The Three Books That Shook Conservative Media in 1964

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/the-three-books-that-shook-conservative-media-and-politics-in-1964/371264/

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Author Phyllis Schlafly went on to spearhead the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, shown in this 1977 photo. (Warren K. Lefler/Library of Congress)

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Appearing in rapid succession, the books startled observers with their dark and conspiratorial interpretation of American history. In None Dare Call It Treason, John Stormer spun a tale of internal subversion and weak-willed foreign policy that marked “America’s retreat from victory” in the Cold War. “Every communist country in the world literally has a ‘Made in the USA’ stamp on it,” he wrote. Phyllis Schlafly, author of A Choice Not an Echo, accused “a few secret kingmakers” in the Republican Party of conspiring to keep conservatives out of power. J. Evetts Haley’s A Texan Looks at Lyndon served up 200 pages of greased palms, stolen elections, and suspicious deaths to argue that President Johnson was better suited to the penitentiary than the presidency. Haley’s claims rivaled the darkest and most bizarre Clinton conspiracies. The author, a Texas cowman, called Johnson an “inordinately vain, egotistical, ambitious extrovert” and claimed Lady Bird Johnson mirrored “Lady Macbeth’s consuming ambition for the growth of her husband’s power.” Of the Kennedy assassination he wrote, “What a strange coincidence.”

These “hatchets with soft cover sheaths,” as the Chicago Tribune characterized them, owed their success to the conservative movement’s innate populism and its institutional architecture. Conservatives, like most populists, harbored deep suspicions of institutions not under their control, particularly the media and the Republican Party. If the newsmen of the Washington Post and the grandees of the GOP were left to shape the campaign narrative, the right believed, Goldwater’s campaign would be over before it began. So conservatives used their own media to craft an alternative campaign unmediated by outside institutions.

But the campaign paperbacks would never have become a phenomenon without the conservative networks meticulously constructed during the 1950s and early 1960s. Deep-pocketed donors goosed sales by buying in bulk—the 75-cent books could be had as cheaply as 20 cents a copy for orders of a thousand or more. A generous donor ensured that each of the delegates to the Republican convention in July received a gratis copy of A Choice, Not an Echo. In Dade County, Florida, campaign workers canvassed neighborhoods, and in place of flyers and leaflets handed out nearly 200,000 copies of None Dare Call It Treason.

Such distribution methods were necessary, because placing the books in traditional outlets proved difficult. Copies could be readily found at tiny, Birch Society-sponsored bookstores that peddled right-wing literature in communities across the country. But snagging shelf space in regular bookstores wasn’t easy. Even getting space for Stormer’s book, which claimed 7 million in sales by Election Day, often required red-baiting reluctant booksellers.

[DURHAM D]

1. My aunt was a Bircher and distributed all

three of those books to family members and friends. My dad (a WWII vet) took None Dare Call It Treason outside and happily burned it in the grill.