Just when I thought the ugly fist of censorship at The John Birch Society had opened, it has clenched again.
On Tuesday, July 8, 2025, I was interviewed, by invitation, by Alex Newman of Liberty Sentinel Media, to discuss the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. I had vetted this in a 2009 article for The New American, which you can read here.
I was assured by Alex’s Chief of Operations: “The interview will be posted at The New American‘s website and all over the internet. We will certainly get you a link.” I put a good deal of work into preparing for the interview, as I had not studied the Shah for many years.
However, a few days later, when I inquired of Alex’s Chief of Operations, I received the following reply:
Hi James,
Unfortunately, after reviewing the interview, the editorial team decided we would not be able to air it. While we recognize that there are evildoers all over the place in all sorts of disguises, fixation on “the Jews” was labeled by Robert Welch as a “tangent” that would make members ineffective in the battle against evil.
Thanks for your time, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
These comments were so incredibly absurd that it was hard to believe that anyone actually made them. Our interview precisely followed the format of the original article—exactly as Alex had wanted. To my recollection, I added only two things:
(1) I mentioned that after publication of the article, the Shah’s widow, the Empress Farah, had requested eight hard copies of the article, surely a testament to the article’s validity.
(2) While enumerating several reasons why the U.S. foreign policy establishment turned against the Shah from the mid-1970s onward, I mentioned something not included in the 2009 article: an interview, since surfaced, that the Shah did with Mike Wallace in 1976, in which he stated that the Jewish lobby exerted excessive influence on U.S. policy. I didn’t say this; he did. You can see the Shah’s interview in many places, such as here.
The only other comment I can remember making that might be interpreted as “Anti-Zionist” was that I said I opposed Israel’s current policy of genocide against the people of Gaza. I said this out of humanitarianism, not “racism.” See my recent article on Gaza, which consists exclusively of the testimony of doctors and nurses who have worked in Gaza. Although hackers succeeded in destroying all 20 of the original videos, I succeeded in restoring 14 of them.
In commenting on Gaza during the Newman interview, I was careful to note that I am half-Jewish myself. I may have briefly said something else negative about the Netanyahu regime; I don’t recall, but I certainly said nothing that—by any stretch of imagination—could be construed as “racist.”
In explaining why the interview was suppressed, Alex Newman’s Chief of Operations stated that
fixation on “the Jews” was labeled by Robert Welch as a “tangent” that would make members ineffective in the battle against evil.
To the contrary, my conversation with Alex, which lasted about a half hour, probably did not address Israel or the Shah’s comments on Jewish influence even for sixty seconds. About 97 percent of my remarks were identical to my original New American article, which is what Alex had expressly said he wanted to address. This could not even remotely be labeled as “fixation on the Jews.”
Inviting me on the show, making me do hours of research, then cancelling the interview based on one or two passing remarks, was much more than the classic “bait and switch”—it was the classic “double cross.”
I want to mention that I know Alex Newman, consider him an honorable man, and I expect that he had little if anything to do with the censorship, which his Chief of Operations attributed to “the editorial team,” whose names I don’t know. I must remark here that it is not at all unusual for a podcast guest to say something that the host disagrees with. It doesn’t mean that the entire interview has to be scrapped. If I said one or two sentences that offended “the editorial team,” all they had to do was edit the sentences out—a very standard practice in both podcasting and magazine publishing. In fact, isn’t editing what “editorial teams” are supposedly for?
This year, The John Birch Society is releasing a new edition of my 1988 book The Shadows of Power. On March 1, 2025, I published a video explaining why I had declined to write an update to the new edition: the Society’s refusal to allow me to explain the true reasons for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, events far too important for the update to ignore.
In the above reply I received from Alex Newman’s Chief of Operations, he stated that “fixation on ‘the Jews’ was labeled by Robert Welch as ‘a tangent that would make members ineffective in the battle against evil.’” Please watch the video referenced above, from about 22:30 on, in which I quote a book published by the John Birch Society under Robert Welch in 1976, which condemned Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, in far harsher terms than I would have used.
Obviously, the current “editorial team” has sparse knowledge of the Society’s own history or Robert Welch’s views.
Today, mainstream conservative spokespersons such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Pastor Chuck Baldwin have condemned the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and U.S. taxpayer support of a regime that, primarily through penetration and manipulation of Islamic groups, has repeatedly used proxy terrorism to attack American and Western interests.
Alex’s Chief of Operations claimed that my approach “would make members ineffective in the battle against evil.” How is telling the truth “ineffective in the battle against evil”? Today, nearly the whole world is awake to the crimes of the political state of Israel. Denying those exceptionally well-documented crimes is what will make an organization “ineffective,” not the other way around.
By the way, I am aware that Alex Newman’s Liberty Sentinel Media is not identical to The John Birch Society. However, since his Chief of Operations, in his emails to me, stressed Robert Welch (the Society’s founder), The New American (the Society’s flagship journal for 40 years) and “members” (which would apply to the Society, not Liberty Sentinel Media), the kinship was undeniable.
Consequently, I rebuke The John Birch Society—not all Birchers, for sure, just those in power who continue to suppress the truth and slander me as an “antisemite.” Will they ever discuss the brutal Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which murdered 34 U.S. sailors and wounded more than 170? They will not. I have said it before; I will say it again: In The John Birch Society, you can criticize the American government all you want—no one will call you “anti-American” if you do. But you cannot criticize a foreign government—the Israeli government—no matter how truthful, no matter how well-documented, no matter how serious the crime. When one holds allegiance to a foreign flag so far above allegiance to the American flag, could that not be considered treason?
If they wish to cancel republication of The Shadows of Power over this post, let them do so. I never requested republication—just as I never asked for the Shah interview—they did. And they muzzled the update I proposed for the book. Again and again, they have wasted my time.
I support no organization that condones censorship, lies, sporadic treason, and acts of genocide by a foreign government.
Addendum 7-28-2025. In reviewing this post, I realized that the final sentence was too broadly harsh. I should have said something on this order:
There are individuals in Appleton (Birch Society headquarters) who condone censorship, lies, sporadic treason, and acts of genocide by a foreign government. These people should be identified and dealt with appropriately.
I could have just edited the sentence, but I don’t like to change history, as it can generate misunderstandings. So I am leaving it as-is, but with this addendum.
