In the turn-back-the-clock Texas GOP, even the John Birch Society is making a comeback

Bud Kennedy

Texas is just one big fringe political rally these days, and now, even the 1950s John Birch Society is back.

In Tarrant County alone, we have a QAnon adherent as a suburban mayor, “Stop The Steal” election deniers inspecting our ballots, a white supremacist youth group and enough Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol invaders to fill a prison wing.

Now, the old-school Birchers have relaunched a chapter in Bedford, where they charge $48 a year to wallow in world conspiracy tales.

If you’re not familiar with the Wisconsin-based John Birch Society, maybe you remember hearing how a fringe group once called President Dwight Eisenhower a “tool of the communists” and is credited with greeting President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas with that hateful full-page newspaper ad, “Welcome, Mr. Kennedy.”

These days, the Birchers still want to “Get U.S. Out of the U.N.,” do away with public education and completely repeal federal civil-rights law.

That 1950s talk seems fine with some local Republicans.

The “Fort Worth Business Chapter” in Bedford was reorganized by three co-leaders, including evangelist Mark Fulmer of Fort Worth, a former Tarrant County public health worker who now preaches global conspiracy.

Robert Welch, founder and head of the John Birch Society, an anti-government group that campaigns against communism, is pictured in his Belmont, Mass., office, April 1, 1961. (AP Photo)
Robert Welch, founder and head of the John Birch Society, an anti-government group that campaigns against communism, is pictured in his Belmont, Mass., office, April 1, 1961. (AP Photo)

Fulmer has already taken his message to a much larger audience, the Fort Worth Republican Women, at a recent luncheon in the elite City Club downtown.

The Birch chapter’s first meeting July 12 included Constable Scott Bedford of Saginaw attending in his county law officer uniform, along with chapter co-leader Rosalie Marie Escobedo of Euless. She was elected to office Saturday as assistant secretary of the Tarrant County Republican Party.

Fulmer introduced the chapter by retelling the story of Birch, a Fort Worth-trained independent fundamentalist Baptist missionary who died years before the society was founded in his name.

In 1945, Birch was a hothead U.S. Army Air Forces Flying Tigers intelligence captain and outspoken Christian on military assignment in China when he threatened communist occupiers and was killed.

According to a meeting video online, Fulmer’s message was more of a church revival than past local John Birch Society events..

But Fulmer covered the basic JBS warnings against “United Nations propaganda,” gun control, red-flag laws, vaccine orders and the ”oppressive one-world globalist regime.”

Gosh.

I’ve been to Bedford.

It does not appear oppressed by a globalist regime.

Ted Miller, a professor at Northeastern University, wrote a biography of John Birch Society founder Robert Welch.
Ted Miller, a professor at Northeastern University, wrote a biography of John Birch Society founder Robert Welch.

“The Birchers always believed a group of communists or secret insiders were running the world. Now, those ideas have become part of the Republican Party conversation,” said Ted Miller, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

His 2021 book “A Conspiratorial Life” (University of Chicago Press, 464 pages, $30) is a biography of Birch Society founder Robert Welch. Welch founded Junior Mints and Sugar Babies candies before he became obsessed with fear of an international communist plot.

Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and conservative commentator William F. Buckley spoke out against the Birch Society. Future President Ronald Reagan said it was run by a “lunatic fringe.”

But “it never really went away,” Miller said by phone.

“You have a former president arguing that the election was illegitimate. And [Austin entertainer] Alex Jones talking about all kinds of ‘truther’ conspiracies,” he said.

Conspiracy brings in money.

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