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The Michigan Messenger going forward

By Staff Report | 11.16.11

I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]

Colorado-based abstinence program provided false and misleading information to Michigan students

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By Todd A. Heywood | 11.16.11

An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.

Class action lawsuit filed against MERS over unpaid taxes

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By Todd A. Heywood | 11.15.11

Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.

Schuette fights important mercury regulations

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By Eartha Jane Melzer | 11.14.11

Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.

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The Tea Party and the John Birch Society

By Ed Brayton | 06.22.11 | 7:23 am

The Institute for Research and Education and Human Rights has a report on the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, led by Dick Armey, and their increasing association with the John Birch Society.

The article notes that FreedomWorks had, for a while, avoided some of the crazier Tea Party ideas and groups:

As noted in Tea Party Nationalism, of all the national Tea Party factions, FreedomWorks had been the organization least entangled with overt bigotry. For instance, FreedomWorks was the only faction who did not have a “birther” as a national staff member. It was the only group that had not jumped on to the nativist bandwagon and supported Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. It had steered clear of most of the outlandish conspiracy theories and far-right machinations that have consumed other Tea Party groups. Now, that has changed.

And it mentions one example from Michigan along with dozens of other examples of the two groups being increasingly entangled:

But after making a big push for new members, they are more and more pushing for involvement with the John Birch Society:

Dick Armey need look no further than the front-page of his FreedomConnector site to see John Birch Society (JBS) activism in Tea Party ranks. Numerous JBS events have shown up in “Latest Activities” section on homepage of FreedomConnector. Most notably, the FreedomWorks staff has been busy promoting the Birchers on their social networking site.

Since the launch of the site, FreedomWorks staff and the FreedomConnector web team have posted at least fifty-nine different announcements that advertised John Birch Society events across the country. (See list in Appendix). Even a cursory look at this list of meetings, forums and protests demonstrates quite clearly that this is not an isolated incident or simple mistake that can be easily dismissed. FreedomWorks staff and the web team have posted an average of ten Birch events a month since the launch of this site. They have advertised Birch events in California, Florida, Idaho, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

In addition to the fifty-nine added by FreedomWorks team members, another twenty-two Bircher happenings have been posted by FreedomConnector members like Dawn Epson, the Tucson facilitator for the John Birch Society. Epson even has been allowed to create a Tucson Bircher “group”–a hub for area Birchers to gather on the FreedomConnector site. In total, 80 different JBS events were advertised on the FreedomWorks FreedomConnector site between the site launch and June 1, 2011.

Tonya Woodruff, a Michigan activist, provided a perfect example of the problem of the missing firewall when she posted a question on FreedomConnector to a participant in the Ludington Area Tea Party: “I was at the John Birch Society Meeting last night and the Birchers wanted to know if the Tea Party was still interested in a presentation? I will send you an e-mail today about this topic.” Opposition to the JBS presence inside the FreedomWorks social network has been virtually non-existent. Instead, these posts have received a warm reception.

The report then offers a long history of the Birchers and their more than 50 years of bizarre conspiracy theories, like claiming that President Eisenhower was a communist spy.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Superficially, the Tea Party might seem to adopt common themes
    with the JBS but there are many differences in their ideas and
    objectives.  

     

    I suppose it is a natural human tendency to conflate
    similar things and pretend that they are identical. The JBS itself has been
    guilty of that practice over the years.

     

    One way of thinking about this is:

     

    All human beings have blood but if you are given the wrong
    blood type, you die.

     

    Similarly, many people, causes, or movements may
    superficially appear to be related or comparable to each other — but, in
    reality, they often have irreconcilable differences which render them
    incompatible with each other.

     

    Ultimately, Tea Parties will reject the JBS because of the
    many noxious ideas which underlie JBS dogma. 
    For example: I doubt many Tea Partiers would agree with the idea that
    most of our national leaders and government officials over the past 80 years
    have been traitors or Communists — as the JBS believes.

     

    Nor do I think most Tea Partiers would agree with this
    comment in the May 2008 JBS Bulletin:

     

    “Just as the John Birch Society showed in the 1960′s
    that the communists basically ran both the civil rights movement and the KKK,
    the strategy was nothing new. The former was used to transfer power to
    Washington DC in the name of civil rights and the latter provided a pretext
    for transferring power to Washington. You cannot get a really good conflict
    started unless you control both sides of the argument.”

    • http://profiles.google.com/marylynne1 Mary Foster

      Actually that sounds like something some of the “tea party” people might believe, if told often enough.  The segment of them who listen to and believe Glenn Beck believe things that are far more bizarre than that.

      • Anonymous

        Mary, it is wrong to believe that the Tea Party consists of one undifferentiated mass of people.

        Yes, there are certain common themes they (and all conservatives) respond to — but the extreme conspiratorial predicates of the Birch Society would not resonate with most Tea Partiers.  

        For one thing, most of them admire and respect Ronald Reagan. Many admire/support Sarah Palin.  By contrast, the Birch Society thinks Reagan was a “phony conservative” who was under the control of the “Insiders” (a term the JBS now uses instead of Communists).  The current CEO of the JBS wrote an article several months ago which suggested that Sarah Palin was not to be trusted.   

        As I said in my original message — the more that Tea Partiers learn about the actual beliefs of the JBS — the more they will recoil from supporting the JBS.

        I seriously doubt that any significant percentage of Tea Party movement adherents believe that our civil rights movement and the KKK were created/controlled by Communists! In fact, the polling done on the Tea Party movement has shown that most of them have no racial animus at all. They certainly would NOT agree with the JBS position that ALL of our civil rights leaders and national civil rights organizations were Communist-controlled and dominated.

        • Anonymous

          Ernie-

          Mary stated: “Actually that sounds like something some of the “tea party” people might believe, if told often enough.”

          You dispute her and say: “it is wrong to believe that the Tea Party consists of one undifferentiated mass of people.”

          But then you follow it up with: “the extreme conspiratorial predicates of the Birch Society would not resonate with most Tea Partiers.”

          Her statement and your follow up are basically saying the same thing. It can be that ‘some’ TPers would agree with the JBS, while it may not resonate with ‘most’.

          If her statement led you to think she believes that the TP “consists of one undifferentiated mass of people”, then your statement would lead to that same belief.

          • Anonymous

            The context of Mary’s remark was in reply to my earlier message.  Obviously, every mass movement attracts weirdos and wackos — including liberal causes and movements.  My message was meant to de-mythologize Tea Party adherents.  It is wrong to conflate them with the Birch Society.

            I don’t know how old you are — but you may recall that during the 1950′s and  1960′s many extreme rightists conflated liberals with communists.  Liberals rightly objected to that type of malicious caricature.  The same principle should apply to Tea Party movement adherents.  The overwhelming majority (based upon polling which has been done on the movement) would NEVER accept the basic predicates of the Birch Society.

            Let me give you another example. 

            What follows are comments made by JBS founder, Robert Welch, to the first meeting of his National Council.  I would be astonished to discover that more than 1-3% of Tea Party movement supporters would agree with his perspective.  This is the REAL face of the JBS:

            “From a careful and
            realistic study of the mountainous pile of evidence that is there for all to
            see, certain terrifying conclusions are objectively inescapable. Among them
            are:

            (1) The Communists are winning their large
            victories, as they always have, through the cumulative effect of small gains;

            (2) They make these gains chiefly through the
            conniving assistance of many of the very diplomats and officials who are
            supposed to be opposing them;

            (3) Communist influences are now in almost
            complete working control of our government;
            (4) And hence, the United States Government is
            today, as it has been for many years, the most important and powerful single
            force promoting the world-wide Communist advance.”

            [A Confidential Report To Members Of The
            Council of The John Birch Society – minutes of 1/9/60 meeting held at Union League Club in
            Chicago IL, page 1-2; minutes signed by Robert Welch.]

            Furthermore, according to Robert Welch:

            “Today, gentlemen, I can assure you, without the
            slightest doubt in my own mind that the takeover at the top is, for all
            practical purposes, virtually complete. Whether you like it or not, or whether
            you believe it or not, our Federal Government is already, literally in the
            hands of the Communists.” [Ibid, page 2]

            “In our two states with the largest population, New
            York and California…already the two present Governors are almost certainly
            actual Communists…Our Congress now contains a number of men like Adam Clayton
            Powell of New York and Charles Porter of Oregon, who are certainly actual
            Communists, and plenty more who are sympathetic to Communist purposes for either
            ideological or opportunistic reasons.” [Ibid, page 7]  [Note: the reference to Governors refers to
            Edmund G. Brown of California and Nelson Rockefeller of New York.]

            “In the Senate, there
            are men like Stephen Young of Ohio, and Wayne Morse of Oregon, McNamara of
            Michigan, and Clifford Case of New Jersey and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and
            Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whom it is
            utter folly to think of as just liberals. Every one of those men is either an
            actual Communist or so completely a Communist sympathizer or agent that it
            makes no practical difference…” [Ibid, page 8]

            “Our Supreme Court, dominated by Earl Warren and Felix
            Frankfurter and Hugo Black, is so visibly pro-Communist that no argument is
            even needed…And our federal courts below that level…are in many cases just as
            bad.” [Ibid, page 8]

            “Our State Department is loaded with Communists from
            top to bottom, to the extent that our roll call of Ambassadors almost sounds
            like a list somebody has put together to start a Communist front.” … [Ibid, page 8]

            “It is estimated from many reliable sources that from 70% to 90% of
            the responsible personnel in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
            are Communists. Our Central Intelligence Agency under Allen Dulles is nothing
            more or less than an agency to promote Communism throughout the world…Almost
            all the other Departments are loaded with Communists and Communist
            sympathizers. And this generalization most specifically does include our whole
            Defense Department.” [Ibid, page 8

  • Anonymous

    I find the sign in the photo to be humorous. If you asked the person holding it ”If you remove ‘Obama’ from the equation, does ’Marxism’ then no longer equal ‘Slavery’?”, I imagine they’d be quite confused.

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