specifically remember now were the red words “Pure Birch!!” on the top of the first page.  I think he either gave me the lowest grade or no grade at all and the paper led to meetings with him and the other teachers in his office. 

Later in that school year Colonel Blimp taught us about the Federal Reserve System and he wasn’t able to respond to new personal discoveries I was making on my own about the illegitimacy of fractional reserve and central banking either.  However when I wrote my final term paper on the history of jury nullification, the Colonel gave me the highest grade and lauded my research.  I wonder if he knew that some of my references were from the revived “American Mercury” of the 1970’s which I think was equivalent to the Liberty Lobby and the Spotlight and would later find out was not allowed to be mentioned in public either because they even admit they’re racists, don’t they?

33 years later nothing has changed. The cultural imprint of Libertarianism = “Pure Birch” = racism is deeper than ever.

In None Dare Call it Conspiracy I remember Allen doing the rhetorically right thing and going out of his way to entertain objections up front and pointing out that there were those out there who claimed that the “conspiracy” is a purely jewish conspiracy and that he did not believe that.  And I think the JBS is famous for bending over backwards this way and I’ve always thought that this was good policy because ITS TRUE!:  The conservative libertarian movement is riddled with racists all over the place. 

If Obama can admit that his grandmother was a racist, then we can admit that there are some racists in our movement.  But unlike Obama we shouldn’t be afraid to highlight our points of agreement with these racists.  Like it or not, I was turned on to the works of Lysander Spooner by an article in a racist magazine psuedonomously authored by a guy named “Johnny Reb”.

This decades long psychological operation of smearing libertarian ideas with racism (both authoritarian and libertarian/voluntary racism) is promoted by concealing it, rather than owning up to it.

Contrary to what poster lester wrote on the previous Welch/Reason thread, Ron Paul’s 8% score in NH was a direct result of the Racist Newsletter issue.

If we have the balls to do as Doug Casey has suggested and call upon the U.S. government to not only withdraw its military from 130 countries, but also to apologize for its crimes, can’t libertarians apologize when they’ve clearly allied themselves with or adopted the authoritarian positions of racists?

For example, Lew Rockwell could start by apologizing for his previous support for police beatings.

One of the interesting things to consider about this era is that the various outlets of the mainstream and internet media are preoccupied with being “against” something. There may be a pretext of impartial analysis, experience, logic and reason but these imperative intellectual tools are usually employed after the fact as benchmarks supporting spurious claims.

This component of Ressentiment seems to be omnipresent now, a kind of Soft Core Inquisition that insures a continuing income for those who make their living exploiting fear or checking credentials at the door. Meanwhile, personal accountability and individual liberty recede...to be followed quickly by analytical thought.

A naturally discursive species becomes merely a noisy one, braying to one another while alternately applauding or shaking a fist with a sneer.
In this atmosphere, the ability to genuflect on command becomes far more important than standing upright.

Censorship, rather than being a seldom-used astringent becomes a way of life.

Like M. Chams, I too was exposed to JBS materials in high school during the 70s, and had teachers denounce the publications I read as “right wing garbage.” I never knew why the JBS was suspected of anti-semitism; I had a (working class) uncle who asked me why I was interested in “nazi” materials.
For my part, I always wondered why folks who were so good on economics and “conservative” philosophy became so eccentric when it came to their idea of the “great conspiracy.” Although WFB certainly had a hand in derailing the JBS, it cannot be denied that their own intellectual bipolarity also contributed.

Justin, thanks for the balanced and informative piece, and thanks to you,
Mr. Newland, for your kind comments about TNA.
The New American has been radically denatured over the past couple of years, but as long as it consistently features Bill Jasper’s work it’s worth getting. Unfortunately, the current JBS management decided in 2006 to abandon investigative reporting, despite the fact that Bill is a top-tier investigative journalist.
There was a tumultuous management shake-up at the JBS home office in fall 2005. CEO Vance Smith was ousted, along with VP Tom Gow and a handful of others. The build-up to that event was ugly and stressful, and the aftermath included roughly a year of very expensive and pointless litigation. The chief casualty of this conflict was Robert Welch University, the single most promising venture the JBS had undertaken since the mid-1960s.
As to my own situation --
I was fired, by the new management, in October 2006 for reasons they still cannot clearly explain. The pretext was my refusal to take down a personal, after-hours blog I started after JBS management decided—without informing me or anyone else—to discontinue the old Birch Blog. My new blog was entitled Pro Libertate.
My understanding has always been that an employer rents my time; he doesn’t own me 24/7. As long as I’m not covertly working for a competitor or otherwise engaged in illegal or unethical behavior, my personal time belongs exclusively to me. The same is true of my name: As a JBS employee I was not a WWE character whose name and likeness were copyrighted property of the company.
For the purposes of inventing a pretext to fire me, JBS management pretended that this wasn’t the case. I was given an ultimatum to which no self-respecting individual would submit: I was told to take down my blog, apologize in writing for EVERYTHING I’d published therein, and promise—in writing—that every syllable I wrote or spoke for public consumption would be subject to approval by JBS management.

They knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t submit to that ultimatum. So it’s clear to me that they simply wanted me gone, and wanted to contrive some cover story to justify the idea that I had “quit.”

I was a contributor to The New American for about 15 years at the time of my firing, and had been on staff with the JBS for 13. Yet within HOURS of being fired, my name was being stripped from TNA’s masthead, and I was informed that the magazine was no longer interested even in receiving freelance submissions from me.
On the very day that I was fired, the chief instigator of that decision, VP for campaigns and missions Alan Scholl, was circulating falsehoods about my supposed offenses and shortcomings. This continued until Bill Jasper essentially forced Alan to back down.

I must admit that and ideological divide played a role in all of this. Alan Scholl, to put matters bluntly, is an authoritarian prick. He was once a friend, but given what he’s done to me and my family (I have five small children and a wife who’s an invalid), I don’t think I owe him the courtesy of civility.

Alan’s objective in early 2006 was to make the JBS a third-string concubine in the GOP’s seraglio. We were to “ride the [Republican] wave,” he insisted to me. That “wave,” of course, had a totalitarian undertow. We are being dragged into undisguised despotism at home and permanent warfare abroad. I had no interest in trying to curry favor with the mouth-breathing cultists—Ditto-heads, Hannitization victims, war-crazed denizens of Mega-Church madrassas—whom Alan had identified as the “core market” for the nJBS.
If you could read my blogs from the period (JBS management has scrubbed them from the web, but I copied most of them), you’ll find that most of them deal with EXACTLY the same set of issues on which Ron Paul built his campaign. I thought at the time that the JBS should try to reach out to freedom-centered people irrespective of their partisan attachments or incidental characteristics, as Ron Paul now has done.
Please forgive me for going on at such length. T

Will, thanks for chiming in. The most awkward thing for me about defending JBS is the fact that I haven’t been much a fan ever since they got rid of you. I must admit, yours was my favorite JBS work, and now, with ProLibertate, I have little reason to check out the New American. (Though I do like some of Jasper’s stuff and JBS still publishes some good writers, like Wilt Alston.)

Hrm, interesting stuff. I like reading about history. :)

I still don’t understand why the Birch society is untouchable. Well, they do make some statements I don’t agree with. But I find it funny that organizations that promote death and destruction don’t get ostracized like the JBS did.

I’m not JBS, but I found the online text of “None Dare Call it a Conspiracy” and think everyone interested in20th century history should at least contemplate it.

http://reactor-core.org/none-dare.html

I also think the Larry Mcdonald crossfire youtube clip is more illuminating than listening to a bunch a of warmongerers define the JBS for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlkD5z740w0

Letting Cosmotarians define the JBS for you is like letting John Kenneth Galbreath defiine free markets for you.

So Ron Paul is a member of JBS.

In spite of their conspiracy theory kookiness they have been as close to anarchism as is allowed in bourgeoise Conservative circles. They are, and have been, explicitly non-racist and explicitly anti-antisemite. They were extremely aggresive anti-Communist nut-cases for most of their existence - but that hardly matters now. Communism is dead.

“Paleo"-Libertarians have a history of alignments that suit the immediate challenge...and, considering the current incepient fascism of our executive state, a move to the Left is overdue.

Murray Rothbard, whom Paul admires, was once a member of the Peace and Freedom Party: nut-cases of a different variety.

The enemy of my enemy is my freind.

Apropos my previous post: I should mention that I use the term “nut-cases” with something approaching affection. I’ve had both JBS and P&F;members as freinds and colleagues. I thought that they were out of their minds - but I’ve enjoyed their company.

Some link the JBS to Mormonism, and thereby to Masonry.

I don’t actually believe Ron Paul is an official member of the JBS. He subscribes to their magazine and talks to them at events, but I don’t think he actually has a membership card.

“Some link the JBS to Mormonism, and thereby to Masonry.”

Which is pretty funny considering that most of the Birchers I’ve talked to consider the Great Conspiracy to have begun in the darkened halls of the Freemasons and the Illuminati.

Mr. Grigg, thanks for stopping by and explaining the circumstances surrounding your expulsion. Like Mr. Gregory, I miss your articles in TNA, but still get my Grigg fix at Pro Libertate, which I read faithfully.

“Which is pretty funny considering that most of the Birchers I’ve talked to consider the Great Conspiracy to have begun in the darkened halls of the Freemasons and the Illuminati.”

Yes, and many say JBS’ers are antisemites. But seriously, did JBS ever mention Masons openly?

The new generation of patriots is well aware that the “anti-semite” smear is the favorite smear of warmongerers everywhere. “Isolationatist”, “Populist” and “conspiracy theorist” are right up there at the top aswell. As always, you know it is a smear when actual arguments to refute claims are absent. For instance, let the cosmo’s out there inform us about what Trotsky was doing in NYC before he went back to Russia to meet up with Lenin andrule with an iron fist. What went on at those dinner parties with the Rockefellers and Morgans? Tell us about how great a guy Mandell House was. Tell us how the CFR doesn’t exist.

No don’t bother with any of that just engage in the smear tactics of calling people racist.

The New American is a solid magazine and the JBS is a good group. I’d much rather read their magazine than Time or US News. Go through their archive of the New American online (http://www.thenewamerican.com/epublish/2). They were ahead of their time on so many issues when the mainstream was sprouting corporate state propaganda. Lew Rockwell even has a piece in their latest issue.

Gary Allen had “None Dare Call It A Conspiracy” published in 1971. In the first chapter he specifically states taht he states that some nuts take it too far and claim it is all “Jews, Masonics or Catholics” and that anyone who subscribes to these silly ideas is simply discrediting any of the legitimate points he is trying to get people to see. So it is kinda silly that people still try to wipe away every point that Allen brought up with a broad stroke of “those guys are anti-semites”. If Raimondo wasn’t gay all you thoughtless bastards would be calling us homphobes, your intellectual dishonesty is really sick.

Last year I someone attempted to recruit me into the JBS. The gentleman was Jewish.  He stated very clearly that he had never encountered any anti-semitism, for the thirty years that he had been a member.  I did not join the JBS, for purely personal reasons.

For those who see the JBS as a Mormon-Masonic plot: I would enjoy reading the convoluted logic that explains why Robert Welch Jr. was a Unitarian.

Also, if Paul is a member, he does have some interesting company:

Consider this somewhat infamous character…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrXpKEiEbY

“But seriously, did JBS ever mention Masons openly?”

All I know is that they promote books ("Proofs of a Conspiracy” by John Robison is a fave) that name the Masons as key conspirators, and members do, too. I don’t know what the official line of the JBS is, or if there even is one.

I don’t know what the “real official” JBS line is either, but if one of their bigger books int eh early 1970’s is explicitly not racist or anti-semitic at all it certainly discredits some of the smearers. I’d definitely listen to anyone who could show that Rockefeller and Morgan and others never supported Trotsky and had nothing to do with supporting Fabian Socialism and Oswald really was a lone nut who had no ties with the CIA. Just address some of ther accusations if you think you can discredit them I have never actually met a anti-semite JBS’er so it just doesn’t ring true.

Larry Mcdonald seems to be a decent guy in this crossfire interview. It is too bad he tragically died soon after this interview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlkD5z740w0

Here is hoping Will Grigg joins the masthead here! And many thanks brother Grigg for your insightful roundup of what went on at JBS during the late unpleasantness. In regards to your points about Alan Scholl, I am always surprised at the number of authoritarian types who manage to sneak in among those of us who love liberty, and promote mutual decorum in our relations with others, but reserve our authoritarian impulses for the internal life and direct it to the salvation of our own souls, rather than trying to get other people’s bodies and minds to succumb to our will. <Sigh!> it was ever thus.

We shall pray to Saint Joseph that your livelihood is soon increased to provide for your wife and nurture of your children.

Google ‘mormonism’ ‘masonry’.

the JBS has been infiltrated and slandered by disinfo agents for decades now.  Looking at the rarified intrigue of this organization is like watching Mockingbird unfold over and over during a long period of time.  It’s really quite amusing.