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The most formidable of the extremist groups is the John Birch Society (TIME, March 10. et seq.), founded three years ago by retired Massachusetts Candymaker (Welch's Fudge and Sugar Daddy) Robert Welch, 62. So suspicious that he often denounces shuffling or coughing in his audience as "a dirty Communist trick," Welch has a gift for such phrases as "Comsymp." which he uses as a label for many who disagree with him, and a talent for such slander as describing Dwight Eisenhower as "a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy." His causes are many: they range from a campaign against the fluoridation of water to one demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Welch is a skilled or ganizer who devoutly believes that internal Communism can best be fought by Communist tactics. He advocates the establishment of "front groups" to push his pet projects; although his society's rosters are kept secret, its membership is estimated at 50,000, and many Birchers have infiltrated, and even come to dominate, other extremist groups.
But in the resurgence of the ultras, several other organizations have begun to challenge the predominance of the John Birch Society. Among them:
>THE CHRISTIAN ANTI-COMMUNISM CRUSADE, led by Dr. Fred Schwarz, 48, a genial, Australian-born physician and onetime Baptist lay preacher. Schwarz began his crusade in 1953, has become one of the principal figures of the rightist revival. Better read and less inflammatory than most of his counterparts, he avows it his purpose "fundamentally to inform, to teach, to educate" about Communism. He has drawn crowds of up to 15,000 in cities across the U.S., persuaded 41 mayors of California towns to declare an antiCommunism week, plans to invade New York City next July in "the biggest thing they've had yet." Schwarz professes abhorrence of extremism, amiably gives his speakers "academic freedom" to make such statements as "Government foments destruction" and "All foreign aid is immoral." Drawing $5,000 a year (plus expenses) from his crusade's funds ($382,000 in 1960), Schwarz gives his listeners definitions of dialectical materialism, short and pointed commercials for his book. You Can Trust the Communists (meaning that Communists can be trusted to drive inexorably toward their goal of subverting the U.S.). He considers himself "the most investigated man in the U.S."
>WE, THE PEOPLE!, an organization that claims membership in 1,700 communities in all 50 states, is run out of a plain, three-room Chicago office by Harry Ev-eryingham, 53, a former radio writer and adman who formed the organization seven years ago. Everyingham believes that the Communist takeover in the U.S. is well along, and that "there are many who are working with the Communists to accomplish this." The titular president of his organization is Tulsa Evangelist Billy Hargis, 36, whose material formed the base for an Air Force manual attacking the Protestant clergy last year. Hargis is convinced that Christianity is a fine place far Communist infiltration because "the Christian idea of brotherhood means to a lot of people turning the other cheek."