Robert W. Welch, Jr. - Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories

"Wherever he looked, Welch saw Communist forces manipulating American economic and foreign policy on behalf of totalitarianism. But within the United States, he believed, the subversion had actually begun years before the Bolshevik Revolution. Conflating modern liberalism and totalitarianism, Welch described government as 'always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom.' Consequently, he charged, the Progressive era, which expanded the federal government’s role in curbing social and economic ills, was a dire period in our history, and Woodrow Wilson 'more than any other one man started this nation on its present road to totalitarianism' ... In the 1960's, Welch became convinced that even the Communist movement was but 'a tool of the total conspiracy.' This master conspiracy, he said, had forerunners in ancient Sparta, and sprang fully to life in the 18th century, in the 'uniformly Satanic creed and program' of the Bavarian Illuminati. Run by those he called 'the Insiders,' the conspiracy resided chiefly in international families of financiers, such as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, government agencies like the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service, and nongovernmental organizations like the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission." — Sean Wilentz, Princeton University historian, October 2010

Welch accused Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower of being communist sympathizers and possibly Soviet agents of influence. He alleged that President Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy", and that Eisenhower's brother Milton was the President's superior in the communist apparatus. President Eisenhower never responded publicly to Welch's claims.