If one is investigating how the #Claremont #Institute, the California-based think tank, came to be such a hotbed of Trumpists and Trumpism
—think about such notorious Claremont fellows as #Michael #Anton and #John #Eastman, and #Victor #Davis #Hanson , on whom Claremont bestowed its annual statesmanship award
—following the money is a useful strategy.

One major source of Claremont’s money is #Tom #Klingenstein, chairman of the institute’s board of directors and its biggest individual funder.
Klingenstein is a partner in the Wall Street investment firm Cohen Klingenstein, which manages a portfolio worth around $2.5 billion, according to its most recent Security and Exchange Commission filing.
IRS figures compiled by the Guardian show that Klingenstein has donated more than $19 million to the Claremont Institute since 2005, with a $2.97 million donation in 2021, his most generous contribution to date.

Klingenstein is also one of the Claremont Institute’s intellectual impresarios, having put out a multipart presentation in 2021 about America’s 🔸“cold civil war” 🔸and 🔹“the existential threat of the woke regime.” 🔹

It is just as reasonable, measured, and temperate as you’d imagine.

Then, in 2022, Klingenstein delivered an encomium titled ♦️Trump’s Virtues.♦️

He was arguing—two years before the presidential primaries, mind you—that the best candidate whom the Republican party could put forward would be Donald Trump.

Trump, Klingenstein said,
"was born for the current crisis: the life and death struggle against the totalitarian enemy I call “woke communism.”

The “woke comms” clench the Democratic party by the scruff of its neck. They tell us lies and silence those who challenge the lies.
Like most totalitarian regimes, they have a scape goat [sic] (white males).

Trump, he continued, “is a manly man.”
(I swear I am not making this up.)

“In present times, when manhood is being stripped of its masculinity, traditional manhood, even when flawed, has much appeal.”

And so on and so forth, in a gusher of praise, some of it veering into the homoerotic, some into the sadistic:
Trump, that pillar of manliness, “smoked rats out of their hiding places” and “ripped apart people he thought were weak.” (What the hell?)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trumps-virtues-and-other-fairy-tales

Revealed: US professor Scott Yenor
was behind extremist site that spread conspiracies

Boise State University (BSU) professor and #Claremont #Institute scholar #Scott #Yenor was the hidden hand behind #Action #Idaho, a far-right online media platform that featured inflammatory rightwing commentary on politics in that state, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The documents, obtained through public records requests, also show that 💥Yenor sought and received funding for the initiative from wealthy and influential donors like Claremont Institute board chair, Thomas D #Klingenstein.💥

He also attempted to hire a rising conservative writer, #Pedro #Gonzalez, to lead the initiative.
Gonzalez was later embroiled in a controversy about #antisemitic remarks he made in online chats in 2019 and 2020.

They also show him tapping a network of expertise that overlaps both with the Claremont Institute and the Society for American Civic Renewal ( #SACR ), a secretive fraternal #Christian #Nationalist organization the Guardian has reported on extensively.

Yenor has not publicly disclosed his involvement in Action Idaho, and it has only been fleetingly mentioned in previous reporting on Talking Points Memo. The revelations could raise further questions about the 💥potential conflicts between Yenor’s professorial position at a public university and his political activism.💥

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/29/boise-state-university-professor-scott-yenor-action-idaho?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Why has so much of the American conservative movement embraced the story that the principles of equality and the pursuit of a more just society are the greatest threats to Western civilization today?

Who or what is responsible for giving these paranoid ideas an intellectual veneer?

The 🔸Claremont Institute🔸 gets you much of the way to an answer.

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.
#ClaremontInstitute #LarryArnn #Klingenstein #EdmundBurkeFoundation
https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump

https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump

Ironically, the folks pushing the "rescue-America-from-the-woke" narrative don’t look much like the hardworking “real” Americans they purport to speak for.

Educated, urbane, politely attired —they look a bit more like the villains of the tale than the people who are supposed to be rising up against the regime.

Yet, under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, this conviction has become something close to the official ideology of the third most populous state in the nation.

Donald Trump too has shifted his rhetoric to claim ownership of what is, in essence, an ultra-MAGA narrative.

👉 Why has so much of the American conservative movement embraced the story that the principles of equality and the pursuit of a more just society are the greatest threats to Western civilization today?

👉 Who or what is responsible for giving these paranoid ideas an intellectual veneer?

The 🔸Claremont Institute🔸 gets you much of the way to an answer.

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.
#ClaremontInstitute #LarryArnn #Klingenstein #EdmundBurkeFoundation
https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump

The far-right financier giving millions to the Republican party to fight ‘woke communists’
Thomas Klingenstein has become one of the largest donors to the party and has increasingly used his resources to pursue a hard-edged version of rightwing politics
#klingenstein #classwar #usa #election2024 #gop

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/far-right-republican-donor-woke-thomas-klingenstein?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other