Birch Society battles

By J.R. Nyquist

Dear Mr. Eddlem,

I should reply to you in greater detail. It’s not right to leave you
with the impression that I’m your enemy or out to defame the JBS.


I’m sorry you misunderstood my July 6 column.
I did not intend to insinuate that the Birch Society is a racist or anti-Jewish organization but only that it shares with less benign political faiths an overall structure of conspiratorial thinking which attracted Mr. Klassen.

As for the question of whether or not Klassen was a racist when he entered the JBS, I must disagree with your assertion that “Klassen makes clear in the book that he didn’t have any solid racist beliefs whatsoever until the late 1960s.” Klassen states on p. 386 of his book, “Nature’s Eternal Religion,” “I, myself, am an ex-graduate from the Jewish sponsored John Birch Society, being misled in my early naivete into thinking that I was going to be able to do something useful in our fight against the Jews and niggers by joining the John Birch Society.”

I think Klassen’s statement is rather clear on this point. On the plus side, you probably wouldn’t want anyone to write that Klassen picked up his racist ideas while working as a member of the Society. That would be far worse than saying he was a racist when he joined up. (Just a thought.)

As you probably know, Ben Klassen is not an isolated case in terms of JBS history. That is to say, other anti-Jewish persons and racists have been involved with the Birch Society — more intimately involved than Klassen. For example, Revilo Oliver was attracted to the JBS cause and wrote for your magazine in the 1960s. Like Klassen, he became embittered and disillusioned when the JBS would not take an anti-Jewish line. Oliver later implied that JBS founder Robert Welch was fully aware of his rabid anti-Semitic views.

At the risk of repeating myself, we should notice that Robert Welch’s conspiracism was open to misunderstanding. In this context, a person like Klassen might have suspected that Robert Welch’s “conspirators” — the insiders’ insiders — are none other than the Learned Elders of Zion. But this understanding (or misunderstanding), even if correct, would not make Welch anti-Jewish. We have to remember that the Jewish people could easily be held innocent of the machinations of a handful of Jewish elitists. (If that is what Welch actually thought on the matter, he could never say so for fear of further misunderstanding.) At the same time, given the general similarity in outline between “Jewish conspiracy theory” and “JBS conspiracy theory,” we can see why anti-Jewish persons might be drawn into the JBS. This misunderstanding is also the reason that mainstream conservative opinion recoiled from Birchism once Welch began talking about a secret group behind the Communists. Conservatives could see that Welch’s formula resembled Hitler’s formula, which earlier asserted the existence of a hidden conspiracy behind Communism (i.e., what he called “Jewish Bolshevism”).

In his “More Stately Mansions” address, Welch referred to an “organization with increasing reach and control over all collectivist activities after 1776.” He talked about the Bavarian Illuminati, suggesting the existence of “organizational continuity” between the Illuminati and the Communist Party Soviet Union. In writing about this “organizational continuity” Welch clearly paid tribute to Dr. Revilo Oliver, whom he credited with the observation that Marx was sponsored by a possible “division” of the Illuminati — the League of Just Men. The fact that Oliver himself believed that the Illuminati was a Jewish front, should give us pause.

Don’t you think it’s possible that some of us are honestly troubled by this history — and by what it says about the credibility of JBS conspiracism? William F. Buckley, to name but one conservative voice, wrote that Welch’s ideas were wrongheaded. Afterwards, National Review was accused of “slinging mud” at Mr. Welch, just as you have accused me of “slinging mud.”

Is that really necessary?

I think our difference of opinion stems from a disagreement about how to interpret certain facts. Are the Communists a mere branch in a larger conspiracy to dominate the world? Yes or no? And is the master conspiratorial group the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, the Masons or the Learned Elders of Zion?

The only root conspiracy on this planet, according to C.S. Lewis, is that of disincarnate beings who observe us from another dimension. In this context, Lewis wrote of letters passed between these beings — the correspondence of Screwtape and Wormwood. No human organization is needed for their work. Human passions and hatreds are all-in-all sufficient to explain the evil that men do.

Please understand, I did not write to smear the Birch Society. The fact that you missed the significance of the interconnections I alluded to, and the psychological comedy of Klassen’s paranoia regarding JBS, only shows that the whole issue cannot be intelligently discussed before a wider public, let alone a specialist like yourself. And yet, we need to have some kind of discussion — not in terms of slinging mud, but in terms of debating the points on which we disagree.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been on talk radio programs and a caller fixated on the phrase “New World Order,” stridently asserts that NATO and the West’s capitalist elite are the chief enemies of mankind. In this accusation I detect a touch of class envy and a dangerous disregard for the West’s collective security. But I also detect JBS teachings which are in perfect alignment with the theme songs of the Chinese Communist Party and the Russian Foreign Ministry.

In saying this, I mean no insult of the JBS. I am merely stating a fact, which we ought to confront together. Even more importantly, I do not accuse you of bad faith in the very human errors that attend us all, and I should hope for the same courtesy in return.

We may disagree, but we need not be disagreeable.

Ben Klassen left the Birch Society after he came to believe it was part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race. Can’t we both laugh at this? Isn’t there something humorous and ironic in it?

You should know that I was a member of the John Birch Society for a number of years, and I found the people to be good Christians and patriots. I’ve even met the leaders of the JBS. Certainly, I don’t have any grudge or hostility toward them. I simply interpret the facts differently and see a Communist enemy rather than a capitalist (Rockefeller, Bilderburger, CFR, etc.) enemy, and a threat from Russia rather than a threat from NATO. (That’s not to say I agree with the CFR or other internationalist groups.)

The main point I’d like to challenge you on is this:

The U.N. doesn’t have a single nuclear weapon. On the other hand, Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons — aimed directly at us. These brilliant conspirators of the CFR — these “insiders” — think it’s wise to send Russia money, supercomputers and other goodies. They find it advisable to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil when it comes to Russian treaty violations. Looking at all this, I don’t think these “insiders” are masters of the game (as you do). They are more like dupes and useful idiots. The strategic geniuses, it seems to me, are in Moscow and Beijing, making a rope big enough to hang the world bourgeoisie — with money borrowed from the world bourgeoisie!

I focus on Russia because Russia is the country that can destroy America in a matter of minutes. Perhaps you don’t believe this, but Russia’s missiles are ready to fire. In fact, the Russians have conducted numerous successful missile tests over the last year. Russia has also been cheating on its arms-control agreements, which suggests they are attempting to swindle those same “insiders” you write about in your magazine.

So I ask you, who is controlling whom? Are the “insiders” of America controlling the Kremlin, or is the Kremlin manipulating, penetrating and infiltrating the Western insiders?

I would still be a member of the Birch Society today if the Society acknowledged that the main threat to this country is currently from Russia and not some vague branch of the Illuminati.

I’m sorry for the misunderstanding about the article on Klassen. I hope you understand my position and the reason your organization has attracted men like Klassen in the past. If I’ve made any errors in this letter, you are welcomed to correct them. I am not all-knowing or all-wise.

It is human to make mistakes.

Best wishes,

J.R. Nyquist

J.R. Nyquist

J.R. Nyquist, a WorldNetDaily contributing editor and a renowned expert in geopolitics and international relations, is the author of "Origins of the Fourth World War." Visit his news-analysis and opinion site, JRNyquist.com. Read more of J.R. Nyquist's articles here.