| Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1, 1899 |
| Died | January 6, 1985 (aged 85) |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Employer | James O. Welch Company |
| Known for | Founding the John Birch Society |
| Religion | Unitarian |
| Spouse | Marian Probert Welch |
Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr. (December 1, 1899 – January 6, 1985) was an American businessman, political activist and author. He was independently wealthy following his retirement and used that wealth to sponsor anti-communist causes. He co-founded the conservative group the John Birch Society (JBS) in 1958 and tightly controlled it until his death. He became a highly controversial target of criticism by liberals, as well as some leading conservatives.
Contents |
Welch was born in rural Chowan County, North Carolina. As a child he was considered "gifted" receiving his early education at home from his mother, a school teacher. He enrolled in high school at the age of ten and was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the age of twelve. Welch was a fundamentalist Baptist and, by his own admission, was "insufferable" in his attempts to convert his fellow students. He later became a Unitarian, remaining so for most his life. Welch attended the United States Naval Academy and Harvard Law School but dropped out of both institutions before graduating. He would later assert this was because of his opposition to the political leanings of the instructors.
Welch founded the Oxford Candy Company in Brooklyn, New York, which was a one-man operation until he hired his brother James to assist him. James Welch left to start his own candy company in 1925.
Welch was inspired one day while making a batch of caramel to pour out a flat piece and put a stick in the candy so it could be eaten like a lollipop. He named this candy a Papa Sucker and licensed the idea to the Brach's candy company in Chicago.
The Oxford Candy Company went out of business during the Great Depression, but his brother's company, the James O. Welch Company, survived, and Welch was hired by his brother. The company began making caramel lollipops, renamed Sugar Daddies, and Welch developed other well known candies such as Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Pom Poms. Welch retired a wealthy man in 1956.
From his teenage years, Welch had been an opponent of Communism. He was a strong believer in various conspiracies in which he believed a wide range of individuals and organizations were part of an international Communist plot. In his own words, the American people consisted of four groups: "Communists, communist dupes or sympathizers, the uninformed who have yet to be awakened to the communist danger, and the ignorant."
Welch joined the Republican Party and then ran and lost an election for the post of Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1950. In 1952, he supported Robert Taft's unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and was a prominent campaign contributor to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy's re-election campaign.
Welch founded the John Birch Society (JBS) in December 1958.[1] Its original membership consisted of only eleven men but Welch's wealth allowed the organization to have a wide impact and sponsor a number of publications. At its height, the organization claimed it had approximately 100,000 members, but its political views limited its ability to form alliances with other groups (even other anti-Communists like Richard Nixon and, to a lesser extent, Ronald Reagan, were denounced by the Society as being too liberal) and diminished its real impact. In October 1965, William F. Buckley, Jr. denounced Welch in his magazine National Review as promoting bizarre conspiracy theories far removed from common sense, and for working with racists like University of Illinois Classics Professor Revilo P. Oliver. While not attacking the members of the society, Buckley attacked Welch in order to prevent his outlandish views from tarnishing the entire conservative movement. Professor Oliver was ousted from the society in a purge of antisemitic and racist members in the early 1960s.
Welch was the editor and publisher of the monthly magazine American Opinion and the weekly "The Review of the News". He also wrote The Road to Salesmanship (1941), May God Forgive Us (1951), "The Politician" (about Eisenhower) and The Life of John Birch (1954). A collection of his essays were also edited into a book "The New Americanism".
In the 1960s, Welch began to believe that even the Communists were not the top level of his perceived conspiracy and began saying that Communism was just a front for a Master Conspiracy, which had roots in the Illuminati; the essay "The Truth in Time" is an example [1]. He referred to the Conspirators as "The Insiders," seeing them mainly in internationalist financial and business families such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and organizations such as the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. He did avoid the Antisemitism, anti-Freemasonry, and anti-Catholicism of other Conspiracy theorists, saying that such prejudices would "neutralize" anti-Communist, anti-Conspiracy efforts. According to one source, Welch converted to Catholicism in the months before his death.[2] As a result of his conspiracy theories, the John Birch Society became synonymous with right-wing extremism, earning satirical blasts from critics ranging from the cartoonist Walt Kelly to the musicians Bob Dylan and Dizzy Gillespie.[3]
Republican mainstream unhappiness with the John Birch Society (JBS) intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a possible "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy." Welch went further in a book titled The Politician, written in 1956 privately printed, rather than by the JBS, for Welch in 1963. It was his personal fact finding mission and was not part of the materials or the beliefs of the JBS. He said also that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance, but said nothing because he wanted to get his country in the war.
The book spawned much debate in the 1960s over whether the author really intended to call Eisenhower a Communist. G. Edward Griffin, a friend of Welch, claims that he meant collectivist not communist. The charge's sensationalism led many conservatives and Republicans to shy away from the group.
In the published edition that excises the allegations mentioned above, there is a footnote on page 278 (footnote 2) and its text appears on pages cxxxviii–cxxxix at the back of the book.[4] That text is as follows:
The original formulation of this comment from the 1958 unpublished version of The Politician is as follows:
There are many other passages in both the 1963 published edition and the 1958 unpublished version of The Politician wherein Welch makes clear that he considered Eisenhower to be a Communist and a traitor. Below are a few examples from the unpublished version (aka "private letter") which was mailed by Welch to friends and acquaintances in the summer of 1958.
"Wherever he looked, Welch saw Communist forces manipulating American economic and foreign policy on behalf of totalitarianism. But within the United States, he believed, the subversion had actually begun years before the Bolshevik Revolution. Conflating modern liberalism and totalitarianism, Welch described government as 'always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom.' Consequently, he charged, the Progressive era, which expanded the federal government’s role in curbing social and economic ills, was a dire period in our history, and Woodrow Wilson 'more than any other one man started this nation on its present road to totalitarianism' ... In the 1960's, Welch became convinced that even the Communist movement was but 'a tool of the total conspiracy.' This master conspiracy, he said, had forerunners in ancient Sparta, and sprang fully to life in the 18th century, in the 'uniformly Satanic creed and program' of the Bavarian Illuminati. Run by those he called 'the Insiders,' the conspiracy resided chiefly in international families of financiers, such as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, government agencies like the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service, and nongovernmental organizations like the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission."
Welch accused Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower of being communist sympathizers and possibly Soviet agents of influence. He alleged that President Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy",[16] and that Eisenhower's brother Milton was the President's superior in the communist apparatus. President Eisenhower never responded publicly to Welch's claims.
Welch was married to Marian Probert Welch and had two sons. He died on January 6, 1985. James Welch, who had publicly distanced himself from his brother's political views, died less than a month later.