#birchers — Public Fediverse posts

“In 1838, concerned that mob violence imperiled the nation’s fledgling democratic institutions, Lincoln predicted that the gravest “danger” to democracy was never going to originate overseas but “must spring up amongst us.… If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

Birchers
Matthew Dallek

#birchers #dallek #rightwing #extremism #pastisprologue

“Constitutionalists were entitled to rule, and either they were going to work within the system to achieve their vision of “constitutional government,” or, if the ballot failed them, they were going to take up arms. By 1974, some members identified violence as the only solution to the ills plaguing the United States.

Birchers
Matthew Dallek

#Birchers #dallek #bookstodon #extremism #rightwing #history #pastisprologue

“If liberals were to build the world they wanted—a world where pluralism trumped hate, science trounced unreason, and democracy conquered fascism—they had to fight harder.”

#Birchers #Dallek #rightwing #rightWingExtremism #History #bookstodon #pastisprologue

“The fact is clear, you can’t talk with a Bircher,” [..] The typical Bircher “is so aggressive in defense of the card he carries that he seems to lose sight of country and human dignity. So the best way to beat him is at the polls. Every time he raises his paranoid head, we will be there after him. Sometimes we will win, sometimes we will lose. But, he will know that we are watching.” #birchers #dallek #bookstodon #rightwing #extremism #Republicans #history #pastisprologue

“Birchers’ use of conspiracy theories to tar their foes as anti-American was native to the United States, too, as was their contempt for multiracial democracy.”
#pastisprologue #birchers #Bookstodon

Wow, whack jobs: “In response to a query from a member in North Carolina, for example, the [John Birch Society] research department in Belmont explained that Franklin Roosevelt, rather than Japan, had “triggered the attack upon Pearl Harbor.”

Birchers
Matthew Dallek
#birchers #dallek #bookstodon #history #extremism #rightwing #americanHistory #conservatism #pastisprologue

Where have we heard this before, “very fine people”:
“In January 1962 Buckley and Goldwater agreed during a meeting at the Breakers in Palm Beach to visibly divorce themselves and the conservative movement from the Birch Society’s wildest conspiracy theories by casting Welch as the crackpot his critics had alleged while at the same time defending Birch members, whom Goldwater called “nice people.”

Birchers
Matthew Dallek
#birchers #dallek #extremism #rightwing #pastisprologue

“Since the nation’s founding, politicians of all stripes have demeaned and denounced their rivals as unpatriotic and a peril to the people’s livelihoods and personal safety. And yet in the early 1960s the Birchers injected politics with a level of rancor toward liberal opponents that further coarsened the atmosphere in the public square and set the stage for more.”

Birchers
Matthew Dallek
#Birchers #MatthewDallek #extremism #rightwing #johnBirchSociety