As a child, Denis Mueller looked up to president Dwight D. Eisenhower as a grandfather figure. He admired “Ike” for sending the army to Arkansas in 1957 to protect a group of black students at then-integrating Little Rock Central High School.
Now, the 68-year-old documentarian said, he wonders, “What happened to the Republican Party?” That’s the premise of Mueller’s latest short film, “From Ike to Trump: The GOP and Race,” which screens at the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington on Saturday, February 9. It spans decades to provide an overview of the civil rights movement and voter suppression in the U.S.
Mueller is best known for the documentary Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, narrated by Matt Damon, which he codirected with University of Vermont associate professor Deb Ellis. (That film is showing Sunday, February 10, at Montpelier’s Savoy Theater, but as of press time was sold out.) In the 33-minute “From Ike to Trump,” Mueller uses newsreels and archival footage to show how, after Ike, “the radical right would change the mission of the party of Abraham Lincoln and oppose the civil rights movement,” he says in the film. He names Barry Goldwater, the five-term senator from Arizona, as the person who changed the course of the GOP.
Mueller said he chose to use archival materials instead of shooting new footage because he wanted to finesse his editing skills. As a former film researcher, he knew what was out there and how much he could use without running afoul of copyright issues.
“From Ike to Trump” links 20th-century history, such as the rise of the anti-communist John Birch Society, to more recent events, including the 2017 student protests of author Charles Murray’s talk at Middlebury College; Stacey Abrams’ run for governor in Georgia, which has one of the strictest voter-ID laws in the country; and President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.
Mueller said he hopes to visit schools across the country to talk about “From Ike to Trump,” giving students a crash course in the history that informs the controversies of today.
The original print version of this article was headlined “New Local Documentary Asks What Happened to the GOP”
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This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2019.
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The John Birch Society is the puppet master behind the right wing extremists who have seized control of the GOP and the White House!!!!
Keep in mind that the Birch Society does NOT believe that the current leadership of the GOP represents their viewpoints. The JBS has given a “FAIL” score to every Congress in recent memory. Even Tea Party favorites often score very low on the JBS “Freedom Index” which scores voting behavior of all members of Congress.
The John Birch Society is only “far-right” if you’re on the far-left. The JBS simply wants the Constitution enforced which is very moderate to normal people.
In reply to Jonathan Carter: IF your comment was accurate and truthful, then the JBS would be supported by most conservative individuals, organizations and publications. However, the exact opposite is the case. Virtually the entire conservative movement in the U.S. has denounced and rejected the JBS as a right-wing extremist organization.
JBS critics have included such prominent conservative Americans such as:
Sen. Barry Goldwater, Cong. Walter Judd, Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Russell Kirk, Eugene Lyons, Willmoore Kendall, James Burnham, Robert Bork, J. Edgar Hoover, Herbert Philbrick, Frank S. Meyer, Cong. Gordon H. Scherer, William F. Buckley Jr., Patrick Buchanan, Fred Schwarz, Lee Edwards, the editors of the conservative newspaper Human Events, George Sokolsky, Roy Cohn, Anthony Bouscaren.
Many Birchers (including some of their most prominent writers and speakers and lifetime members) left the Society in disgust such as: Alan Stang, Gary Allen, Dr. Charles Provan, Milorad Draskovich, John Rees, and William Norman Grigg. Even Mrs. Robert Welch (the widow of JBS founder Robert Welch) withdrew her support from the JBS after her husband died.
Further reply to Jonathan Carter:
The Birch Society has the “distinction” of being the only national conservative “educational” organization to have lost an historic precedent-setting defamation lawsuit after the JBS described Chicago lawyer Elmer Gertz in an article it published in its monthly magazine as a Communist fronter and a Leninist who was engaged in a conspiracy against the Chicago police.
After 14 years of litigation, including two different jury trials, numerous appeals, and review by the U.S. Supreme Court, the JBS paid Gertz $100,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages for malice. Because the JBS appealed the initial decision, the final payment (including accrued interest) was almost $500,000 (which is about $1.5 million in 2017 dollars). Punitive damages are only allowed in libel actions when malice can be shown. Malice, in legalese, refers to reckless disregard for truth arising from evil intent and a desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering.
As one Appeals Court observed about the JBS article on Gertz:
There was more than enough evidence for the jury to conclude that this article was published with utter disregard for the truth or falsity of the statements contained in the article about Gertz. [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, No. 81-2483, Elmer Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 6/16/82, page 20].
In addition: J. Edgar Hoover and senior officials of the FBI concluded that the Birch Society was a “right-wing extremist” organization that did NOT deal in facts.