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The historian who uncovered the ADL’s secret plot against the far-right John Birch Society
(JTA) — A historian leafing through files in an archive discovered how a Jewish organization helped bring down an influential far-right extremist movement in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s by going undercover and acting as self-appointed spies.
The discovery of the Anti-Defamation League’s covert operation targeting the John Birch Society is the basis of a chapter in a new book by political historian Matthew Dallek of George Washington University. Published in March, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” is Dallek’s fourth book. It examines the roots of today’s emboldened conservative movement in the United States.
“Birchers” is a history of a group that at its height numbered as many as 100,000 members and “mobilized a loyal army of activists” in a campaign against what it saw as a vast communist conspiracy. He also examines how the Birchers’ mission to defend Christianity and capitalism morphed into a radical anti-civil rights agenda that groups like the ADL saw as an existential threat.
Dallek, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in Los Angeles, recently sat with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss the rise of the Birchers, how the ADL infiltrated their ranks and whether such tactics are justified in the name of fighting extremism.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
JTA: Before we get into the Jewish aspect of the book, meaning the chapter on the Anti-Defamation League’s relationship with the John Birch Society, let’s take a step back. Who are so-called Birchers? Why do they matter?
Mathew Dallek: The John Birch Society was a household name in the 1960s, becoming the emblem of far-right extremism. It didn’t have huge numbers, but it did penetrate the culture and the national consciousness. Its leader, Robert Welch, had argued at one point that President Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of a communist conspiracy taking over the United States. Welch formed the John Birch Society to educate the American people about the nature of the communist threat.
In its heyday, the group had about 60,000 to 100,000 members, organized into small chapters. They sent out literature trying to give members roadmaps or ideas for what they could do. They believed a mass education of the public was needed because traditional two-party politics was not going to be very effective at exposing the communist threat. They would form front groups such as Impeach Earl Warren [the Supreme Court’s chief justice] or Support Your Local Police. They tried to ban certain books that they viewed as socialistic from being used in schools. Some Birchers ran for school board seats and protested at libraries.
Critics feared that the Birchers were a growing fascist or authoritarian group and that if they were not sidelined politically and culturally then the country could be overrun. The Nation magazine wrote that Birchers essentially had given their followers an invitation to engage in civil war, guerrilla-style. Those fears sparked a big debate about democracy. How does one sustain democracy and, at the height of the Cold War and in the shadow of World War II, Nazi fascist Germany, and the Holocaust?
As you were researching, you came across a trove of historical internal documents from the ADL in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Why did you devote a chapter to what you found in those documents? What did those files reveal to you about the John Birch Society?
These papers are a goldmine. They’re this incredible and often detailed window into the far-right and, in particular, the John Birch Society. They show the ADL had an extensive, multi-dimensional counterintelligence operation that they were running against the Birch Society.
People knew at the time that the ADL was attending events where Birchers were speaking. But the ADL also had undercover agents with code names, who were able to infiltrate the society’s headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, and various chapter officers. They dug up financial and employment information about individual Birchers. And they not only used the material for their own newsletters and press releases, but they also fed information to the media.
Another layer is about a debate that’s been going on: Were the Birchers racist and antisemitic? The Birch Society always insisted that they did not tolerate white supremacy and didn’t want any KKK members. They said they accepted people of all faiths and races. And it’s true that they did have a handful of Jewish and Black members.
But what the ADL found was that a lot of hate was bubbling up from the grassroots and also leaking out from the top. The ADL was able to document this in a systematic way.
Some critics of the ADL today say the organization has strayed from its mission by focusing not just on antisemitism but on a wider array of causes. But from reading your work, it sounds like the ADL even then took an expansive view of its role, examining not just direct attacks on Jews but also how the political environment can jeopardize Jews. Am I getting that right, and why did the ADL devote so many resources to a group like the John Birch Society?
So, a few things: It’s the late ’50s and ’60s, and a civil rights coalition is emerging. Benjamin Epstein, the national director of the ADL, was friendly with Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice, and Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy went to an ADL event and praised the ADL for speaking out very strongly in defense of democracy and pushing for the equal treatment of all Americans.
Isadore Zack, who helped lead the spy operation, at one point wrote to his colleagues that it was only in a democracy that the Jewish community has been allowed to flourish and so, if you want to defend Jewish Americans, you also have to defend democracy.
There certainly were other threats at the time, but the Birch Society was seen by liberal critics, including the ADL, as a very secretive group that promoted conspiracy theories about communists who often became conflated with Jews.
Would you consider the ADL successful in its campaign against the Birchers?
They were successful. They used surreptitious and in some cases underhanded means to expose the antisemitism and the racism and also interest in violence or the violent rhetoric of the Birch Society in the 1960s.
The ADL was at the tip of the spear of a liberal coalition that included the White House, sometimes the Department of Justice, depending on the issue, the NAACP, Americans for Democratic Action, labor unions, the union-backed Group Research Inc., which was tracking the far-right as well. The ADL was one of the most, if not the most effective at constraining and discrediting the society.
Clearly, however, the Birchers’ ideas never died. They lived on and made a comeback.
It’s somewhat ironic that you reveal the existence of this spying apparatus devoted to targeting an extremist and antisemitic group in the 1960s given the infamy the ADL would earn in a later era, the 1990s, for allegations that they colluded with police agencies in San Francisco to spy on and harass political activists. They eventually settled with the Arab American, Black and American Indian groups that brought a federal civil suit. I know you didn’t study these revelations, which are outside the scope of your book, but could you perhaps reflect on why undercover tactics were seen as necessary or justified?
It’s important to remember that in the mid-20th century, law enforcement in the United States was often led by antisemites or people who were much more concerned with alleged internal communist threats — the threat from the left.
From the ADL’s vantage point, one could not rely on the government entities that were by law and by design supposed to protect Jewish Americans. There was a sense that this work had to be done, at least in part, outside of the parameters of the government.
When I first discovered the ADL’s spying, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. But I realized they weren’t just spying to spy, they exposed a lot of scary things, with echoes in our own times — like easy access to firearms, a hatred of the government, a denigration and defamation of minority groups. And this was all happening in the shadow of the Holocaust and World War II. I became much more sympathetic; they were very effective, and they had a vision of equality of treatment for all Americans.
It’s obviously controversial. I try not to shy away from it. But they had a lot of good reasons to fight back right and to fight back in this nonviolent way.
That last thought brings to mind another, right-wing Jewish group that existed in this era of taking things into our own hands, that did use violence, explosives even.
You mean the Jewish Defense League, led by Meir Kahane.
Yes, exactly.
He was a Bircher. Toward the end of my book, I mention that he was a member for a while, under his alias Michael King.
Antisemitism is on the rise, and lots of initiatives are being organized to address it, both by existing groups like the ADL and new ones. The ADL’s budget has almost doubled over the past seven years. I am seeing Jews talk of fighting back and taking things into their own hands. And we are in this politically precarious movement in American history, all of which suggests parallels to the era you examined. What kind of wisdom can we glean from examining the ADL’s secret and public fight against the John Birch Society as people who care about the issues affecting Jews today?
A lot of liberals in the 1960s and a lot of the leadership at the ADL grasped the axiom that things can always get worse.
In 2015-2016, you’ll recall, there was Trump’s demonization of Mexican immigrants, and the so-called “alt-right” around him and his campaign and expressions of vitriol by people like Steve Bannon.
There was an assumption among a lot of Americans and among a lot of Jewish Americans that the fringe right — the antisemites, the explicit racists, the white supremacists — that there’s not a majority for them and they can never achieve power.
If you go back and you look at Trump’s closing 2016 campaign ad, it’s textbook antisemitism. He flashes on screen these wealthy Jewish international bankers, and he argues that basically, there’s a conspiracy of these global elites who are stealing the wealth of honest Americans. There’s also 2017, the white supremacists in Charlottesville, who said “Jews will not replace us” and Trump saying there are fine people on both sides.
The sense that democracy is incredibly fragile is not just a theory or a concept: It’s an actuality, the sense as well, that the United States has only been a multiracial democracy for not very long and a haven for Jews for not that long either.
The work that the ADL and the NAACP and other groups did to try to constrain and discredit as fringe and extremist still goes on today. It’s harder to do for all sorts of reasons today including social media and the loss of faith in institutions. But it still goes on. You see the importance of institutional guardrails including the Department of Justice that is prosecuting 1,000 Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
The last thing I’ll say is that one of the admirable things in the 1960s about the ADL and the liberal coalition it belonged to is that it built support for landmark legislation like the Immigration Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of ’65. And a coalition eventually fell apart, but it was powerful, reminding us why Jewish American groups should care about or focus on issues that don’t directly affect Jewish people.
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Trump may be making a classic error in seeking peace with Iran
An assumption has shaped Western thinking about Iran for decades: that the Islamic Republic has similar goals to those of the West, and can therefore be incentivized to integrate into a more stable regional order.
Vice President JD Vance gave that assumption its latest expression when he said a potential new peace agreement between Iran and the United States could “fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years” — if Iran complies with the deal.
Perhaps he’s right, and Iran is in fact committed, this time, to never again pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons. But the Islamic Republic’s own rhetoric provides serious reasons for skepticism on that front.
Since 1979, the regime has presented itself as the standard-bearer of a revolutionary project. It is not merely a government. It is the self-appointed guardian of a worldview.
That worldview is often expressed through the concept of muqawama, which translates roughly to “resistance.” The term refers to far more than military opposition. It describes a political, religious and civilizational struggle against what the regime views as Western domination, American influence, Israeli sovereignty, and the regional order that emerged during the 20th century.
Ideologies shape behavior. A regime organized around economic growth behaves one way. A regime organized around the concept of revolutionary struggle behaves differently.
Western powers too often forget this truth when it comes to Iran, assuming that its leaders seek prosperity, stability, security and international acceptance. We assume that economic incentives and diplomatic agreements will eventually outweigh ideological commitments.
It is important to distinguish here between the regime and the people it governs. Iran is home to an ancient civilization, a sophisticated culture, and millions of citizens whose aspirations often appear very different from those of their rulers. For nearly half a century, many Iranians have lived under a system they neither created nor freely chose. Waves of protests and dissent have repeatedly suggested that large numbers of Iranians seek a different future — one characterized less by revolutionary struggle and more by ordinary human aspirations like freedom, dignity and connection to the wider world.
Viewed through the lens of muqawama, Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, proxy armies and regional interventions cease to look like products of separate policies. They become parts of a coherent strategy, manifestations of the same underlying vision: the transformation of the existing regional order.
The obvious question, then, is whether that vision has changed. And if it hasn’t, what does Iranian compliance with this new deal actually mean?
After all, one can honor the terms of an agreement while remaining fully committed to objectives that lie beyond the agreement’s reach. Iran has done so plenty of times in the recent past.
In 2018, Israeli intelligence agents removed a vast archive of nuclear documents from a secret warehouse near Tehran. The archive contained detailed records of weapons-related research and planning, suggesting that the regime viewed this knowledge as valuable, worth preserving and potentially applicable in the future.
Over the years, inspectors evaluating Iran’s nuclear capabilities have repeatedly encountered inconsistencies between Iran’s declarations about its efforts and the evidence before them. Each episode, by itself, may be explainable. Taken together, they paint a picture of a regime that has consistently viewed transparency as something to be managed rather than embraced.
Fordow, the infamous nuclear enrichment facility buried beneath a mountain, was designed by people expecting confrontation. Facilities intended to withstand intensive military attacks — as Fordow has — reveal something about the assumptions of those who build them.
Western policymakers often view negotiations as a path toward resolution. Iran tends, in contrast, to treat them as a strategic opportunity. Every round of talks creates opportunities to reposition and advance. Every agreement creates new debates about interpretation and enforcement that the regime can turn to its advantage.
It may be less useful to think in terms of bad faith than in terms of incentives. The issue is understanding the ambitions of the regime as it understands them. And there are reasons to doubt whether U.S. negotiators hammering out the details of this agreement understand those ambitions correctly.
This raises grave concerns for Israel, which is not a party to the new ceasefire. The nuclear issue is primary, but the ballistic missile program and satellite armies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all pressing problems for the Jewish state. A deal that fails to engage with all parts of that picture will leave Israel in danger.
The United States can afford strategic patience. It sits behind two oceans, far from Iran. Israel cannot. A nation smaller than New Jersey has little margin for catastrophic error. If American assumptions prove mistaken, American policy can be revised. If Israeli assumptions prove mistaken, the consequences are potentially fatal.
This is why many Israelis have expressed outrage at this ceasefire. They’re wondering: If the ideology remains intact; if the missile programs remain intact; if Hezbollah remains intact; if the regime’s revolutionary ambitions remain intact, what exactly has been resolved?
Near-term tension reduction has repeatedly served as a substitute for resolving the underlying threat from Iran’s radical regime. Sanctions relief following the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by then-President Barack Obama eased pressure on the regime while leaving its governing vision untouched. The underlying problem remained.
Muqawama is not merely resistance to particular policies. It is resistance as an organizing principle. Any agreement that ignores that reality risks confusing tactical restraint with strategic change.
The post Trump may be making a classic error in seeking peace with Iran appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump-backed Oklahoma congressional candidate supports Israel — and says the Antichrist will be Jewish
(JTA) — A pro-Israel pastor who inveighs against “sharia law” and wants Jews to accept Jesus is the favored candidate in a crowded congressional primary in Oklahoma on Tuesday.
Jackson Lahmeyer, the founder of Pastors for Trump and a political activist from the Tulsa area, secured the president’s endorsement ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the state’s solidly Republican 1st District House seat. Other big GOP endorsements soon followed, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, helping to pull Lahmeyer away from the other nine candidates vying for the nomination.
Much of Lahmeyer’s national profile has been defined by his regular invocations of “sharia law,” traditional Muslim doctrine often used as a right-wing shock tactic. One of his campaign platforms is “Ensuring That Sharia Law Never Takes Root In Our Nation.”
On Sunday, Lahmeyer also responded to allegations published by the Daily Mail that he had cheated on his wife, writing in a post on X that “this matter was already dealt with privately between me and my wife, Kendra, through counsel and prayer with God and spiritual advisors.”
Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is home to a thriving Jewish community — one that has recently urged Jews from Canada to take up residence — as well as multiple large Jewish organizations including Schusterman Family Philanthropies.
Multiple representatives of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa declined to comment on Lahmeyer’s candidacy. But it’s clear that if elected, he will bring to Congress some specific ideas about Jews.
“The Antichrist will be a political leader of Jewish descent,” he told a livestream of his church on Oct. 8, 2024, a day after the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. “That is how the Jews will worship him.”
During his sermon, Lahmeyer based the claim on his reading of biblical prophecy, arguing that the Antichrist will “speak great blasphemy” and will “have no regard for the gods of his fathers.”
Lahmeyer’s preaching about the Jewish Antichrist has also sparked concern among some Jewish voters.
“Jackson, I am appalled at this post. I’m Jewish. I supported you[r] run for office at every turn. I have children and grandchildren. Antisemitism is at an all time high. I’m scared for them. This is abhorrent,” one X user wrote in response to a February 2023 post on X by Lahmeyer claiming the Antichrist will be “Jewish” and a “homosexual.”
Lahmeyer pushed back on the response, replying to the user that “This is not anti-Semitic AT ALL. The Christ is Jewish. Scripture indicates that the Antichrist will also be Jewish.”
Despite those apocalyptic beliefs, Lahmeyer has repeatedly framed support for Israel as a key tenet of his faith, reflecting a Christian Zionist worldview that sees Jewish return to Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
“I stand with the Jewish people because God almighty stands with the Jewish people,” Lahmeyer said in an Oct. 9, 2025 post dismissing claims he had been paid by the Israeli government to post pro-Israel content. “So those of you who are out there saying I’m getting $7,000 a post, I wish that were true, but you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.”
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Lahmeyer’s statements about Jews and Israel reflect a typical strain of Christian Zionism.
“He’s pro-Israel in this very particular sense of he has a strong attachment to a theological conception of Israel,” Taylor said. “When it comes to questions about the Antichrist and whether the Antichrist is Jewish or not, that’s all pretty standard speculation within modern evangelicalism.”
Those views, once largely confined to Lahmeyer’s reach as a storefront pastor, have followed him into a larger political arena as he has transformed from a fringe activist into a political contender with presidential backing.
“It is my Great Honor to endorse MAGA Warrior, Jackson Lahmeyer, who is running to represent the fantastic people of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, and has been with me from the very beginning of our Movement to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday reaffirming his endorsement of Lahmeyer.
Trump praised Lahmeyer’s role in founding “Pastors for Trump,” which he launched in 2022 to organize evangelical pastors around getting Trump reelected. The same year, Lahmeyer lost his Republican primary bid to unseat Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, whom he called a “coward” for not backing Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Lahmeyer, who did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for an interview, is a member of the White House Faith Office and Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board.
He has been cultivating relationships with the Trumps for years. In addition to backing the president’s election claims, Lahmeyer has hosted the president’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., as well as FBI Director Kash Patel at his church and on podcast episodes.
Lahmeyer’s rise coincides with a growing movement of conservative Christians and right-wing influencers who have been increasingly critical of Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance.
During an event marking the second anniversary of Oct. 7 titled “The Case for Israel,” Lahmeyer addressed the growing prominence of anti-Israel figures on the Christian right, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“Both Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, they’re Roman Catholics, so to them the church has replaced the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and that is why they can make these claims,” Lahmeyer said.
But Lahmeyer has stopped short of condemning Carlson’s rhetoric, despite criticism from Trump and evangelical members of his administration including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
“Some very influential leaders, all of whom I like — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have taken a very controversial stance in regards to the nation of Israel,” Lahmeyer told NPR in November.
Taylor said the fallout over Israel within the MAGA coalition between Christian antisemites, such as Carlson and Owens, and Christian philosemites, such as Huckabee, placed Lahmeyer in a precarious position as he seeks office.
White evangelicals show widespread support for Israel, with 72% reporting a positive opinion of the Jewish state according to an April 2025 poll by the Pew Research Center, but among Republicans under 50, positive sentiments about Israel have dropped in recent years, falling from 63% reporting a positive view in 2022 to 48% in 2025.
“A lot of young evangelicals are moving away from Zionism, and becoming less sympathetic with the state of Israel, both theologically and just in terms of world events, and the war in Gaza,” Taylor said. “So I think it’s a very complicated place that he’s in, trying to kind of run as a politician in this moment where MAGA is fracturing over some of the things he could be very publicly identified with.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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UK appeals court upholds ban on Palestine Action as a terrorist organization
(JTA) — A British appeals court ruled Monday that the government acted lawfully in banning a prominent pro-Palestinian group as a terrorist organization.
Jewish groups welcomed the decision to maintain the ban on Palestine Action, which has staged multiple destructive attacks on military installations and weapons manufacturers in Britain.
The government banned Palestine Action in July 2025 after some of its members broke into an air force base and damaged two military aircraft as part of a protest against the U.K.’s relationship to Israel during the war in Gaza. The ruling meant that anyone displaying support for the group has been subject to arrest and imprisonment.
The British High Court declared the ban unlawful in February, concluding that the ban interfered with Palestine Action members’ rights to speech and assembly. Now, a five-judge U.K. Court of Appeal panel has ruled that the group’s activities met the legal standards for terrorism and the government’s decision to ban the group was justified and proportionate.
Sue Carr, England’s chief justice, said in a statement broadcast from the court that while many Palestine Action activities and affiliates were non-violent, the group’s materials and impact showed that violence was integral to its activities.
“It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open,” Carr said. “It is a covert organization operating with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy the property of third parties.”
British Jewish groups applauded the decision. “The Court’s decision confirms the seriousness of Palestine Action’s activities,” Board of Deputies of British Jews Acting President Adrian Cohen said in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Cohen noted that Palestine Action’s targets have included Jewish communal institutions and Jewish-owned businesses. He added, “At a time of record levels of antisemitism, division, and communal tensions, all those in public life should be clear: no cause justifies criminality, violence or the glorification of those who carry it out.”
The ruling comes days after four Palestine Action-affiliated activists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in connection with an August 2024 break-in at the headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, the British outpost of an Israeli weapons company. The activists had previously been acquitted on some charges but were prosecuted again on others and convicted, including one on charges of striking a police officer with a sledgehammer..
More than 100 people were arrested on Friday after Palestine Action’s supporters rallied outside the sentencing. They joined more than 3,000 people who British media report have been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action since its ban. Other supporters include the writer Sally Rooney, who last year pledged proceeds from the BBC productions of her books to the group despite potential legal penalties.
The group is vowing to appeal its ban yet again. “We will not stop fighting for the ban to be lifted, the end of the use of terror legislation against us, and crucially, for a free Palestine,” co-founder Huda Ammori posted on X on Monday. “I will appeal to the Supreme Court and take it up to the European Court of Human Rights, if needs be.”
The ruling comes as Prime Minister Keir Starmer seeks new powers to ban state-backed groups, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations. (British law currently reserves such bans for non-state actors.) The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British advocacy group, said the ruling about Palestine Action “underscores the Home Secretary’s power to proscribe terrorist networks” and called for the IRGC and other groups to be banned.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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