Organizations: The Americanists

Among the U.S. brotherhoods dedicated to the fight against Communism, nothing is quite like the John Birch Society. Except for an elite corps of leaders, its members shun personal publicity, and their names are held by the society in strictest secrecy. Its cells, of 20 to 30 members apiece, take orders from society headquarters, promote Communist-style front organizations that do not use the John Birch name. Carefully avoiding normal channels of political action, the society accepts the hardboiled, dictatorial direction of one man who sees democracy as a "perennial fraud" and estimates...

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