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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 Admin Designates Muslim Brotherhood Branches in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon as Terrorist Groups
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a US-Paraguay Status of Forces agreement signing ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
The Trump administration has designated branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan as terrorist groups, the US State and Treasury departments announced on Tuesday.
“Today, as a first step in support of President Trump’s commitment to eliminate the capabilities and operations of Muslim Brotherhood chapters that pose a threat to the United States as described in Executive Order 14362, the United States is imposing terrorist designations against the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rubio said in a statement.
The announcement came nearly two months after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
Rubio explained on Tuesday that the State Department was “designating the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), and the group’s leader Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh as an SDGT. Concurrently, the Department of the Treasury is designating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as SDGTs for providing material support to Hamas.”
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has long been affiliated with the Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Rubio added. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent similarly vowed to continue targeting the Islamist network.
“The Treasury Department is taking action pursuant to President Trump’s leadership by designating Muslim Brotherhood Branches as Terrorist Organizations,” he said in a statement. “The Muslim Brotherhood has a longstanding record of perpetrating acts of terror, and we are working aggressively to cut them off from the financial system. This administration will deploy the full scope of its authorities to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat terrorist networks wherever they operate in order to keep Americans safe.”
The State Department released a summary of the recent history behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate in Lebanon — described as “LMB (also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah)” — since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, LMB (also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah) reactivated its al-Fajr Forces and launched rockets, in coordination with Hezbollah and Hamas, from Lebanon into northern Israel,” the State Department said. “In March 2024, the Israel Defense Forces launched an attack against al-Fajr Forces operatives who were preparing to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel. In July 2025, the Lebanese Army dismantled a covert military training camp that included LMB and Hamas militants.”
The State Department revealed that “under LMB secretary general Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh’s leadership, the group has pushed for a more formal alignment with the Hezbollah-Hamas axis.”
John Hurley, treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement that the Muslim Brotherhood “has inspired, nurtured, and funded terrorist groups like Hamas, that are direct threats to the safety and security of the American people and our allies.”
In November, Texas announced the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, with its Attorney General Ken Paxton taking legal action in December to defend Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision. Last week, Paxton joined Texas to an alliance of states led by Virginia and Iowa challenging the nonprofit group American Muslims for Palestine, in an effort to “to combat Hamas terrorism.”
The State Department outlined the history of the Muslim Brotherhood’s associations with terrorist activity.
“In its 1988 founding charter, Hamas described itself as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” the department said. “Hamas conducted the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, including hundreds of Israeli civilians and at least 31 US citizens, and resulted in more than 240 people being kidnapped, including US citizens. Hamas has been designated as an FTO since 1997 and an SDGT since 2001.”
The Muslim Brotherhood branches responded to the designations in statements.
“The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood categorically rejects this designation and will pursue all legal avenues to challenge this decision which harms millions of Muslims worldwide,” the Egyptian branch said.
The LMB called itself “a licensed Lebanese political and social entity that operates openly and within the bounds of the law.”
The Trump administration has not taken action against Turkey or Qatar, two other Middle East countries with long histories of steadfast support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
In December, Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, was interviewed about the increase in terrorist violence last year and noted the role of the Muslim Brotherhood as a key factor.
“I don’t think there’s any one factor, but a complicity of factors, primarily one being the rise, or the resurrection, of the Muslim brotherhood,” Emerson said. He described how the Brotherhood has “been around since 1928, but in this country, since 1964, obviously they have become very big in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, not in its form as the MB, as it’s called, but rather in front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] and about 150 other front groups operating in the United States.”
In its designation of the Muslin Brotherhood last year, Texas also proscribed CAIR as a terrorist group, describing it as a “successor organization” to the Brotherhood and noting the FBI called it a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.”
“Around the world, there are probably more than 500 Muslim Brotherhood front groups or aid organizations that operate as ‘charities,’ but in fact, proselytize or commit acts of terrorism or funnel money to terrorism,” Emerson explained. “The rise of oil prices or the proliferation of oil money, especially by Qatar, which is the primary sponsor of Islamic fundamentalism around the world and brotherhood basically continues the operations of terrorists as full-time employees.”
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Israel Announces Departure From Several UN Agencies It Accuses of Bias Against Jewish State
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Israel will immediately sever ties with several United Nations agencies and international organizations, the Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday, accusing the bodies of exhibiting systemic bias against the Jewish state within the UN system.
In a statement posted on social media, the foreign ministry said that the decision was made following an internal examination after the United States last week withdrew from dozens of international bodies which, according to the White House, “no longer serve American interests.”
The move was approved by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who instructed officials to conduct a broader review to determine whether Israel should continue cooperating with additional international organizations, potentially leading to further shakeups.
The seven organizations that Israel will remove itself from right away are: the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNWOMEN), UN Conference for Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), UN Alliance of Civilizations, UN Energy, and Global Forum on Migration and Development.
The foreign ministry argued that each body targeted Israel unfairly.
After an examination and discussion conducted following the US withdrawal from dozens of international organizations, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs @gidonsaar has decided that Israel will immediately sever all contact with the following UN agencies and international…
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) January 13, 2026
Israeli officials said the decision to sever ties with these specific organizations was the result of a broader conclusion that parts of the UN system have been politicized and openly hostile to Israel. According to the foreign ministry, several of the bodies either singled out Israel for disproportionate condemnation, ignored or minimized Israeli civilian suffering, produced one-sided and ideologically driven reports, or provided platforms for critics while excluding Israeli participation altogether.
Other organizations were accused of undermining core principles of state sovereignty or exemplifying an unaccountable and inefficient UN bureaucracy. Collectively, the ministry argued, this repeated behavior led Israel with little justification for continued engagement and necessitated a reassessment of participation in forums it believes no longer operate in good faith.
Israeli officials framed the move as both corrective and overdue, arguing that a number of UN-affiliated bodies have abandoned neutrality and instead become platforms for political attacks against the Jewish state.
Several of the organizations cited in the US withdrawal announcement had already been cut off by Israel in recent years.
Israel ended cooperation with UN Women in July 2024, after the agency declined to address or investigate sexual violence committed against Israeli women during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The foreign ministry said the organization’s silence on the issue was unacceptable, adding that the former local head of UN Women concluded her tenure at Israel’s request.
Officials signaled that additional organizations could face similar decisions as Israel reevaluates the costs of participation in international forums it believes have become politicized.
The move comes on the heels of the US removing itself from 66 international organizations which, the Trump administration argued, behave “contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty” and promote “ideological programs that conflict with US sovereignty and economic strength.”
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over US priorities, or that address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively such that US taxpayer dollars are best allocated in other ways to support the relevant missions,” the White House said in a Jan. 7 statement.
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Anti-Israel Activists Drop Lawsuit to Cancel Antisemitism Prevention Course at Northwestern University
People walk on the campus of Northwestern University, a day after a US official said $790 million in federal funding has been frozen for the university while it investigates the school over civil rights violations, in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
A civil lawsuit which aimed to cancel Northwestern University’s antisemitism prevention course on the apparent grounds that conduct widely acknowledged as antisemitic is integral to Palestinian culture has been voluntarily withdrawn by both parties.
“The plaintiffs and defendants, by and through their respective undersigned counsel, hereby submit the following joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal purgation to federal rule of civil procedure … and hereby stipulate to the dismissal of this action in its entirety, without prejudice,” says a court document filed on Dec. 22. “Each party shall bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — demanded a temporary restraining order to halt the program, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it. Filing on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group CAIR charged that the required training violates Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 and serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
CAIR particularly took issue with Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
The mutual dismissal did not cite a reason for the claim’s withdrawal, but it was Northwestern’s robust policy agenda for combating antisemitism which precipitated CAIR’s scrutiny.
The university adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in 2025 and began holding the “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions CAIR challenged in its lawsuit.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” Northwestern said in a report which updated the public on its antisemitism prevention efforts. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world.
On Tuesday, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) told The Algemeiner that the lawsuit lacked a “strong legal foundation” and was “an inefficient use of judicial resources.”
It added, “Universities have broad discretion to require training programs designed to address antisemitism and other issues central to campus safety and wellbeing. While the case was withdrawn prior to a ruling on the merits, we believe the university’s authority in this area is well-established.”
In late November, Northwestern University agreed to pay $75 million and abolish a controversial compact, known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement,” it reached with a pro-Hamas student group in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations that it was slow to address antisemitism and other policies which allowed reverse discrimination.
Part of the “Deering Meadow Agreement” which ended an anti-Israel encampment, called for establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
The agreement outraged Jewish civil rights groups and lawmakers and ultimately led to the resignation of former Northwestern University president Michael Schill, who authorized the concessions.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement, noting that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.