Decades before QAnon, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, there was the John Birch Society.
The group was a midcentury phenomenon that anchored the far-right wing of the conservative movement — and the Santa Barbara News-Press emerged to lead the resistance. The crusade would win the newspaper’s publisher a Pulitzer Prize.
Founded in 1958, the John Birch Society had taken such extreme positions that it was alienating many across the board, Republicans and Democrats alike. It was a secretive society, riven with conspiracy theories.
Birchers could be intense. It was their ideas — mostly centered around unfounded accusations of widespread communist infiltration and influence in the U.S. government —that aroused ire in political circles and the media.
Nothing inflamed mainstream passions more than John Birch Society founder Robert Welch’s accusations against President Dwight Eisenhower. Welch accused the moderate Republican and World War II hero of being “a dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,” according to Edward Miller’s 2021 biography, “A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society and the Revolution of American Conservatism.”
Unfounded, unhinged accusations against Eisenhower and other top officials were too much for News-Press publisher Thomas Storke.
The News-Press ran a series of investigative stories about the society and its activities in Santa Barbara. The stories culminated in an editorial that published Feb. 26, 1961.
The editorial began by underscoring the newspaper’s abhorrence of communism, “which must be opposed vigorously.” But it added that America shouldn’t push democratic principles “into the ash can” in its obsession to ferret out communist infiltration.
Then it went directly after the Birchers, stating: “The News-Press condemns the destructive campaign of hate and vilification that the John Birch Society is waging against national leaders who deserve our respect and confidence.”
The post went on to condemn Welch for associating Eisenhower with a communist conspiracy and for pushing to recruit members in Santa Barbara. The News-Press challenged the society’s local leaders to come forward, identify themselves and explain their plans for the city.
“The organization’s adherents, sincere in their opposition to Communism, do not seem to understand the dangers of the totalitarian dynamite with which they are tampering,” it said.
The Pulitzer Committee awarded the 1962 prize for editorial writing to Storke “for forceful editorials calling public attention to the activities of a semi-secret organization known as the John Birch Society.”
The News-Press stories, along with those in other newspapers, didn’t help the society’s reputation. Some maverick Republicans who rallied around Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater as the GOP presidential nominee in 1964 kept a measured distance from the society. Yet the Birchers had gotten a foothold in Santa Barbara.
“Santa Barbara was fertile recruiting ground for the society, which enlisted hundreds of members there. The Santa Barbara-News Press caught wind of the movement and published a series of articles highly critical of the organization,” Matthew Dallek noted in his 2022 book, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.”
And the Birchers?
The society is still around, though it’s far from the household name it was in the 1960s.
