John Birch Society

The John Birch Society is a nationwide organization dedicated to freeing the United States from the threat of a communist takeover. Robert H. W. Welch Jr. founded the society in Indianapolis in 1958, meeting with 11 other men from various states at a northside home on December 8 and 9. The society was named after John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and military intelligence officer who was killed by communist forces in China in August 1945. Welch claimed that Birch was an unknown but dedicated anti-communist and the first American casualty of the Cold War.

During the early 1960s, the society was the object of much controversy, its activities even being viewed with concern by the U.S. Justice Department. The approximate number of members ranged between 60,000 and 100,000.

Although Indianapolis was not the center of those activities, local conservative leaders frequently expressed doubts about the society’s tactics. Over the protests of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission, the John Birch Society was one of several groups included in a lecture series offered to Indianapolis police trainees from 1966 to 1969. In 1965, union officials in Indianapolis claimed that the John Birch Society was attempting to infiltrate local affiliates of the AFL-CIO. By the end of the decade, however, the society was no longer considered to be a serious factor in Indiana politics.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the society’s membership and influence declined rapidly due to the death of Welch in 1985. In 1993, the John Birch Society still maintained a telephone number with an address in a downtown Indianapolis office building. The organization no longer maintains an Indianapolis address.

Although much of the John Birch Society exists only online through its monthly publication The New American, the group, headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, has continued its activities into the 21^st century. It still advocates for radical right and far-right issues such as calling for the United States to end its membership in the United Nations. The society is also an active supporter of an audit of the Federal Reserve System.

The John Birch Society has direct links to conservative politics in the first decades of the 21^st century. Fred Koch, the father of David and Charles Koch, was among the organization’s first 11 members and one of its main financial backers. The organization does not divulge membership figures and maintains that it is an educational organization, rather than a political organization.