Was this the Birch book you saw as a young teen, Ed?
John A. Stormer, whose self-published 1964 book, “None Dare Call It Treason,” became a right-wing favorite despite being attacked as inaccurate in promulgating the notion that American government and institutions were full of Communist sympathizers, died on July 10 in Troy, Mo. He was 90.
The McCoy-Blossom Funeral Home posted news of his death on its website, saying he had fallen ill a year ago.
Mr. Stormer’s book, published by his own Liberty Bell Press, tapped into a vein of conservative alarm that was still very much present in the early 1960s, even though the Red-baiting era of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had faded in the 1950s.
The book landed in the year that the Republican Party nominated Barry M. Goldwater, the conservative Arizona senator, for the presidency, and Goldwater sympathizers latched onto it, buying up copies and distributing them at rallies and by other means. The far-right John Birch Society was among the groups spreading the book around... (continues)
[My mother, btw, commuted to a nursing job in Troy MO for many years during my youth. Little did I suspect...]
Yes! And apparently I was an old teen; I graduated from high school in 1963. Perhaps this was the first thing I read that introduced me to the power of fear.
ReplyDeleteWhat a book... A good half of my extended family aligns generally with Birchers, and I have seen this book around. I started it, but I couldn't get into it--too many tin-hat vibes
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