JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY
“The aggrieved sense of being divorced from the nation's ethos helped
to push some conservatives beyond the pale, into the exhilarating battle (and
fellowship) that the Birch Society, operating locally in kaffeeklatsch-size
chapters, seemed to offer. Claire Conner, in ‘Wrapped in the Flag: A Per-
sonal History of America's Radical Right’ (2013), tells of growing up in
Chicago during the fifties and sixties after ‘the John Birch Society became
my parents' lifelong obsession.’ (Her father, Jay, she says, spent thirty-two years
on the society's National Council.)”
to push some conservatives beyond the pale, into the exhilarating battle (and
fellowship) that the Birch Society, operating locally in kaffeeklatsch-size
chapters, seemed to offer. Claire Conner, in ‘Wrapped in the Flag: A Per-
sonal History of America's Radical Right’ (2013), tells of growing up in
Chicago during the fifties and sixties after ‘the John Birch Society became
my parents' lifelong obsession.’ (Her father, Jay, she says, spent thirty-two years
on the society's National Council.)”
Thomas Mallon, “A View from the Fringe, The John Birch
Society and the Rise of the Radical Right,” in the New Yorker, January
11, 2016, pp. 63-69.
