#Claremont Institute

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Josh Marshall

I want to return to this revelatory interview with coconspirator John Eastman, the last portion of which was published Thursday by Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute and then highlighted by our Josh Kovensky. There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.

Jan 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.

“Our Founders lay this case out,” says Eastman. “There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”

“So that’s the question,” he tells Klingenstein. “Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?”

The answer for Eastman is clearly yes and that’s his justification for his and his associates extraordinary actions.

Let’s dig in for a moment to what this means because it’s a framework of thought or discourse that was central to many controversies in the first decades of the American Republic. The Declaration of Independence has no legal force under American law. It’s not a legal document. It’s a public explanation of a political decision: to break the colonies’ allegiance to Great Britain and form a new country. But it contains a number of claims and principles that became and remain central to American political life.

The one Eastman invokes here is the right to overthrow governments. The claim is that governments have no legitimacy or authority beyond their ability to serve the governed. Governments shouldn’t be overthrown over minor or transitory concerns. But when they become truly oppressive people have a right to get rid of them and start over. This may seem commonsensical to us. But that’s because we live a couple centuries downstream of these events and ideas. Governments at least in theory are justified by how they serve their populations rather than countries being essentially owned by the kings or nobilities which rule them.

But this is a highly protean idea. Who gets to decide? Indeed this question came up again and again over the next century each time the young republic faced a major political crisis, whether it was in the late 1790s, toward the end of the War of 1812, in 1832-33 or finally during the American Civil War. If one side didn’t get its way and wanted out what better authority to cite than the Declaration of Independence? There is an obvious difference but American political leaders needed a language to describe it. What they came up with is straightforward. It’s the difference between a constitutional or legal right and a revolutionary one. Abraham Lincoln was doing no more than stating a commonplace when he said this on the eve of the Civil War in his first inaugural address (emphasis added): “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

In other words, yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government if you really think its abuses have gotten that intractable and grave. But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang. They accepted that. They didn’t claim that George III had no choice but to let them go.

From the beginning the Trump/Eastman coup plotters have tried to wrap their efforts in legal processes and procedures. It was their dissimulating shield to hide the reality of their coup plot and if needed give them legal immunity from the consequences. The leaders of the secession movement tried the same thing in 1861.

In a way I admire Eastman for coming clean. I don’t know whether he sees the writing on the wall and figures he might as well lay his argument out there or whether his grad school political theory pretensions and pride got the better of him and led him to state openly this indefensible truth. Either way he’s done it and not in any way that’s retrievable as a slip of the tongue. They knew it was a coup and they justified it to themselves in those terms. He just told us. They believed they were justified in trying to overthrow the government, whether because of OSHA chair size regulations or drag queens or, more broadly, because the common herd of us don’t understand the country’s “founding principles” the way Eastman and his weirdo clique do. But they did it. He just admitted it. And now they’re going to face the consequences.

#us politics #news #talking points memo #2023 #op eds #Tom Klingenstein #Claremont Institute #john eastman #Josh Kovensky #Josh Marshall #jan 6 investigation #jan 6 insurrection #domestic terrorism #treason #traitors #donald trump #capitol riot investigation #Declaration of Independence

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Katherine Stewart at TNR (08.10.2023):

Earlier this year, nearly 1,000 supporters of “National Conservatism” gathered at the semicircular auditorium of the Emmanuel Centre, an elegant London meeting hall a couple of blocks south of Westminster Abbey, to hear from a range of scholars, commentators, politicians, and public servants. NatCon conferences, as they are often called, have been held in Italy, Belgium, and Florida and are broadly associated with what is increasingly called the “New Right.” In London, speakers denounced “woke politics,” blamed immigration for the rising cost of housing, and said modern ills could be solved with more religion and more (nonimmigrant) babies. The break room was lined with booths from organizations such as the Viktor Orbán–affiliated Danube Institute, the U.K.-based conservative think tank the Bow Group, the Heritage Foundation, and the legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, which is headquartered in Arizona but has expanded to include offices in nearly a half-dozen European cities. When I attended NatCon London in May, I heard a number of American accents in the crowd, and I was not surprised to see Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank, on the lineup. These days, Anton and other key representatives of the Claremont Institute seem to be everywhere: onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC); at the epicenter of Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke”; and on speed-dial with GOP allies including Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, and Donald Trump.

Most of us are familiar with the theocrats of the religious right and the anti-government extremists, groups that overlap a bit but remain distinct. The Claremont Institute folks aren’t quite either of those things, and yet they’re both and more. In embodying a kind of nihilistic yearning to destroy modernity, they have become an indispensable part of right-wing America’s evolution toward authoritarianism. Extremism of the right-wing variety has always figured on the sidelines of American culture, and it has enjoyed a renaissance with the rise of social media. But Claremont represents something new in modern American politics: a group of people, not internet conspiracy freaks but credentialed and influential leaders, who are openly contemptuous of democracy. And they stand a reasonable chance of being seated at the highest levels of government—at the right hand of a President Trump or a President DeSantis, for example.

[...]

Founded in 1979 in the city of Claremont, California (but not associated in an official way with any of the five colleges there), the Claremont Institute provided enthusiastic support for Donald Trump in 2016. Individuals associated with Claremont now fund and help run the National Conservativism gatherings; Claremont Institute chairman and funder Thomas D. Klingenstein also funds the Edmund Burke Foundation, which has held those National Conservatism conferences across the globe. Claremont is deeply involved in DeSantis’s effort to remake Florida’s state universities in the model of Hillsdale College—a private, right-wing, conservative Christian academy in Michigan whose president, Larry Arnn, happens to be one of the institute’s founders and former presidents. Claremont honored DeSantis at an annual gala with its 2021 “Statesmanship Award,” and the governor returned the favor by organizing a discussion with a “brain trust” that included figures associated with the Claremont Institute. If either Trump or DeSantis becomes president in 2024, Claremont and its associates are likely to be integral to the “brain trust” of the new administration. Indeed, some of them are certain to become appointees in the administrative state that they wish (or so they say) to destroy.

The Claremont Institute in the Trump era has become a clearinghouse for far-right and fascistic ideas.  

#Claremont Institute #Conservativism #Right Wing Extremism #Alliance Defending Freedom #Danube Institute #The Heritage Foundation #Michael Anton #CPAC #CPAC Hungary #Bow Group

[empirearchives]

Pretty Napoleonic era fashion plates from 1801

#engravings #prints #claremont institute #fashion plates #fashion #costume plates #costumes #fashion plate #engraving #print #napoleonic era #napoleonic #first french empire #french empire #empire style #regency #fashion history #history of fashion #empire waistline #empire waist #apron #bonnet #19th century #1800s #1800s fashion #historical fashion #dresses

[msclaritea]

Tom Klingenstein, founder of the Claremont Institute, another Social Engineering farce, is the one behind all of Death To America bull, and those Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan are a bunch of clowns, for agreeing to be minions for a fascist.

So, we have yet ANOTHER Jewish billionaire, funding antisemitism, rightwing activities (THAT WOULD INCLUDE SUBJECTING CHILDREN TO THE EXPOSURE OF PORN!!) and more importantly, funding Muslims in America. All of this, to keep those obscene Tax Credits How many is that, now, when you throw in governors like Pritzker and bullies like Peltz?

"The Claremont Institute’s main funder is Thomas D. Klingenstein, a NYC investment manager who chairs the institute’s board. His firm, Cohen Klingenstein, reported about $2.4 billion worth of stock in publicly traded companies including $20 million in FaceBook & Twitter....Not JUST coup-designer disbarred john eastman. Claremont also stipends an indoctrination summer school for law enforcement at the most local level.

claremont.org/fellowships/sha

#TomKlingenstein #Trump #ClaremontInstitute #Israel #ChuckJohnson #BenShapiro #Facebook #Twitter

#we have yet ANOTHER Jewish billionaire funding antisemitism #rightwing activities and more importantly #funding Muslims in America. All of t #ALL OF THIS TO KEEP TAX CREDITS AT OBSCENE LEVELS #Cohen Klingenstein #Institute Responsible For Indoctrinating American Law Enforcement #Police Academies #Trump Tax Scam #Twitter #Facebook #Jewish Billionaire Bullies #Norman Peltz #Jewish Billionaire Funds Institute That Promotes Antisemitism #Claremont Institute

[mounadiloun]

Un antisémite chargé de lutter contre l'antisémitisme à Harvard?

On se souvient de la chasse au sorcières qui a visé des présidents d’universités aux Etats Unis, accusés de laxisme face à l’antisémitisme qui caractériserait les  manifestations croissantes de solidarité des étudiants avec la Palestine. Les principales cibles de cette chasse aux sorcières ont été trois femmes présidentes d’universités parmi les plus prestigieuses des États Unis Liz Magill…

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#Anti Defamation League #Christopher Rufo #Claremont Institute #Claudine Gay #Derek Penslar #Elise Stefanik #Harvard #Jonathan Greenblatt #Liz Magill #Palestine #sionisme #Tamir Pardo

[world-fresh-news]

Far-right VC sells ammo to feds, but thinks they're corrupt!

Doubling down on hypocrisy, a right-wing entrepreneur who is a co-owner of a company that sells ammunition to the federal government and local law enforcement regularly promotes government-bashing conspiracy theories on social media. The entrepreneur, Nathaniel Fisher, is also the CEO of New Founding, a venture capital firm that he describes as a “venture capital firm and talent network for the…

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#Anthony Miglini #Claremont Institute

[upnorthprogressive]

Mason County's CSPOA Member Kim Cole Will Attend the State Of the Union Address

Tonight the world will watch as President Biden gives his State of the Union Address. This requirement is stated in Article II of the United States Constitution. It is customary for members of Congress to invite a guest to sit in the mezzanine gallery and watch the event. Tonight, John Moolenaar (R – Wants to reopen GEO’s Punk Prison) will have “constitutional” Sheriff Kim Cole from Mason County…

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#Claremont Institute #Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association #CSPOA #John Eastman #John Moolenaar #Mason County #Michigan #Sheriff Kim Cole #State of the Union Address

[qupritsuvwix]

#sheriffs #claremont institute #trumpster fire #christo fascism #the man who shot liberty valance

[uboat53]

Hey guys, check your local sheriffs. There's a movement to turn them into the heads of private militias instead of fair enforcers of the law. If your guy is into this, best you know about it.

#us politics #politics #claremont institute #sherriffs

[typicalopposite]

On the (very likely) chance a sequel is not announced today… I have very hastily come up with a possible answer as to why. 😀

So by now we have all collectively (at least those of us who have seen it) agonized over Prime Video's November is for sequels post… right? Well, I think I may have figured it out...

There are four more deleted scenes that we know of and if I'm not mistaken Aneesh said there's one we don't know of… so that's five.

There is at least one interview in the works.

TZP made a rwrb related post for thanksgiving so if he doesn't for new years (and maybe NG too) I'm fairly certain that could be marketed as a crime in most countries.

Both Alex and Henry's birthdays are in March.

The books came out in May (OG) and October (collector's edition) and the movie in August so those months with get some form of content for sure.

Which leaves Matthew finishing off his look who I founds.

Add that all up and put them in order, that comes up to new content each month for 12 months which will put us back in November when we will get the sequel announcement

Because November is for sequels. 🤡

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb on prime #firstprince #henry hanover stuart fox #alex claremont diaz #taylor zakhar perez #nicholas galitzine #this is it #I have gone mad #prime I’ll be forwarding you the mental institution bill

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Considering how rapidly the right's "war on woke" is expanding, it was perhaps inevitable: Self-identified "mama bears" on a Texas school board are angry that a classroom had a poster showing people of different races holding hands. Last week, the school board in Conroe, Texas, a small city north of Houston, turned the right-wing mania for censorship into a dark parody of itself. At issue? A poster that seemed to imply that interracial friendship is possible.

According to ABC 13 Eyewitness News in Houston, things started when school trustee Melissa Dungan declared that she had spoken to parents who were upset about "displays of personal ideologies in classrooms." When pressed for an example, according to the news report, "Dungan referred to a first grade student whose parent claimed they were so upset by a poster showing hands of people of different races, that they transferred classrooms."

"I wish I was shocked," Dungan said of the poster. "I am aware these trends have been happening for many years."

Some other members of the school board did, in fact, argue that there was nothing objectionable about such a poster. But Dungan was backed up by another trustee, Misty Odenweller, who insisted that the depiction of uh, race-mixing was in some way a "violation of the law." The two women are part of "Mama Bears Rising," a secretive far-right group fueling the book-banning mania in Conroe and the surrounding area. At least 59 books have been banned due to their efforts.

When another trustee asked Dungan if she personally objected to an illustration of cross-racial friendship, she demurred, simply declaring that she was just trying to avoid "situations like that." Situations like what, exactly? She didn't say.

Dungan's behavior is a perfect illustration of the "anti-woke" tap dance. The person alleging nefarious wokeness never admits to their own bigotry, instead pretending that they're reacting to "woke" people who are "pushing" an agenda, in this case through innocuous poster art.

Of course, the entire premise of the argument is rooted in bigotry, as this example shows. It presumes that the feelings of real or imagined bigots who might take umbrage at such an image are of paramount importance, and that everyone else's freedoms must be curtailed to appease them.

It's tempting to shrug it off as one-off weirdness from Nowheresville, Texas. But while this was an especially ham-fisted example, it's part of a well-funded nationwide effort, led by a group of interlocking far-right groups, aimed at destroying modernity, undermining democracy and imposing authoritarian government against the will of most Americans.

Donald Trump sucks up most of the oxygen in the discussion about rising American fascism, but even without him, this movement is powerful and widespread, and it's using these local culture-war skirmishes battles to seize even more power. And old-fashioned racism, the kind on display in Conroe, is very much at the center of it all.

Last week, the New Republic published a lengthy and terrifying investigative article by Katherine Stewart about the Claremont Institute, once a vaguely respectable conservative think tank and now among the leading right-wing organizations pushing the anti-education and anti-democratic agenda below the surface of the Conroe incident.

One of the many Claremont alumni Stewart profiles is Christopher Rufo, who spearheaded the recent hysteria over "critical race theory" in education. In reality, critical race theory was an approach used in law schools and other graduate-level academic spaces, and had basically nothing to do with public schools.

Rufo's ingenious idea was to turn it into a catch-all scare term that could be used to demonize any and all forms of anti-racist education, even something as previously noncontroversial as a poster depicting interracial friendship.

The far-right, anti-democratic politics of the Claremont Institute are so grotesque that many readers will dismiss them as preposterous, but it's all carefully documented and disturbingly real. As Stewart chronicles, Claremont has promoted the work of Costin Alamariu, who holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale and writes under the name "Bronze Age Pervert." He has declared that the "liberation of women" is an "infection" that requires "the most terrible convulsions and the most thorough purgative measures."

A frequent contributor to Claremont's online journal, who writes under the name "Raw Egg Nationalist," argues that "men and women shouldn't work together in the same spaces" and describes the Black Lives Matter protesters of 2020 as "hideously ugly, malformed people." Claremont-associated blogger Curtis Yarvin argues (in Stewart's words) that "America needs a king, a dictator with total military power." Claremont's most famous associate is board member and former law professor John Eastman, now known as "Co-Conspirator 2" in the indictment against Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow the U.S. government.

Because of their tight link to the book-banning efforts, the relatively new but suspiciously wealthy group Moms for Liberty has received massive media attention in the past couple of years. Even so, the group's radical ideology has not really been covered in most mainstream news coverage, which tends to portray the Moms as a bunch of overzealous church ladies. As Flux editor Matthew Sheffield, Media Matters vice president Julie Millican and researcher Olivia Little explained in a recent "Theory of Change" podcast, however, underneath the facade of "Christian moms" is some startling far-right radicalism.

For instance, while it was widely reported that a Moms for Liberty pamphlet from one branch was caught quoting Adolf Hitler, the group was able to spin that as a misunderstanding and a mistake. But at their summit a few days later, speaker Tiffany Justice yelled, "I stand with that mom" — the one who quoted Hitler — while the audience whooped its approval.

Moms for Liberty has heavily promoted trainings for conservative activists on how to take over school boards, which ought to make clear how we should understand stories like this one, which just sound like a racist tantrum in a Texas suburb. These aren't random or isolated events — they're part of a large, well-organized and well-financed attack on public education across the country.

Mama Bears Rising, the group that fueled the Conroe school board takeover, in unsurprisingly discreet about its connections to the larger national movement for censorship. But screenshots of online communications by local anti-censorship activists suggests that it's no coincidence that the books targeted for censorship in Conroe are the same ones that show up on book-ban lists across the country. Mama Bears Rising is drawing on the same playbook that's being disseminated nationwide through a well-funded network of Christian nationalist activists.

These days, it's almost never just one nutty lady at a school board meeting. It's about a movement with a committed ideology, that has deep connections to Donald Trump's campaign to end democracy.

#us politics #news #salon #2023 #republicans #conservatives #book banning #book bans #wokeness #woke #moms for liberty #interracial friendship #racists #xenophobia #tweet #twitter #Mama Bears Rising #Claremont Institute #Costin Alamariu #Christopher Rufo #critical race theory #Curtis Yarvin #John Eastman #Tiffany Justice #adolf hitler #censorship

[illyanarasputinfan]

I would love to attend this.

#The Uncanny Experience #X-Men #MARVEL #Marvel Comics #Marvel Heroes #Youtube #Chris Claremont #Lenore Zann #Cal Dodd #The Xavier Institute #X-Men Cosplay #Cosplay #Cosplayer #Cosplayers

[nando161mando]

via @slackbastard

#slackbastard #yeahnahpasaran #194 #jasonwilson #pseudoscience #nazis #february 8 #2024 #3cr #855am #portland #oregon #the claremont institute #us politics #nsn #nationalsocialistnetwork #nationalism #harvard #neofascism #neonazis #invasion day #australia day #racism #racist #fascism #race science #eugenics #ausgov #politas #auspol

[wingedtyger]

Ben-Day Shots - Captain Britain #5

Captain Britain #5 Week Ending Nov 10, 1976Cover Price: 10 pence Characters: Captain Britain / Brian Braddock, Courtney Ross, Hurricane, Jacko Tanner, Chief Inspector Dai Thomas, Sandy York First Appearance: Dr. Neil MacKenzie, Detective Inspector Kate Fraser Content Note: disasters, falling buildings, digging people out of rubble (no pictures), radiation We start with one of those nice…

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#Captain Britain #Claremont-isms #Cops vs Heroes #Courtney Ross #Dai Thomas #Dr MacKenzie #fools at the institute #Hurricane #Kate Fraser #Nuclear Power #Sandy York #science! #secret identity antics

[ttpd-chair]

#the claremont institute #article #us politics

[oldshowbiz]

As absurd as this 1970s tabloid headline is, it's precisely the type of horseshit that billionaire-funded think tanks and endowments like the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Olin Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation like to push to this day - under the guise of scholarship.

#think tank #corporations #america