An Evening at The John Birch Society
Grove, Gene
An Evening at The John Birch Society by GENE GROVE IN AN AGED building at 156 Fifth Avenue, an equivocal location midway between the charm of New York's Washington Square and the splendor of...
...But the Zionists of the United States, Britain, and elsewhere in the world became largely responsible for Hitler's going berserk, when Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca in 1944 demanded unconditional surrender by the Germans...
...Not more than ten of the thirty people in the room were less than fifty years old...
...If there were six million Jews within reach of Hitler, which number is widely questioned, and if they have all disappeared, where are they...
...An attack may be made the day after tomorrow...
...He was nervous as he outlined the expected attack...
...I don't know how they got my name and I have no control over what they say...
...Among many other things, he has opposed the income tax, the St...
...There was also a motion," he said, "to support the state and national Episcopal councils and the National and World Council of Churches...
...He had refused to say whether or not he was a member of the society, but said he had had no contact with members of Chapter Twenty-six...
...Hart, stirred by the mention of Congress, began to talk again...
...One recalcitrant member demurred...
...It is estimated that this new minimum wage law will cause the unemployment of 600,000 to 700,000 people in the United States...
...The Army subsequently attempted to pacify everyone and succeeded in pacifying no one...
...Byron, at the time of the meeting still unconfused by the Army, meanwhile was moving to the attack...
...You know, Mr...
...You may see the Sokolsky column this week...
...Hart has been in this for a long time...
...Now the latest indication is that they're afraid of it because it is so libelous, that what they did in planting that microphone is so serious, that they may be scared off...
...I gave a report on that at a DAR meeting and they laughed at me...
...This time there was no objection...
...The woman's name and address were recorded on a pad of yellow legal paper and, with the deference due the $1,000 it costs to become a life member, she was ushered to the inner room where, in five minutes, Merwin K. Hart was to open the meeting...
...I'm not convinced as thoroughly as you are that this is a Communist film...
...The film, entitled Yanqui No, was one of a series of "Closeup" programs produced by Time, Inc., sponsored by Bell & Howell, manufacturers of photographic equipment, and shown on the American Broadcasting Company's television network...
...Another was the latest issue of Hart's Economic Council letter...
...One of the demonstrators," Hoover said, "provided the spark that touched off the flame of violence...
...What about the universe...
...When nervous, Hart fiddles constantly with the glasses, removing the sunglasses, then the glasses, replacing the glasses, clipping on the sunglasses, going through the cycle again...
...Newspaper reports had drawn the broad outlines of the John Birch Society...
...Admiral Freeman was my sponsor at a recent meeting of Chapter Twentysix...
...Brandishing a handful of photostats from the Overseas Weekly, Mrs...
...Constance G. Dall, is assistant chapter leader, and another vice president, retired Vice Admiral Charles S. Freeman, is treasurer...
...But I think we are going to be surprised how they turn and run, and I think we're going to see quite a bit of evidence of that in the future...
...At the same time, the Army announced that Welch's book The Life of John Birch was being withdrawn from the troop information program with which the John Birch Society had nothing to do and that Welch's magazine, American Opinion, was being banned from the division's newsstands...
...The meeting, as with most meetings conducted by amateurs, was becoming fragmented...
...The society and other groups with "equally dangerous" programs, the bishop had said, "endeavor to reverse our American tradition of democratic opportunities and civil rights, to paralyze our Federal government in its promotion of the general welfare, and in other ways to turn back the clock in defiance of our national history and experience...
...Peale has been so smeared that I think it takes a great deal of courage, but it was announced from the pulpit last Sunday...
...Dall—who sat at a desk checking each of the thirty persons who entered— that she was a life member of the Home Chapter, a sort of select membership-at-large that is one of the status symbols within the John Birch Society...
...Although it was less than a week since Robert J. Meisenbach had been found not guilty of assault with a deadly weapon in a San Francisco trial, the jury's finding was not mentioned...
...a reading of the society's publications had offered an insight into founder Robert Welch's TheConspiracy-Is-Everywhere philosophy...
...Hart was standing by his desk talking to some of his followers...
...Hart rapped on his desk and brought the meeting to order...
...We don't want to begin the counterattack prematurely...
...One woman digressed from Bishop Donegan's criticism of the society to rumors that an investigation was impending (it never occurred) to determine how many members of Congress were members of the John Birch Society...
...Startled at the attention she had drawn, she paused, looked anxiously around the room and said, "I don't know if it's true, but that's what they say...
...Who has set this newspaper up as an agency to monitor the thinking and expression of thought of officers in the American Army...
...Yes," he said, "and they're getting further into our national life every day...
...There's a group in the Pentagon, Major Roberts told me this himself, on the look-out for us, just waiting for a chance to connect the letter-writing to the John Birch Society, to smear us and ruin General Walker...
...But be sure to use your own names, the names of other groups to which you may belong, operate through other organizations...
...Norman Vincent Peale's resistance evidently was vigorous, since the film was shown as promised...
...I'm a great admirer of Mr...
...Such alarums and excursions, however, are a standard part of the Birch Society's meetings and bulletins...
...Byron had better watch to see that no one kept it, and everyone laughed...
...Byron said...
...I think you'll see the beginnings of our efforts show up very soon...
...A blown-up picture of a girl in a negligent bikini passed from hand to hand to the accompaniment of tongue-cluckings...
...Surely this episode calls for an investigation by a Congressional committee to discover what really happened in the Walker incident...
...An Evening at The John Birch Society by GENE GROVE IN AN AGED building at 156 Fifth Avenue, an equivocal location midway between the charm of New York's Washington Square and the splendor of midtown Manhattan, Chapter Twenty-six of the John Birch Society meets on the second Tuesday of every month...
...But a jury of Meisenbach's peers decided that no such incident had occurred, and his attorney, a former assistant district attorney, said that "this knocks Operation Abolition into the creek...
...Hart ordered a halt...
...The film opens with the 1960 meeting of the Organization of American States at which the United States sought a condemnation of Cuba, shows the opposition to the resolution by the Venezuelan delegation, then taTces the viewer to Venezuela to show the conditions in that country which have generated a substantial sympathy for Fidel Castro...
...Bell & Howell, Time, Inc., and the American Broadcasting Company stood condemned by Chapter Twenty-six...
...There were, she said, three versions of the film in circulation...
...The lady in mink seated herself next to me, said to no one in particular that she "might have to leave early," and draped her stole carefully across the back of the chair...
...It seems that the Communist Party has gotten a member into a John Birch meeting and they qualified him and he was accepted at face value and he went out and organized a chapter of his own . . ." A chorus of groans circled the room...
...You should be sure that you are seeing the right version...
...We must be sure not to associate the campaign with the John Birch Society...
...Major Arch Roberts at the Army Information Office in Manhattan admitted that he had written the first draft of the "pro-Blue" troop information program for which General Walker was suspended...
...Hart's nose supports a pair of silverframed glasses which, in turn, support a pair of clip-on sunglasses...
...This will cause unemployment...
...If they start an investigation of Congress," she said, "they'll be sorry, because they'll find fifty Communists or Communist sympathizers in the Congress...
...The lady in green fixed me with a suspicious stare...
...Meanwhile most of the American press has been trying Eichmann in various columns, news dispatches, special articles, etc...
...Welch...
...Now the Overseas Weekly, we're investigating it now...
...When he had ended his peroration on the minimum wage law, Hart adjourned the meeting...
...That's the stuff," he said, "with which the people on the other side, the Communists, the internationalists, are trying to overcome this country and reduce this country and its people to Communist slavery...
...Hart paused, then brightened, and gave the members better news...
...At the door to Suite 1100 one woman, equally muffled by her mink stole and her Southern drawl, told Mrs...
...Isn't there a council for that now...
...One man remarked that Mrs...
...Aren't you...
...As had been announced several days before the meeting of Chapter Twenty-six, the Columbia Broadcasting System's "CBS Report" on the following Thursday was on the subject of "Censorship and the Movies...
...I will pass around just one photostat to show you what kind of a thing we are fighting...
...Dall said that "I think there are about ten chapters in New York now...
...Mark Byron for a report on the progress of a John Birch Society-sponsored program in support of Major General Edwin A. Walker, who last spring was relieved of his command of the Twenty-fourth Division in Germany after a privately-owned newspaper, Overseas Weekly, accused him of using Army facilities to promote the programs of the John Birch Society among his troops...
...On the other hand, the Army accepted Walker's contention that there was no connection between his "pro-Blue" program—widely believed to have been named after Welch's Blue Book—and the John Birch Society, despite the society's campaign in his behalf...
...Byron sat down and Hart turned the discussion to Operation Abolition, the House Un-American Activities Committee's film of the San Francisco student riots...
...And this with our unemployment already at its highest in twenty years...
...asked chapter leader Hart...
...Winning Admiral Freeman was not difficult...
...It was two weeks later, on May 16, that columnist Sokolsky—who a month earlier had said of the Birch Society that "it is not sound to believe that everyone who disagrees in 1961, after two world wars and a universal depression, with the economics of Mark Hanna, is a Communist"—devoted an entire column to the defense of General Walker and an attack on the Overseas Weekly...
...Look at this minimum wage law they just passed...
...About twenty minutes into the hour-long film, an investigation had begun of the tawdry slums, which ring the Venezuelan capital, Caracas...
...He's got a real background...
...Perhaps some of you are familiar with that...
...Such programs are dangerously subversive in the true meaning of that word and we warn all church people to avoid becoming involved in their activities...
...Welch said three years ago that Castro was a Communist...
...Byron reported with a simper, "I have here some copies of the 'Oversexed'— I mean Overseas—Weekly...
...Sokolsky asked...
...Abruptly, ten minutes latei*, he waved an end to it...
...Lawrence Seaway, the forty-hour week, voting by persons on relief, Lend-Lease, anti-discrimination laws, the United Nations, and child labor laws...
...People were drifting out the door and as they left Hart urged them to take material from the piles on his desk...
...Walker's previously announced assignment to command the Eighth Corps in Texas was canceled...
...No more savage or senseless decision was ever reached by an American President . . . "But to return to the Eichmann case...
...I would pass them around, but I am sure this is not the kind of thing you would like to see...
...I'd like to see more of it," he said...
...Our schools in Long Island are overrun with New Dealers...
...A bunch of Communists," she called them...
...Bunch of Communists," she repeated firmly, her lips drawn tight...
...Was the general committing an offense or was he persecuted for loyalty...
...Sighing himself, Hart went on: ". . . consisting of men who thought as he did and then that was reported to the Columbia Broadcasting Company and they intended to put that on their hour-long program which they have, I think, every Thursday night...
...I'm concerned about the collectivist trend in Washington," I told him...
...Both the Daily News and George Sokolsky will be in the fight soon...
...The core of the film's postion on the student demonstrations against the Committee is J. Edgar Hoover's report that a mob "instigated by Communists who had maneuvered themselves into strategic positions" charged the Committee's hearing room, forcing the San Francisco police to defend themselves...
...You have to be careful where you get the picture from...
...More than half were men...
...A House Select Committee on Lobbying Activities once described the techniques of the ultraconservative Council as being "to disparage those who oppose its objectives by appeals to religious prejudice, often an ill-concealed anti-Semitism...
...To a smattering of applause, Mrs...
...Then in May, 1953, Representative Francis Walter in the Reader's Digest stated that there were then from three to five million aliens in the United, States illegally...
...She had, she said, seen a showing of the film sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union—" and you know what that means"—which had been skillfully "doctored...
...It was after seven p.m., more than two hours since Hart had opened the meeting, when the attractive woman in green stood by the doors to 156 Fifth Avenue—the exit from the building had been locked and a gallant was searching for a janitor— and told the others that she had attended a recent meeting of a Henry George economic study group...
...The promised Daily News investigation evidently failed to turn up anything fit to print...
...Leaping a barricade that had been erected, he grabbed an officer's nightstick and began beating the officer over the head...
...It did not mention the John Birch Society...
...And Major Roberts is doing a wonderful job—his whole career would be in danger if the Army knew how he's working with us...
...Every month members are alerted to imminent attack from the constantly menacing other-world of Communists and liberals and "Comsymps"—a word coined by Robert Welch and of which he is fond because "you don't have to tell how much they are Communists and how much they are sympathizers...
...The film and the reports were over, a few members had left early, Hart was no longer directing the discussion, and the garrulous had not yet had their say...
...Not for members of Chapter Twentysix, however...
...Mrs...
...Peale resisted and Tt will be shown...
...I mumbled an answer but it didn't matter because the lady kept on talking between fitful glances at other minks and other pillbox hats...
...He invited me to the meeting...
...The [New York] Daily News has been very cooperative...
...That's their hour-long program, which you can readily find from the program schedule...
...I never associated with these people," he said...
...I think we can all see," he said, "that this is out-and-out Communist propaganda, an attempt to lay the blame for South American poverty on the better classes in Venezuela and a plea for more foreign aid from the United States...
...but the chapter meetings are the heartbeat of the society and the final expression of Welch's beliefs...
...I know personally a man who must raise his wages to apprentices from forty cents to fifty cents an hour because of this bill...
...Is it not likely that many of these six million, claimed to have been killed by Hitler and Eichmann, are right here in the United States and are now joining in the agitation for more and more support of the State of Israel—even if the American Republic goes downF "How can we Americans expect to preserve our country and its liberties if we permit Zionist influence to flout some of the vital principles on which the United States was founded...
...There was a great deal of pressure brought, I understand, but Dr...
...Having dealt with the clear and present dangers to the John Birch Society, Hart got down to business...
...Byron's predictions were partially fulfilled...
...An appreciative round of guffaws followed this sally into the world of religion, where fundamentalist Welch shares the view of some of the more rabid fundamentalist sects that the Protestant councils of churches offer aid and comfort to the Communist conspiracy...
...second to impress the world with the might of Israel and third to distract the attention of the American people while our one-worlders advance their plans...
...One elderly woman said that there would be a showing of Operation Abolition at Marble Collegiate Church a week later "at the regular prayer-meeting time...
...That's the way it goes when anybody stands in their way," Hart said, his voice taking on a note of defiance...
...Most of the members stayed to talk...
...Nearly every piece printed mentions 'six million Jews.' The publicity has i^een wellnigh nauseating to Americans who are deeply concerned with the Communist and economic threat to their own country...
...Founded in 1959, it is dominated by Hart's subordinates in the NEC: his executive vice president, Mrs...
...Our letter-writing campaign is going magnificently," Mrs...
...I've never been to a meeting of this chapter," she told me...
...No," was the answer, " 'World' is still singular...
...Mrs...
...Hart yielded the floor to a busy, soft-voiced woman who introduced herself to the new members as Mrs...
...Byron explained to me that "I was serving as a volunteer coordinator but I couldn't do it all and I kind of faded out of the picture and we're waiting for a full-time coordinator now...
...Robert Welch decided long before Fidel Castro came to power that the Cuban leader was a Communist...
...This early, now accepted estimate causes many of his followers to look with greater favor upon Welch's similar charges against Dwight Eisenhower, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others, while opponents feel this foresight was strongly reinforced by Welch's whole-hearted admiration for the regime of Fulgencio Batista...
...There are probably three objectives of this publicity campaign...
...They're very close now— they're doing a very thorough investigation—to getting a line on Communists working for the Overseas Weekly...
...We know no evidence that the abolishing of any such rule was ever even discussed before...
...He became a monster toward the end, as shown by the savage killing of more than 4,000 Germans for alleged involvement in the attempted assassination of himself in 1944, as well as in the killing of many Jews and non-Jews...
...Finally, she got the floor...
...It said: "We certainly hold no brief for Hitler...
...We had about a dozen chapters forming in Long Island but none of them are meeting yet...
...Welch just went through his speaking tour which took him from coast to coast with excellent results," the eighty-year-old chapter leader told his followers...
...Grudgingly, Hart signaled for a resumption of the film...
...They don't seem to really know what they're about...
...Everyone thought I was crazy, but they don't any more...
...A gentleman with a pronounced Southern accent had attended that day's session of the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and reported the attack of Bishop Horace Donegan on the John Birch Society...
...I ventured the suggestion that, since economist George had advocated a single tax on property that must, necessarily, presuppose private ownership of property, it would be rather difficult for his followers to be Communists...
...There will be one in Forest Hills very shortly...
...The meetings are held in the building's Suite 1100, the office of the National Economic Council, and the chapter leader is Merwin K. Hart, long-time head of the NEC...
...In one corner, one of the members was telling his listeners that the most persistently invidious force pushing collectivism in the United States was the Canadian whiskey interests...
...It punished General Walker by publicly rebuking him "for taking injudicious actions and for making derogatory statements about prominent Americans"— he was reported to have called an assortment of people, including Walter Lippmann, Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, "pinks" or worse— and for participating in certain controversial activities...
...It was not unique for Hart to be against an action of Congress: he has spent the major portion of his eighty years being against...
...Another woman, younger, attrac* tive, dressed in green, had been inserting vigorous asides and exclamations in each discussion...
...Mrs...
...A "coordinator," a euphemism of the John Birch Society, is a paid organizer...
...I'm a life member of the Home Chapter...
...The lady was quite right...
...Mrs...
...It is of interest that in recent years the United States government abolished the rule that any aliert applying for citizenship or any person reported in the census, must state his religion or race...
...A projector had been set up in Hart's office and after the familiar delays— the threading of the film, the adjustment of the sound, the focusing—a motion picture was presented for review...
...The film, complete with commercials, is distributed by Bell & Howell as a public service...
...However, more attacks will be made in the future...
...Chapter Twenty-six is the oldest chapter of the Johh Birch Society in Manhattan and one of the oldest in the country...
...The gentleman reported the attack with an air of resignation, adding, "I think the Methodists and the Presbyterians also have attacked the society...
...I want to belong to a group that does something...
...First to humiliate and antagonize the German people and to alienate Germany— one of the staunchest allies we have anywhere...
...A puzzled murmur followed this advice...
...One was a petition calling for a Congressional investigation of the State Department, which Hart has described as the "enemy of the American people...
...The location is as unfortunate as it is unfashionable...
Vol. 25 • September 1961 • No. 9
