Birch Watching

The moment the reader realizes the degree to which Matthew Dallek went native in writing Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right arrives late—on page 286 of a 288-page book. “We need to find space in our periodization of American politics for fringe traditions in general and the rise of Birchers in particular,” Dallek insists. “Call that period, from 1958 to 2022, the Bircher Years.” It undoubtedly came as a surprise for most readers to learn that they had lived the period of their entire lives in this epoch. Given that the group’s decline started more than a half century ago, the author by necessity depicts the “organization that did more than any other” to catalyze the “extremist takeover of the American right” as something like a time bomb that ticked for decades before detonating with Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Dallek, in portraying an all-powerful John Birch Society (JBS) in a manner akin to how its members talk of Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, fails to heed Nietzsche’s warning to avoid staring into the abyss, lest it stare back into you.