John Stormer was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, attended Pennsylvania State University and graduated from California's San Jose State University after the Korean War. During the war, he served as an Air Force editor and historian. He is a member of the American Legion and the Council For National Policy. Stormer has served on the Missouri Republican State Committee and was state chairman of the Missouri Federation of Young Republicans (1962–64). His further involvement in politics led him to be a member of the Missouri delegation to the Republican Convention which nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. He has honorary degrees from Manahath School of Theology (1965) and Shelton College (1976). He joined the John Birch Society.

Stormer visited Vietnam twice, first in 1965, and has toured many other world trouble spots on fact-finding missions.

With his wife, Elizabeth, Stormer has lived in Florissant, Missouri for the last 35 years.

In the 1950s, John Stormer became disillusioned with the political candidates and philosophies that he was asked to support. In 1962, he left his career as editor and general manager of a leading electrical magazine to begin an intensive study of communism. With what he learned, he wrote the book None Dare Call It Treason which he claims has sold seven million copies, although the book never appeared on any best seller lists. The book argued that the United States was losing the Cold War because it had been heavily infiltrated by Communist subversives.

The title of the book is derived from an epigram of Sir John Harrington. "Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

In his book, None Dare Call It Treason...25 Years Later, he again wrote of what he considered the cultural manipulation in American society and warned of the alleged designs of the Fabian Society and their agenda of democratic socialism. Writing in 1989 he also argued that Perestroika and Glasnost were merely Soviet propaganda tools.

His more recent book, None Dare Call It Education, while having a slant towards Republican politics and evangelicalism, contains an array of statistics demonstrating the failure of American public schools to perform their stated mission.