Katherine Stewart has written several important books about the insidious Right and their radical, racist views. In this article in The New Republic, she looks at an influential reactionary organization, the Claremont Institute, and traces its ideological forebears. From crackpots to intellectual gurus, she traces the Right’s fascination with manliness, racism, anti-Semitism, and its longing for a world led by a new Caesar, a strong man who will protect other men from rapacious women and immigrants.
It’s a long read but worth your time. Stewart looks at the Fascist underbelly of conservatism, and it’s repulsive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“People on one side of the partisan divide are being trained to fear a future fascist takeover. People on the other side are being trained to fear a future communist takeover. Both sides are being trained to overlook the oligarchic totalitarian takeover that has already occurred.”
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Claremont Institute is in recent news not only because of John Eastman but also because of Charles Haywood who is from Indiana and was raised in orthodox Roman Catholicism. Guardian posted today, “US Businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network.” From what Haywood has written, we can deduce how his religious beliefs drive him.
We can speculate why some people are attracted to Claremont. The appeal of its messaging/network to Josh Hammer may or may not be a puzzle. In 2018, he was a John Marshall Fellow of the Institute. Wikipedia describes him in an entry. While Israel has been a subject Hammer addressed, he, to my knowledge, doesn’t tie his sect’s beliefs to advancing his political goals.
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I was just watching the long interviews with Eastman, on Youtube, conducted by Tom Klingenstein. It’s a good thing they were both seated and not moving about the stage. Otherwise, Klingenstein might well have tripped over Eastman’s nose hair.
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Thanks for posting the article link. For those who don’t want to read the entire article, the paragraph above the heading, “What money buys when it thinks it’s buying Ideas” is one of the best.
The final sentence of the Stewart article is profound. “If your power depends on lying to the people, that doesn’t make you noble. It just leaves you with a choice: accept that you are a fraud, or embrace the lie.”
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The example that highlights Stewart’s final sentence- Ohio’s Catholic bishops publicly stated that they had no position on Issue 1 (the vote was Aug.8) because there was no moral component to it. Then, three dioceses, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, spent $900,000 to promote the destruction of democracy via Issue 1.
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@ Linda — Pretty much sums it up (I was going to copy and paste that finally line, but you beat me to it).
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Yikes! Where is Greg when you need him? Biased German philosophy is not my area of expertise. Reading through this caca made me better understand that even those considered intellectuals can be totally out of their minds. All of the references lead to what we know about the current GOP. They are grounded in xenophobia, misogyny and other assorted scapegoating. They have moved from the party of small government to the party of hate. If they take power, they will dismantle so much more than the so-called administrative state. They will dismantle democracy.
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Greg was the smartest guy in the commenter section. He is sorely missed.
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An internet search shows Christopher Flannery who is referenced in the Stewart article, moved to Ashland University (Ohio), a private Christian school, a couple of years ago.
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They should also recall how Caesar ended up.
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These are not intellectuals but social misfits ” right-wing Yale Ph.D. student(s), (who ) woke up one morning after another dateless night on 4chan and thought he was the second coming of Nietzsche” The loser Nazis are just what they appear to be loser Nazis. They feel inferior to women, liberals and the woke. They need the Proud Boys and the like to provide the muscles they lack. The question for the rest of us is do we treat them as the French treated the Vichy before/during or after the war .
But how dare we call them” deplorable “
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woke up one morning after another dateless night on 4chan and thought he was the second coming of Nietzsche
HAAAA!!!
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“This [the new Conservative think tank crowd’s takes on history] isn’t intellectual history; it is cartoon history, rooted in some kind of reactionary pathology,” says Ms. Stewart in her fine, fine essay.
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To the right wingers who latch onto religion’s patriarchy to prop up their manhood… that’s pathetic (Josh Hawley as poster boy).
For the GOP women who are indoctrinated into thinking they should scurry behind men because the men in their lives are incapable of finding purpose (or, uncompetitive on a level playing field with women) …again, pathetic.
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“In a lecture delivered in the safe space of Hillsdale College, Rufo revealed that America’s universities—all of them, apparently, with the exception of Hillsdale and a handful of allies—are in the hands of the woke and discriminate rampantly against right-wingers.”
Yes, if you are an actual expert on a topic, you will not, ipso facto, believe Reich-wing mythologies, and therefore, you will be called “woke” by the Reich-wing. The term “conservative university” is an oxymoron.
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Agree
As was clarified, there has never been a conservative leader. There have been conservative statesmen but, never leaders.
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?
Churchill?
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I don’t recall the author of the quote, its focus was the U.S.
The Statesman (2-17-2023) posted, “Why is the right losing everywhere- the slow death of western conservatism.”
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I seem not to have made my point clearly. The issue is not that colleges have progressive policies but, rather, that if you assemble experts on a bunch of topics, they will tend to be progressives because they actually know stuff. So, for example, if you actually understand something about climate, then you will be a progressive.
It’s not that colleges and universities hire based on ideology, its that ideological leanings to the left are a consequence of hiring experts.
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So, for example, a Conservative college in America will try to hire people with traditional religious beliefs, but according to a recent Pew survey, 59 percent of scientists disavowed traditional religious belief, and another 7 percent said that they didn’t know whether there was a god. So, 66 percent, or two thirds.
That severely narrows the pool of people from which one can staff.
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Especially when the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s view is acted upon- science through the lens of Christianity, etc. and a view that academics can’t be separated from religion.
While I’d reject the idea of more
suffering, a prohibition by
conservative religions
against the Covid vaccination for its members, may have served to advance modernism.
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Leo Strauss’s idea that philosophers practice an “art of writing” whereby they expound a view with an exoteric meaning meant for the general public (and the censors) but hide within their work esoteric meanings for other philosophers subtle enough to discover it is exemplified in the works of Descartes and Kant, both of whom, in different ways, expounded ideas that set limits on what could be known–limits that excluded knowledge of anything like the Christian god, something that they had to explicitly disavow in their work while at the same time propounding views that led inexorably to that belief.
This tendency in philosophy under authoritarian states Strauss found, in particular, among medieval thinkers, who could be imprisoned (like Galileo) or put to death (like Bruno) for expounding the wrong ideas. Another term for what Strauss described is plausible deniability. Yet another is doubletalk, or equivocation.
Modern conservativism has steeped itself in this. It has latched onto plausibly deniable doubletalk, in a big way. Mobsters always did that, of course. They would, knowing that they were being surveilled, issue subtle, oblique commands, and their capos and soldiers would read the esoteric meanings and carry them out. Trump learned to do this from Roy Cohn and has practiced it all his life. So, given that mobsters and Trump can do it, it’s not all that difficult. “They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” said Trump of asylum seekers from Mexico. Why has this become THE way for Conservatives, in their current incarnation, to talk? Well, because they have view so extreme that they would immediately be rejected by most people. They want women back in the kitchen and nursery. They want theocracy and fascism. But they can’t say that outloud. So, they make statements with exoteric meaning for the general public and esoteric meaning for the in-group of other Fascists in the wings–the latter being dog-whistles. Donald Trump’s telling the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by” is an example. The general consumption, or exoteric, meaning is that they should stand down. The esoteric meaning is that they should stand by for the day when they can function as Trump’s version of the S.A., the Sturmabteilung, or Stormtroopers, also known as the Brown Shirts.
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All of the above (my explanation, in moderation, of equivocation and doubletalk from Conservatives in America today, has two justifications. The first is the PRACTICAL one: they can’t just say, outright, that they want to take the vote from women and black people. They have to say it obliquely (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). The second is the THEORETICAL one: in the end, Fascism does not favor some particular political theory. It is about one thing and one thing only, power. This is why Henry Kissinger was (I have no idea what views he is espousing now) the archetypal Fascist. To the Fascist, it’s all about power. Nothing else matters. Screw any particular morality or ideals. Might determines what’s right. The true Fascist believes that everyone who thinks otherwise is deluding himself or herself about the true nature of reality, which is “red in tooth and claw,” period. In other words, Fascism, stripped of everything else, is simply psychopathy, and Fascists are simply psychopaths.
The current Republican party is the party of psychopaths.
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Diane, please remove this link. It was a mistake.
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I hope I removed the right link.
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Yes, thanks, Diane. I accidentally posted my editing page rather than a link to the final piece.
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A truly outstanding essay from Ms. Stewart!!!!
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A sampling of Claremont Lincoln Fellows (2020)
Nathaniel Fischer- Co-founder of Donum Dei Classical Academy
Pavlos Papadopoulos- Asst. Prof at Wyoming Catholic College
Matthew Schmitz- Catholic Herald
Jon Schweppe- he’s with American Principles Project which was co-founded by Robert P George. APP funded the anti-democracy Issue 1 in Ohio on the ballot Aug. 8.
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Thanks so much for posting Ms. Stewart’s masterful essay, Diane! She’s brilliant, and the pairing of you and Ms. Stewart, well, WOW!
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Katherine Stewart is an expert on the religious right. She has written some powerful Books. The latest was “The Power Worshippers.”
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I shall read her. Thanks for the recommendation, Diane.
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This quote from the article is a clear call for (very) old fashioned armed violence ““Given the promise of tyranny, conservative intellectuals must openly ally with the AR-15 crowd,”
This also shows that these people do not go with the times;. New Age fascists use much better and efficient tools than physical violence. Guns are for the clueless and impatient.
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The Claremont Institute, The Heritage Foundation, ALEC, The Federalist Society, Hillsdale College… The right wing list goes on. There are no equivalents on the Progressive side that have the initiative or the willingness to commit resources to fight back. Why not? Can’t we show the light of day just an energetically as the dark side tries to cover it up? I certainly do not have the resources but sure would be happy to roll my sleeves up and get to work with people who do.
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