Everything has a history and a pre-history, and that includes Donald Trump and his angry hordes. Trump is by no means the first American tycoon to stir up fears and resentments and attempt to ride a populist wave. One of his notable predecessors, mostly forgotten today, is Robert Welch.
Born in the last year of the 19th century, Welch built his fortune in the confectionery trade. His company came up with the Sugar Daddy and then, after a slide into bankruptcy, returned successfully with Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. Candy made Welch fabulously wealthy; but his forays into electoral politics—including a run in 1950 for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts—went nowhere. Welch found another vehicle to advance his agenda, which in its essentials amounted to anti-communism on steroids.
That vehicle was the John Birch Society, which Welch established in 1958. By that juncture, the embers of the McCarthy era had already begun to cool. The demagogic senator from Wisconsin had died the previous year, not long after discrediting himself by recklessly lodging unfounded accusations. But the John Birch Society, picking up where McCarthy left off, was nonetheless extraordinarily successful. At its peak, at the close of the 1950s, it boasted 100,000 members—mostly white suburbanites—managed by a paid staff of 200, with 60 regional coordinators running chapters across the United States, making it the largest conservative grassroots organization in the country.
