M uh love podcasts. I don't ship. Is that? Are we allowed to open a show that way? I don't know. Well, we did it, I'll let you do it. I didn't. God damn it. This is terrible the best I am. I am so sorry to everybody. Ye I have well as everyone can can hear now by by listening to the tremendous failure that has just occurred in everyone's earballs. Uh. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people, namely me. And my guests today are Dan and Jordan's. That's us. If I if I just said Dan, or if I just said Jordan's, I would have to be more specific. But when I say Dan and Jordan's, I think everyone knows that it's it's the knowledge fight. Guys. Your identity has become subsumed into your podcast, so enjoy that. It was inevitable. Yeah, it was going to happen. I think a lot of people have taken to just calling us Jordan capital j capital d. Yeah, sort of a combined down. I feel like they could do better. Who could? Yeah, can you danger? Because it would have to be like Dan or something like that. But but Jorg Dan is like I feel like it's really just like giving like cloud to one name. But you're stressing that d pretty hard right in the middle, and I can appreciate that. I think it's I think it's great we're really getting into the weeds of this since they're solving it once and for all. You know, that's what people come here for, you know what. With explanation, I'll let you have it. Guys. All right, Jordan, are you ready to hear about some ship? You bet? Robert yea post your podcast? So you know what sucks many many many things? Uh? You know, I would say, broadly speaking, the right wing in America, the Republican Party, the looming uh fascist threat that has been slightly weed whacked back, but is still threatening to encroach uh and choke all of us to death uh forever. That Yeah, Engines and dragons monster. When you put it like that, it is basically a dungeons and dragons monster. So this episode is about e Gary Guy Gaxe. This episode is about so Gary Guy GaX invented dungeons and dragons. This episode is about the man who invented the modern Republican Party, by which I mean the Party of Donald Trump, by which I mean you know the fascists, and his name was Robert Welch. You guys know who Robert Welch is. I don't know who Robert Welch is. I'm gonna I'm gonna feign ignorance for about three quarters. You definitely look at me, and did you know about Robert Welch. The whole point of me is to not know about Robert. Well, you know him by a different name. Yeah, yeah, you you Jordan know him as the founder of the John Birch Society. Oh I do know him as the candy Man. Yes, Oh, I do know him as the candy Man. Oh shit, candy. So if you haven't heard of the John Birch Society, they're loosely speaking, why we got President Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump, and the whole ecosystem of right wing grifters who make money off of convincing their fans that everybody on the left is part of a Marxist conspiracy, like the idea that Joe Biden is a is a Communist agent, which are are good friend of the pod Alex Jones brings up repeatedly, is a descendant of a John Birch Society talking point or at least a family of those talking points. So that's that's the guy we're talking about today, Bob Welch, founder the John Birch Society. Yeah, dude, yeah, I don't. I don't, I don't. I think, first off, my my initial sign that he's not a good guy is you're talking about him. So that's that's a red flag right off the bat. And then Bob Welch, that's just a that's just a right wing name. That's just what it is. Yeah, Yeah, Bob Welch is is is you'd guess that he founded some sort of society that did something terrible. So Robert H. W. Welch Jr. Which, by God, the more thorough you are with the name, the worse it sounds. Was born on a farm. Why do all these jerks have the initials h W two? Yeah, he does, he does. He's got a real George Bush fibe going on, what the hell? Well, I mean, that's how the word white starts right in their world, white white, white. I think that's what it is. I think Robert quite Welch, that actually completely You might be right. So Whitey was born on a farm in Choen County, North Carolina, on December one, eighteen ninety nine. He was a brilliant child, some might even say a genius. He could read by age three, and he knew his multiplication tables by age four. By age seven, he was studying Latin, and at age twelve he enrolled in the University of North Carolina. He graduated at age sixteen. Uh, and yeah, everything that happens in the story should be taking his evidence for white child prodigy should be dosed with paint chips. I think that's yeah. I always feel like when I hear something like that, and I hear like someone new multiplication tables at four, I'd be like, who prove it? Yeah, I would say prove it. And and if you can prove that a kid is that smart, you gotta slow him down somehow. I would write to be able to quiz that four year old. I see how deep you're not to the table is? Yeah? And I think if you're a four year old with perfect knowledge of the multiplication tables, take them out of school for two years, don't let him read books, make them work on a farm. Did you write a Kurt Vonnegut short story at us? What just Happen? Look? Vonnegut was right. The problem is that people are too smart these two fast. Give them braces, take them down the notch. Yeah yeah, slow them down somehow, just you know, put blinders on the kid, feed him lead, whatever it takes, and then the versus true. If you're not good at something, give them steroids and ship give him all the drugs to make them smarter. I think everyone who can't do the multiplication tables by age four, mandatory steroids. Everyone who can illiterate farm in the Midwest. I like it. That's my deal. Society in charge of children, Okay, so uh yeah. Bobby Welch, child prodigy, entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis in nineteen seventeen, a year when nothing else of particular interest occurred. He resigned after just two years when he decided that a military career was not for him. Instead, he wanted to be a lawyer, so he enrolled in Harvard Law School, but this didn't wind up working out much better for him. Robert clashed regularly with his professor's, particularly the hilariously named Felix Frankfurter, who would grow up. It's a real guy, it's a real guy's name. He went on to become a Supreme Court justice. Of course, a lot of people have to overcome something in order to do something great. And I think being born with Felix, he had his handicap and it made him great. Yeah, Justice, hot dog. Yeah, because that's the hardest. If you want to be the hardest, it can be too for other people to laugh at you become a Supreme Court justice, because then everybody's got to be scared one way or the other. You're gonna terrify half the population if it pleases the hot dog. Oh god, oh god, I'm so sorry. Please don't take away my reproductive health care. In the case of Hines versus the United States, he's gonna have to recuse himself. He cannot. He could not rule on anything to do with the John Kerry campaign for that reason. Um Frankfurter was a liberal Supreme Court justice, which might explain why Robert Welch hated him so much. Welch's biography, which is quite a text, says that the young Robert Welch hated Felix Frankfurter because, quote, the young man from North Carolina recognized hogwash when he heard it, and a hogwash is spelled in all caps and also spelled out with like a like a dash in between each word. That's good, it's a fascinating publication. That's a that's a Canterbury Tales level of bullshit right there. Yeah, magnificent. Did someone who was with the John Birch Society right this biography? Yes? Absolutely, yeah, no, A thousands like the editorial style. It was written probably by Bob Welch. Yeah. Welch left Harvard just a year before he would have graduated. He decided that he'd learned enough and it was time to make a shipload of money. And this wonder kin had a specific plan for how he was going to get rich. The motherfucking candy business. Hell yeah, hell yeah, candies where the money is. Man. You know, that's the thing about candy. You get older, it stays appealing to people of the same age. I don't know why I tried to I don't know why I tried to Fast Times. Tried to Fast Times that one. So Bob's brilliant idea was something called the Papa Sucker. The Papa Sucker, the Papa Sucker. Yeah, speaking of Fast Times jokes, because it is what it sounds like. What would happen when your dad gets a blowjob. But it was actually a caramel lollipop designed to not melt in the summer heat. That's exactly like what would happen if your dad got a blowjob right there. I'm pretty sorry. Yeah, And like your dad's penis, it was filled with dangerous chemicals, which is why it didn't melt in the summer heat. Probably that's good stuff, not a good lying to keep. You take the rough with the smooth, as they say, dangerous chemicals. It's not melt especially when it comes to your dad's generals. You got to take the rough with when it comes to a Papa Sucker. Unfortunate, unfortunate. This is really gone on the rails, but they're not great rails. So despite the novelty of Bob Welch's Papa Sucker, his first business, named the Oxford Candy Company, did not go well. Uh. The cause seems to have again been the fact that Bob Welch did not play well with others. He had an increasing series of tins disagreements with his board of directors. They had a fight over what he described as their desire to reduce the quality of their products to improve profits, Welch quit and again walked away. So getting a bit of a theme, like everything all I want to do is tortured children for morality tales. Yeah, he just keeps getting into disagreements with people, be they his professors or his business partners, and then piecing the funk out. That's that's early life. Bob Welch not an easy guy to get along with, So he's also not an easy guy to dissuade from his sacred task of selling candy. Um. He set up another candy company, this one in Berlin, and money was tight because he had a couple of kids by this point, so he took a second job as a salesman for E. J. Brack and Sons, which was one of the largest candy companies in the world. They're the people who make candy corn, among other you know. Oh so they're evil too, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Their history's greatest monsters corn pumpkin. They make candy pumpkin's. Yeah, the candy corn substances in a bunch of different shapes. Oh yeah, yeah, you mean the little pumpkins that are made out of candy corn. I do like the very specific term substance. Whatever it's made of which you don't know and neither. It's just a substance. Man tried to convince me that like, candy pumpkins are better like candy. Corn sucks, but candy pumpkins are good like No, it's just more. It's the same. It's a larger piece of the same terrible candies, just a ball. You know, it is great. I have this, there's this. So the person I lived with for a while is a is a Chinese national, and she introduced me to this wonderful restaurant in Portland that's like a Chinese street food restaurant and have this dish that I've never had before that's just corn and fried batter and green onions and cilantro and it's fucking awesome. Oh it's so good, Like I don't know how it's it does sound good, incredible. But you know what, Bob Welch would really hate the idea of you living with a Chinese national. He would hate everything. As soon as I said Chinese, he would have started screaming, ever the mouth this mouth. Well, I don't know if I convinced him my friend was descended from Chang Kai check, he'd probably have been all right with that. He was a big chang head as that was all around. Yeah, that would be that would be mouse sedgenation. Mao, Dan are running. I feel like you had that one in your head for years and then you hardened it into a joke about Chang Kai check because if only I'm tortured by new versions of that same shitty joke all day. Jordan's made that joke fifteen times on the podcast. I've just edited out every time. Yeah, you're wise to do that. So. Uh. This second candy company didn't work very well because it was the Great Depression and people didn't have disposable income for candy. Probably was a bad time to start a candy business. Uh, and his his new company fell apart in nineteen thirty three. Fortunately, Bras was still making money and he was doing well enough as a salesman that they took him on as a full time employee, which kept him afloat for the next year or so. In nineteen thirty four, he started his third candy company, the Midwest Candy Company of Attica, Indiana. Uh And unfortunately his candy was as bad as his company's name, and Welch's third enterprise failed. So he said, how's that doing. Was he still selling the papa suckers? No, he he had to give the leave the Papa sucker behind when he had a fight with his business partners. So all the papa suckers that are getting sold, yeah, they're keeping the loss. That's the worst loss right there. He's not getting a dime from any of the papas that are getting sucked these days, which is a real shame. So, yeah, three failed candy companies. In a ninety five Bob Welch files for bankruptcy, which is, you know, pretty on brand for him. It's the financial equivalent of like running away when you get into an argument. So so far everything scans. He returns to Boston and he gets a job working for his younger brother, who was also in the candy business and a lot more successful than his older brother. The James O. Welch company was a success, and this is what finally brought Robert Welch the wealth he desired. He was made VP in charge of sales and advertising, and as the company grew, this meant Roberts spent years traveling across the country to offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle. Now a wealthy man, he began racking up positions on government boards, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and eventually a role as a national counselor for the US Chamber of Commerce. Is anything thats you into a right wing lunatic more than getting rich off of somebody else's work? Yeah, especially your brother's work. Yeah right, a regular right wing thing? Is that how they all get to where they are ahead? Sorry? Just he takes a lot of credit for the company's success, but judging by the fact that he had three failed candy companies and only succeeded when he latched onto his brothers, I'm gonna guess the James was the talent and the family might be the case. Yeah, if I recall correctly. Didn't they make some like pretty like memorable candies? Yeah? No, the James O. Welch Company has made some some of the all time great candies. Uh they all sound weird when yeah, and some sort of weird sugary rope thing. I don't know, like they made a bunch of candy candy. Yeah, it's not like it's not like the god fearing modern candy that we have today. It was all strange and terrifying and involved four pounds little nibbles, those little so you can't even sell kids something with horror in the name. Now it's just social justice warriors. Yeah, cancel cultures, run them buck And now we can't have our horehound candy. Why can't I buy a fox stick today? Why can't I go to any candy shop I want to and buy a fox stand. I wanted a fox, a fox stick and a Papa sucker. Come on, So, I just like it's sugar Mama's Sugar Mama's Jesus way to be a misogynist day. But I think, but isn't like sugar Daddy and sugar Baby aren't sugar. They have junior Mints, sugar Daddies, sugar babies, sugar Mama's Welch is fudge, welch is Freppe and pom poms. Wow. I finally understand the popularity of incest porn on the Internet. I think it all comes from there. It's all the Papa suckers and the sugar model starts there. I see it. It's all made making sense. Now, Yeah, you know you say that Jordan's It makes the Welch company motto suck on a Mama make a lot more sense. Yeah, that does sound right. That that all is starting to scan now. So, like all men who get rich through a mixture of blind luck and family ties, Robert Welch decided to write a book. The Road to Salesmanship was about exactly the book you'd guessed that it was. I found a copy of it on Amazon today for three ninety nine and the product description text is wonderful. Uh, just gonna read you the Amazon description text, which is a little bit off the beaten path, but it it's quite funny. The Road to Salesmanship Brackets Pamphlet Robert Welch Robert not capitalized, Welch capitalized ninety one raring out of print, Collector's item limited available. The Road to Salesmanship Pamphlet and Brackets by Robert Welch, this time capitalized. This is a document and then new sentence that was written by the founder of the John Birch Society, but written decades before he founded the John Bridge Society. Now they start calling the John Bridge Society. This is not about the John Bridge Society or any projects. Rinciples of the john Bridge Society. This is a unique look at the early thoughts of Robert Welch, long before he founded the john Bridge Society. And I enjoyed that. M hm. So I looked through the book a bit. I found it online. There's also a free copy. Don't don't pay Amazon for this fucking book, um, so I I and don't read it also it's not worth reading. But I skimmed a couple of chapters just to see if there was anything entertaining about it, because I was hoping that like it was filled with I don't know, a bunch of crypto fascist nonsense, and it's it's it's even too boring for that. It seemed to have been mostly folksy and anecdotes about his sales experience and in inoffensive advice on how to sell stuff. He does start the he does. I enjoyed that He starts the book by noting that unlike like loser jobs like bricklaying and lumberjacking, being a salesman is a true profession, like being a doctor. Specifically, throw ship on brick layers and lumberjacks. Any idiot can do those jobs selling ship. That's hard. Salesman do occupy the same rarefied territory as doctors nowadays. You know, you think about a used car salesman, you're like, that guy is a surgeon the same level of quality. Yeah, just a used body salesman. I mean you think when the coronavirus first hit, our first responders were the doctors, the nurses, and the candy salesman. Yeah. Absolutely. Also, I really do think the candy sells itself. Yeah. I don't know, it doesn't take much. I'm not impressed by a candy salesman. I mean, as long as it's not a disastrously gross candy, or as long as it's not called the Papa Sucker. Yeah, but it'll be all right. You're gonna be all right. Eminem's ever needed an ad campaign, yeah, because they absolutely have. But it's just they had a long one every Christmas, great ad campaign, but they didn't need them. They would have sold their chocolate with or without them. Yeah. Meanwhile, I think the only job that Robert Welch did was was the Papa Sucker. Suck on your Papa, Oh boy. Yeah, I didn't expect us to go down anyway for this episode. Apparently he ends the book on a series of final don'ts for Salesman, which include and these are. The actual text of all of these is more boring than you'd expect. But the don't there funny a knife can have two edges. Everybody knows that drum is hollow. People rent offices to do business in remember the future, and professors belong in classrooms. Wait, those are the don't Those are the don'ts. So don't professor. Yeah, don't be unless you're unless you're in a classroom. Don't teach people about candy when you're trying to sell to That's a good point. Oh, I get you now, especially don't be a liberal candy prefersior. Oh, you can't do that. They like to imagine that the knife has two edges. Thing is is a reference to the many knife fights that candy salesman got into in the nineties. Wouldn't surprise my brutal business is dangerous work. You saw what happened to the Augustus gloup Kid. Yeah, and that that Robin Williams movie The Candy Man. So the impression that I got from my limited reading of this book is that young Bob Welch was something of a pampus know at all, um, but I got no hint that he was particularly unhinged or unreasonable, like it's not there's nothing like like. There's no hints as to what he became in the book. He just seems like kind of a dick um, which I guess is one hint, but not not much of one compared to what happens next. So, during World War Two, Welch served on the War Production Board. If it seems odd to you that a candy man would be appointed to help manage national military production during a global battle for survival of democracy, yes, yes it does, but that is what happened. Uh bullets, But Eminem's yeah, just another kind of Papa sucker. We have a long history of giving people jobs are not qualified for in this country. It's it's a creative strength. So, as a result of his work in the War Production Board, Welch spent more and more time in Washington, d c. During the forties. He also became chairman of the National Confectioners Association's Washington Committee. In nineteen seven, he received the candy industry's highest honor, the Kettle Award, from Candy Industry Magazine. So he's really he's arrived. You can't top the kettle award if you're a candy man for for for what did he receive this award forgetting all those kids to suck on their papa's But I mean, like high sales. Was he a good candy creator? Was he just around win World War Two? Why did he get this award? He's honestly, I think ink and this is this isn't written anywhere, but reading between the lines from everything I read about his his earlier life, I think his real talent was that he was very good at getting other rich businessman to like him. And I like, that's why you'll notice the thing that he really does best. He wasn't a particularly good business owner or candy salesman, but he was great at being on the board of big candy industry companies because rich guys liked him. It's like, I think that was his talent that I'll take you a long way in America. Yeah, I mean. The analog is like people who get a lot of stuff through networking, Like maybe not they're intrinsic skills. They might get more gigs or shows or stuff because of the ability to schmooz and stuff. And Robert Welsh was. From everything I could tell, it seems like he was pretty pretty good at that. That's how you get a cattle. Yeah, yeah, that's how you get a cattle. You get you get a cattle. Nobody's trying to take the Man's Cattle Award. Sure, he fucking brought us closer to fascism than any other living or any other American he's ever lived. But he won that kettle. Here in the kettle I allowed. Did you know the weekend is freaking out because he didn't get the kettle? Do you know that Tom Hanks won kettle two years in a row, both of them for his Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates. That was the best thing that ever happened to the candy. And okay, you're right, we need we pulled throughout the next year the Academy award two years in a row. Cattle two years in a row. Very impressive. All right, all right? I thought it was because of Philadelphia, but he doubt he eats Reese's peanut butter cups in Philadelphia. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, that Tom Hanks is actually the only man to get the egot k yeah, okay, So Welch's real gift seems to have been in organizing people in businesses. He had a genius for managing teams and forgetting again rich people to like him. In nineteen fifty, he was appointed to the board of directors for the National Association of manufact Jurors. He held this job for a while and through it was in regular contact with wealthy and powerful people in a bunch of different industries. And is at this point that I'm going to start quoting from the World of the John Birch Society by D. J. Malloy, which is a real fun book about a bunch of terrible ship Welch first became involved in politics in nineteen forty six, when he volunteered to work on Republican Robert Bradford's successful campaign to become governor of Massachusetts. He was appointed vice chairman of the state's Republican Finance Committee. Two years later, in nineteen forty nine, Welch went a major step further, however, when he announced his intention to become the next Lieutenant governor of the Bay State. Like many other conservatives and businessmen of the time, reducing government interference in the economy, and turning back the creeping collectivism of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal were among Welch's principal concerns, as he made clear in an interview with Courtney Sheldon of the Christian Science Monitor on the eve of the election. Our first and most important job, Welch explained, is to keep us from going any further than we have already gone in the extension of government ownership of business, operation of business, interference with business, control of business, and control of the details of our daily living. He was also very strongly opposed, he said, to socialized medicine at the national or state level, to federal aid to education in any shape, manner, or form, and to federal housing plans. So nineteen forties, Bob Welch is like, not only funck the New Deal, fuck the concept of state paid healthcare, Fuck the concept of federal aid to education, and funck federal housing. Um he was really ahead. Doesn't know how to ground how to grow the candy business. You make dental care free for everyone, candy goes out of the roof, Come on, man, and the long term business strategy. That's actually a good plan. I think it is. It is and if all those don't have to pay Jesus, you get a second kettle for that you give, you give poor families their rent for free, They're going to buy a lot more candy for those kids. True still is right about education being a real barrier to the candy industry. Though you want people as dumb as hell if you want to meet in enough candy. Any kind of nutritional information in schools is going to be a hindrance. Yeah, So from the late nineteen forties it was kind of clear the guy that Bob Wolk was going to turn into. In a speech in May nineteen forty nine, he argued that it was no secret that there was a war going on in the United States between collectivism and individualism. He described this war as occurring on many fronts. In the field of commerce and industry, the battle is between free enterprise and state socialism, he said. In politics, it is between the people's ownership of the government and the government's ownership of the people. In sociology, it is between self reliance and dependence on a welfare state. In international relations, it is between a brutally aggressive tyranny and the remains of an independent civilization. So that's I wish, I wish rich people would just be like, I want more money, Like I would at least be able to engage with that. But that's a whole longest of fake bullshit. Leave me alone, just say you want more money. And what's what's impressive about it is that it's the exact same rhetoric that you hear out of the like mainstream Republican Party today. So like like we which really uh, like the thing that he predicted more than anything was like the way to kind of frame this battle, um, but because like, yeah, that there's a fight between in the in this period, the like the late nineteen forties and fifties, when like the government has just finished a long stint of cracking down brutally on left wing organizing, defining like this is a battle between free enterprise and state socialism, Like that was the thing he was doing, was was not just attacking socialism, which Americans have done for a while, but defining like the mainstream Democratic Party as socialists and refusing to deviate from that line. Like that was really kind of one of Welsh's big innovations. Branding your enemies as opposed to yourself. Yeah, and also the idea that no, we're we're not. This is not you know, politics is not some sort of grand bait between you know, two sides with different opinions on how things might work, trying to figure out the way to make a better society. It is a It is a fight between tyranny, uh and any hope of survival, and like the other side is nothing but pure tyranny, evil stuff. Yeah, Like like our ahead of the Federal Elections Commission said, yeah, it fucking rules. Yeah. Well described the battle between liberals and conservatives in the United States as a war that would determine whether we are going to leave our children and our grandchildren a world at least as good as the one we have inherited, or one that has already plunged into the incipient shambles of a new dark Ages. So he was right in the inverse, I suppose. Yeah, I mean he did help bring us into a new dark Ages. Um, so good on you, Bob. You know who else is going to bring us into a new dark age? CBS? Yeah, I mean they're gonna try, but they're gonna do it with the help of the products and services that's support this podcast. I made no sense that our products and services are going to plunge the world into a new dark age. Know that they're going to help CBS do it. I think they might. Is it a mask singer on CBS? Who is the masking? Do they have the same masked singer every time? Absolutely not. The whole point is guessing who's behind the mask? Okay, I've never seen it. They have celebrities and costumes and then they sing and then a panel of Judge's gas who's behind the mask? All right, Well that's worse than Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. At least Sarah Palin was on it. Of course she was. Never mind, it's today only second to Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. We're back and we're talking about the masked singer and how it's almost certainly evidence that the United States has in fact slid into a new dark age through which there is no escape. Doctor Drew was on it. Yeah. See, that's the kind of thing like if if aliens came down and I had to like defend the continued existence of human civilization, I think I could do a pretty good job. Until they brought up clips from that show, Like I think I could defend us from like war crimes charges and stuff, but not not that. Here's this guy who's on the radio giving medical advice to teams for twenty years. Uh, he's dressed like a hippopotamus, singing a song poorly. Yeah, you know what, you know what, what are you going to use? A virus? Big lasers? Like, just just just do it, just be quick about it. If the first questions Aliens ask is, was Sean Spicer a good dancer? We're gonna be in real trouble there. But you know who wasn't on the mask singer Sean Spicer Robert Welch. Ye, Bob Welch was not, although he would have hated that show and called it evidence of a communist conspiracy. So Bob Welch's appetite had been, you know, pretty sufficiently stirred by the nineteen fifties, and again he had, you know, he'd kind of climbed his high as the candy industry would get him. So like what you see in the late forties is he reaches the heights that a candy man can hit and he immediately starts screaming about how communists are going to have infiltrated the Democratic Party and are going to destroy democracy. Um like a normal career check. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that eminem Mars was run by Marxist collectivists. Yeah, I assume it was because he didn't have a Wonka vater. You know, he could only go, I'm gonna make so many more fucking Willy Wonker reference. Oh it's not just I do not have trouble seeing Bob Welch is a lot like Willie Wonka, to be honest, because I think they both believe business owners should be able to kill children. Yeah, I agree, and enslaved people. Yes, he is so Bob Welch. You know, in the nineteen fifties starts getting way more into politics. Now it's it's unclear precisely when his terror if the left began. Again. When you read this guy's background, the stuff that wasn't just written by the Jahn Birch Society decades later, it kind of comes out of left field, like he's just a candy man, and then boom, he's screaming about the New Dark Ages. But however it started, it was in full form by July of nineteen fifty when he wrote this in a fundraising letter for a politician quote. The strategy of the socialists divide and conquer, call all businessmen crooks so that nobody will speak up for them, and strangle them with controls and taxation. Brib all the farmers with their own money into a selfish pressure group for more bribes. Infiltrate the labor unions and convert them into political tools. Discredit the medical profession until the rest of the public clamors for government medicine. Attack every segment of our population with tactics with which alienate the support of all other segments. The forces on the socialist side amount to a vast conspiracy to change our political and economic system. Wow, your face changed, It was almost you went deep into that channel, Bob Dark there's a odd I love. They're including the idea that socialists were going to discredit the medical profession in order to convince people to demand government medicine. It's like, No, what discredited the medical profession was people going to the e er and getting a forty dollar bill for a three hour visit. Uh, I'll do it. Yeah, there are two ways to go on on that thought process. There. So, this was the first time Bob Well used the word conspiracy in a public statement, and it would not be the last. Tragically, wich is increasingly unhinged. Rants about socialism did not translate into success at the ballot box, probably because a lot of Americans in nineteen fifty had directly and recently benefited from massive social welfare projects. Really really, that's when you actually feel the effects of government working for you, and you're like, oh, maybe this isn't an evil thing, you know, And then yeah, but millions of us didn't starve because of the civilian conservation, you know, project. I don't think that's a bad conspiracy, to be honest. Yeah, is the conspiracy that we didn't starve to death during the depression? Because I like that. Yeah, Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. So yeah. He lost the race for Lieutenant governor by a margin of more than a hundred thousand votes, which in nineteen fifty was like most of the country. Yeah with the question, Yeah, so it was not a close election. Still, it is worth noting that nearly sixty thou Americans had cast their votes for Bob Welch and his giant left wing conspiracy. After his defeat, he wrote about his hopes that this corps of supporters would in the next year's grow into quote a far stronger, more militant, and more effective force of political strength than other campaigns to come. He insisted, this crusade has just started because it's always a good thing when right wing idealogues describe what they're doing as a crusade. That that always it really gets it really gets white men all hot and bothered whenever you give him the opportunity to go on a crusade against anybody who's not a white man. So that I mean, you know, my mom, Jordan's ABC baby, always be a crusadan. That's what you gotta do. If I'm not, it's yeah, okay. So Welch tried his hand at politics again two years later when he attempted to be elected as a delegate for Senator Robert Taft's run for president. Yall, remember when Bob Taft ran for president, William Howard, you are thinking about the first Taft, although I assumed they were both would have had problems with the White House bathtubs. No, this was this was Taft the sequel, or the attempted sequel to taft Um, And like most sequels, it was not as good as the original to teot Domes. Okay, Uh, so Taft was actually running to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was also running for president at that time. Um. And at that point, for you know, understandable reasons, Dwight Eisenhower was probably one of the most beloved men on the entire planet. The whole highway thing. He hadn't done the highways yet, but he had helped beat the Nazis. Um he was for me lately, that's what I'm asking, Okay, he was even Eisenhower at this point was even actually pretty popular with a lot of Soviets, including Marshall Zukov, the most prominent commander of Soviet forces during World War Two. Um. It's actually, it's actually kind of a fun story that Marshall Zukov, who again is like the main Soviet general who beat the Nazis, Like he and Eisenhower were like real good buddies, and Eisenhower gave him a tackle box filled with a bunch of hand carved fishing lures, and Zukov kept it with him until the day he died. It was right next to him when he died. Really, that's very cute, Yeah, isn't that. Yeah. I mean, admittedly, both guys are responsible for the deaths of millions, so there is yeah. Also but hen that's fair, that's fair, and other people. But as funny, if Zukov didn't fish, yeah, he just really loved them Luis. Yeah, it's very thoughtful. So anyway, the fact that Eisenhower was, despite being a pretty hardcore Cold warrior himself, capable of seeing communists as human beings, enraged Bob Welch. And Bob Welch was further enraged by the fact that Eisenhower supported taxing people to spend money on things that would benefit the public good like highways. Back to Bob Welch was Marxism. I don't need roads. Yeah, you gotta think all all all rich people are basically like, uh, Doc Brown, like, we don't need roads. Yeah, exactly where we're going. We just all just dirgibles for the rich and everyone else as a mud farmer. That's the glorious dream of Bob Welch. I do like any alternate universe where dirigibles factor heavily in the future, I love it. I can't. I can't imagine Bob Welch getting his way and they're not being thousands of dirigibles and giant mechanical spiders. Oh yeah, yeah, you're gonna have some yeah yeah. Yeah. So obviously Ike won that election. He's kind of hard to beat. Again, if you really want to win an election, beat the Nazis, it'll do. Yeah. If Biden, If Biden defeats the Nazis, I will vote for him a second time. First, if Biden had if Biden had sacked Hitler's Berlin, yeah, I think people would have he would have he would have had a more commanding lead. What Hitler's Berlin in South Carolina? Now, is that where it's out or yeah? Uh So the final delegate count in that uh in that convention between Eisenhower and Taft was a blowout, eight hundred and forty five to two eight um most so. Again the final one not particular close, but the first count of delegates had been much narrower, with five nine for Eisenhower and five hundred for Taft. It was a contentious and ugly uh contest between the two men. Um. Eisenhower's people accused tafts people of stealing delegates. There were a number of different votes before they got to the final count, and there were ugly floor fights, and while I did prevail clearly in the end, a lot of Taft supporters were left feeling that they'd been cheated. There was kind of a stop the steel thing, and Bob Welch was like the main architect of it. Um was Roger Stone like a baby. Yeah, I mean I think he was a baby at the time. Yeah, yeah, first, yeah, you can kind of honestly, the best, like the best way to describe it might be it seems sort of like what happened with Bernie Sanders in two thousand and sixteen, at least in terms of how his his supporters felt. You had this like candidate who had a strong base of fanatical supporters who were like, the party leadership has fucked us out of of winning. And that's probably the case. It does seem like the Republican Party leadership like tipped the scale for Eisenhower at the same time, hard to imagine Taft doing better than Eisenhower at the time. Robert Welch, who was infuriated, called it the dirtiest deal in American political history, A new one, yeah, a famous deal that he was mad about not long ago. Nothing made him angrier than Taft getting screwed, Robert. That's a Papa sucker for you. The Bernie Sanders of not wanting people to have healthcare. So Eisenhower went on to electorally pants his Democratic challenger in one of the most overwhelming landslides in the US political history. Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, would go on to do absolutely nothing of note, but that is that was ix pp. Most Americans were fine with more or less everything that went on, And really the whole fight over Taft being you know, cheated out of the nomination didn't did not become a major national story. The early nineteen fifties were a time of broad political consensus among the nation's white supermajority. Uh So, like again, people were pretty happy. The Eisenhower years are generally referred to by again white folks as like a golden era in America. Um, because most we get to eat alone, right, guys, we all get to eat alone. This is pretty great. I love this country. We get to buy terrible houses in the suburbs. You know, look like me, You look like me, You look like me. This place is great. I just love this club. I just bought a house for eleven dollars and I got a negative four percent loan. They're paying this house for buying this house. Yeah, I accidentally fell landed on a fucking uh. What's the what's the thing that people don't get anymore that they used to get pension? I forgot what pensions were because they don't exist anymore for most of us unless you're a cop. So yeah, again, most Americans, at least most of the Americans, who again were white and thus the kind of people who got asked about things at that time. We're pretty happy with Eisenhower's victory, but not Bob Welch. Taft's defeat was something of a black pill for him, convincing him that party politics was hopeless and that party politics could never save the United States from the looming specter of communism. Nineteen fifty two was also the year that Welch published his first political book, May God Forgive Us, which is solid title give it to the Man, you know, Yeah, that's that's sinners. Sinners in the hands of an angry God was already taken at that point, I believe, so he couldn't use that one. His first book is basically the title is like it's too late. Yeah, you're fucked ship, Sophie. Remind remember, remind me to pitch You're fucked to I don't know, penguinners. Somebody figure out. We'll figure out what it's about. Later on the Art of rat Fucking his salesmanship book Zen In the Art of rat Fucking, a Guide for hard nosed Buddhist political Operators. I would read that book. That actually sounds great fun, that does so fun. Yeah, so what one hand? Rat fucking? So may God forgive us was a full throated condemnation of US foreign policy in Asia, which Welch saw as the government basically handing an entire continent over to the commies. He blamed it on the quote almost unbelievable combination of trickery, chicanery, and treason of the Harry Truman administration. Truman, as far as Welch was concerned, was basically a Communist. Now, the fact that Harry Truman had literally dropped two Adam bombs in order to scare the Soviet Union didn't seem to change Welch's political calculus at all. He was a communist far left. For me, it was an act man. Can't see through the bullshit. It was actually the deep state who launched those nuclear bombs. So Truman was, no, don't do it. He was a hardcore Trotskyist. Yeah, yeah, it was Peter Struck actually dropped their nukes, if I recall correct. So Bobby was most distraught by what he saw as the abandonment of nationalist warlord Chang Kai check to communist war lord mousey tongue. Uh, that's that's where we get our Chang Kai Check reference. I always love to have some good I like to throw in some red meat for the Chang gang you know. Yeah, universal basic income. Yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, Mauser C ninety six is that firep slugs all the good Chinese warlord stuff. So it was during the research for this book that Welch first came across a name that would come to define the rest of his lives work, John Birch. You'll know who the actual John Birch was. He does. He explained it to me, and I'm I'm so good at remembering exactly where the original forgotten. Yeah. I do know one thing about him, which you will almost certainly say here very shortly. Well, I actually don't think I think he's bluffing. I think Jordan's bluffing. I will tell you. I will tell you this. What's the one thing you know I know that I remember specifically from you is, according to his friend John Birch, would have hated the John. Yes, yeah, that is what I does. Seem fair, although there's debate about that, but that is one account that you can find for sure. Okay, we'll talk about his life and you can tell me how you think after that. Okay, So there's one thing skimmed about John Burt. Okay, skimmed is even generally. Yeah, there's one thing that you overheard about John Burt. She didn't happen to remember hearing this information. And now you understand my knowledge base. Yes, So the actual John Burch was born in India in nineteen eighteen to parents who are Christian mission areas in a three year mission trip that ended in frustration and disappointment, presumably because most of the people they met were fine with the gods they already had. Atlantic writer Thomas Mallon notes that quote evangelical zeal conflicted with the more material progress being pursued by the missionary Sam Higginbottom, their boss at the Allahabad Agricultural Institute, In other words, John Burch's parents wanted to be like, you know, Super Jesus e with people, and their boss was more about improving people's material needs and hoping that inspired them to find Christ. So they got tired of that we should give you food, and the other guys like, what if we told him they were going to hell? That would we work to right? What if food was contingent the accepting Christ. Yeah, So the guy who cared about helping people stayed in India helping people, and the Birch family moved back to Georgia. So that's where John was born in India, but he grew up in Georgia, and it would be fair to describe him as growing up a religious fundamentalist, Like he was not just a religious man, but by the standards of the time, a fundamentalist. He went to Mercer Universe City and was described by a biographer later in life as obstinate, passionate, and headstrong. I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic here. He hat the most professor Felix Frankfurt. The most notable state side episode of his brief life involved participating in a thirteen member student group against five professors whose theological views they deemed heretical. The accusing students were decided minority on the Baptist campus, and charges against the faculty were dismissed after a ten hour hearing. Birch went on to graduate at the top of his class, but found himself shunned by a portion of its members. He began to feel that he had been used, provoked into the fight by some of Macon's towny Baptist ministers. So again, he's very hard core religious and is like willing to accuse a bunch of professors of heresy. But then after the whole situation shakes out, he starts to feel as if he's been manipulated by like ministers in the area, and he kind of like he kind of has an awakening. And after this point most degree became less extreme religiously, Like it seems to have realized he was being manipulated. Why do I feel like two percent of that debate was entirely about whether or not Jews were people, Like, yeah, right, there was a j Q in that. Yeah. So yeah, John was smart enough to realize he'd been manipulated, and he left that school. He went to a Bible institute next run by a popular evangelical radio preacher who suggested that Burt should travel to China as an evangelist. John arrived there in September of nineteen forty, in the middle of a long and almost impossibly bloody war between China and Japan and a civil war in China. It was a rough fucking place to be in, not an easy time to be anywhere really in China. Um So John actually traveled closer to the danger and moved almost two hundred miles from where he had initially moved in China to the city of shang Grau, which was very close to the front line. Now, while he was a foreigner in China to sell people on Christianity, it does seem like he legitimately fell in love with the culture. He learned to speak fluent Mandarin in just a year, which is not something you would Yeah, he's he's really very gifted with languages. Um and yeah, that's probably not the kind of thing you do if you didn't have some appreciation for the culture. Uh. The Atlantic notes that this exceeded to tell them their dirty commies. That's what I need to tell them, their commies. Um. Yeah. It's also noted by his biographer that he recognized his own racial prejudice, which was obviously a product of growing up white and Georgia. She was struggling to overcome it in the nineteen forties. So it seems like a guy who like grew up in a pretty regressive background, but was making significant strides to be a better person, open to new ideas and new people and new cultures. Definitely not a villain, would be fair to say. By nineteen forty two, Birch had become discouraged by the bureaucracy of the missionary effort in China, feeling as if it distracted from the more important work of providing meaningful aid for a nation that was riven by war and starvation. He volunteered to serve in the U. S. Military mission to China as a chaplain. Before he got an answer, he wound up helping to rescue of me Dolittle's raiders who had just bombed civilians in Tokyo is revenge for Pearl Harbor and had landed in China. As Birch's biographer notes, quote, they saw a gaunt Western man with several days growth of beard, and one of the airman exclaimed, well, Jesus Christ. The missionary replied, that's an awfully good name, but I am not. He so to him, all right, a little, you little clever bastard, shut just say God, you gotta you gotta, you gotta, you gotta throw out something good there. You gotta have it like I would have gone with, that's my dad's name. That's the way you do that. That would have been a funnier remark if only John Burch had done more stand up sets, if only Jordan was around back then to do punch up yea on social responses. One note, John, one note, Let's take it one more time. Let's take it from the top. You can't imagine if you were him giving that response that like what seventy years later some dicks would be like arguing about whether or not it was funny on a podcast. Yeah, I I imagine I would. I would like that. I would like seventy years from now somebody to be like, it's pretty good that one time, that's worth of life. That one time Jordan's responded to someone saying hi to him was not funny enough. There seventy years from now, behind behind the bastards where they just go through old episodes of my podcast and punch it up, correct my mispronunciations. But you know what, it will be funny. Still, you're a great transition. Not to most people. Capitalism is not gonna last that long. Nothing's gonna last that long. But you do need to do another. Okay, here's a product. We're back that was a good one. Hey, what do you what do you? I don't need I don't need this ship. I don't need don't need this. Seventy years from now, people are going to be like Robert was really being bullied by Sophie that one time when he talked about the John Birch Society that was most noteworthy thing that happened before World War Three. Let's give them notes on it, even though none of them survived the initial nuclear exchange. Anyway, I'll start the Robert Evans Society. Yeah, I'm gonna wind up being the first victim of space communism. So Birch would go on to play a minor role in helping do Little's raiders escape. He was commissioned in the military, and he worked in the military for a few years. And you know, at this point US military mission in China. Broadly speaking on the right side of things because they're against Japan who was killing millions and millions and millions of people. So yeah, he's he's not a completely unproblematic guy, but not a bad guy. Uh And yeah, his goal after leaving the service was to do more missionary work. He was going to move to Tibet, but he never got the chance to do that. Birch was physically and mentally wreck both from a terrible war and from repeated doubts of malaria. He got his final military assignment in August, which was just after the Japanese surrender was announced. And you know that, like when Japan surrendered, the Chinese nationalists in the Chinese Communist forces started fighting again, and Birch was with the U. S. Military Unit and again sick, and everyone who was round up the time notes that he was like showing increased signs of paranoia. He was going through PTSD. He was not in a good mental place. And the group he didn't have hydroxychloroquin. Yeah that that actually would have helped because it's an anti malaria um so Virch's party. The guys he was with, like the U. S. Military Unit, who's with ran into a group of Communist soldiers and they ordered the Americans to disarm. Birch got angry and insulted people, and like, we don't exactly know what happened, but there was a fight and Birch was shot dead. So if he had never learned Chinese, he wouldn't have been able to piss him off as much. Yeah, the the lesson here is never learned another another language, you will get murdered in a field in China by red army soldier. I think That's what I think. That's what I'm gonna take away from this. Yeah, quit, quit your Spanish lessons today and save your own life. This podcast is not brought to you by Duo Lingo. Yeah, so, uh, Mause Dong actually apologized for the killing of John Birch to an American general who was like in charge of the US mission in the country at the time. Um, but mal kind of walked away from that meeting really angry because the American general seemed to be insistent that he could be should be able to send American troops anywhere inside of China without like informing the Chinese ahead of times. So it was a whole it was a whole big deal and it. It just kind of seems like a tragedy. Like Birch that probably was being a dick but also was sick and struggling with PTSD and doesn't seem to have been a bad guy. It's just a bummer. It's you know, the war. That war sucks. Yeah, Um, it would be fair to call him a complicated man, but yeah, definitely not a villain in death, though his like a see, was really really simplified thanks in large part to Robert Welch. He turned John Birch into a symbol because to Robert Welch, John Birch was the first American to die fighting Communism, even though he hadn't really been fighting Communism. That actually been like broadly speaking, trying to help China and they just got new an argument with some Communist soldiers and everyone was probably drinking. He was trying to apply nuance to a situation where there's only good guys and bad guys, and how dare you ever consider the bad guy's human beings? That's crazy? Yeah, yeah, Welch does not see any nuance in this. To him, John Birch is a martyr who like gave his life to destroy communism. Um, and yeah, he starts turning him into basically like the John the Baptist of capitalism. Like that's that's kind of Bob Welch's goal here, Um, which, yeah, I don't. I never knew John Birch, obviously because he died decades before my birth. But reading about the guy, you kind of get the feeling he'd be a little bit bummed. Yeah, you know who else didn't him? Fucking Robert Welch. And Robert Welch did not know him though, not even a little bit. In nine, Welch started work on what would become one of his most consequential books, The Politician. He was inspired to write it during a car ride in New York with a friend. Basically, he's in a car with a buddy of his. They're on like a driving to New York, and he starts ranting about Dwight Eisenhower and talking about how he's a Communist agent. And after hours of this one has to assume his friend is like, Hey, why don't you like shut the funk up and just write a book about this. That's every time I've been on the road as a comic. You know, you should write a book which is a classy way of saying please stop talking. Um, Welch does not take this as a classy way of saying please stop talking, and he actually writes a book. Um. I don't think please stop talking is something he respected very much as a as a way of life. Not a real please guy nor a stop guy. Is the decision to write this book. Yeah, it's not a great I guess the Leviathan was taken, so he had to go with the politician. And may God forgive us was already I've already been taken. May God forgive us again. May God forgive us? Yeah, may God forgive us five She's all being forgiven by God. May we be forgiven? Tokyo drift. It's fun. So Welch started, you know. So he has this conversation with a friend. He's like, just write a fucking book about Eisenhower the Communist. So Welch starts by writing a letter which outlines his feelings on Eisenhower, and he revises it over the years. In nineteen fifty six and again in nineteen eight and basically every year he sends out a new draft of this letter to anyone who would listen to him, and he calls it a letter, but by the third revision it was eighty thousand words long, which you might know. This is not a lever a letter. Did he just write I want more money, over and over and over again. Yeah, though about what he wrote, I feel like some of my relatives, like holiday letters, might end up being about that long. I feel like I don't have word counts on it. But if they feel would see there was at least one recipe in there, right, there had to be one recipe for Papa suckers to make a good old fashioned I mean, I would be really angry if any of my friends are loved one sent me an eighty thousand word letter like that one. I would happily get that one. Other than a letter that I was supposed to actually read. I mean I would read it. That's why it goes in the garbage. Thanks for sending me that letter. That's great letter. Yeah exactly, dear uncle, I have thrown your letter in the trash. Thank you for sending me such a heavy package. Uh so yeah. Um. Since by the third revision it was more than eighty thousand words long, Welsh decided to start calling it a book The Politician, as he titled It became the underground secret text of what became a small cult like following of friends and admirers who increasingly believed that Bob Welch was something of a prophet. In February of nineteen fifty six, Welch launched his first magazine, One Man's Opinion. He later renamed it American Opinion, which really like actually reveals a lot about his thought process, Like I think this, No America thinks this. That that idea of the subjective actually being the objective. Yeah, yeah, that's how the artist thinks. Yeah it is. It is pretty telling. So he left the Welch Company at the start of nineteen fifty seven and began preparations to turn his circle of followers into a formal political advocacy group. Now, by this point, Welch was convinced not just that Eisenhower was a crooked politician, but that he was a secret comunist agent in the White House, Like that that Eisenhower was actually a communist and was was attempting to manipulate the United States into socialism from the White House. So crazy that that stuff used to happen in the past. Yeah, it's just like it's just like how could you be in that headspace where something like that happens. It's crazy. Imagine looking imagine looking at Dwight Eisenhower and being so far right that you're like that fucking Marxist. Imagine looking at Biden. Yeah. Yeah, Like he's the kind of person who, like everyone is a Marxist if they don't think he should be able to skeet shoot with poor people like that's that's that's Bob Welch's politics in a nutshell. Um. Yeah. And Welch wasn't just convinced that Ike was a communist. He believed that the majority of both the Republican and Democratic parties, most of their elected leaders at least, were communists and communists sympathizers. So, uh, Bob Welch, in order to kind of uh spread this warning about encroaching communism, turned to the massive rolodex of wealthy industrial magnates that he built up over years in the candy world. He invited all of these guys to a hotel in suburban Indianapolis in December of nineteen fifty eight, and he asked them to stay for two days. He didn't tell them what it was about or why he was inviting them to a hotel for two days. Um, and gentlemen, it is a murder mystery. He kind of. He just said it was a matter of utmost importance. So he's very cloak and dagger, very secretive and of like the seventeen guys that Bob Welch invites, eleven of them show up to see what he has to say. And I'm gonna quote from politics, real cool characters among those eleven. Yeah, Yes, at least one Bastard's pot alumni. Yeah. After exchanging firm handshakes in the breakfast room of a sprawling Tudor style house in the Tony Meridian Park neighborhood, Welch explained why he had brought this group together. The United States faced an existential threat from an international communist conspiracy hatched by an amoral gang of sophisticated criminals. The power hungry, god hating government worshippers had infiltrated newsrooms, public schools, legislative chambers, and houses of worship. They were frighteningly close to total victory. Welch felt it in his gut. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of enslaved robots in which every civilized trait has been destroyed. Welch wrote in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society, the organization's founding history, that would really sound unhinged to me if he weren't proven one correct on every point there, right, Yeah, I mean I think you got it. I think you nailed it. There's definitely a group of cunning megalomaniacs who seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race reduced to robotics servitude. But you know, it's Jeff Visas, it's Peter Yeah, yeah, these guys who would have been in the John Society exactly. Yes. So the chosen few gathered here would form the vanguard of a new political movement, an army of brave American patriots dedicated to preserving the country's Christian and constitutional foundations. Welch christened the group the John Birch Society, named in memory of a US soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know the guy. Um Yeah. And their goal at the beginning was destroying the quote Communist conspiracy, or at least breaking its grip on our government and shouting its power within the United States. So I love I love guys who are like, oh, there's a conspiracy to kill everybody, and then they create what is essentially the Knights Templar, Like, what are we doing? There's a conspiracy? We have to create a conspiracy to fight We're gonna be a secretive group of crusaders fighting against communism. What's what's weird and conspiratory about that? It's the same thing you hear now, Like, you know, there's a there's a coup going on in our government, so we have to form a counter coup, of course, and then they're going to form a counter counter coup against our counter coup. Yeah, yeah, it's like, what what are we even doing? This is just like one of those dolls inside a doll or an onion. Well, it's just it's one of the most effective ways if you're trying convince people to do something that's blatantly evil and horrible, the best way to do it is to convince them that the people you're going to be harming are doing the same thing to you. That's the like we should have martial law because Biden's gonna put in martial law, or like that trailer park was going to gear up in their Forerunners and drive through my neighborhood firing out the window. So I have to get in my Forerunner and drive through their trailer park shooting into trailers. There's no other option. They forced me into it also, by the way. Yeah, so all eleven of the rich dudes that Welch invited to his meeting became founding members of the John Birch Society. We're gonna talk about these guys. Oh yeah, We're gonna talk about these guys a little bit. One of them was T Coleman, Andrew's former commissioner of the I R S. Another was the personal aid former personal aid for General Douglas MacArthur, who attempted to nuke both China and North Korea. Um, good guy. And another of them was Fred Coke founder father, father, while and founder of the infamous Coke bro There's yeah, yeah, those are those are the three that I found worth naming. There's but Revelo p Oliver wasn't he there too? I think? So? Who's Revelo p Oliver? You know that you know these people? He was. He was a guy who ended up inspiring William Luther Pierce writing his his works. Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah, he became a big fascist guy. I think he was there at that first he was one of the founding members. Yep, you're right, you're right, you're right. He's a he's a real thinker of the crypto early fascist Oh yeah, classics professor from the University of Illinois found it. Yeah, and one of the Holocaust denial movements leading lights. What a great meeting to have been a fly on that wall. Cool, cool people. A lot of a lot of real casual anti Semitism, like like a collection of actual like demons, not in the way that you like demonize like you, not in the way you do manize your enemies and all that stuff. Those guys, even if you're like broadly in agreement with what they believe, you should look at that meeting and go get the funk away from me. You guys are terrif. The ripples are almost astounding even just thinking about like the the idea that Fred Koke, the father of the Koch Brothers, is in the same room with Reveal op Oliver, who like inspired and helped facilitate the writing of the Turner Diaries. Yeah, it's just insane. It's insane the tendrils. It makes sense, though, because one of the fun things to do with the far right and with the normal right is to play like the Kevin Bacon game with the Turner diaries, Like how how like how? How? How can you tie back a Republican politician to the Turner diaries generally less than four steps? Um? Yeah, thanks to the Koke Brothers. Hey, good guys, Good guys. At least they apologize later on. Yeah, God, I want to I want to funk up the world badly enough, but also be in a position where I can just be like Oopsy Tootles. Hey, guys, I'm gonna I'm gonna be honest. This one's on me. My bad, My bad. You know, big enough a man to admit when I've destroyed the entire world, and this is that time for me. I fumbled. Yeah, Hey, we all make mistakes. We all make mistakes. One for three. One for three is the best baseball players. In order to make this right, I have purchased a Poe Buddy's Nerfect shirt and I wear it for the next four days. Anyway. Sorry to everyone who's lost leved ones. So from the beginning, Welch patterned the John Birch Society off of the revolutionary communist movements. He's so despised, which is again another like so you're saying these people are like the the epitome of all evil, and you're also deliberately framing your group out of after them like scared because they're good at it. They are good at it, like obviously Alex Alex and Alex Jones. I don't know if you know this. We do a little bit about him, uh he uh. He just put out like, hey, what we need to do is get all the truck drivers together and let them strike in a unified front. And you're like, do you not hate unionization? Now you want to use withholding of labors and means of political action interest there's nothing wrong with that? Not well for us, yeah, him, there's something wrong, yes, yeah, Like you shouldn't be. It's the same thing with like police unions. It's like you people use fire hoses on striking workers. You don't get to unionized. Like so from the beginning, Welch patterned the John Yeah, he patterned them off of revolutionary communist movements. Uh. In his initial like founding documents, Welch wrote that he wanted the John Birch Society to be a monolithic body operating under completely authoritative control at all levels. In other words, he would be the MAO or the style and of his own counter communist movement. The Society would be organized into cells of ten to twenty members, formed after the revolutionary cadres that were common in underground communist movements, Like you read about the Khmer Rouge and like the founding of that, And it's like the same basic organizational strategy as you're trying to avoid, like infiltration, and it works. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is. Yeah, it works pretty well. There's a reason he patterns off of this, even though it is ironic. Welch informed his followers that he had considered a republican form of organization for their society, but that while it had certain attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions, it failed under quote less happy circumstances. The United States, Welch insisted, was beset by less happy circumstances, and the extent of socialist infiltration in American society made any republican system open to infiltration, distortion, and disruption. Robert Welch was, in short, creating an underground fascist political party. His disdain for anything that even smacked of democracy was quite clear. Welch told his follower is that democracy was quote merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud. So I want more and I don't want people to be able to vote that I should give more money. Yeah, I do not want people to be able to vote for anything really, because they will vote for socialism. Yeah. I mean it's the same ship that you see today. It's there's nothing new here. Uh, well it was new here that like, that's what's interesting about this is that he was like, like, now we have it's shocking to a lot of people that we have all these mainstream elected Republicans saying openly like we're not a democracy. Democracy is bad. We don't want democracy when there's this much socialism going around. If you let people choose things, they'll choose dangerous socialism. And Bob Welch was the guy fucking sixty years before that who was being like, this is exactly the way we should be framing things. That question is do you think he is he a believer? Do you know what I'm Yeah, I think so he is he's not the same kind of right wing grifter we're used to seeing all over the place. I don't think he's a grifter. I don't think he's a grifter. He's already rich for one thing, and yeah, well, like rich people don't continue the grift. I think there is an element of a grift in what he's doing, but he's not. He's not. It seems to be like there's a grit, isn't the focus. There's people who serve the scam and then there are people who are like, no, his ideological. I think he's more on that side. Well, all right, I think he's an ideologue. I think he believes in what he's doing reasons Well, of course, don't don't worry about that. He's not. He's not just in it for the money, right. He wouldn't be doing this if it was just to sell like pills, pills. He's not a pill guy. Um. So I'm gonna quote now from the World of the John Birch Society by D. J. Malloy. Quote. All in all, it was a hierarchical structure derived not just from the many years Whilch had spent in the world of business, but also from his openly, if perhaps surprisingly expressed admiration for the organist national tactics of his communist foes, acknowledging the similarity between Lennon's notion of the Dedicated Few and his own plans with the John Birch Society. In the Blue Book, for example, the always capitalized founder explained that he was willing to draw on all successful human experience in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve any sacrifice of morality in the means used to achieve an end. If I'm if I'm in that room, I'm like, he's going to be removing people from pictures pretty soon. Yeah, he's he's gonna be erasing us from history. I don't. I don't trust that guy. He's going to be relying on everyone's wife to some letters to people while the men get drunk and yell about commies. So membership is one of the Dedicated Few was not free. Monthly dues were twenty four dollars from men and twelve dollars for women, which probably says something unfortunate. Life memberships cost a thousand dollars. There were monthly chapter meetings for the first two years of the John Birch Society. Things went along smoothly enough. Word of the Society was past to mouth, and cells of Birches sprang up all around the nation. Welch addressed them all monthly in the Society's bulletin, which he wrote every word of It was not always easy to get freedom loving Americans to sign up for an organization that was fundamentally undemocratic, monolithic, and authoritarian instructure. Welch spent a lot of his time explaining to members why such a strict and unbending hierarchy was necessary. He told them that the US was a shoreline of beautiful houses threatened by a rising flood. You can assume the floods non white people. The Birches in their ilk were lonesome boys with brooms trying to sweep it back. What they needed, Welch insisted, was a dynamic boss to get them organized by barking this. This is again from one of his writings. This is like so he's like, he's describing like the US as a bunch of beautiful houses and there's this flood threatening it, and were brooms beating it back. And all those boys need is a boss who's willing to shout this, hey, you guys, all of you drop those pretty brooms. You fellows down there on the end, start running for empty bags. You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those bags with sam And you men here, all of you start looking those bags of sand to put on this wall. The communists have busted up so badly. You fellows over there, all of you get the heaviest clubs you can find. Spread yourselves out along the whole length of this wall, and don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs you find monkeying with it. Don't even hesitate to break the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall if you were sure of their evil intentions. So is set up perfectly, and it's the best country that has ever existed. But there are circumstances that are happening right now that really we need a dictator. Yeah, I'm afraid. So there's just nothing. It's just it's impossible to avoid the circumstantial. We need a dictator, otherwise people are gonna spend all their time swinging brooms and not beating people in the head making sandbags. I find it fun that this starts as like a metaphor for trying to organize people to deal with what is presumably like a tsunami or a flood condition, and instead turns into beating communists with sticks. There's a flood coming, punch the water. Don't do anything to help it. I mean, every year or so I go out to the coast and get into a fight with the ocean, and I I think that's why we have not had a major tsunami on the West coast of the United States and years I just get drunk and scream, you think you're bigger than that because of me. I beat the ship out of the ocean. Every couple of years. Georgian has seen me. Sophie Jordan does talk like you have to if you don't, if you don't, like, if you don't stand up to bodies of water, they're gonna walk all over you. Literally, we're all nodding like very stoic nods. Fight the ocean. That could go into the that could go in the don'ts of the art of salesmanship right there, I think, yeah, I would have started John Birch Society. That's just themed at getting people to fight the ocean. Fight various forms of nature yeah, well mostly oceans, punch trees. All of what Birch was preaching was good enough to earn his society the membership of one of my favorite Bastards Pod characters, Philish Laughly. She and her husband some guy joined in nineteen fifty nine. Uh so, yeah, that's Goodishly, I thought Jordan was going to bark at that. Yeah close. Not a schlaer as as we used to call ourselves, not on the schlaugh squad. So that same year, same year Schlaughlely and her husband joined the John Birch Society, Robert Welch launched a crusade to recall newly installed Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. Justice Warren was a liberal who had written the majority opinion for a decision that overruled state and local segregation laws. We're talking brown versus the Board of Education here, um. Robert Welch did not like Brown versus the Board of Education? Why not not wild about the fact that black people got to go to the same schools as white people now and Welch's eyes, Earl Warren's opinion on this case meant that he was a communist. Welch insisted in letters that Warren had violated his oath, and he harangued his most gifted followers to turn the effort to recall the justice into a movement. Privately, Welsh wrote that frankly, with the left wing control now so strong, insidious, and ubiquitous in Washington, I am not deceiving myself that we have very much chance of really bringing about the impeachment of Earl Warren. Although we might, but I don't think that is really as important as dramatizing to the whole country where he stands, where the Supreme Court now constituted under him, stands, and how important it is to face the facts about the road we are now traveling on so fast. So that's really interesting to me because in all of his public like publications he makes it clear that this is a real effort to recall Earl Warren, and I think we have a real shot and we're going to get this guy out of the Supreme Court. And his private letters he's like, we're never going to do this. It's all about making people angry. It's about the rhetoric. It's about the idea of the fight, yeah, which is not like anything else that's happened since no A lot of size on this episode when he passed in the future compared Trailblazer. Yeah, so you get a feel for Bob Welch by reading his letters. I'm gonna read you now an excerpt from when he sent to T Coleman Andrews, who's the former commissioner of the I R S let her start with I mean kind of. It begins with yeah, that's what I hear out of all of his writings. The letter begins with Welch's regret that Andrews turned down an opportunity to spearhead the effort against what Welch refers to in all caps as the movement to impeach Earl Warren. He calls it that in all caps every time he types about it. He's a caps guy, So you do well on Twitter. Is Frankfurter not on the Supreme Court anymore? Or I think he's dead at this point? Okay, I was gonna say, because you gotta go for him first, you know, he's your guy. So uh yeah. He starts the letter by being like, it's a bummer that you don't want to help me impeach Earl Warren. He goes on to discuss gathering storms in the South, which is a reference to the Civil rights movement, which Bob Welch stated he thought was directly caused by the Communist party. Quote if blood does flow there, which I agree is entirely likely, it will definitely be because the Communists planned it that way. They have schemed for so long to be in position to fan little fires of civil disorder into a huge conflagration of civil war if and when they need such a horror in their moves to take us over. And John Birch, though a minister devoted to peace, was entirely ready to fight for a cause which he considered worthy of sacrifice. So devoted to peace, devoted to piece. This guy something, well, he's he's referring to John Birch, who he did not in saying that, like, we have to be like John Birch, who was devoted to piece but was willing to get into a drunken argument with communists soldiers get shot to death. That sounds like most right wing heroes, like Colonel Travis he was a drunk. I don't know that he was drunk. He may just have been drunk on malaria. I'm just assuming everyone in the forties was wasted at all times. That's a good idea. John Birch hated Earl Warrant. That is actually a little known fact that I found that in the right. This up nonsense. Yeah, so uh. Welch portrayed the John Birch Society's work not as part as an activism but as an attempt to unite all Americans under an anti communist banner. In the nineteen sixty issue of The Bulletin, he wrote, it is of vital importance to the communists to split Americans into all kinds of groups snarling at each other. And so he said, the Society would not seek to split up Americans. We are fighting communists period, nobody else. They put people into all these groups, and I don't think that we should have black people, Jewish people, Chinese people, liberals, the LGBTQ community. I don't think we should have any of those people those specific groups that I have chosen to deny as people see left as evil. Yeah, they're defighting us by allowing people who aren't like me to exist. Yeah exactly. So um yeah. Welch by the mid nineteen fifties had grown increasingly convinced that the entire US government was basically Communist all the way down. And one of the main triggers for this was when Congress voted to censure Senator Joe McCarthy in nineteen fifty four. Um, so he like time, by the way, right right on time. Yeah, they got to him quick. So yeah. And because Eisenhower was a big part of finally censuring Joe McCarthy after letting Joe McCarthy be Joe McCarthy for years. Uh, Welch, you know, I saw this as more evidence that Ike was a secret communist. Is kind of on the wall. Yeah, there he after just two whole red scares he stepped in. So the politician Welch's book about Ike remained largely a secret work. He circulated it among his most loyal inner circle. He handed it out to like leaders in the movement, but regular members didn't get to know. It was kind of like they're Zeno. Like when you get high enough up in the Birch Society, you learned that Eisenhower is a communist. Um, Welch noted about his book and one private letter quote are rather extreme. Precautions with regards to this document are not due to any worry on my part. As to what might happen to myself, But many of my best informed friends feel that having the manuscript get into the wrong hands at the present time might do far more damage than good to the whole anti communist cause. Yeah, it's it's it's Alex Jones, I mean, and Alex Jones, as a little bit of a spoiler, was grew up on John Birch material, so not a kwinkie dink So for the Bircher rank and file, Eisenhower was just a crooked politician who was much too friendly with foreign leaders. At one point in nineteen sixty, Ike agreed to attend a summit with Nikita Krushchev, British Prime Minister Harold McMillan, and French President Charles de gaul Welch considered all three of these men to be card kerry and communists, which just fair. With Khrushchev, I'll say that, yeah, famous communist Charles all right, Yeah, didn't he do rituals and dance? And I don't know, I can't remember. I mean, he was pretty problematic in a lot of ways himself, but communist is not an accurate was a very problem Yeah, so was McMillan. For that matter. Um. Yeah, So Welch considered again all these guys to be communists, and he had the John Birch Society send a heavily publicized message to President Eisenhower. If you go, don't come back. Um. The slogan was sent out in a blizzard. Yeah, you will be exiled, yeah for hanging out with famous communist Charles de gaul If you go. What a great threat. If you go to that meeting, the conference room will be your elbow. So the slogan was sent out in a blizzard of postcards, letters, and telegrams, and within the society it was actually quite controversial, since many normal Birchers were not as a rational as the group's founder. Nationwide, it sparked curiosity for this strange, semi underground organization. One curious individual was Jack Mabley, an investigative reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News. So, hey, hometown here out. Yeah, maybe a technically candyman is a hometown hero for Chicago too, But that's different both hometown heroes to Chicagoans. It's the only way to stop a bad Chicago Chicago. Uh so, yeah, maybe starts looking into the John Birch Society. He went, he like kind of finangles his way into attending a meeting, and he talks with a number of its members, and by hook and by crook, he comes into possession of a copy of The Politician. Uh yeah, so it's it's made its way out of the society's inner circle and into the hands of a journalist. Now, unfortunately Robert Welch's prophecies are come true. Yeah, people are going to know what they're crazy. I'm gonna quote now from DJ Malloy's book on the John Birch Society, writing about Mayble's you know, the article he writes about The Politician. Quote, this fantastic document, maybe reported accuses President Eisenhower of treason. It flatly calls him a communist, and for three d and two pages attempts to document at the charge. And he provided an exact quote from the book to prove his claim, one that would haunt Welch in the Birch Society for years to come, but which was mysteriously although understandably absent when the book was officially published in nineteen sixty three. It was well, I too think that Milton Eisenhower, the President's brother, is a communist and has been for thirty years. This opinion is based largely on general circumstances of his conduct. But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable. But it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt through some violation of confidence. Someone who had been sent the letter in nineteen fifty eight had passed on to Mablee, and the journalist had naturally selected for quotation the most extreme statements he could find, without the benefit of any explanation or modifying import of the context around them. Violation. He's like, hey, can I take a look at your copy of that? Yeah, sure, violation. Well it's like and and I love the idea that that's out of context. Yeah, that's the thing they gets, that thing people say about like Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones like that. The defenses they always make is that you're just taking us out of context. Um, and that's what fucking Welch in the John Birch Society do with this document. They claimed that he was like, well, I said, I didn't say that Eisenhower was a communist agent. I said that I thought he was based on evidence that i'd seen. That's different saying he's a communist. Yeah. The rest of those eight thousand words are the stone cold dead to rights evidence that's journalist quote unquote is not taking into account and that is really malpractice exactly. Yeah, So most people did not buy Welch's defense. In fact, a Saturday Evening Post reporter who wrote about the John Society in nineteen seven stated that it's members spent most of their time talking to outsiders answering questions about Welch's Communist Eisenhower conspiracy. So like this kind of dominates the public perception. They become a bit of a joke to a lot of Americans because you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, they got their revenge, didn't they. So this did not stop the John Birch Society, although it did draw attention to the group for the first time. This may have helped as much as it harmed. Tens of thousands of Americans continued to flock to the John Birch Society, eventually growing to ninety five thousand members in nineteen sixty five. Welch's stated goal was a million American Bircher's, and as the nineteen sixties got rolling, it looked like he might actually achieve it. And that's part one of the John Birch Society. What a Dick an erotic novel. I don't think he's a good guy. No, I think he sucks and I think so and I need a papa sucker at least soothed me. Gonna go suck on a papa while we take a quick break. You guys want to plug your plug ables before we roll out. We got a podcast. Think people can find that you wrote a book. I did write a book. You always have to remind me to actually tell people that. It's the Quiet Part Loud. You can get it at the Quiet Part loud dot com. That's where for free check out Knowledge Fight, check out the Quiet Part Loud, and check out nothing else. If you do anything else on the internet, you have you have offended and harmed me personally and I and my forthcoming for vengeance. Uh, God doesn't need to forgive us. God what my podcast out