New documents detail inner workings of Society for American Civic Renewal, group with an emphasis on Christian nationalism
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 19 Mar 2024
New documents have shed light on the origins and inner workings of the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), including methods for judging the beliefs of potential members on topics such as Christian nationalism, and indications that its founders sought inspiration in an apartheid-era South African white men-only group, the Afrikaner-Broederbond.
They also show that Boise State University Professor and Claremont thinktank scholar Scott Yenor tried to coordinate SACR’s activities with other initiatives, including an open letter on “Christian marriage”.
One expert says that one of the new documents – some previously reported in Talking Points Memo – use biblical references that suggest a preparedness for violent struggle against the current “regime”.
The SACR is a secretive far-right men-only organization with an emphasis on Christian nationalism and a desire to open branches across the US.
The Guardian has previously reported on SACR’s close links to the Claremont Institute, an influential rightwing thinktank with fellows who have participated in attempts to overturn the 2020 election and promoted the idea that an authoritarian “Red Caesar” might redeem a US republic they see as decadent.
SACR’s origins appear to date to the latter half of 2020, with key milestones in the group’s development coming over the following 18 months.
And there are indications that the inner circle of the group sought inspiration from earlier iterations of Christian nationalism in authoritarian states.
As previously reported in the Guardian, Skyler Kressin, a tax consultant based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to play a central administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-21 tax return.
On 30 October 2020, Kressin wrote an email to Yenor with the question “that good?”, along with a screenshot of an Amazon listing for Super-Afrikaners, a book by the investigative journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom.
First published in 1978, Super-Afrikaners exposed the workings of South Africa’s Broederbond, a secretive, exclusive, men-only network that promoted the interests of white Afrikaners in that country and which is credited with a significant role in bringing the National party – the architects of apartheid – to power.
Within half an hour, Yenor replied: “That’s the one”.
The Guardian contacted Scott Yenor with detailed questions on aspects of this reporting, including whether or not the Afrikaner Broederbond had been an inspiration for SACR.
He did not respond directly to most of those questions, but on the matter of SACR’s secrecy, he wrote in an email: “We maintain confidentiality because we know talentless punks like you would pose ridiculous, bad-faith questions meant to stoke your unhinged fever dreams and incriminate us and even unaffiliated people.”
Yenor continued: “Lazy propagandists who disregard ethics in journalism don’t deserve detailed responses.”
The Guardian invited Yenor to respond to the initial questions.
SACR’s rules and vetting process
In the early part of 2021, Yenor drafted documents that firmed up SACR’s purpose and character.
To a 27 April 2021 email sent to himself and his wife at her employment address, Yenor attached a document entitled “Working membership and recruiting guide for chapter leadership”.
In spelling out SACR’s rules, the document reveals the high value the organization places on secrecy. It says that “all discussion is confidential unless clearly noted otherwise”; and “all names of attendees are strictly confidential”. The document even says that members should withhold information from prospective members, instructing that members should “never reveal the names of other Chapter members to prospects”, and “never reveal national or chapter initiatives to prospects – speak only in general terms about our objectives and mission”.
The document also lays out procedures for vetting such prospects. After chapter leaders have decided that a prospect is “worthy of consideration”, they should be invited to a chapter event.
The document says that at that point, members should “gauge alignment and fit” with questions such as “What are your thoughts on Christian nationalism?”, “Comment on the Trump presidency and what it entails for the future”, and “Describe the dynamic of your household in terms of your role and that of your wife.”
In the first section – “membership criteria” – the document says membership in the group is “predicated on political alignment and faithfulness to the Christian religion, combined with virtue and with any of community influence, capability, or wealth”.
The document elaborates on each of these criteria.
Alignment is “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and an acceptance of traditional natural law in ethics”.
Natural law is a view with a long history on the right which holds that fundamental moral principles arise from God or nature, not from human reflection or politics. It is a view that Claremont scholars have attempted to provide.
Faithfulness also has a patriarchal edge in SACR’s definition: it is “submission to the authority and standards of behavior of a particular Trinitarian Christian body”, but also “taking ownership as head of the household in terms of leading regular prayer and spiritual reading and reflection”.
Influence is defined as “the ability to make a mark primarily on culture and social discourse but also in politics and business. The positions here can range from equity ownership in productive enterprises to positions of influence in cultural, religious and intellectual institutions.”
Recruiting efforts for the group included visits to Boise from out-of-town collaborators.
A 19 March 2021 email from Yenor lays out a draft schedule for a visit to Boise by Aaron Renn, senior fellow and editor of “theocon” website American Reformer – co-founded by Nate Fischer – and a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Plans included “dinner at Epi’s”, a Basque restaurant in Boise; a meeting with representatives of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right thinktank; and a guest lecture by Renn to Yenor’s students.
Also planned were “drinks with SACR possibles” where Yenor anticipated a “soft sell as per Skyler’s method”, a comment which is not explained further.
The documents indicate Yenor had worked on putting together a group of “SACR possibles” ahead of Renn’s visit.
In a 19 March 2021 exchange, Yenor and his son Jackson workshop the wording of an invitation to prospective SACR members to an evening talk at a local “classical Christian” academy, the Ambrose school. While Scott Yenor’s original had “a national movement with national ambitions”, Jackson Yenor replied with the recommendation: “Say goals instead of ambitions. These guys are ‘goal oriented’ business people, not Machiavelli.”
Further on, the text advised prospective recruits that “chapters will unite public-spirited men who are interested in doing the work of civic renewal. This might involve shoring up teetering institutions. It might involve seeking to turn corrupt institutions.”
The Ambrose School is a “classical Christian” academy in Meridian, on the western edge of the Boise metro area, where Yenor’s wife Amy works as an events coordinator.
The draft invitation does not indicate any date for the drinks meeting, but Yenor’s visit happened less than three weeks after Yenor was working on the text.
The Guardian contacted Boise State University to ask whether there were any policies about faculty combining guest lecturer visits with political activism, but there was no immediate response.
Other documents appear to be connected to SACR recruiting.
On several occasions, Yenor emailed a link to the sacr.us domain with no further context or explanation in the email text. One such email was sent to the Gmail address of the chief executive of a civil engineering company in Pennsylvania. Another was sent to a lawyer and former justice department employee in Tallahassee, Florida.
New documents have shed light on the origins and inner workings of the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), including methods for judging the beliefs of potential members on topics such as Christian nationalism, and indications that its founders sought inspiration in an apartheid-era South African white men-only group, the Afrikaner-Broederbond.
They also show that Boise State University Professor and Claremont thinktank scholar Scott Yenor tried to coordinate SACR’s activities with other initiatives, including an open letter on “Christian marriage”.
One expert says that one of the new documents – some previously reported in Talking Points Memo – use biblical references that suggest a preparedness for violent struggle against the current “regime”.
The SACR is a secretive far-right men-only organization with an emphasis on Christian nationalism and a desire to open branches across the US.
The Guardian has previously reported on SACR’s close links to the Claremont Institute, an influential rightwing thinktank with fellows who have participated in attempts to overturn the 2020 election and promoted the idea that an authoritarian “Red Caesar” might redeem a US republic they see as decadent.
SACR’s origins appear to date to the latter half of 2020, with key milestones in the group’s development coming over the following 18 months.
And there are indications that the inner circle of the group sought inspiration from earlier iterations of Christian nationalism in authoritarian states.
As previously reported in the Guardian, Skyler Kressin, a tax consultant based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to play a central administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-21 tax return.
On 30 October 2020, Kressin wrote an email to Yenor with the question “that good?”, along with a screenshot of an Amazon listing for Super-Afrikaners, a book by the investigative journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom.
First published in 1978, Super-Afrikaners exposed the workings of South Africa’s Broederbond, a secretive, exclusive, men-only network that promoted the interests of white Afrikaners in that country and which is credited with a significant role in bringing the National party – the architects of apartheid – to power.
Within half an hour, Yenor replied: “That’s the one”.
The Guardian contacted Scott Yenor with detailed questions on aspects of this reporting, including whether or not the Afrikaner Broederbond had been an inspiration for SACR.
He did not respond directly to most of those questions, but on the matter of SACR’s secrecy, he wrote in an email: “We maintain confidentiality because we know talentless punks like you would pose ridiculous, bad-faith questions meant to stoke your unhinged fever dreams and incriminate us and even unaffiliated people.”
Yenor continued: “Lazy propagandists who disregard ethics in journalism don’t deserve detailed responses.”
The Guardian invited Yenor to respond to the initial questions.
SACR’s rules and vetting process
In the early part of 2021, Yenor drafted documents that firmed up SACR’s purpose and character.
To a 27 April 2021 email sent to himself and his wife at her employment address, Yenor attached a document entitled “Working membership and recruiting guide for chapter leadership”.
In spelling out SACR’s rules, the document reveals the high value the organization places on secrecy. It says that “all discussion is confidential unless clearly noted otherwise”; and “all names of attendees are strictly confidential”. The document even says that members should withhold information from prospective members, instructing that members should “never reveal the names of other Chapter members to prospects”, and “never reveal national or chapter initiatives to prospects – speak only in general terms about our objectives and mission”.
The document also lays out procedures for vetting such prospects. After chapter leaders have decided that a prospect is “worthy of consideration”, they should be invited to a chapter event.
The document says that at that point, members should “gauge alignment and fit” with questions such as “What are your thoughts on Christian nationalism?”, “Comment on the Trump presidency and what it entails for the future”, and “Describe the dynamic of your household in terms of your role and that of your wife.”
In the first section – “membership criteria” – the document says membership in the group is “predicated on political alignment and faithfulness to the Christian religion, combined with virtue and with any of community influence, capability, or wealth”.
The document elaborates on each of these criteria.
Alignment is “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and an acceptance of traditional natural law in ethics”.
Natural law is a view with a long history on the right which holds that fundamental moral principles arise from God or nature, not from human reflection or politics. It is a view that Claremont scholars have attempted to provide.
Faithfulness also has a patriarchal edge in SACR’s definition: it is “submission to the authority and standards of behavior of a particular Trinitarian Christian body”, but also “taking ownership as head of the household in terms of leading regular prayer and spiritual reading and reflection”.
Influence is defined as “the ability to make a mark primarily on culture and social discourse but also in politics and business. The positions here can range from equity ownership in productive enterprises to positions of influence in cultural, religious and intellectual institutions.”
Recruiting efforts for the group included visits to Boise from out-of-town collaborators.
A 19 March 2021 email from Yenor lays out a draft schedule for a visit to Boise by Aaron Renn, senior fellow and editor of “theocon” website American Reformer – co-founded by Nate Fischer – and a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Plans included “dinner at Epi’s”, a Basque restaurant in Boise; a meeting with representatives of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right thinktank; and a guest lecture by Renn to Yenor’s students.
Also planned were “drinks with SACR possibles” where Yenor anticipated a “soft sell as per Skyler’s method”, a comment which is not explained further.
The documents indicate Yenor had worked on putting together a group of “SACR possibles” ahead of Renn’s visit.
In a 19 March 2021 exchange, Yenor and his son Jackson workshop the wording of an invitation to prospective SACR members to an evening talk at a local “classical Christian” academy, the Ambrose school. While Scott Yenor’s original had “a national movement with national ambitions”, Jackson Yenor replied with the recommendation: “Say goals instead of ambitions. These guys are ‘goal oriented’ business people, not Machiavelli.”
Further on, the text advised prospective recruits that “chapters will unite public-spirited men who are interested in doing the work of civic renewal. This might involve shoring up teetering institutions. It might involve seeking to turn corrupt institutions.”
The Ambrose School is a “classical Christian” academy in Meridian, on the western edge of the Boise metro area, where Yenor’s wife Amy works as an events coordinator.
The draft invitation does not indicate any date for the drinks meeting, but Yenor’s visit happened less than three weeks after Yenor was working on the text.
The Guardian contacted Boise State University to ask whether there were any policies about faculty combining guest lecturer visits with political activism, but there was no immediate response.
Other documents appear to be connected to SACR recruiting.
On several occasions, Yenor emailed a link to the sacr.us domain with no further context or explanation in the email text. One such email was sent to the Gmail address of the chief executive of a civil engineering company in Pennsylvania. Another was sent to a lawyer and former justice department employee in Tallahassee, Florida.
Christian nationalist prayers
An April 2021 email Yenor sent to his wife’s work address has an attached PDF – “SACR-prayers”. The document features a “long prayer – formal and inaugural occasions” and a “short prayer – regular meetings”.
The long prayer draws biblical and historical parallels for SACR’s activities: “May God unite us in this mission as Joshua’s men when they defeated the mighty walls of Jericho, as Nehemiah’s men who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, as St Constantine’s men when they conquered in the sign of the cross. May the light of Christendom be restored in our homeland, and may America not fall to those who hate God.”
Brad Onishi is the author of Preparing for War, a critical account of Christian nationalism, the host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, and an academic with appointments at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. He is also a self-described former Christian nationalist.
In a telephone conversation he said that the prayers include “coded” references that may function as justifications of violence.
Explaining the reference to the story of the conquest of Jericho in the book of Joshua, Onishi said: “What happens when the walls fall down? Joshua’s men go in and kill everyone: men, children, women, animals.
“It’s an attempted genocide, right?”
“In that prayer they’re saying we’re Joshua’s men. We’re the type of men who trust God,” Onishi added.
“And when God, when God gives us the signal, we’re going to go kill everybody. That’s what we do.”
Revealed: US conservative thinktank’s links to extremist fraternal order
Claremont Institute officials closely involved with Society for American Civic Renewal, which experts say is rooted in Christian nationalism
Jason Wilson
Claremont Institute officials closely involved with Society for American Civic Renewal, which experts say is rooted in Christian nationalism
Jason Wilson
THE GUARDIAN
Mon 11 Mar 2024
The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy.
The revelations emerge from documents gathered in public records requests, including emails between several senior members of SACR: Claremont president Ryan P Williams; its director of state coalitions and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor; and others including former soap manufacturer and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.
Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo has close ties with ‘dissident right’ magazine
The trove also contains an “internal” SACR “mission statement” with a far more radical edge than the public “vision” now recorded on the organization’s website.
That document speaks of recruiting a “brotherhood” who will “form the backbone of a renewed American regime” and who “understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise”; whose “objectives” include to “collect, curate, and document a list of potential appointees and hires for a renewed American regime”.
The document does not indicate that such “renewal” will take place through participation in electoral contests, and nor does it make mention of the US constitution.
Along with the financial links between the SACR and Claremont – the Guardian previously reported Claremont’s $26,248 donation to SACR in 2020 – the documents raise questions as to what extent SACR is an initiative of the Claremont Institute, and to what extent its participants have abandoned liberal, secular or democratic politics.
The Guardian contacted Ryan Williams, Claremont’s president, for comment on his involvement in SACR, and on the extent of Claremont’s ties to the organization.
In an email he said: “While the Claremont Institute acted as a fiscal sponsor to help the Society for American Civic Renewal establish itself as an incorporated 501(c)(10), that was the end of any corporate collaboration between the Claremont Institute and SACR.”
He added: “As a founding board member of SACR in my personal capacity, obviously I think that a fraternal order dedicated to civic and cultural renaissance and rooted in community, virtue, and wisdom is a very good thing.”
Williams also confirmed that he continues to serve as a SACR board member.
The Guardian also contacted Scott Yenor and Boise State University for comment.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, said of the SACR documents: “Their planned regime is obviously far from a multiracial democracy. The documents appear to be describing a religious autocracy.”
Laura K Field, a writer, political theorist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, a Washington thinktank, said the documents expressed “extreme Christian nationalism” where “a particular kind of Christianity should dominate as an ideal, and that it should dominate permanently”.
The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy.
The revelations emerge from documents gathered in public records requests, including emails between several senior members of SACR: Claremont president Ryan P Williams; its director of state coalitions and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor; and others including former soap manufacturer and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.
Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo has close ties with ‘dissident right’ magazine
The trove also contains an “internal” SACR “mission statement” with a far more radical edge than the public “vision” now recorded on the organization’s website.
That document speaks of recruiting a “brotherhood” who will “form the backbone of a renewed American regime” and who “understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise”; whose “objectives” include to “collect, curate, and document a list of potential appointees and hires for a renewed American regime”.
The document does not indicate that such “renewal” will take place through participation in electoral contests, and nor does it make mention of the US constitution.
Along with the financial links between the SACR and Claremont – the Guardian previously reported Claremont’s $26,248 donation to SACR in 2020 – the documents raise questions as to what extent SACR is an initiative of the Claremont Institute, and to what extent its participants have abandoned liberal, secular or democratic politics.
The Guardian contacted Ryan Williams, Claremont’s president, for comment on his involvement in SACR, and on the extent of Claremont’s ties to the organization.
In an email he said: “While the Claremont Institute acted as a fiscal sponsor to help the Society for American Civic Renewal establish itself as an incorporated 501(c)(10), that was the end of any corporate collaboration between the Claremont Institute and SACR.”
He added: “As a founding board member of SACR in my personal capacity, obviously I think that a fraternal order dedicated to civic and cultural renaissance and rooted in community, virtue, and wisdom is a very good thing.”
Williams also confirmed that he continues to serve as a SACR board member.
The Guardian also contacted Scott Yenor and Boise State University for comment.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, said of the SACR documents: “Their planned regime is obviously far from a multiracial democracy. The documents appear to be describing a religious autocracy.”
Laura K Field, a writer, political theorist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, a Washington thinktank, said the documents expressed “extreme Christian nationalism” where “a particular kind of Christianity should dominate as an ideal, and that it should dominate permanently”.
Yenor and SACR
Scott Yenor is a professor of political science at Idaho’s Boise State University and simultaneously the senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute.
His Claremont appointment came in February 2023. Media reports at that time indicated that Yenor would be working closely with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis and DeSantis-aligned legislators; when the job was announced the governor’s wife, Casey Desantis, tweeted: “Thrilled to welcome Scott Yenor from the Claremont Institute to his new home in Tallahassee.”
Reporting in the New York Times last month put Yenor at the center of a network of activists tied to Claremont and other rightwing nonprofits to wage an “anti-DEI crusade” against diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in educational institutions, corporations and public agencies.
Unreported until now is Yenor’s place as an ideological and organizational leader in SACR, and the radical nature of that organization’s aims as understood by he and other core members.
SACR is structured as a 501(c)(10) body under the section of US tax law that provides nonprofit status for organizations “with a fraternal purpose”.
In 2020 the umbrella organization was incorporated in Indiana with Charles Haywood as principal, and the first local lodge was established in Dallas, Texas. Subsequently, three local lodges were established in Idaho: in Boise and Couer d’Alene in 2021, and Moscow in 2022.
Idaho company filings show that Scott Yenor became president and the only listed principal officer of the Boise lodge on 5 August 2023.
Scott Yenor is a professor of political science at Idaho’s Boise State University and simultaneously the senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute.
His Claremont appointment came in February 2023. Media reports at that time indicated that Yenor would be working closely with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis and DeSantis-aligned legislators; when the job was announced the governor’s wife, Casey Desantis, tweeted: “Thrilled to welcome Scott Yenor from the Claremont Institute to his new home in Tallahassee.”
Reporting in the New York Times last month put Yenor at the center of a network of activists tied to Claremont and other rightwing nonprofits to wage an “anti-DEI crusade” against diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in educational institutions, corporations and public agencies.
Unreported until now is Yenor’s place as an ideological and organizational leader in SACR, and the radical nature of that organization’s aims as understood by he and other core members.
SACR is structured as a 501(c)(10) body under the section of US tax law that provides nonprofit status for organizations “with a fraternal purpose”.
In 2020 the umbrella organization was incorporated in Indiana with Charles Haywood as principal, and the first local lodge was established in Dallas, Texas. Subsequently, three local lodges were established in Idaho: in Boise and Couer d’Alene in 2021, and Moscow in 2022.
Idaho company filings show that Scott Yenor became president and the only listed principal officer of the Boise lodge on 5 August 2023.
Secrecy at SACR
But emails indicate that he had taken a board role in the national organization even earlier than that date.
On 25 January 2023, lawyer Clyde Taylor – now at Wagenmaker Law but until 2019 an associate at the rightwing litigation firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty – wrote to Haywood and Skyler Kressin about their trademark application for the SACR logo.
Haywood forwarded the lawyer’s email to Yenor, Claremont president Williams, and Nathanial “Nate” Fischer, copying in Kressin on two addresses including one hosted at SACR’s sacr.us domain.
“We should probably have a board meeting to discuss this, finances, etc,” Haywood wrote in response to Yenor, suggesting Yenor and the others he copied in were members of that body.
Haywood added a suggestion on encrypted messaging services, indicating an imperative of secrecy inside SACR. “I vote we create a new Signal group and have a board meeting. Any takers?” he said. The group was then set up.
The Guardian reported last August that on his website Haywood has repeatedly envisioned serving as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” which might at some point find itself in conflict with the federal government.
Haywood has also expressed a desire to recruit “shooters” to help defend the “extended, quite sizeable, compound” he occupies on the western fringe of Carmel, Indiana. According to documents lodged with the city of Carmel, the latest construction project on Haywood’s compound is a six-bedroom faux-classical mansion with a central library room that occupies both of the building’s floors.
He has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation to the tune of at least $50,000, according to 2021 and 2022 tax filings, along with at least $50,000 to the Claremont Institute.
In the same report, the Guardian revealed that Kressin, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.
The Guardian reported last September that Fischer, a Claremont Lincoln fellow, was president of SACR’s Dallas lodge and owns a firm that has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in government ammunition contracts. He also owns another firm that helped produce videos in which Claremont chairman Thomas Klingenstein exhorted rightwingers to join in a “cold civil war” against “woke communists”.
The Guardian contacted Nate Fischer, Skyler Kressin and Charles Haywood for comment.
Neither Kressin nor Haywood responded. Fischer did not respond directly, but on Friday morning on X, formerly Twitter, he left a 900-word post offering some material from internal SACR documents, admitting that the Guardian’s reporting had led him to the conclusion that “this is a good time to share more about the organization.
SACR’s mission: ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ in an ‘new aligned regime’
Another document suggests reasons that SACR’s leadership might want to avoid scrutiny: in internal discussions. “Civic renewal” appears to equate to regime change in America.
The document is one of two Yenor attached to a 27 April 2021 email, sent from his Boise State email address to a personal email address. The email text simply says “print”.
The SACR document contains two versions of the organization’s “mission statement” – one “public” and one “internal” – along with a list of “objectives” for the organization.
Its authenticity as a working document is indicated by the current “vision” articulated on SACR’s website, which currently features what appears to be a reworked version of the “public” mission statement.
The 2021 document envisions “a vigorous civic renewal that will reflect the past while facing the future”, while the website sets out a “new thing for a new day, informed by the wisdom of the past but facing the future”. Each version promises to “reclaim a humane vision of society”.
A harder-edged “internal” mission statement, however, stands in stark contrast to these anodyne public presentations.
It first announces: “Our aim is to build and maintain a robust network of capable men who can reverse our society’s decline and return us to the successful path off which America has strayed.”
The document says the organization’s founders are “un-hyphenated Americans, and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.”
It says: “We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance” of their beliefs.
In terms of recruiting, the document says: “Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm.”
Further down, the document specifies five organizational “objectives” that encompass nepotistic business practices, the grooming of new and emerging “elites” within SACR, and, experts say, an apparently insurrectionary political project.
The first objective is to “identify and provide formation for local elites … capable of exercising authority and who are aligned with our goal of complete civic renewal”, and warning that “concrete temporal achievements, not furthering intellectual discussion”.
The second objective is to help those local elites build “fraternal networks which will advance both the members of those networks and our collective goals” including “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business”.
The third objectives to coordinate across the “fraternal networks” to bring “political awareness” to matters such as “hiring and promotion; award of contracts; internal policies and procedures; and leadership succession”.
A fifth objective is to “collect, curate and document a list of potential appointees and hires for an aligned future regime”, who would likely not be founding participants, but “ … men who grow up in the system”.
Asked what an “aligned regime” might look like, Williams, the Claremont Institute’s president, wrote: “It would, more likely than not, be some form of the US constitutional order, but with much higher fidelity to that order before it was corrupted and subverted by modern progressivism.”
Perhaps ominously, a fourth objective is to “defend fraternal networks, our own and allies, against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks”, though no details are offered on what form this defense or deterrence might take.
Although the document makes reference to America’s founding, Field, the Niskanen fellow, said that it contradicted its spirit.
“George Washington, Jefferson, [and] Madison all embraced religious pluralism very explicitly, and the constitution reflects that,” she said.
“This is anti-constitutional, and I think many, many faithful Christians would say it’s anti-Christian.”
Beirich, the extremism expert, said the mission statement and objectives were “essentially a stealth plan to replace everything about the current government with a religious autocracy”, with the addition of an effort to “fashion young people behind closed doors for the eventual takeover of the regime, right?”
“They’re going to grow them up as Christian autocrats.”
But emails indicate that he had taken a board role in the national organization even earlier than that date.
On 25 January 2023, lawyer Clyde Taylor – now at Wagenmaker Law but until 2019 an associate at the rightwing litigation firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty – wrote to Haywood and Skyler Kressin about their trademark application for the SACR logo.
Haywood forwarded the lawyer’s email to Yenor, Claremont president Williams, and Nathanial “Nate” Fischer, copying in Kressin on two addresses including one hosted at SACR’s sacr.us domain.
“We should probably have a board meeting to discuss this, finances, etc,” Haywood wrote in response to Yenor, suggesting Yenor and the others he copied in were members of that body.
Haywood added a suggestion on encrypted messaging services, indicating an imperative of secrecy inside SACR. “I vote we create a new Signal group and have a board meeting. Any takers?” he said. The group was then set up.
The Guardian reported last August that on his website Haywood has repeatedly envisioned serving as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” which might at some point find itself in conflict with the federal government.
Haywood has also expressed a desire to recruit “shooters” to help defend the “extended, quite sizeable, compound” he occupies on the western fringe of Carmel, Indiana. According to documents lodged with the city of Carmel, the latest construction project on Haywood’s compound is a six-bedroom faux-classical mansion with a central library room that occupies both of the building’s floors.
He has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation to the tune of at least $50,000, according to 2021 and 2022 tax filings, along with at least $50,000 to the Claremont Institute.
In the same report, the Guardian revealed that Kressin, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.
The Guardian reported last September that Fischer, a Claremont Lincoln fellow, was president of SACR’s Dallas lodge and owns a firm that has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in government ammunition contracts. He also owns another firm that helped produce videos in which Claremont chairman Thomas Klingenstein exhorted rightwingers to join in a “cold civil war” against “woke communists”.
The Guardian contacted Nate Fischer, Skyler Kressin and Charles Haywood for comment.
Neither Kressin nor Haywood responded. Fischer did not respond directly, but on Friday morning on X, formerly Twitter, he left a 900-word post offering some material from internal SACR documents, admitting that the Guardian’s reporting had led him to the conclusion that “this is a good time to share more about the organization.
SACR’s mission: ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ in an ‘new aligned regime’
Another document suggests reasons that SACR’s leadership might want to avoid scrutiny: in internal discussions. “Civic renewal” appears to equate to regime change in America.
The document is one of two Yenor attached to a 27 April 2021 email, sent from his Boise State email address to a personal email address. The email text simply says “print”.
The SACR document contains two versions of the organization’s “mission statement” – one “public” and one “internal” – along with a list of “objectives” for the organization.
Its authenticity as a working document is indicated by the current “vision” articulated on SACR’s website, which currently features what appears to be a reworked version of the “public” mission statement.
The 2021 document envisions “a vigorous civic renewal that will reflect the past while facing the future”, while the website sets out a “new thing for a new day, informed by the wisdom of the past but facing the future”. Each version promises to “reclaim a humane vision of society”.
A harder-edged “internal” mission statement, however, stands in stark contrast to these anodyne public presentations.
It first announces: “Our aim is to build and maintain a robust network of capable men who can reverse our society’s decline and return us to the successful path off which America has strayed.”
The document says the organization’s founders are “un-hyphenated Americans, and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.”
It says: “We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance” of their beliefs.
In terms of recruiting, the document says: “Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm.”
Further down, the document specifies five organizational “objectives” that encompass nepotistic business practices, the grooming of new and emerging “elites” within SACR, and, experts say, an apparently insurrectionary political project.
The first objective is to “identify and provide formation for local elites … capable of exercising authority and who are aligned with our goal of complete civic renewal”, and warning that “concrete temporal achievements, not furthering intellectual discussion”.
The second objective is to help those local elites build “fraternal networks which will advance both the members of those networks and our collective goals” including “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business”.
The third objectives to coordinate across the “fraternal networks” to bring “political awareness” to matters such as “hiring and promotion; award of contracts; internal policies and procedures; and leadership succession”.
A fifth objective is to “collect, curate and document a list of potential appointees and hires for an aligned future regime”, who would likely not be founding participants, but “ … men who grow up in the system”.
Asked what an “aligned regime” might look like, Williams, the Claremont Institute’s president, wrote: “It would, more likely than not, be some form of the US constitutional order, but with much higher fidelity to that order before it was corrupted and subverted by modern progressivism.”
Perhaps ominously, a fourth objective is to “defend fraternal networks, our own and allies, against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks”, though no details are offered on what form this defense or deterrence might take.
Although the document makes reference to America’s founding, Field, the Niskanen fellow, said that it contradicted its spirit.
“George Washington, Jefferson, [and] Madison all embraced religious pluralism very explicitly, and the constitution reflects that,” she said.
“This is anti-constitutional, and I think many, many faithful Christians would say it’s anti-Christian.”
Beirich, the extremism expert, said the mission statement and objectives were “essentially a stealth plan to replace everything about the current government with a religious autocracy”, with the addition of an effort to “fashion young people behind closed doors for the eventual takeover of the regime, right?”
“They’re going to grow them up as Christian autocrats.”
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