Comment

The John Birch Society roots of Glenn Beck's obsession with George Soros

76
ernie124111/17/2010 3:16:12 pm PST

Part 1 of 2 replies

Well, Obdicut, I guess you use the words “racist” and “bigotry” differently than I do nor do I think your definitions conform to what those terms mean in normal customary usage.

You declare that opposition can be “racist” without stemming from bigotry. The gold standard of the English language is the Oxford English Dictionary. According to OED:
RACIST = n. An advocate or supporter of racism; a person whose words or actions display racial prejudice or discrimination.

According to the OED, “bigotry” can be defined as “intolerance, prejudice” and my thesaurus indicates that synonyms for bigotry include: bias, racialism, racism.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any actual real-life example of someone who is racist but who is not bigoted. One presupposes the other.

Now—-with respect to your reference to pages 505-506 of Brenner’s dissertation which you think provides “quick easy examples” of “racist imagery”, “racist arguments” and “exploiting racist tension” — I don’t think your “examples” can stand up to more careful analysis.

It is quite common for large organizations to attract weirdos and wackos or “boarding parties” who think they can divert the energies of members to their personal agendas.

For example, the leaders of organizations such as the ACLU, NAACP, Americans For Democratic Action, and SANE explicitly declared that Communists were not welcome in their organizations. Nevertheless, CPUSA members were instructed to join all those groups in the hope that they could insinuate themselves into policy-making positions, or as delegates to annual conventions, or as contributors to each organization’s official publications.

So the real question becomes: what does a targeted group do when it discovers such “boarding parties”?

The official position of the Birch Society, as an organization, is presented to all members in the monthly JBS Bulletin written, originally, by Robert Welch. The “examples” you refer to in Brenner’s narrative did not represent the official JBS position. As Brenner clearly points out, JBS members who expressed racist or anti-semitic beliefs were summarily removed from the JBS. As Brenner correctly observed on page 506 regarding the comments by Revilo Oliver:

“As that incident demonstrates, while the Americanist Right certainly had racists among its members, it was ready and willing to eject them from Americanist organizations when their racism became too open or too
vicious.”

Many organizations (including liberal groups) are willing to overlook obnoxious personal opinions and attitudes so long as they cannot be construed to reflect the organization’s position.

On many occasions when a JBS member made some intemperate or bigoted comment — their membership was terminated. Three more prominent examples include: John Schmitz, Westbrook Pegler, Richard Cotten. In another instance, an entire JBS chapter was disbanded in Meridian MS when a JBS chapter leader refused instructions from the local JBS Coordinator to terminate the membership of local JBS members who were discovered to be KKK members.