THE DEMONIC SPIRIT OF
ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE ANTI-COMMUNISM
By RALPH GRAHAM¹

This essay is about the radical right-wing extremists, the militant anti-communist zealots, the ultra-conservatives who are weakening our national unity, undermining Christian principles, and turning neighbors, friends, and family members into informers against one another. TIME Magazine, Dee. 8, states, “ . . . the most formidable of the extremist groups is the John Birch Society founded by Robert Welch of Massachusetts.” Members of the John Birch Society are busy creating “front” organizations and have infiltrated, and even come to dominate, other extremist groups. It is the purpose of this article to describe its nature and spirit, to show why Christians can have no sympathy for it or participation in it, and to suggest some constructive measures for Christians and Americans who are seriously concerned for the security of our country, its ideals, its traditions, and its institutions. It is to be desired that sincere patriots do not become dupes of these unamerican, unchristian, and inhumanitarian groups, and that those who read this will be informed that Christians must dissociate themselves from such fascist groups and oppose them as injurious to the well-being of our country. It is the contention of this writer that such groups as the John Birch Society tend to undermine truth, freedom, justice, unity, and peace. If the innocent suffer from this criticism, it will be because they are ignorant or in the wrong place.

TRUE PATRIOTISM

Right-wing extremists assert that they are the true patriots of our country and that those who disagree with them are guilty of treason, traitors to their country. We question this assertion and disagree with it emphatically. No group has the right to make itself the judge and jury of the sincerity and loyalty of all other Americans. A person does not have to be a fanatic to be loyal to his country. Patriotism is honorable and admirable when it is committed to truth, freedom, justice and the brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God. The Christian citizen is truly patriotic when he prays for the rulers of his country, is obedient to his country’s laws, pays his taxes, and defends it against all enemies whether within or without. A true patriot will give no comfort or aid to any enemy of the country. He will be seriously concerned about the adequacy of our defense, the security of our rights, and the justice and truth of our deeds and words in our relationships to other peoples. He will be vitally concerned over maladministration in government, the poverty and unemployment of our people, and the enslavement of the citizens to the State. He will oppose anything that would deprive Americans of self-reliance and initiative, freedom of expression in communications or religion, and the assurance of security from the aggression of any other nation. He will resist any pressures that will seek to intimidate or to inflame hatred for others. True patriotism is best expressed by speaking the truth openly, by using the ballot, inspiring faith in our country, its administration, its institutions, and its sacred traditions.

WHAT ABOUT THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY?

We must censure and oppose the kind of thinking and spirit that result in the preposterous statements and charges, the deceptive and destructive actions, the divisive and fear-producing techniques that characterize these extremists. They engage in the scurrilous smear, the deliberate falsehood, intimidation, economic coercion, guilt by association, insinuation, distortion and exaggeration, and surreptitious accusation. They persuade neighbors, friends, citizens, and families to spy on one another and inform on each other. They sow seeds of suspicion and distrust, provoke fear and anxiety, inspire hatred, and cultivate in people a lack of confidence in our national leadership, our institutions, and the principles underlying the American way of life. They are inimical to good mental health, wholesome community, and the support of our highest values. President Kennedy has said, “They find treason in our finest churches, in our highest courts, and even in the treatment of our water.”

Preposterous Assertions:

1. The UNICEF Christmas cards omit any reference to religion because they are intended to serve the interests of atheistic materialist communist propaganda.

2. The sentence, “In God we trust,” was removed from one dollar bills through the influence of communists in our government.

3. Recent versions of the Bible like the Revised Standard Version are the work of communists who want to pervert the gospel.

4. Urban renewal is a plot to wipe out the property rights of loyal Americans.

5. Integration is a deliberate attempt to mongrelize the nation.

6. Mental programs are only schemes to brainwash men’s minds and to put away those who will not agree with the purpose of the brainwashing.

7. Fluoridation of drinking water is a plot to socialize medicine, coerce medication, poison the public, and impose dictatorship.

8. The U-2 incident involving the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers was inspired and staged by communists in Washington, D. C., to wreck the Paris Summit conference because they did not believe the time was ripe to sell out the U. S.

9. Many of the 6 million Jews allegedly killed by the Germans have in reality slipped into the U. S. unlawfully to lobby for America to spend itself poor in building up the Jewish State of Israel.

Do these statements seem to be preposterous and fantastic? These extremists know that as Hitler said, “If you repeat a lie frequently enough, people will believe it.” There is someone who will believe the grossest lie. Let us note a few more.

1. The United Nations was conceived by Communists in Moscow to serve the International Communist conspiracy.

2. In a 1961 speaking tour, Welch charged that some 7000 Protestant clergymen are communists.

3. The World Council of Churches as well as the National Council of Churches are infiltrated and dominated by communists.

4. Every Supreme Court Justice, including James Byrnes, appointed since 1933 has been dedicated to subverting the constitution. The Supreme Court has become “one of the most important agencies of the communist global conquest.”

5. Russia’s opposition to Dag Hammarskjold was just a ruse to persuade the U. S. to defend him. This would keep him in the U. N. which is what Russia wanted because “he was one of the most contemptible agents of the Kremlin ever to be supported by American tax payers”

This recklessness of dogmatic assertion is carried to all extremes. Neither the living nor the dead are safe from the venom of these people.

1. Abraham Lincoln opposed States’ rights and was treasonable in the behavior of his office.

2. Pres. F. D. Roosevelt plotted through economic pressures to force the Japanese government to bomb Pearl Harbor, and he deliberately withheld vital information from Pearl Harbor so they would not anticipate the attack.

3. Former President Dwight Eisenhower “was a conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.” Also serving the communists conspiracy to overthrow our government include such names as Marshall, Dulles, Truman, Kennedy, and Supreme Court Justice Warren.

If you have been able to accept any of the foregoing, you will have no difficulty in swallowing the following statement:

“The United States is from 40 to 60% controlled by communists. There are 2,000 communists in our Defense Establishment. Further, there is a communist agent in Washington, D. C., who is monitoring the cables going in and out of the Pentagon. All FBI agents have been ordered by the government to cease their investigations of communism and subversion in America.”

Members of these groups have been urged to oppose such motion pictures as “Inherit the Wind” and “Spartacus,” such men as Walter Lippman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge; and Mrs. E. Roosevelt, and such organizations as the American Bar Association, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and Moral Rearmament.

TECHNIQUES OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS

The John Birch Society demands absolute and unquestioning loyalty to and trust in its leader Robert Welch. Welch says his group will not become a debating society because the raising of questions by members slows down the work of the organization. He collects large sums of money and refuses to give an accounting of its use. He denies his members the right to criticize the society but demands and encourages the most malicious criticism of American leaders, institutions, actions, and principles in the name of patriotism! Welch has openly declared his borrowing and use of communistic techniques to achieve the society’s aims. J. Edgar Hoover calls communists The Masters of Deceit and in his expose of communistic techniques reveals their use of deceit, secrecy, fear, suspicion, hatred, violence, character assassination, and contempt for authorities. We may ask, “If right-wing extremists use communistic techniques, will not such techniques result in the realization of communist aims? Will they not result in the destruction of community spirit, contempt for authorities, and paralyzing fear? This is the work of demagoguery which exploits the neurotic, the paranoid, the hostile aggressor, the inferiority complex, and the resentful. But just as the kingdom of God can not be built by the devil’s machinery, so a true, just, and peaceful society cannot be created or sustained by the big lie, unjust accusation, and the chaos that leads to national disaster.

An organization like the John Birch Society appeals to those whose fear of their enemies is stronger than the love which they have for their friends. This is why their vocabulary and arguments are so appealing and convincing to some. Our President has pointed out that Russia’s use of conventional words like “truth,” “peace,” and “freedom” indicates they understand these terms in a much different sense than we do. We cannot trust people merely because they use the “right” words of political orthodoxy. We must not be led astray by the delusion that “Everyone who is an enemy of my enemy is my ally.” We must not only be concerned to destroy the enemy which the right-wingers profess to be opposing, but we must also be concerned with the changes that are taking place all around us while our attention is being distracted. It is difficult to believe in the good intentions of those who oppose the build-up of military defense while encouraging a heckling campaign against disarmament. Such actions have but one aim, the subversion of American community spirit. Can we trust the “wisdom” of those who support segregation in the name of States’ rights and racial purity? Can we condone intimidation and destruction of community spirit by anonymous and threatening telephone calls, economic coercion, and whispering campaigns that accuse citizens of treason without any reasonable grounds? Would a true patriot say that “the worst form of government is a democracy?” Or say that democracy is merely a deceptive phrase, “a weapon of demagoguery and a perennial fraud?” When a group is so opposed to democracy and defends dictatorships like Batista in Cuba, Franco in Spain, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, can we be sure it is trying to create the kind of an America we believe in and our young men died to save?

THE ALLEGED AIM OF THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY

In the light of the foregoing we may now evaluate the statement of their aim. The professed aim of the Society is, “To restore, with brighter lustre and deeper conviction, the faith-inspired morality, the spiritual sense of values, and the ennobling aspirations on which our Western Civilization has been built.” This sounds as beautiful as the promises that Castro made to the people of Cuba in the days of the revolution. Where are his high aims and promises now? Can we believe the “disciples of deceit” when they say these things? It sounds wonderful. But can you believe a person who shouts how much he believes in light while he is going around shooting out every light he sees? If the Birchites have evil designs on our American way of life, would they admit it? Would they not concoct some sort of disarming statement such as this? And would they not do exactly as they are doing? In any case, their actions give the lie to their stated aims. America can not be built up by deceit, fear, anarchy, disorder, hatred, suspicion, and demagoguery. Such things destroy but never build up.

WHAT CAN CHRISTIAN AMERICANS DO FOR THEIR COUNTRY?

At his inauguration, President Kennedy said, “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” The way you can do most for your country is to practice its ideals, use its free institutions, teach its traditions, and defend its freedoms against both fascists and communists. There is no doubt but that communist world wide designs and strategy make us spend much in military preparedness, in foreign aid, and in supporting the U. N. It would be supreme folly for us to ignore the secret activities of the Communist Party in the U. S. But it is no indication of treason or compromise if our awareness of communist military power, economic strength, and scientific progress has made us cautious and seemingly over-diplomatic. We have reverence for life and personality and we can afford to talk a long time, endure some humiliation, and spend a great deal of money if this will prevent the catastrophic destruction of millions of lives. We love our people as well as our enemies. We are opposed to destructive ideas, evil designs, and covenant breakers. But in a war everybody loses, more innocent suffer than evil, and nothing is really settled permanently.

Concerning the external threat of communism, we can meet their intimidations by adequate military preparedness, maintaining strong allies, and making new friends. We can answer their scientific progress by our own which includes research for the enjoyment of peace and a higher standard of living. We can meet their aggression with determined, invincible, and inevitable resistance and counter measures. Our answer to their militant and arrogant atheism is truth, faith, and character. We can destroy the power of their propaganda by exercising justice in dealing with other nations, speaking the truth in and supporting the United Nations, and strengthening the Voice of Free Radio Europe. When they show their utter contempt for life and the value of the individual, we can show by our words and actions that we value the individual as being created in the image of God, as the object of divine love, and as of immeasurable worth to our country, to friends and family, and to himself. Our greatest vulnerability is moral weakness and our greatest defense against all enemies is righteousness.

Concerning both the external and the internal threat of communism as well as of fascist extremists, the individual in society can do a number of things:

1. Dedicate himself anew to the ideals, institutions, principles, and values that have made America great and strong.

2. Reject, oppose, and dissociate himself from all the evils that contradict loyalty to truth, publicity, freedom, justice, unity, and peace.

3. Commit himself to the ideals of Christianity, the principles of democracy, and the humanitarian spirit.

4. Speak the truth without deception, cultivate world peace and national community through commitment to justice, brotherhood, and freedom.

5. Strive for the emotional and intellectual balance so necessary in the rational evaluation of ideas, movements, institutions, and problems.

6. Cultivate self-respect in himself, faith in others, and confidence in the way of life that involves honesty, freedom of expression, religion, and enterprise, and mutual acceptance.

7. Learn to judge a person on his own merits and ideas by their correspondence with the truth, the good, and the right.

World tensions may be lessened if the church is active in foreign missions and benevolence and as a nation we use foreign aid to raise the standard of living in backward nations and work through the United Nations for better understanding of mutual views and problems. Perhaps we can diminish the area or those environmental conditions which provide fertile soil for communist infiltration or the rise of fascist extremists by teaching and inspiring self-reliance, helping others to help themselves by providing tools and vocational training, encouraging industry and capital to share ownership with workers and participation in management, providing food and medical aid where needed, setting an example of reverence for personality as the creation of God’s love, community loyalty, and of the strong helping the weak.

Yes, our greatest contribution and our best defense for America against communism or any other ideology that threatens the spirit and purpose of Christianity or of our free and democratic way of life is personal integrity, the practice of brotherhood toward all peoples without discrimination or reservation, supporting the church and the values it cherishes in its work of missions and benevolence at home and abroad, in the practice of genuine loyalty to our country, its traditions, institutions, laws, government, and by supporting the United Nations. Perhaps, one of our greatest opportunities is the support of those educational institutions where the true spirit of Jesus Christ is instilled in the students, our Christian colleges. We must not forget that our freedoms, our prosperity, and our values are enjoyed by us at the great cost of vigilance, sacrifice, and devotion. This is also the price of keeping America great, strong, and safe.

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