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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love podcasts. I don't ****. You're so big. Nerd. Is that. Are we allowed to open a show that way? I don't know. Well, we did it. I let you do it. I didn't enjoy it, though. *** **** it. This is terrible. Everyone spiraling. The malaise with. Yeah. Robert Evans and the best I am. I am so sorry to everybody. Host now. Yep. Yep. I have his backing band. Well, as everyone can can hear now by by listening to the the tremendous failure that has just occurred in everyone's ear balls. This is behind the ******** a podcast about bad people, namely me and my guest today are Dan and Jordan. That's us. Hmm. So good it's here. If I, if I just said Dan or if I just said Jordan, I would have to be more specific. But when I say Dan and Jordan, I think everyone knows that. It's it's the knowledge fight guys, which you your identity has become subsumed into your podcast. So enjoy that. It was inevitable it was going to happen. I think a lot of people have taken to just calling us Jordan, Jordan, Capital J. Capital D Yeah, sort of a combined noun. I feel like they could do better. Who could they? Yeah, can you? Danger. You know, you'd have to be like Dan Ann or something like that. But Jordan is like, I feel like it's really just like giving like cloud to one name. But you're stressing that D pretty hard right in the middle and I can appreciate that. I take enough. I think it's, I think it's great. We're really getting into the weeds of this since there's solving it once and for all. You know, that's what people come here for. You know what? With explanation, I'll let you have it. All right. Jordan, Are you ready to hear about some ****? Robert Yay host your podcast. So you know. What sucks? Many many many things. Yeah, I I would say, broadly speaking, the the right wing in America, the Republican Party, the, the the looming fascist threat that that has been slightly weed whacked back but is still threatening to encroach and choke all of us to death forever. That matter, yeah. Are you guys a fan? A little bit like a fire engines and Dragons monster when you put it like that. It is basically a dungeons and Dragons. Monster. So this episode is about E Gary Gygax, yeah? This episode is about, so Gary Gygax invented dungeons and Dragons. This episode is about the man who invented the modern Republican Party, by which I mean the party of Donald Trump, by which I mean, you know, the fascists. Uh, and his name. Was Robert Welch. They're done. I didn't know. You know. You guys know who Robert Welch is? I don't know who Robert Welch is. I'm gonna. I'm gonna feign ignorance for about 3/4 of. You definitely know who Bob Welch is. Look at me and say, did you know about Robert Wells? The whole point of me is to not know about Robert Wells. You know him by a different name. No. Yeah. Yeah, you, you you Jordan know him as the founder of the John Birch Society. Ohh. I do know him as you know him as the Candyman. Yes. Yeah. Ohh. I do know him as the Candyman. Ohh. ****. Ohh. Yeah. He's also gonna guy big, big. Candy, that's right. So if you haven't heard of the John Birch Society, they're, loosely speaking, why? We got President Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump, and the whole ecosystem of right wing grifters who make money off of convincing their fans that everybody on the left is part of a Marxist conspiracy. Like the idea that Joe Biden is a is a communist agent, which are are are good friend of the pod Alex Jones brings up repeatedly is a descendant of a John Birch Society talking point, or at least a family of those talking points. So that's that's. The guy we're talking about today? Bob Welch, founder of the John Birch Society. Dude, yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't. I I think First off, my my initial sign that he's not a good guy is you're talking about him. So that's that's a red flag right off the bat. And then Bob Welch. That's just a that's just a right wing name, baby. That's just what it is. Yeah. Yeah, Bob Welch is, is, is. You'd guess that he founded some sort of society that did something terrible. So Robert HW Welch junior, which by God, the more thorough you are with the name, the worse it sounds, was born on a farm. Why do all these jerks have the initials HW too? Yeah, he does. He does. He's got a real George Bush vibe going on. Yeah. What the hell? Well, I mean, that's how the word. White starts right in their world. White, white. White think that's what it is? I think Robert White. Welch. Yeah, 100 Welch. That's actually scans completely. You might be right. You might be so. ****** was born on a farm in Chowan County, North Carolina on December 1st, 1899. He was a brilliant child, some might even say a genius. He could read by age 3 and he knew his multiplication tables by age 4. By age 7, he was studying Latin. And at age 12, he enrolled in the University of North Carolina. He graduated at age 16. Uh. And yeah, everything that happens in the story should be taken as evidence for why child prodigy should be dosed with paint chips. I think that's yeah. I always feel like when I hear something like that and I hear like someone new multiplication tables at 4, I'd be like, who prove it? Yeah, I I would say prove it. And and if you can prove that a kid is that smart, you got to slow him down somehow. I would love to be able to quiz that four year old. Like, I see how deep your knowledge of the table is. Yeah. And I think if you're a four year old with perfect knowledge of the multiplication tables, take them out of school for two years. Don't let him read books. Make them work on a farm. That's right. Uh, Kurt Vonnegut. Short story at us what just happened? Look, Vonnegut was right. The problem is that people are too smart. And these two fast give him braces. Take him down a notch. Yeah. Yes. Slow him down somehow. Just, you know, put blinders on the kid, feed him, lead whatever it takes. And then in the universe is true. If you're not good at something, give him steroids and ****. Give them all the drugs to make them smarter. I think everyone who can't do the multiplication tables by age 4, mandatory steroids. Everyone who can illiterate farm in the Midwest. I like it. That's my ideal society. The health Ranger has informed me that steroids. Charge of children. OK, so yeah, Bobby Welch's child prodigy entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1917, a year when nothing else of particular interest occurred. He resigned after just two years, when he decided that a military career was not for him. Instead, he wanted to be a lawyer, so he enrolled in Harvard Law School. But this didn't wind up working out much better for him. Robert clashed regularly with his professors, particularly the hilariously named Felix Frankfurter, who would grow up. It's a real guy. It's a real guy's name. He went on to become a Supreme Court Justice. Of course, a lot of people have to overcome something in order to do something great. And I think being born with Felix and there's a point. Point, point you were just talking about. Exactly. He had his handicap, and it made him great. Yeah. Yeah. Supreme Court Justice. Your honor. Hot dog. Yeah. Because that's the hardest. If you want to be the hardest it can be to for other people to laugh at, you become a Supreme Court Justice. Because then everybody's got to be scared one way or the other. You're going to terrify half the population if it pleases the hot dog. Oh, God. Oh, God. I'm so sorry. Please don't take away my reproductive healthcare footlong Coney in. In the case of Heinz versus the United States, he's going to have to recuse himself. I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He cannot. He could not rule on anything to do with the John Kerry campaign for that reason. Frankfurter was a liberal Supreme Court Justice, which might explain why Robert Welch hated him so much. Welch's biography, which is quite a text, says that the young Robert Welch hated Felix Frankfurter because, quote, the young man from North Carolina recognized hogwash when he heard it, and a hogwash is spelled in all caps and also spelled out with like a with like a dash in between each word. It's it's a fascinating publication. That's a that's a Canterbury tales level of ******** right there. Yeah. Magnificent. Did someone who was with the John Birch Society write this biography? Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah. No, that 1000% like they're sort of editorial style? Yeah. It was written probably by Bob Welch. Yeah, I would assume in 1922. Welch left Harvard just a year before he would have graduated. He decided that he'd learned enough and it was time to make a **** load of money and this wunderkind. At a specific plan for how he was going to get rich. The ****** ******* candy business. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Candy, man. Candy is where the money is, man. You know, that's the thing about candy. You get older, it stays appealing to people of the same age. I don't know why I tried to. I don't know why. I tried to tried to fast times that tried to fast times. That one. So Bob's brilliant idea was something called. The Papa sucker. The Papa sucker. The Papa sucker. Yeah, Speaking of fast times jokes, because it is what it sounds like what would happen when your dad gets a *******. But it was actually a caramel lollipop designed to not melt in the summer heat. That sounds exactly like what would happen if your dad got a ******* right there, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, and like your dad's penis, it was filled with dangerous chemicals, which is why it didn't melt in the summer heat. Probably. That's good stuff. Not a good line to keep. You have to take the rough with the smooth, as they say, you know, dangerous chemicals. It's not melting, especially when it comes to your dad's genitals. Sure, yeah. Gotta take the rough with the rough with this when it comes to a pop. A sucker. Oh, unfortunate, unfortunate. This is really gone. On the rails. But they're not great rails. So despite the novelty of Bob Welch's Papa Sucker, his first business, named the Oxford Candy Company, did not go well. The cause seems to have again been the fact that Bob Welch did not play well with others. He had an increasing series of tense disagreements with his board of directors. In 1929, they had a fight over what he described as their desire to reduce the quality of their products, to improve profits. Welch quit and again walked away. So we're getting a bit of a theme, like everything. What happens when all I wanna do is torture children for morality tales? Yeah, he just keeps getting into disagreements with people, be they his professors or his business partners, and then piercing the **** out, that's that's early life. Bob Welch. Not an easy guy to get along with, so he's also not an easy guy to dissuade from his sacred task of selling candy. He set up another candy company, this one in Berlin, and money was tight because he had a couple of kids by this point. So he took a second job as a salesman for EJ Brack and Sons, which was one of the largest candy companies in the world. They're the people who make candy corn. Among other you know, Brack. Ohh. So they're evil, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. They're history's greatest monsters. So corn? Yeah, pumpkin. Comes out, they make candy pumpkin. It's like, yeah, the candy corn substances in a bunch of different shapes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean the little pumpkins that are made out of candy corn? Yes, I do like the very specific term substance, whatever it's made of, which you don't know and neither do I. It's just a substance. Man tried to convince me that, like, candy pumpkins are better. Like, candy corn sucks, but candy pumpkins are good. They can. No, it's just more. It's the same. It's a larger piece of the same terrible candy. It's just a ball, you know? It is great. I have this. There's this. So the person I've lived with for a while is a is a, a Chinese national. And she introduced me to this wonderful restaurant in Portland that's like a Chinese street food restaurant. And they have this dish that I've never had before. That's just corn. And fried batter. And green onions and cilantro. And it's ******* awesome. Oh it's so good. Like I don't know how it's it does sound good. Incredible. But you know what? Bob Welch would really hate the idea of you living with the Chinese national. He would hate everything. As soon as I said Chinese he would have started screaming. He would have everything Mao this mouth. You know, if if I convinced him my friend was descended from Chiang Kai Shek he'd probably have been alright with that. He was a big Chang head as that was. Other one way around, yeah, that would be. That would be mouse edge ination. Mouse, said Dan. Dan, are you leaving? Why are you running, Dan? I feel like you had that one in your head for years, Jordan. Just? And then you shoehorned it into a joke about Chiang Kai Shek because no one, if only I'm, tortured by new versions of that same ****** joke all day. Jordans made that joke 15 times on the podcast. I've just edited out every time. Yeah, I know you are wise to do that. So, uh, this second candy company didn't work very well because it was the Great Depression and people didn't have disposable income for candy. Probably was a bad time to start a candy business in 1929 and his his new company fell apart in 1933. Fortunately, Brax was still making money and he was doing well enough as a salesman that they took him on as a full time employee which kept him afloat for the next year or so. In 1934 he started his third candy company, the Midwest Candy Company of Attica IN and unfortunately his candy. This is as bad as his company's name and Welch's third enterprise failed. So he said. What about failed? How is that doing? Was he still selling the Papa suckers? No, he had to give the leave the Papa sucker behind when he had a fight with his business partner. So all the Papa suckers that are getting sold. Worst loss. That's the worst loss right there. He's not getting a dime from any of the papers that are getting sucked these days. Which is a real shame. So yeah, three failed candy companies. And in 1935, Bob Welch files for bankruptcy, which is, you know, pretty unbranded for him. It's the financial equivalent of like, running away when you get into an argument. So, so far, everything scans. He returns to Boston and he gets a job working for his younger brother, who was also in the candy business and a lot more successful than his older brother. The James O Welch Company was a success. And this is what finally brought Robert Welch the wealth he desired. He was made VP in charge of sales and advertising. And as the company grew, this meant Roberts spent years traveling across the country to offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle. Now a wealthy man, he began racking up positions on government boards, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and eventually a role as a national councillor for the US Chamber of Commerce. Is there anything that turns you into a right wing lunatic? More than getting rich off of somebody else's work? Yeah, especially your brothers work. Yeah, right. Isn't that a regular right wing thing? Isn't that how they all get to where they are? Favorite go ahead. Sorry, it was just he takes a lot of credit for the companies success. But judging by the fact that he had three failed candy companies and only succeeded when he latched onto his brothers, I'm going to guess that James was the talent and the family might be the case. Yeah, yeah, if I recall correctly. Didn't they make some like pretty like memorable candies? Yeah, no. The James O Welch Companies made some some of the all time great candies. They all sound weird when you sugar Daddy I think, right? Yeah, and they have some sort of weird sugary. Rope thing? I don't know. Like they they made a bunch of candy cows. Old timey candy? Yeah, it's not like, it's not like the God fearing modern candy that we have today. It was all strange and terrifying and involving # little nibbles. Those little so you can't even sell kids something with horror in the name. Now it's just the social justice warriors. Yeah, cancel cultures run amok and now we can't have our horehound candy. Why can't I buy a **** stick today? Why can't I go to any candy shop I want to and buy a **** stick. I wanna **** a **** stick and a Papa sucker. Come on. So I just like all that. It's sugar Mamas. Sugar Mamas Jesus. Wait to be a misogynist day. But I think but isn't like Sugar Daddy and sugar baby? Aren't those also candy sugar? They have junior mints, sugar daddies, sugar babies, sugar Mamas, welches Fudge, welches frappe and pompoms. Wow. I finally understand the popularity of incest **** on the Internet. I think it all comes from there. It's so great. It all from the Papa suckers and the sugar Mama all starts there. I see it. It's all mating making sense now. And the pompom. Yeah. And you know, now that you say that, Jordan, it makes the Welch Company motto suck on a Mama. Make a lot more sense. Yeah, that does sound right. That that all is starting to scan now. So, like, all men who get rich through a mixture of blind luck and. Family ties. Robert Welch decided to write a book. The road to salesmanship was about exactly the book you guessed that it was. I found a copy of it on Amazon today for 399, and the product description text is wonderful. I'm just gonna read you the Amazon description text, which is a little bit off the beaten path, but it it's quite funny. The road to salesmanship brackets pamphlet. Robert Welch. Robert Knott capitalized. Welch capitalized, 1941. Rare and out of print collectors item limited availability. The road to salesmanship pamphlet and brackets by Robert Welch, this time capitalized, 1941. This is a document. And then new sentence that was written by the founder of the John Birch Society but written decades before he founded the John Birch Society. Now they start calling it the John Bridge Society. This is not about the John Bridge Society or any projects or principles of the John British Society. This is a unique look at the early thoughts of Robert Welch long before he founded the John Bridge Society. I had. I enjoyed that. Hmm. So I looked through the book a bit. I found it online. There's also a free copy. Don't don't pay Amazon for this ******* book, so I, I and don't read it. Also, it's not worth reading, but I skimmed a couple of chapters just to see if there was anything entertaining about it, because I was hoping that, like it was filled with, I don't know, a bunch of crypto fascist nonsense. And it's it's it's even too boring for that. It seems to have been mostly folksy anecdotes about his sales experience, and in an inoffensive advice on how to sell stuff, he does start the he does. I enjoyed that. He starts the book. By noting that unlike like loser jobs like bricklaying and lumberjacking, being a salesman is a true profession, like being a doctor. Like you specifically throw **** on brick layers and lumberjacks. Any idiot can do those jobs selling ****. That's hard. Husband, do occupy the same rarefied territory as doctors nowadays. You know, you think about a used car salesman. You're like, that guy is a surgeon. The same level of quality. Well done? Well, yeah. Just a used body salesman. I mean, you would think when the coronavirus first hit, our first responders were the doctors, the nurses and the candy salesman. Yeah, absolutely. So I really do think the candy sells itself. Yeah, I don't. It doesn't take much. I'm not impressed by a candy salesman. I mean, as long as it's not a disastrously gross candy, or as long as it's not called the Papa sucker. Yeah, I'm going to be all right. You're going to be alright. Eminem's have never needed an ad campaign. Yeah, that's just because they absolutely have. But it's just we had a long one every Christmas. But it's actually it's a great ad campaign. Yeah, but they didn't need them. They would have sold their chocolate with or without them. Yeah, and meanwhile, I think. The only job that Robert Welch did was was the Papa sucker. Suck on your Papa. Yeah? Oh boy, yeah, I didn't expect us to go down anyway. Jamie walked us on for this episode, apparently. He ends the book on a series of final don'ts for salesman, which include and these are the actual text of all of these is more boring than you'd expect, but the don't. Sure, funny, a knife can have two edges. Everybody knows that Trump is hollow. People rent offices to do business in, remember the future, and professors belong in classrooms. Wait, those are the don'ts. Those are the don'ts. So don't professor. Yeah, don't be unless you're unless you're in a classroom. Teach people about candy when you're trying to sell to. Oh, that's a good point. Don't be. I like professor. Oh, I get you now, especially. Don't be a liberal candy professor. Oh, you can't do that. Ohh they'll remain. I like to imagine that the knife has two edges. Thing is is a reference to the mini knife fights that candy salesman got into in the 1940s. It wouldn't surprise me. Brutal business. It's dangerous work. You saw what happened to the Augustus Gloop kid. Yeah, and that that Robin Williams movie The candy man. So the impression that I got from my limited reading of this book is that young Bob Welch was something of a pompous now at all. But I got no hint that he was particularly unhinged or unreasonable. Like, it's not. There's nothing like like there's no hints as to what he became in the book. He just seems like kind of * **** which I guess is 1 hint, but not not much of 1 compared to what happens next. So during World War 2, Welch served on the War Production Board. If it seems odd to you that a Candyman would be appointed to help manage national military production. During a global battle for the survival of democracy, yes, yes it does. But that is what happened. What are bullets but M&M's? Yeah? Another kind of Papa sucker. We have a long history of giving people jobs they're not qualified for in this country. It's it's our greatest strength. So, as a result of his work in the war production board, Welch spent more and more time in Washington DC during the 40s. He also became chairman of the National Confectioners Association's Washington Committee. In 1947, he received the candy industry's highest honor, the Kettle Award, from Candy Industry magazine. So he's really he's arrived. You can't top the Kettle award if you're a candy man for for for what did he receive this award for? Getting all those kids to suck on their Papas. I mean like with high sales, was he a good candy creator? Was he just around like, did he win World War Two? Why did he get this award? You honestly, I think, and this is this isn't written anywhere, but reading between the lines, from everything I read about his his earlier life, I think his real talent was that he was very good at getting other rich businessmen to like him and I like. That's why you'll notice the thing that he really does best. He wasn't a particularly good business owner or candy salesman. But he was great at being on the board of big in candy industry companies because rich guys liked him. It's like, I think that was his talent. It's that I don't take you a long way in America. Yeah, I mean the analog is like people who get a lot of stuff through networking, like maybe not their intrinsic skills there. They might get more gigs or shows or stuff because of the ability to schmooze and stuff. And and Robert Welch is, from everything I could tell, seems like he was pretty, pretty good at that. And that's how you get a kettle. Yeah, yeah, that's how you get a kettle. You gotta get a kettle. But nobody's trying to take the man's Kettle award. Sure, he he he he ******* brought us closer to fascism than any other living or any other American who's ever lived. But he won that kettle. He earned the kettle. Did you know the weekend is freaking out because he didn't get the kettle? Do you know that Tom Hanks won Kettle two years in a row? Both of them, for his Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates. All right? That was the best thing that ever happened to the candy industry. OK, exactly. You're right. We need to pull throughout the next year's Academy Award. Two years in a row, cattle two years in a row. Very impressive. Alright, alright. I thought it was because of Philadelphia, but never mind. Reeses peanut butter cups in Philadelphia? I don't know if that's true. Yeah, that Tom Hanks is actually the only man to get the EGOT. OK, yeah. OK, so Welch's real gift seems to have been organizing people in businesses. He had a genius for managing teams and forgetting again rich people to like him. In 1950, he was appointed to the Board of Directors for the National Association of Manufacturers. He held this job for a while, and through it was in regular contact with wealthy and powerful people in a bunch of different industries. And it's at this point that I'm going to start quoting from the world of the John Birch Society by DJ Malloy, which is a real fun book. Got a bunch of terrible ****. Welch first became involved in politics in 1946, when he volunteered to work on Republican Robert Bradford successful campaign to become Governor of Massachusetts. He was appointed vice chairman of the state's Republican Finance Committee two years later, in 1949. Welch went a major step further, however, when he announced his intention to become the next Lieutenant governor of the Bay State. Like many other conservatives and businessmen of the time, reducing government interference in the economy and turning back the creeping collectivism of Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal were among Welch's principal concerns, as he made clear in an interview with Courtney. Sheldon of the Christian Science monitor on the eve of the election. Our first and most important job, Welch explained, is to keep us from going any further than we have already gone in the extension of government, ownership of business, operation of business, interference with business, control of business and control of the details of our daily living. He was also very strongly opposed, he said, to socialized medicine at the national or state level, to federal aid, to education in any shape, manner or form, and to Federal Housing plans. So. 1940s Bob Welch is like not only **** the New deal, **** the concept of state paid healthcare, **** the concept of federal aid to education and **** Federal Housing. Umm, he was really ahead of the know how to how to grow the candy business. You make dental care free for everyone. Candy goes out of the roof? Come on man. And if all of this is a long term business strategy, that's actually a good plan. I think that is. It is. And if all those poor give you a kettle don't have. To pay, return the kettle. Jesus, you get a second kettle for that. You give. You give poor families their rent for free, they're gonna buy a lot more candy for those kids. It's true. Hell yeah, true. He is right about education being a real barrier to the candy industry, though. You want people as dumb as hell if you want to meet in enough candy. That's true. Any kind of nutritional information in schools is going to be a hindrance. Yeah. So from the late 1940s, it was kind of clear the guy that Bob Welch was going to turn into in a speech in May 1949. He argued that it was no secret that there was a war going on in the United States between collectivism and individualism. He described this war as occurring on many fronts. In the field of Commerce and Industry, the battle is between free enterprise and state socialism, he said. In politics, it is between the people's ownership of the government and the government's ownership of the people. In sociology, it is between self-reliance and dependence on a welfare state. In international relations, it is between a brutally aggressive tyranny and the remains of an independent civilization. So that's I wish, I wish rich people would just be like, oh, I want more money. Like, I I would at least be able to engage with that. But that's a whole long list of fake ********. Leave me alone. Just say you want more money. And what's what's impressive about it is that it's the exact same rhetoric that you hear out of the like, mainstream Republican Party today. So like, like, Welch really like the thing that he predicted more than anything was like the way to kind of frame this battle, but because, like, yeah. It's a fight between in the in this. The like the late 1940s and 50s, when like the government has just finished a long stint of cracking down brutally on left wing organizing. Defining like this is a battle between free enterprise and state socialism. Like that was the thing he was doing was was not just attacking socialism, which Americans had done for a while, but defining like the mainstream Democratic Party as socialists and refusing to deviate from that line like that was really kind of one of Welsh's big innovations. Branding enemies. As opposed to yourself. Yeah. And also the idea that, no, we're, we're not. This is not, you know, politics is not some sort of grand debate between, you know, two sides with different opinions on how things might work, trying to figure out the way to make a better society. It is a, it is a fight between tyranny and any hope of survival. And, like the other side is nothing but pure tyranny, like evil stuff. Yeah. Like our head of the Federal Elections Commission said, hmm, yeah, it ******* rules. Yeah, great. Well, describe the battle between liberals and conservatives in the United States as a war that would determine whether we are going to leave our children and our grandchildren a world at least as good as the one we have inherited, or one that has already plunged into the incipient shambles of a new dark ages. Well, so he was right in the inverse, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, he did help bring us into a new dark ages. So good on you, Bob. You know who else is going to bring us into a new dark Age? CBS. Yeah, I mean, they're going to try, but they're going to do it with the help of the products and services that support this podcast. I made no sense. That that our products and services are going to plunge the world into a new dark Age. No, they're going to help CBS do it. I think they might. Is the masked singer on CBS? Is there no idea who is the masked singer in point? Do they have the same masked singer every time? Absolutely not. The whole point is guessing who's behind the mask. OK, I've never seen it. They have celebrities in costumes and then they sing. And then a panel of judges. Guess who's behind the mask? All right, well, that's worse than Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. At least Sarah Palin was on it. Of course she was. Never mind. It's today only second to Bill Gates and Rashida Jones. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying. Or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. 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A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy. Try better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind. Better help from behind. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. We're back, and we're talking about the masked singer and how it's almost certainly evidence that the United States has, in fact, slid into a new dark age through which there is no escape. Doctor Drew was on it, too. But see, that's the kind of thing. Like, if if aliens came down and I had to, like, defend the continued existence of human civilization, I think I could do a pretty good job until they brought up clips from that show. Like, I think I could defend us from, like, war crimes charges and stuff, but not not that. Here's this guy who's on the radio giving medical advice to teens for 20 years. He's dressed like a hippopotamus singing a song poorly. Yeah. You know what? You know what? Are you going to use a virus? Big lasers? Like, just just just do it. Just. Quick about it. If the first questions aliens ask is, was Sean Spicer a good dancer? We're going to be in real trouble there. But you know who wasn't on the masked singer Sean Spicer? Robert Welch. Yeah. Bob Welch was not, although he would have hated that show and called it evidence of a communist conspiracy. So Bob Welch's Appetite had been, you know, pretty sufficiently stirred by the 1950s. And again, he had a, you know, he'd kind of climbed as high as the candy industry would get him. So, like what you see? The late 40s is he reaches the the heights that a candy man can hit and he immediately starts screaming about how communists are going to have infiltrated the Democratic Party and are going to destroy democracy. He sounds like a normal career check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the problem is that Eminem Mars was run by Marxist collectivists. Yeah. I assume it was because he didn't have a wonkavator. You know, he could only go as high. I'm going to make so many more ******* Willy Wonka reference. I predict you will. Oh, it's not. I do not have trouble seeing it. Bob Welch is a lot like Willy Wonka, to be honest. Because I think they both believe business owners should be able to kill children. Yep. Yeah, I agree with that. And enslaved people. Yes, he is. So, uh, Bob Welch, you know, in the 1950s, starts getting way more into politics. Now it's it's unclear precisely when his terror of the left began again. When you read this guy's background, the stuff that wasn't just written by the John Birch Society decades later, it kind of comes out of left field like he's just a candy man and then, boom, he's screaming about the new Dark Ages. But however it started, it was in full form by July of 1950 when he wrote this in a fundraising letter for a politician quote. The strategy of the Socialists is to divide and conquer. Call all businessmen crooks so that nobody will speak up for them, and strangle them with controls and taxation. Bribe all the farmers with their own money into a selfish pressure group for more bribes. Infiltrate the labor unions and convert them into political tools. Discredit the medical profession until the rest of the public clamors for government medicine. Attack every segment of our population with tactics with which alienate the support of all other segments. The forces on the socialist side amount to a vast conspiracy to change our political. And economic system. Wow, your face changed while you're reading that. It was almost like you went. You went deep into that Channel, Bob. That was dark. There's a lot I love there, including the idea that socialists were going to discredit the medical profession in order to convince people to demand government medicine. It was like no false flag, buddy. What discredited the medical profession was people going to the ER and getting a $40,000 bill for a 3 hour visit. I'll do it. Yeah. There are two ways to go on the on that thought process there, I suppose. So. This was the first time Bob Welch used the word conspiracy in a public statement, and it would not be the last. Tragically, Welch is increasingly unhinged. Rants about socialism did not translate into success at the ballot box, probably because a lot of Americans in 1950 had directly and recently benefited from massive social welfare projects. It really helps. It really helps when you actually feel the effects of government working for you and you're like, oh, maybe this isn't an evil. Thing, you know, and then yeah, but millions of us didn't starve because of the civilian conservation, you know, project. I don't think that's a bad conspiracy, to be honest. Yeah. Is the conspiracy that we didn't starve to death during the depression. Because I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah. So yeah, he lost the race for Lieutenant governor by a margin of more than 100,000 votes, which in 1950 was like most of the country with inflation. Yeah, with inflation, that's 10 million votes. Yeah, so it was not a close election. Still, it is worth noting that nearly 60,000 Americans had cast their votes for Bob Welch and his giant left wing conspiracy. After his defeat, he wrote about his hopes that this core of supporters would in the next years grow into, quote, a far stronger, more militant, and more effective force of political strength. Other campaigns to come, he insisted. This crusade has just started because it's always a good thing when right wing ideologues describe what they're doing as a crusade that that always it really gets. It really gets white men all hot and bothered whenever you give them the opportunity to go on a crusade against anybody who's not a white man. So that, I mean, you know my motto, Jordan, ABC, baby, always be crusading. That's what you got to do if I'm not the masked singer. It's fox because of course it is. Yeah, it's scams for two fox. OK, so Welch tried his hand at politics again two years later when he attempted to be elected as a delegate for Senator Robert Taft's run for president. Y'all. Remember when Bob Taft ran for president? He was great. Big old fella real. You're thinking of William Howard. You are thinking about the first half, although I assumed they were both would have had problems with the White House bathtubs. No, this was this. Was Taft the sequel or the attempted sequel? To Taft, and like most serious, it was not as good as the original 2 teapot domes. So Taft was actually running to the right of Dwight D Eisenhower, who was also running for president at that time. And at that point, for, you know, understandable reasons, Dwight Eisenhower was probably one of the most beloved men on the entire planet. The whole highway thing one, enjoy. He hadn't done the highways yet, but he had helped beat the Nazis. He was what? Really for me lately? That's what I'm asking. OK, he was even Eisenhower. This point was even actually pretty popular with a lot of Soviets, including Marshall Zukov, the most prominent commander of Soviet forces during World War Two. It's actually it's actually kind of a fun story that Marshall Zhukov, who again is like the the the the main Soviet general who beat the Nazis like he and I, Eisenhower were like real good buddies and Eisenhower gave him a tackle box filled with a bunch of hand carved fishing lures. And Zukov kept it with him until the day he died. It was right next to him when he died. He really? That's very cute. Yeah. Isn't that adorable? Yeah. I mean, admittedly, both guys are responsible for the deaths of 1,000,000, so there is, yeah, there is also the Nazis. That's fair. That's fair. And other people. But you're not wrong. Also, be funny if Zukov didn't fish. It just really love them, Lords. Yeah, that's good. It's very thoughtful. So anyway, the fact that Eisenhower was, despite being a pretty ******** cold warrior himself, capable of seeing communists as human beings, enraged Bob Welch. And Bob Welch was further enraged by the fact that Eisenhower supported taxing people to spend money on things that would benefit the public good, like highways. That, to Bob Welch, was Marxism. I want more money. I don't eat roads. Just say it. Yeah, you got to think all, all, all rich people are basically like, uh, Doc Brown. Like, we don't need roads. Yeah, exactly where we're going. We just all just dirigibles for the rich, and everyone else has a mud farmer. That's the glorious dream of Bob Welch. They do like any alternate universe where dirigibles factor heavily in the future. I love it. Why? I can't. I can't imagine Bob Welch getting his way. And they're not being thousands of dirigibles. And giant mechanical spiders. Ohh yeah yeah. You're gonna have some. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously Ike won that election. He's kind of hard to beat again. If you really want to win an election, beat the Nazis. It it that'll. Boy. Yeah, if Biden, if Biden defeats the Nazis, I will vote for him a second time for sure. If Biden had if Biden had sacked Hitler's Berlin, yeah, I think people would have. He would have. He would have had a more commanding lead. What is Hitler's Berlin in South Carolina now? Is that where it's at? Or did they ask Florida? Uh, so the final delegate count in that in that convention between Eisenhower and Taft, was a blowout, 845 to 280 close. So again, the final one. Not particularly close, but the first count of delegates had been much narrower, with 595 for Eisenhower and 500 for Taft. It was a contentious and ugly contest between the two men. Eisenhower's people accused Tafts people of stealing delegates. There were a number of different votes before they got to the final count, and there were ugly floor fights. And while. Nick did prevail. Clearly, in the end, a lot of Taft supporters were left feeling that they'd been cheated. There was kind of a stop the steel thing, and Bob Welch was like the main architect of it. Was Roger Stone like a baby at the time? Yeah. I mean, I think he was a baby at the time. Googoo Gaga, stop the poor. Yeah, first one is rat **** yeah you can. Kind of honestly the best like the best way to describe it might be it. It seems sort of like what happened with Bernie Sanders in 2016, at least in terms of how his his supporters felt. You had this like candidate who had a strong base of Fanatical supporters who were like the party leadership has ****** us out of of winning and that's probably the case. It does seem like the the Republican Party leadership. Like tipped the scale for Eisenhower at the same time. Hard to imagine Tafts doing better than icenhower. At the time, Robert Welch, who was infuriated, called it the dirtiest deal in American political history. Now the new one? Yeah. There's a famous deal that he was mad about. Long ago, nothing made him angrier than Taft getting screwed. Wow, Robert. That's a Papa sucker for you, the Bernie Sanders of not wanting people to have health care. So Eisenhower went on to electorally pants his Democratic challenger. And one of the most overwhelming landslides in US political history, Eisenhower's Vice President, Richard Nixon, would go on to do absolutely nothing of note. But that is, that was ikes ikp. Most Americans were fine with more or less everything that went on. And really the whole fight over Taft being, you know, cheated out of the nomination, didn't did not become a major national story. The early 1950s were a time of broad. Political consensus among the nation's white supermajority. Uh, so, like, again, people were pretty happy. The Eisenhower years are generally referred to by, again, white folks as like a golden era in America. Because most hey, we get to eat alone, right, guys? We all get to eat alone. This is pretty great alone this country. We don't. We get to buy terrible houses in the suburbs, you know? Look like me. You look like me. You look like me. This place is great. I just love this club. I just bought a house for $11.00. And I got a -, 4% loan. It's really good. Yeah. They're paying me to have this house, me for buying this house, yeah. I accidentally fell and landed on a ******* uh, what's the what's the thing that people don't get anymore that they used to get pension? No. I forgot what pensions were because they don't exist anymore for most of us. Cheer cop. So yeah, again, most Americans, at least most of the Americans who again were white, and thus the kind of people who got asked about things at that time were pretty happy with Eisenhower's victory, but not Bob Welch. Taft's defeat was something of a black pill for him, convincing him that party politics was hopeless and that party politics could never save the United States from the looming specter of communism. 1952 was also the year that Welch published his first political book, May God forgive US, which is solid title. Give it to the man of it, you know. Yeah, that's that's sinners. Sinners in the hands of an angry God was already taken at that point, I believe so he couldn't use that one is his first book is basically the title is like it's too late. Yeah. You're ******. Ah, **** Sophie. Remind Remember Me remind me to pitch you're ****** to I don't know Penguin or somebody to get. We'll figure out what it's about later on. The art of rat *******. Yeah, salesmanship book, Zen and the art of ********* yeah. A guide for hard nosed Buddhist political operators. I would read that book. That actually sounds great. That does sound fun. That sounds fun. Yeah. So what is the make up one hand rat *******. So May God forgive us was a full throated condemnation of US foreign policy in Asia, which Welch saw as the government basically handing an entire continent over to the commies. He blamed it on the quote almost unbelievable combination of trickery, chicanery, and treason of the Harry Truman administration. Truman, as far as Welch was concerned, was basically a communist. Now, the fact that Harry Truman had literally dropped two atom bombs in order to scare the Soviet Union didn't seem to change Welch's political calculus at all. He was a communist. Too far left for me. It was an act, man. Can't see through it, can't see through the ********. It was actually the deep state who launched those nuclear bombs. So Truman was. No, don't do it. No. He was a ******** Trotskyist. Yeah, true. Yeah, it was. Peter struck. Actually dropped the nukes, if I recall correctly. So so Bobby was most distraught by what he saw as the abandonment of nationalist warlord Chiang Kai Shek to Communist warlord Mousey Tongue. That's that's where we get our Chiang Kai Shek reference. Always love to to have have some good. I I like to throw in some red meat for the Chang gang, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Universal basic income. Yeah, yeah, the whole thing. Yeah. Mauser C 96. Is that fire? 45ACP slugs? Uh, all the good Chinese warlord stuff. So. It was during the research for this book that Welch first came across a name that would come to define the rest of his life's work, John Birch. You'll know who the actual John Birch was. Explain it to me. And I'm. I'm so good at remembering exactly where the original gender percent forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. I do know one thing about him which you will almost certainly say here very shortly. I actually don't think I think he's bluffing. I think Jordan bluffing. I will tell you. I will tell you this. What's the one thing you know? One thing I know that I remember specifically from you is according to his friend, John Birch would have hated the John Birch Society. Yes. Yeah. That is what I do does seem fair, although there's debate about that. But what about God? Damn. That is one account that you can find for sure. OK, yeah, we'll talk about his life, and you can tell me how you think after that. OK, so there's one thing I've skimmed about John Brennan. OK? Skimmed is even generous. Yeah, there's one thing that you overheard about John Birch and happened to remember. They're called hearing this bit of information, and now you understand my knowledge base. Yes. So the actual John Birch was born in India in 1918 to parents who were Christian missionaries on A3 year mission trip. That ended in frustration and disappointment, presumably because most of the people they met were fine with the gods they already had. Atlantic writer Thomas Mallon notes that quote evangelical zeal conflicted with the more material progress being pursued by the missionary Sam Higginbottom, their boss at the Allahabad Agricultural Institute. In other words, John Birch's. Parents wanted to be like, you know, super Jesusy with people. And their boss was more about improving people's material needs and hoping that inspired them to find Christ. So they got tired of that. We should give you food and the other guys, like, what if we told them they were going to hell? That would probably work too, right? What if food was contingent on them accepting Christ? Yeah. So the guy who cared about helping people stayed in India helping people, and the Birch family moved back to Georgia. So that's where John was born in India, but he grew up in Georgia. And it would be fair to describe. Is growing up a religious fundamentalist like he was not just a religious man but by the standards of the time, a fundamentalist gotcha. He went to Mercer University and was described by a biographer later in life as obstinate, passionate and headstrong. I'm going to quote from the Atlantic here the most professor Felix Frankfurter. The most notable stateside episode of his brief life involved participating in a 13 member student group against five professors whose theological views they deemed heretical. The accusing students were decided minority on the Baptist campus, and charges against the faculty were dismissed after a 10 hour hearing. Birch went on to graduate at the top of his class, but found himself shunned by a portion of its members. He began to feel that he had been used, provoked into the fight by some of Macon's Towny Baptist ministers. So again, he's very ******** religious and is like, willing to accuse. Bunch of professors of heresy. But then after the whole situation shakes out, he starts to feel as if he's been manipulated by like ministers in the area and he kind of like, he kind of has an awakening. And after this point most degree became less extreme religiously, like seems to have realized he was being manipulated. Why do I feel like 60% of that debate was entirely about whether or not Jews were people? Like, yeah, that's. Right, right. There was a Jay Q in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that discussion. So, yeah, John was smart enough to realize he'd been manipulated, and he left that school. He went to a Bible Institute next, run by a popular evangelical radio preacher who suggested that Bert should travel to China as an evangelist. John arrived there in September of 1940, in the middle of a long and almost impossibly bloody war between China and Japan and a civil war in China. It was a rough ******* place to be in 191940. Not an easy time. Could be anywhere really in China. So John actually traveled closer to the danger and moved almost 200 miles from where he had initially moved in China to the city of Shangrao, which was very close to the front line. Now, while he was a foreigner in China to sell people on Christianity, it does seem like he legitimately fell in love with the culture. He learned to speak fluent Mandarin in just a year, which is not something you would do. Yeah, he's really very gifted with languages. And yeah, that's probably not the kind of thing you do if you didn't have some appreciation for the culture the Atlantic. Notes that this exceeded learned their language just to tell them they're dirty commies. That's what I did. Tell them they're commies. Yeah, it's also noted by his biographer that he recognized his own racial prejudice, which was obviously a product of growing up white in Georgia and was struggling to overcome it in the 1940s. So it seems like a guy who, like grew up in a pretty regressive background, but was making significant strides to be a better person, open to new ideas and new people and new cultures. Definitely not a villain would be fair to say. By 1942, Birch had become discouraged by the bureaucracy of the missionary effort in China, feeling as if it distracted from the more important. Work of providing meaningful aid for a nation that was driven by war and starvation. He volunteered to serve in the US military mission to China as a chaplain before he got an answer. He wound up helping to rescue Jimmy Doolittle's Raiders, who had just bombed civilians in Tokyo as revenge for Pearl Harbor and had landed in China. As Birch's biographer notes quote, they saw a gaunt western man with several days growth of beard and one of the airmen exclaimed. Well, Jesus Christ, the missionary replied. That's an awfully good name, but I am not he so good. Bit of wit to him. Your little clever *******. Shut. Not as bad as mine just said about my God. Ah, ah. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta throw out something good there. You gotta have like I would have gone with. That's my dad's name. That's the way you do that. That's the way you pulled that one off. Yeah, that would have been a funnier remark if only John Birch had done more stand up sets. Jordan was around back then to do punch up. Yeah, I gotta do punch up on social responses. OneNote. John OneNote. Let's take it one more time. Let's take it from the top one more time. You can't imagine if you were him giving that response that like, what, 70 years later? Some ***** would be like arguing about whether or not it was funny on a podcast. Yeah, I I imagine I would. I would like that. I would like 70 years from now. Somebody to be like, that was pretty good. That one, that's one that's worth a life. That one time Jordan responded to someone saying hi to him was not funny enough. And I'm excited for 70 years from now, behind, behind the ******** where they just go through old episodes of my podcast and punch it up, correct my mispronunciations. But you know what? It'll be funny still. You're right. Transitions, Robert, which you need to do, not to most people. Capitalism is not going to last that long. Nothing's gonna last that long, but you do need to do it. OK. Here's a product. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. 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A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at anytime. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. We're back. That was the least funny one you've ever done. That was a good one. Hey, what are you? What are you? I don't need. I don't need this ****. I don't need. I don't need this. 70 years from now, people are going to be like, Robert was really being bullied by Sophie that one time when he talked about the John Birch Society one time that was the most noteworthy thing that happened before World War Three. Let's give them notes on it. Even though none of them survived the initial nuclear exchange anyway, I'll start the Robert Evans Society. Yeah, I'm going to wind up being the first victim of space communism. So, yeah, space Birch would go on to play a minor role in helping Doolittle's Raiders escape. He was commissioned in the military, and he worked in the military for a few years. And, you know, at this point, U.S. military mission in China, broadly speaking, on the right side of things because they're against Japan, who was killing millions and millions and millions of people. So yeah, he's he's not a completely unproblematic guy, but. Not a bad guy. Uh. And yeah. His goal after leaving the service was to do more missionary work. He was going to move to Tibet, but he never got the chance to do that. By 1945, Birch was physically and mentally wrecked, both from a terrible war and from repeated bouts of malaria. He got his final military assignment in August, which was just after the Japanese surrender was announced. And you know that, like when Japan surrendered, the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese Communist forces started fighting again, and Birch was with the US military unit and again sick and everyone who was around at the time. Notes that he was like showing increased signs of paranoia. He was going through PTSD, he was not in a good mental place, and the group he was with, too bad he didn't have hydroxychloroquine yeah, that that that actually would have helped, yes, because it's an anti malaria. So Birches party, the guys he was with, like the US military and who's with, ran into a group of Communist soldiers and they ordered the Americans to disarm. Birch got angry and insulted people. And like, we don't exactly know what happened, but there was a fight in. Birch was shot dead. So if he had never learned Chinese, he wouldn't have been able to **** him off as much. Yeah, the the lesson here is never learned another another language. You will get murdered in a field in China by Red Army soldiers. I think that's what I think. That's what I'm gonna take away from this. Yeah, quit. Quit your Spanish lessons today and save your own life. This podcast is not brought to you by Duolingo. Yeah. So, uh, mousie dung actually apologized for the killing of John Birch to an American general who was like in charge of the US mission in the country at the time. But he, Mao, kind of walked away from that meeting really angry because the American general seemed to be insistent that he could be, should be able to send American troops anywhere inside of China without like informing the Chinese ahead of time. So it was a whole, it was a whole big deal and it it just kind of seems like a a tragedy, like birds probably was being * **** but also was sick and struggling with. PTSD and doesn't seem to have been a bad guy. It's just a bummer. It's, you know, war. That war sucks. Yeah, yeah, it would be fair to call him a complicated man, but yeah, definitely not a villain. In death, though, his legacy was really, really simplified, thanks in large part to Robert Welch. He turned John Birch into a symbol because to Wybert Welch, John Birch was the first American to die fighting communism, even though he hadn't really been fighting communism. That actually been like, broadly speaking, trying to help. China. And they just got into an argument with some Communist soldiers, and everyone was probably drinking. I just have to assume to apply nuance to a situation where there's only good guys and bad guys and how dare you ever consider the bad guys human beings. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Welch does not see any nuance in this. To him, John Birch is a martyr who, like, gave his life to destroy communism. And, yeah, he starts turning him into basically like, the John the Baptist of capitalism like that. That's kind of Bob Welch's. Role here. Which, yeah, I I don't. I never knew John Birch, obviously, because he died decades before my birth. But reading about the guy, you kind of get the feeling he'd be a little bit bummed. Yeah, you know who else didn't know him? ******* Robert Welch. And Robert Welch did not know him? No. Not even a little bit. That's fair. In 1954, Welch started work on what would become one of his most consequential books, the politician. He was inspired to write it during a car ride in New York with a friend. Basically, he's in a car with a buddy of his. They're unlike driving to New York, and he starts ranting about Dwight. Eisenhower and talking about how he's a communist agent. And after hours of this, one has to assume his friend is like, hey, why don't you, like, shut the **** ** and just write a book about this? That's every time I've been on the road as a comic. Every single time, you know you should write a book. Which is a classy way of saying please stop talking. Welch does not take this as a classy way of saying please stop talking and he actually writes a book. I don't think, please stop talking. Is something he respected very much as a as a way of life. Not a real please guy. Yeah. Nora, stop. Guy. If the decision to write this book too, yeah, not a great deal. The Leviathan was taken, so he had to go with the politician. And May God forgive us was already had already been taken. May God forgive us again. May God forgive us. 2/3 forgive you. Yeah, yeah. May God forgive us five you've got. She's all being forgiven by God. May we be forgiven Tokyo drift. It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad. Uh, it's fun. So Welch started, you know, so he has this conversation with a friend. He's like, just write a ******* book about Eisenhower, the Communist. So Welch starts by writing a letter which outlines his feelings on Eisenhower, and he revises it over the years in 1956 and again in 1958. And basically every year he sends out a new draft of this letter to anyone who would listen to him, and he calls it a letter. But by the 3rd revision, it was 80,000 words long, which you might notice is not a lever a letter. Like, did he just write, I want more money? Over and over and over again, no. Yeah, talk about what he wrote. I feel like some of my relatives, like holiday letters might end up being about that long. I feel like I don't have word counts on them. But if they feel, yeah, 80,000 words, I assume there was at least one recipe in there, right? There had to be one recipe. Papa suckers. Get old fashioned. I mean, I would be really angry if any of my friends or loved ones sent me an 80,000 word letter. Like, really? No. Oh, that one. I would happily get that one other than her letter that I was supposed to actually read. If you read it, that's why it goes in the garbage. Thanks for sending me that letter. That's great. You sent me a two page letter. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Dear Uncle, I have thrown your letter in the trash. Thank you for sending me such a heavy package. So yeah, since by the 3rd revision it was more than 80,000 words long, Welsh decided to start calling it a book. The politician, as he titled it, became the underground secret text of what became a small cult like following a friends and admirers who increasingly believed that Bob Welch was something of a prophet. In February of 1956, Welch launched his first magazine, One man's opinion. He later renamed it American Opinion, which really like actually reveals a lot about his thought. Yeah, yeah, like I think this. No, America thinks this is that, that idea of these subjective actually being the objective? Yeah. Yeah, that's how the artist thinks. Uh-huh. Yeah, it is. It is pretty telling. So he left the Welch company at the start of 1957 and began preparations to turn his circle of followers into a formal political advocacy group. Now, by this point, Walsh was convinced not just that Eisenhower was a crooked politician, but that he was a secret. Communist agent in the White House like that that Eisenhower was actually a communist and was was attempting to manipulate the United States into socialism from the White House. That's so crazy that that stuff used to happen in the past. That's so wild. Yeah. It's just like, it's just like, how could you be in that headspace where something like that happened? Ever crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, imagine looking. Imagine looking at Dwight Eisenhower and being so far right that you're like that ******* Marxist. Imagine looking at Biden. Yeah, yeah. Like, he's the kind of person who, like, everyone is a Marxist if they don't think he should be able to ***** shoot with poor people. Yeah. Like, that's that's that's Bob Welch's politics in a nutshell. Yeah. And Welch wasn't just convinced that Ike was a communist. He believed that the majority of both the Republican and Democratic parties, most of their elected leaders at least, were communists and Communist sympathizers. So Bob Welch, in order to kind of spread this warning about encroaching communism, turned to the massive rolodex of wealthy. Industrial magnates that he'd built up over years in the candy world. He invited all of these guys to a hotel in suburban Indianapolis in December of 1958 and he asked them to stay for two days. He didn't tell them what it was about or why he was inviting them to a hotel for two days. And gentlemen, it is a murder mystery. He kind of. He just said it was a matter of utmost importance. So he's very cloak and dagger, very secretive, and of like the 17 guys that Bob Welch invites, 11 of them show up. See what he has to say. And I'm going to quote from politics some real cool characters among those eleven. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real cool folks. Yes, at least one ********. Pot alumni. Yeah, yeah. After exchanging firm handshakes in the breakfast room was a sprawling 2 door style house in the Tony Meridian Park neighborhood. Welch explained why he had brought this group together. the United States faced an existential threat from an international communist conspiracy hatched by an amoral gang of sophisticated criminals, the power hungry, God hating government. Worshippers had infiltrated newsrooms, public schools, legislative chambers, and houses of worship. They were frighteningly close to total victory. Welch felt it in his gut. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of enslaved robots in which every civilized trait has been destroyed, Welch wrote in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society, the organization's founding history. That would really sound unhinged to me if he weren't proven 100% correct on every point there, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you got it. I think you nailed it. There's definitely a group of cunning megalomaniacs who seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race reduced to robotic servitude. But, you know, it's Jeff Bezos. Yeah, it's Peter Thiel and Bezos. Yeah, yeah, it's guys who would have been in the John Birch Society. Exactly. Yes. So. The chosen few gathered here would form the vanguard of a new political movement, an army of brave American patriots dedicated to preserving the country's Christian and constitutional foundations. Welch christened the group the John Birch Society, named in memory of a U.S. soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know the guy? Yeah. And their goal at the beginning was destroying the quote Communist conspiracy. Or at least breaking its grip on our government and shouldering its power within the United States. So I love. I love guys who are like, oh, there's a conspiracy to kill everybody. And then they create what is essentially the Knights Templar. Like, what are we doing? There's a conspiracy. We have to create a conspiracy to fight it. We're going to be a secretive group of crusaders fighting against communism. What's what's weird and conspiratorial about that? It's the same thing you hear now. Like, you know, there's a there's a coup going on in our government. So we have to form a counter coup, of course. And then they're going to form a counter counter coup against our counter coup. Yep. Yeah. There's like, what? What do we even do? And this is just like one of those dolls inside of dolls or an onion. Well, it's. It's one of the most effective ways. If you're trying to convince people to do something that's blatantly evil and horrible, the best way to do it is to convince them that the people you're going to be harming are doing the same thing to you. Exactly. That's the like. We should have martial law because Biden's gonna put in martial law like or like that. Trailer Park was going to gear up in their forerunners and drive through my neighborhood, firing out the window. So I have to get in my forerunner and drive through their trailer park shooting into trailers. There's no other option. They forced me into it. Hmm. False flag also, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, all eleven of the rich dudes that Welch invited to his meeting became founding members of the John Birch Society. We're gonna talk about these guys. Oh yeah, we're talk about these guys a little bit. One of them was T Coleman Andrews, former commissioner of the IRS. Another was the personal aide, former personal aide for General Douglas MacArthur, who attempted to nuke both China and North Korea. He's a good guy. And another of them was Fred Koch, founder father while and founder of the infamous Koch brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are those are the three that I found. Worth naming. There's revilo P Oliver. Wasn't he there too? I think so. Who's revilo P Oliver? You know that. You know these people. He was he was a guy who ended up inspiring William Luther Pierce, writing his his works. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. He became a big fascist guy. I think he was there at first. He was one of the founding members. Yep, you're right, you're right, you're right. He's a he's a real thinker of the the crypto early fascist. Ohh yeah. Classics professor from the University of Illinois found it. Yep. Yep. And and one of the Holocaust denial movements. Uh, leading lights. What a great meeting you to to have been a fly on that wall. Yeah. Cool, cool people. Lot of real casual anti-Semitism. Like, yeah, it's a collection of actual, like, demons. Yeah, not in the way that you, like, demonize like you. Not in the way you demonize your enemies and all that stuff. Those guys, even if you're, like, broadly in agreement with what they believe, you should look at that meeting and go get the **** away from me. You guys are terrible. The ripples are almost astounding, even just thinking about like, yeah, the the idea that Fred Koch, the father of the Koch brothers, is in the same room with Revilo. The Oliver who like, inspired and helped facilitate the writing of the Turner Diaries? Yeah, it's just insane. It's insane. The tendrils. It makes sense though, because one of the fun things to do with the far right and with the normal right is to play like the Kevin Bacon game with the Turner Diaries. Sure. Like how? How, like how how how can you tie back a Republican politician to the Turner Diaries? Generally less than four steps. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Thanks to the Koch brothers. Hey, good guys, good guys, at least. Hey, guys. Later on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They admitted he. God, I wanna. I wanna **** ** the world badly enough, but also be in a position where I can just be like, oopsie. Toodles. Hey, guys. I'm going to. I'm going to be honest. This one's on me. My bad, my bad. You know what? Big enough, man to admit when I've destroyed the entire world and this is that time for me, I fumble. Yeah. Hey, we all make mistakes. We all make mistakes. Best in order to make this right. One for three. One for three is the best baseball players. In order to make this right, I have purchased a poo buddies nerfed shirt. I will wear it for the next 4 days. Anyway, sorry to everyone who's lost loved ones. So from the beginning, Welch patterned the John Birch Society off of the revolutionary communist movements he so despised, which is again another like. So you're saying these people are like the the epitome of all evil, and you're also deliberately framing your group out of after them, like you're scared because they're good at it. They are good at it. Like, obviously Alex. Alex on Alex Jones. I don't know if you know this. We do a little bit about him. He he he. Just put out like, hey, what we need to do is get all the truck drivers together and have them strike in a unified front. And you're like, do you not hate unionization, but now you want to use withholding of Labor as a means of political action? Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, for us, yeah. No, there's something wrong. Yes. Yeah. Like you. You shouldn't be. It's the same thing with, like, police unions, where it's like you people use fire hoses. And striking workers, you don't get to unionize like yourselves. So from the beginning, Welch pattern that John yeah patterned them off of revolutionary communist movements. In his initial, like founding documents, Welch wrote that he wanted the John Birch Society to be a monolithic body operating under completely authoritative control at all levels. In other words, he would be the Mao or the Stalin of his own counter communist movement. The society would be organized into cells of 10 to 20 members, formed after the revolutionary. Address that were common in underground communist movements. Like, you read about the the, the Khmer Rouge and like the founding of that, and it's like the same basic organizational strategies you're trying to avoid, like infiltration. Yeah. And it works. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, yeah. It it it works pretty well. There's a reason he he patterns off of this, even though it is ironic. Welch informed his followers that he had considered a Republican form of organization for their society, but that while it had certain attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions, it failed under quote, less happy. Circumstances. the United States, Welch insisted, was beset by less happy circumstances, and the extent of socialist infiltration in American Society made any Republican system open to infiltration, distortion, and disruption. Robert Welch was, in short, creating an underground fascist political party. His disdain for anything that even smacked of democracy was quite clear. Welch told his followers that democracy was, quote, merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery and a perennial fraud. So I want more. And I don't want people to be able to vote that I should give more money. Yeah. I do not want people to be able to vote for anything. Really? Yeah. Because they will vote for socialism. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same **** that you see today. It's there's nothing new here. Well, it was new here, though. Like, that's what's interesting about this is that he was like, like, now we have. It's shocking to a lot of people that we have all these mainstream elected Republicans saying openly, like, yeah, we're not a democracy. Democracy is bad. We don't want democracy when there's this much socialism going around. If you let people choose things, they'll choose dangerous socialism. And Bob Welch was the guy ******* 60 years before that who was being like, this is exactly the way we should be framing things. I have a quick question is, do you think he is he a believer? Do you know what I'm saying? I think he is a he's not the same kind of right wing grifter we're used to seeing all over the place. I don't think he's a grifter. I don't think he's a grifter. He's already rich for one thing, and I'm sure, yeah, well like rich people don't continue the grift. Yeah, there is an element of a grift in what he's doing, but he's not. He's not. Seems to be like there's a gift, isn't the focus. There's people who serve the the scam and then there are people who are like, no this ideal ideological. I think he's more on that side as well. Alright, I think he's an ideologue. I think he believes in what he's doing. OK. He's making bad reasons. Well, of course, yeah, don't worry about that. He's not. He's not just in it for the money, right? He wouldn't be doing this if it was just to sell like, pills. Yeah. Pills, yeah. He's not a pill guy. No. So I'm going to quote now from the world of the John Birch Society by DJ Malloy quote All in all, it was a hierarchical structure derived not just from the many years Welch had spent in the world of business, but also from his openly, if perhaps surprisingly, expressed admiration for the organizational tactics of his communist foes, acknowledging the similarity between linens notion of the dedicated few in his own. Plans for the John Birch Society. In the Blue Book, for example, the always capitalized founder explained that he was willing to draw on all successful human experience in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve any sacrifice of morality and the means used to achieve an end. If I'm if I'm in that room, I'm like, he's going to be removing people from pictures pretty soon. Yeah, he's he's going to be erasing us from history once he gets to be dictated. I don't. I don't trust that guy. He's going to be relying on everyone's wife to send letters to. The people while the men get drunk and yell about yeah, commies. So membership is one of the dedicated. View was not free. Monthly dues were $24.00 for men and $12.00 for women, which probably says something unfortunate. Life memberships cost $1000. There were monthly chapter meetings for the first two years of the John Birch Society. Things went along smoothly enough. Word of the society was passed mouth to mouth and cells of Birchers sprang up all around the nation. Welch addressed them all monthly in the society's bulletin, which he wrote every word of. It was not always easy to get freedom loving Americans to sign up for an organization that was fundamentally. Undemocratic, monolithic and authoritarian Instructure, Welch spent a lot of his time explaining to members why such a strict and unbending hierarchy was necessary. He told them that the US was a shoreline of beautiful houses threatened by a rising flood and you can assume the floods. Non white people. The Birches and their ilk, were lonesome boys with brooms trying to sweep it back what they needed, which insisted was a dynamic boss to get them organized by barking this this is again from one of his writings. This is like so he's like, he's describing like us as a bunch of beautiful houses and there's this flood. Threatening it and we're loading it with brooms. Beating it back. And all those boys need is a boss who's willing to shout this. Hey, you guys, all of you, drop those pretty brooms. You fellows down there on the end, start running for empty bags. You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those bags with sand. You men here, all of you, start lugging those bags of sand to put on this wall the Communists have busted up so badly. You fellows over there, all of you, get the heaviest clubs you could buy and spread yourselves out along the whole length of this wall. And don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs you find monkeying. That don't even hesitate to break the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall if you are sure of their evil intentions. So America is set up perfectly, and it's the best country that has ever existed, but totally right. There are circumstances that are happening right now that really we need a dictator. Yeah, I'm afraid so. There's just nothing. It's just it's impossible to avoid this. Circumstantial. What are you going to do? We need a dictator. Otherwise people are going to spend all their time swinging brooms and not beating people in the head making sandbags. I find it fun that this starts as like a metaphor for trying to organize people to deal with what is presumably like a tsunami or a flood condition, and instead turns into beating communists with sticks. There's a flood coming. Punch the water. Don't do anything to help it, just punch it. I mean, every year or so I go out to the coast and get into a fight with the ocean. And I I I think that's why we have not had a major tsunami on the the West Coast of the United States in years. I just get drunk and scream. You think you're bigger than that because of me? I beat the **** out of the ocean every couple of years. Georgia has seen me. Sophie Jordan does taunt Lake MI often. You have to. If you don't, if you don't like, if you don't stand up. The bodies of water, they're gonna walk all over you. Literally we're all nodding like. Sure. Very stoic nod. Yeah. Stoic nod. Yes. Yeah, fight the ocean that could go into the that could go in the don'ts of the art of salesmanship right there, I think. Yeah, I would have started John Birch society that's just themed at getting people to fight the ocean, fight various forms of nature. Yeah, well, mostly oceans. Punch trees. Yell at the water. All of what John Birch was preaching was good enough to earn his society the membership of one of my favorite ******** pod characters, Phyllis Schlafly. She and her husband, some guy, joined in 1959. So yeah, that's good. Phyllis Schlafly Jordan was going to bark at that. Yeah, he's not very close. Laffer as as we used to call ourselves. Not on the Schlaff squad? No. So that same year, same year, Schlafly and her husband joined the John Birch Society, Robert Welch launched a crusade to recall newly installed Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. Justice Warren was a liberal who had written the majority opinion for a decision that overruled state and local segregation laws. We're talking brown versus the Board of Education here. Robert Welch did not like Brown versus the Board of Education. Oh yeah, why not? Not wild about the fact that black people got to go to the same schools as white people now and Welch's eyes. Earl Warren's opinion on this case meant that he was a communist. Welch insisted in letters that Warren had violated his oath, and he harangued his most gifted followers to turn the effort to recall the justice into a movement privately. Welch wrote that frankly, with the left wing control now so strong, insidious and ubiquitous in Washington, I am not deceiving myself that we have very much chance of really bringing about the impeachment of Earl Warren. Although we might, but I don't think that is really as important as dramatizing to the whole country where he stands, where the Supreme Court now constituted under him stands, and how important it is to face the facts about the road we are now traveling on so fast. So that's really interesting to me because in all of his public, like, publications, he makes it clear that this is a real effort to recall Earl Warren. And I think we have a real shot and we're going to get this guy out of the Supreme Court and his private letters, he's like, we're never going to do this. It's all about making people angry. It's about the rhetoric. It's about pushing the idea of the fight. Yeah. Which is not like anything else that's happened since, uh, no. Lot of sighs on this episode when you passed in the future compared. Yeah. Yeah. He's a real trailblazer. Yeah. So you get a feel for Bob Welch by reading his letters. I'm going to read you now an excerpt from one he sent to T Coleman Andrews, who's the former Commissioner of the IRS. So let's start with. I mean, kind of it. It begins with well, yeah, that's what I hear out of all of this writings. The letter begins with Welch's regret that Andrews turned down an opportunity to spearhead the effort against what Welch refers to in all caps as the movement to impeach Earl Warren. He he calls it that in all caps every time he types about it. He's a caps guy. He do well on Twitter. Is frankfurter not on the Supreme Court anymore or is. I think he's dead at this point. OK. I was going to say because you gotta go for him first. You know? He's your guy. So yeah, he he starts the letter by being like, it's a bummer that you don't want to help me impeach Earl Warren. He goes on to discuss. Gathering storms in the South, which is a reference to the civil rights movement which Bob Welch stated he thought was directly caused by the Communist Party. Quote If blood does flow there, which I agree is entirely likely, it will definitely be because the Communists planned it that way. They have schemed for so long to be in position to fan little fires of civil disorder into a huge conflagration of civil war, if and when they need such a horror in their moves to take us over. And John Birch, though, a minister devoted to peace, was entirely ready to fight for A cause which he considered. Really? Of sacrifice? O devoted to peace, devoted to peace, this guy something, well, he's referring to John Birch, who he did not know in saying that like we have to be like John Birch, who was devoted to peace but was willing to get into a drunken argument with Communist soldiers to get shot to death. That sounds like most right wing heroes. Like Colonel Travis, he was a drunk. I don't know that he was drunk. He may just have been drunk on malaria. I'm just assuming everyone in the 40s was wasted at all times. That's a good idea. John Birch, you did. Earl Warren. That is actually a little known fact that is true. I found that in the right eye, not making this up. One sense, yeah. So uh. Welch portrayed the John Birch Society's work not as partisan activism, but as an attempt to unite all Americans under an anti communist banner. In the 1960 issue of the Bulletin he wrote it is of vital importance to the Communists to split Americans into all kinds of groups, snarling at each other. And so he said the society would not seek to split up Americans. We are fighting communists. Nobody else. They put people into all these groups and I don't think that we should have black people. Jewish people, Chinese people, liberals, the LGBTQ community. I don't think we should have any of those people, those specific groups that I have chosen to deny as people. See, yeah, left is evil. Yeah, they're dividing us by allowing people who aren't like me to exist. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, Welch, by the mid 1950s, had grown increasingly convinced that the entire U.S. government was basically communists all the way down. And one of the main triggers for this. Was when Congress voted to censure Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954. So he like, right on time, by the way. Yeah. Right. Right on time. Right on time. Witty damage. Yeah. They got to him quick, so. Yeah. And because Eisenhower was a big part of finally centering Joe McCarthy after letting Joe McCarthy be Joe McCarthy for years. Welch, you know, saw this as more evidence that Ike was a secret communist. Things kind of on the wall. Yeah. All the signs. There, if you're looking, he he. After just two whole Red scares, he stepped in. So the politician Welch's book about Ike remained largely a secret work. He circulated it among his most loyal inner circle. He handed it out to like leaders in the movement. But regular members didn't get to know it was kind of like their Xenu, like when you get high enough up in the Birch society, you learned that Eisenhower is a communist. Welch noted about his book in one private letter quote are rather extreme precautions with regards to this document are not due to any worry on my part as to what might happen to myself, but many of my best informed friends feel that having the manuscript get into the wrong hands at the present time might doom far more damage than good to the whole anti communist cause. Yeah it's it's it's Alex Jones I mean and Alex Jones as a little bit of a spoiler was uh grew up on John Birch material so. Not a kawecki ****. So for the Bircher rank and file, Eisenhower was just a crooked politician who was much too friendly with foreign leaders. At one point in 1968 agreed to attend a summit with Nikita Khrushchev, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and French President Charles de Gaulle Welch considered all three of these men to be card carrying communists, which is there with Khrushchev. I'll say that. But the goal? The goal? Yeah. Devious communist. Cheryl stegall. Charles de Gaulle. Alright. Yeah. Didn't he do rituals and dances? And I don't know that. I can't remember if that was degaulle. I mean, he was pretty problematic in a lot of ways himself, but communist is not an accurate description. Was very problematic. Yeah. Yeah. So was McMillan, for that matter. Yeah. So Welch considered, again, all these guys to be communists. And he had the John Birch Society send a heavily publicized message to President Eisenhower. If you go, don't come back, the slogan was sent out in a Blizzard of yeah, hell. Will be exiled, yeah, for hanging out with famous communist Charles de Gaulle. If you go, what a great threat. If you go to that meeting, the conference room will be your elbow. So the slogan was sent out in a Blizzard of postcards, letters, and telegrams. And within the society, it was actually quite controversial, since many normal birchers were not as irrational as the group's founder nationwide, it sparked curiosity for this strange semi underground organization. One curious individual was Jack Mabley, an investigative reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News. So, hey, hometown hero? Hey, yeah, maybe. I mean, technically Candyman is a hometown hero for Chicago too, but that's a different both hometown. Heroes 2 Chicagoans 2 the only way to stop a bad Chicagoan is a good Chicagoan. Uh, so, yeah, uh. Mabley starts looking into the John Birch Society. He went. He, like kind of finagles his way into attending a meeting, and he talks with a number of its members, and by hook and by crook, he comes into possession of a copy of the politician. Yeah, so it's it's made its way out of the society's inner circle and into the hands of a journalist. Now, unfortunately, Robert Welch's prophecies are going to come true. People are going to know they're crazy. I'm going to quote now from DJ Malloy's book on the John Birch Society, writing about Mabley's. You know, the article he writes about the politician? Quote, this fantastic document Mably reported accuses President Eisenhower of treason. It flatly calls him a communist, and for 302 pages, attempts to document the charge. And he provided an exact quote from the book to prove his claim, one that would haunt Welch in the Birch Society for years to come, but which was mysteriously, although understandably absent when the book was officially published in 1963, it was, well, I too think that Milton Eisenhower, the president's brother, is a communist and has been for 30 years. This opinion is based largely on general circumstances of his conduct. But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable. But it seems to me to put this conviction. Beyond any reasonable doubt, through some violation of confidence, someone who had been sent the letter in 1958 had passed it on to Mabley, and the journalist had naturally selected for quotation the most extreme statements he could find without the benefit of any explanation or modifying import of the context around them by some violation. OK. Could I take a look at your copy of the that? Yeah, sure. Violation. Yeah. Well, it's like, and and I love the idea that that's out of context. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, it's that thing people say about, like, Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones like, that the the defenses they always make is that you're just taking us out of context. And that's what ******* Welch in the John Birch Society do with this document. They claim that he was like, well, I said, I didn't say that Eisenhower was a Communist agent. I said that I thought he was based on evidence that I'd seen that. That's different than saying. He's a communist. Yeah, the rest of those 80,000 words are the stone cold dead to rights evidence. That's right, journalist, quote UN quote is not taking into account. And that is really malpractice issues. Agree? Exactly. Yeah. So most people did not buy Welch's defense. In fact, a Saturday Evening Post reporter who wrote about the John Birch Society in 1967 stated that its members spent most of their time talking to outsiders, answering questions about Welch's Communist Eisenhower Conspiracy. So, like, this kind of dominates the public perception. They become a bit of a joke to a lot of Americans because, you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, they should be fooled. They got their revenge, didn't they? So this did not stop the John Birch Society, although it did draw attention to the group for the first time. This may have helped as much as it harmed. 10s of thousands of Americans continued to flock to the John Birch Society, eventually growing to 95,000 members in 1965. Welch's stated goal was a million American birchers, and as the 1960s got rolling it looked like he might actually achieve it. And that's part one of the John Birch Society. What * **** an ****** novel. I don't think he's a good guy, no, no. I think he sucks. And I think my throat is sore and I need a Papa sucker really soothed me. No. Gonna go suck on a Papa while we take a quick break. You guys wanna plug your plug cables before we roll out? Oh yeah, we got a podcast. Indeed we do. Think people can find that. You wrote a book. I did write a book. You always have to remind me to actually tell people that. Sure. It's the quiet part. Loud. You can get it at the quiet partloud.com. Let's wear for free. Check out knowledge fight. Check out the quiet part loud and check out nothing else. If you do anything else on the Internet you have you have offended and harmed me personally and I and my forthcoming Prince Ohh. That doesn't need to forgive us. God what podcast out? Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. In Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. 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