Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The problem of this dissertation is psychological and sociological description and analysis of the appeals and activities of the John Birch Society as a movement of social protest of the radical right. The John Birch Society is one of the major organizations described in current journalistic treatments as radical right or as right-wing extremist. The Society came to public prominence in the spring of 1961 as awareness of its fairly widespread organizational accomplishments and of the more extreme opinions of its founder, Robert Welch, were brought to public attention by the press. The method included both library and field research. Library research, both before and after the field research, focused upon the provision of an adequate framework of psychological and sociological theory through which to perceive the setting, the leader, the organization and membership, and the ideology and activity of the John Birch Society. The primary data so perceived were those of many of the Birch Society publications, those provided by observers of local Birch Society conflicts in Gloucester, Little Rook, El Paso, Dallas, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Phoenix, and Wichita, and those provided by the participants on each side of these conflicts through interviews and, with many, through the administration of a questionnaire. Secondary data were provided by newspaper, newsmagazine, and personal correspondence descriptive of the leader, the organization, the membership, the ideology, and the local and national activities of the Birch Society. The conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: 1. The Birch Society functions as a fundamentalist reaction. 2. The top leadership of the Society is charismatic. 3. The organizational-leadership structure of the Society is an unstable mixture of both charismatic and rational-bureaucratic elements. 4. The stance of the Society as an aggressive sect is inherently unstable. 5. The activity and ideology of social protest represent the major appeal of the Society. 6. The conflict in which the Society engages is characteristically non-communal. 7. The ideology of the Society is substantively and formally logic-tight and, characteristically, those who affirm it are highly closed-minded. 8. Within our troubled setting, the ideology provides the social-psychological appeals of certainty, superiority, and self-righteousness and "justifies" aggression toward otherwise invulnerable objects of frustration. 9. As a fundamentalist reaction, the Society fails to serve its manifest function, none of its latent functions appear to be constructive, and some are latently dysfunctional even for its own existence. 10. The Society is well described as a movement of social protest of the radical right. These conclusions led the author to observe that the non-rational character of the Society tends to dominate and to obscure whatever fundwnental forces and issues may be in conflict. The implications of this observation, for the legitimated processes of the American democratic society, then led the author to the position that the only way to move conflicts with the Society into potentially constructive channels appears to be through insistence upon the norms of rational and communal conflict.

This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of a major speech by Robert Welch, founder of The John Birch Society. A verbatim copy of the speech used in this analysis is available under the title of The Blue Book Of The John Birch Society. However, this speech was originally delivered by Robert Welch in December of 1958.The analysis examines the purpose and organization of The Blue Book speech, and the use of logical, factual, and non-factual arguments. An attempt is also made to point out fallacies in arguments, weaknesses in organization, multiplicity of purposes, and unethical techniques and factual discrepancies.

Previous accounts of the development of the New American Right have demonstrated the popularity and resonance of the ideology in Southern California. However, these studies have not shown how contention surrounded conservatism’s ascendancy even in regions where it found eager disciples. “Save Our Republic” uses one conservative Southern California community as a vehicle to better understand the foundations of a wider movement and argues the growth of conservatism was not nearly as smooth as earlier studies have suggested. Santa Barbara, California, experienced a much more contentious introduction to the same conservative elements and exemplifies the larger ideological clash that occurred nationwide during the late 1950s and early 1960s between “establishment,” moderate Republicans and the party’s right flank. In California’s cradle of conservatism, the ideology’s birth was not an easy one. Santa Barbara should have provided a bonanza of support for the John Birch Society, a staunchly anticommunist organization founded in 1958 by retired businessman Robert H.W. Welch. Instead, its presence there in the early 1960s divided the city and inspired the sort of suspicion that ultimately hobbled the group’s reputation nationally. Rather than thriving in the city, the JBS impaled itself in a series of self-inflicted wounds that only worsened the effect these characterizations had on the group’s national reputation. Disseminated to a nationwide audience by local newspaper publisher Thomas M. Storke, who declared his intention to banish the organization from the city, the events that occurred in Santa Barbara throughout 1961 alerted other cities of the potential disruption the JBS could inspire in their communities. The JBS would forever bear the battle scars it earned in Santa Barbara. “Save Our Republic” argues the events in Santa Barbara exemplify the more pronounced political battle that was occurring throughout the nation in the 1960s as conservatives grappled to determine the bounds of their ideology. The threat from the right that caused so much handwringing in the halls of conservative power had an equally unsettling effect in the city’s parlors, churches, schoolhouses and newsrooms.