From its beginning in 1958 the John Birch Society was a tightly organized, dogmatically rigid, hierarchical entity with autocratic founder Robert Welch in absolute control of the Belmont, MA command structure. It was deliberately authoritarian in nature, modeled on the cadre structure of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) which was perceived as its principal ideological adversary. It was not conceived as an organization for free and open discussion or debate but as an educational/political action organization with a specific agenda and rigid dogma dictated from Belmont. (An excellent book on the structure of the CPUSA is I Led Three Lives, which was later made into a TV series in … Continue reading The John Birch Society