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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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Syria Leads World in Improving Freedom, Report Says, Amid Concerns Over Regime’s Jihadist Links
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa attends the Ministry of Awqaf conference titled “Unity of Islamic Discourse” at the Conference Palace in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
The same week that an influential survey of global freedom named Syria as the most improved country in the world, Syrian authorities announced a crackdown on alcohol sales in Damascus amid persecution for those failing to fast for a full day during Ramadan.
On Thursday, the nonprofit advocacy group Freedom House released its annual report reviewing the rise and fall of freedom around the world, rating countries based on their political rights and civil liberties. The organization offered a grim overall assessment, noting that freedom had fallen for the 20th consecutive year, with 54 nations declining in 2025. Today only 21 percent of human beings live in countries classified as free, a drop of 46 percent from 20 years ago, according to the report.
“Even as 2026 has brought new opportunities for those living under authoritarian rule from Venezuela to Iran, the last 20 years have been a dark period for global freedom,” Freedom House CEO Jamie Fly said in a statement. “Those who still enjoy the blessings of freedom must do more to counter authoritarianism and provide more effective support for the democratic aspirations of people standing up to repression around the world, or this persistent decline will continue.”
However, one Middle Eastern country in particular stood as a bright spot countering the trend.
“Syria received the world’s largest score improvement for the year, bringing cautious optimism to a region dominated by entrenched authoritarian rule,” the report stated.
Last year, “foreign and independent local media outlets were able to report critically from inside Syria, civil society organizations were able to register and operate more freely, and oppressive Assad-era legal restrictions started to be rolled back,” the report added, referring to long-time Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled in December 2024.
Ahmed al-Sharaa became Syria’s official president after leading the rebel campaign that ousted Assad — whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war — in an offensive spearheaded by al-Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda affiliate.
Since taking power, al-Sharaa has sought to depict himself as a moderate leader who wants to unify his country and attract foreign investment to rebuild it after years of civil war. Many foreign leaders and experts have been skeptical of him, however, questioning whether he is still a jihadist trying to disguise his extremism.
Incidents of sectarian violence — including the mass killing of pro-Assad Alawites — have deepened fears among minority groups about the rise of Islamist factions and drawn condemnation from global powers currently engaged in discussions on sanctions relief and humanitarian aid.
The US has moved to lift an array of sanctions previously imposed on Syria under Assad. Until recently, al-Sharaa was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head.
However, Freedom House said it observed significant improvement for the freedom of Syrians, despite major challenges.
Freedom House described how in Syria today, “citizens and a transitional government face profound challenges in erecting a democratic system after more than half a century of dictatorship. The civil war that began in 2011 has devastated public institutions and infrastructure, while sectarian polarization and ongoing violence further complicate efforts to create credible transitional justice mechanisms and introduce the rule of law.”
An example of that sectarianism manifested on Monday evening, when the Damascus governorate announced a number of measures to restrict alcohol sales. The rules will require nightclubs and bars with liquor licenses to convert into cafe licenses. The city will only allow alcohol purchases with sealed bottles from stores in majority Christian places. This conflicts with Syrian law, which does not ban alcohol, as well as human rights treaties signed by Syrian protecting the right to drink alcohol.
The regulations also limit the locations of alcohol vendors, banning them from operating 75 meters from houses of worship and schools with only three months to comply. One unnamed bar owner told The Arab Weekly that he had anticipated the change and would close in response. He noted that he had seen a decline in his customers since the rise of l-Sharaa’s government last year. Other restaurants have reportedly adapted to the change by taking alcohol off of menus or shifting to serving drinks in teacups.
Syria’s leaders have opposed religious freedom in other ways recently, with The Arab Weekly citing reports of arrests and firings for those who break Ramadan fasts early.
Freedom House researchers offered additional insights into the depths of authoritarianism around the world and its hot spots. The states with the heaviest drop in rankings last year were Guinea-Bissau (−8), Tanzania (−7), Burkina Faso, (−5), Madagascar (−5), and El Salvador (−5).
The countries which received the worst overall scores were South Sudan (0), Sudan (1), and Turkmenistan (1) on the organization’s 100-point scale.
Iran saw a fall by one point, reaching a score of 10 total points, with Freedom House explaining that authorities arrested more than 21,000 people “as part of a crackdown on alleged espionage and collaboration following the regime’s 12-day war with Israel in June” and that the regime had expelled “some 1.8 million Afghan migrants and refugees without regard for their basic rights.”
Russia and China maintained their scores of 12 and 9, respectively, with Freedom House stating that “Russian authorities took further steps to suppress antiwar speech and independent journalism, while Chinese officials cracked down on small but multiplying protests.”
The report noted numerous military coups in Africa, identifying nine since 2019 with Madagascar the most recent.
“Mali provides just one example of the lasting damage done by military coups. Conditions in several countries, including Burkina Faso and Niger, continued to deteriorate in 2025 after a wave of military coups beginning in 2019 toppled governments across the Sahel and West Africa,” the report stated. “In both countries, freedom continued to decline in the years following the coups, as the junta leaders acted unilaterally to consolidate power and used increasingly violent methods to suppress dissent.”
In Burkina Faso, the military indefinitely suspended elections, while in Niger the junta dissolved all political parties.
“We continue to see that the desire for freedom is universal,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, who co-authored the report and works as Freedom House’s research director. “From Belarus to Zimbabwe, people around the world are taking great personal risks to stand up and defend their fundamental rights.”
Gorokhovskaia said that to reverse the global decline in freedom, “democratic governments and societies must demonstrate their solidarity with those seeking freedom, in part through funding and diplomatic support for frontline human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations.”
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College Republicans Chapter Sues University of Florida for Deactivating Group Over Nazi Salutes
Members of University of Florida’s College Republicans chapter. Photo: Screenshot
The University of Florida’s College Republicans chapter has teamed up with a local far-right lawyer to sue the school for closing the student club after learning that two of its leaders photographed themselves pantomiming the Nazi salute.
“The University of Florida punitively deactivated and shut down the [University of Florida College Republicans] in response to alleged viewpoints expressed by a member … and in an effort to silence the club and chill its future free speech,” said the lawyer, Anthony Sabatini, who was seemingly enlisted to defend the student club’s right to support Nazism. “No university policy, rule, or law provides UF a lawful basis for the deactivation. We are seeking an emergency preliminary injunction.”
Sabatini is an alumnus of the University of Florida and was once a “Lincoln Fellow” selected by the Claremont Institute, a think tank in California known for its rejection of the so-called “east coast” wing of the conservative movement and advocacy of “post-liberalism.” Sabatini’s social media activity includes reposts of material by Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter, as well as his denouncing Republicans such as US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and White House chief of staff Susan Wiles as “piece[s] of s–t.” He has also endorsed James Fishback, a candidate for governor of Florida who built his reputation by criticizing Israel and refusing to condemn antisemitic podcaster Nicholas Fuentes.
On March 8, Sabatini tweeted, “I hated Mark Levin before it was cool,” an allusion to the Jewish political commentator’s feuds with far-right provocateurs who have attempted to foster suspicion around his membership in the conservative movement.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the University of Florida said last week it would shutter its College Republicans chapter at the request of the Florida Federation of College Republicans (FFCR), which disbanded the group.
Since then, members of the student club have alleged that the Florida Federation lacks jurisdiction over the organization, insisting that it is registered with the College Republicans of America group. There are several contending “College Republican” groups, including the original College Republican National Committee founded in 1892, College Republicans United, the National Federation of College Republicans (NFCR), and College Republicans.
Regardless of the outcome of the legal dispute, the incident marked the second time this month that conservative youth were publicly outed for indulging Nazism and the white supremacist movement.
Earlier this month, leaked texts revealed dozens of antisemitic and racist texts exchanged by young Republicans in Miami-Dade County, Florida, some of which fantasized about engaging in onanism in an all-white country.
As first reported by The Miami Herald, the group chat, created on WhatsApp, was described by its members as “Nazi heaven” for the daily barrage of extremist comments contributed to it. Individuals affiliated with the Miami-Dade Country Republicans, Turning Point USA, and College Republicans casually said “ni—er,” denounced women as “whores,” and spoke rapturously about Adolf Hitler.
Dariel Gonzalez, according to the Herald, was one of the chat’s most prolific contributors, bandying about comments regarding “color professors” and telling members that “You can f–k all the k—kes you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.”
The group chat’s exposure comes at a time when, according to recent polling, young Republicans have increasingly embraced antisemitism and conspiracy theories.
Right-wing antisemitism is surging in popularity among conservative youth, seemingly in part due to the influence of online commentators such as Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson.
In September, a conservative magazine at Harvard University published an opinion piece which bore likeness to key tenets of Nazi doctrine, as first articulated in 1925 in Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, and later in a blitzkrieg of speeches he delivered throughout the Nazi era to justify his genocide of European Jews.
Written by David F.X. Army, the article chillingly echoed a January 1939 Reichstag speech in which Hitler portended mass killings of Jews as the outcome of Germany’s inexorable march toward war with France and Great Britain. Whereas Hitler said, “France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans,” Army wrote, “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans.”
Army also called for the adoption of notions of “blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own” in response to concerns over large-scale migration of Muslims into Europe.
In Nazi ideology, “blood and soil,” or Blut und Boden, encapsulated the party’s belief in eugenics and racial purity; the German “Aryans’” right to expand into Eastern Europe to amass new Lebensraum, or “living space”; and the transformation of the German peasantry into an agricultural class which stood in contrasts to Jews, many of whom lived in cities.
Meanwhile, antisemitic hate crimes have spiked to record levels across the US.
In January, Stephen Pittman, 19, allegedly ignited a catastrophic fire which decimated the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. After being arrested, Pittman confessed and told US federal investigators that he targeted the institution over its “Jewish ties,” according to court filings.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘I’m alive!’: Netanyahu speaks in-person amid ongoing online rumors claiming he’s dead
“I am alive — and you are all witnesses,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, opening a rare in-person news conference with foreign reporters in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu was addressing a viral online rumor that he had been killed in an Iranian missile strike on March 8. The false claims gained traction after a Sunday press conference in which he appeared via Zoom, taking questions from Israeli journalists without disclosing his location amid ongoing Iranian ballistic missile attacks and following the assassination of senior regime figures.
The low-quality video he later posted on X fueled further speculation, as some users pointed to what they claimed was a six-fingered hand as evidence that it had been AI-generated to conceal his death.
In an effort to put the rumors to rest, Netanyahu released a video of himself ordering coffee on the outskirts of Jerusalem. But the clip took on a life of its own online. Much of the attention shifted to the barista, a young woman behind the counter whose warm smile went viral.
“I have got to ask you a question the entire internet is dying to hear the answer on: Is Benjamin Netanyahu dead?” media personality Mehdi Hasan asked Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview on Wednesday. Van Hollen, a fierce Netanyahu critic, was unequivocal. “No,” he said. “He is not dead.”
Netanyahu at start of press conference with foreign press:
“First of all, I just want to say I’m alive — and you’re all witnesses.” pic.twitter.com/B1ogphOTTD
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) March 19, 2026
Netanyahu’s appearance on Thursday was not only meant to show proof of life. It was also an attempt to counter criticism from some in the MAGA movement that Israel dragged the U.S. into an endless war with Tehran, and as U.S public opinion is turning against the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran.
On Tuesday, a senior intelligence official resigned to protest the administration’s approach. Joe Kent, who had been director of the federal National Counterterrorism Center, claimed that Israeli officials had used lies to convince President Donald Trump to start the war.
The isolationist wing of the conservative movement — associated with antisemitic influencers like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes — amplified those claims, adding further conspiracy theories, including claiming Israeli involvement in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year.
“Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?” Netanyahu asked rhetorically. “Come on. President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America, and may I add, what is also good for future generations.”
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