The John Birch Society was originally founded in 1958 as an anti-Communist organization, named after a Baptist missionary who was killed in China by communists. Since its founding, the society has drifted further and further into the extreme right of American politics. During the upheavals of the '60s and '70s, the Birchers were the front line of pro-Vietnam War and anti-New Left action. Following the fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union, they have, one might say, lost a bit of their focus, and drifted, more or less by default, further and further into the position of standard conspiracies-behind-every-bush paranoia which they helped to invent, and which most American political extremists seem to drift to given enough time (c.f. the putatively Democratic but otherwise indistinguishable Lyndon LaRouche).
Historically the Birchers' favorite tactic has been to accuse any political figure they dissaprove of of being a Commie plant, though with the declining shock value and impact of that accusation, their new favorite accusation is of being a creeping One-Worlder, or a sinister Insider. They tend to spread their venom equally, at least, and are at least as critical of every Republican presidential nominee since World War II (except possibly Barry Goldwater) as their Democratic counterparts.
Some (admittedly context-less) quotes from one of the John Birch Society websites (www.thenewamerican.com)
- "Under General Pinochet’s leadership, an incipient Communist dictatorship in Chile was stopped cold. Rather than suffer excoriation at the hands of the media, this man should be honored as a hero."
- "The urge to destroy and defile Western culture represents the true spirit of Kwanzaa."
- "Joe McCarthy was a brave and honest man. There was nothing cynical or devious about him. He said and did things for only one reason - he thought they were the right things to say and do."