A Conspiratorial Life - Edward H Miller

A Conspiratorial Life

Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism

(Autor)

Buch | Softcover
464 Seiten
2023
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-82650-9 (ISBN)
19,95 inkl. MwSt
The first full-scale biography of Robert Welch, who founded the John Birch Society and planted some of modern conservatism’s most insidious seeds.
 
Though you may not know his name, Robert Welch (1899-1985)—founder of the John Birch Society—is easily one of the most significant architects of our current political moment. In A Conspiratorial Life, the first full-scale biography of Welch, Edward H. Miller delves deep into the life of an overlooked figure whose ideas nevertheless reshaped the American right.

A child prodigy who entered college at age 12, Welch became an unlikely candy magnate, founding the company that created Sugar Daddies, Junior Mints, and other famed confections. In 1958, he funneled his wealth into establishing the organization that would define his legacy and change the face of American politics: the John Birch Society. Though the group’s paranoiac right-wing nativism was dismissed by conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley, its ideas gradually moved from the far-right fringe into the mainstream. By exploring the development of Welch’s political worldview, A Conspiratorial Life shows how the John Birch Society’s rabid libertarianism—and its highly effective grassroots networking—became a profound, yet often ignored or derided influence on the modern Republican Party. Miller convincingly connects the accusatory conservatism of the midcentury John Birch Society to the inflammatory rhetoric of the Tea Party, the Trump administration, Q, and more. As this book makes clear, whether or not you know his name or what he accomplished, it’s hard to deny that we’re living in Robert Welch’s America.
 

Edward H. Miller is a teaching professor at Northeastern University and the author of Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Introduction
1 Chowan County, North Carolina 1700–1899
2 Stockton, 1899–1910
3 Elizabeth City, Raleigh, Annapolis, 1910–1919
4 The Candyman, 1919–1927
5 Professional Breakdown and the Great Depression, 1928–1940
6 America First, 1940–1945
7 Postwar Dreams and Delusions, 1946–1950
8 The Candidate, 1950
9 May God Forgive Us, 1951–1952
10 There’s Just Something about Ike, 1952
11 A Republican Looks at His President, 1953–1954
12 The Saga of John Birch, 1954
13 Adventures in the Far East, 1954–1955
14 Arrivals and Departures, 1955–1958
15 The Indy Eleven, 1957–1959
16 Revelations, 1959–1960
17 Goldwater in ’60, 1960
18 Staccato Jabs, 1961–1962
19 Succession? 1961–1962
20 “Where Were You in ’62?,” 1962
21 Revolution in the Streets and the Paranoid Style in Belmont, 1963
22 Two Novembers, 1963–1964
23 Nadir, 1965–1966
24 Avenging the Insiders, 1966–1968
25 The Fifty-Foot Cabin Cruiser, 1969–1975
26 Bunker, 1970–1978
27 Making Morning in America . . . , 1970–1985
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index


 

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 15 halftones
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 767 g
Themenwelt Literatur Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Geschichte / Politik
Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte Neuzeit (bis 1918)
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung Politische Systeme
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung Politische Theorie
ISBN-10 0-226-82650-3 / 0226826503
ISBN-13 978-0-226-82650-9 / 9780226826509
Zustand Neuware
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