Miller’s study of Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, presents a plausible account of America’s slow descent from the 1950s into the abyss of post-truth politics ... Miller is alert to the many stages of the American right’s ‘theme park journey’: the careers of Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater and George Wallace; the conversion of blue-collar ethnic Catholics in the North and white supremacists in the South to a new model of Republicanism ... Of course, the slow unfolding of right-wing delusion falls short of explaining our present grotesqueries.
... Welch’s white supremacy is addressed in direct terms, though the book’s discussions of his antisemitism are less clear ... A Conspiratorial Life is the first comprehensive biography of Robert Welch. It is revelatory about his role in the development of modern American conservatism.
Edward H. Miller’s eye-opener of a biography claims that reports of Welch’s banishment have been greatly exaggerated—at least when measured by the enduring influence of his thinking. Miller argues that today’s politics of fact-free conspiracies owe much to Welch, an interesting character who (paranoid conspiracy theories aside) was a serious player in conservative politics from the 1950s through to the 1980s. He emerges from Miller’s telling as an example of the symbiosis of anti-tax,
anti-regulation Main Street businessmen, anti-Communist ideologues and social conservatives who helped shape the modern GOP ... Several lessons from Miller’s biography of Welch are worth remembering .... If one approaches Robert Welch’s life expecting a sociopath, a narcissist, a con artist or a compulsive liar, Miller’s estimable book will disappoint ... The portrait that emerges is antique but neither hateful nor deranged. The scariest lesson of Welch’s life is that the attachment to paranoid conspiracies as a way to explain the successes of disliked candidates and policies is still with us.
A reminder that outlandish conspiracism has a long history on the right ... Miller invites the reader to compare Robert Welch with Donald Trump, which makes sense on a surface level: both were bankrupted businessmen who lacked paternal warmth in their childhoods and had a penchant for conspiracism. But Welch had intellectual pretensions, was a faithful husband to his wife, and was a true believer who poured every dollar he earned into the John Birch Society. None of these qualities are present in Trump ... Edward H. Miller ends A Conspiratorial Life by warning that parts of the United States — filled with a cacophony of cable news pundits, talk radio hosts, and social media blowhards — have 'become Welchland.' Indeed, Welch could only have dreamed of having the president’s ear, let alone of creating a conspiracy theory that would propel a mob through the doors and windows of the Capitol itself. The conspiratorial flank of the right is back and stronger than ever, albeit under the auspices of the My Pillow Guy instead of the inventor of the Sugar Daddy caramel pop.
... [an] immersive biography ... Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, this is an enlightening study of an overlooked yet influential figure in American politics.
