Anton and Yarvin’s May 2021 conversation was recorded for the podcast of the American Mind,
a publication of the powerful rightwing #Claremont #Institute,
where Anton is a senior fellow,
and whose growing influence during the Trump era has seen it described as the “nerve center of the American right”.

On 8 December, Trump’s transition team announced that Anton would be appointed director of policy planning at the state department.

Anton also served in a communications role in Trump’s first-term national security council from February 2017 until April 2018,
resigning the day before neoconservative John Bolton assumed the role of national security adviser.

After leaving the first Trump administration, Anton did not abandon Trump,
but continued writing about US liberal democracy in bleak terms.

In "Up from Conservatism",
a 2023 anthology of essays edited by the executive director of Claremont’s "Center for the American Way of Life", Arthur Milikh,
Anton wrote that
“the United States peaked around 1965”,
and that Americans are ruled by
“a network of unelected bureaucrats … corporate-tech-finance senior management, ‘experts’ who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion,
and media figures who police those boundaries”.

Anton continued the discussion in sections headed
“The universities have become evil”,
“Our economy is fake”,
“The people are corrupt”,
“Our civilization has lost the will to live”.

His and Yarvin’s conversation was ostensibly about his 2020 book,
"The Stakes".

That book was controversial even on the right for its prolonged consideration of autocratic “Caesarism”
as a means of resolving American decadence.

In the book, he defined #Caesarism as a “form of one-man rule:
halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.

He adds, though, that
“Caesarism is not tyranny, which, strictly understood,
is a regime that usurps a legitimate and functioning government”,
whereas Caesarism implements “authoritarian one-man rule partially legitimized by necessity”

– that is,
“the breakdown of republican, constitutional rule”,
adding that
“a nation no longer capable of ruling itself must yet be ruled”.

He writes that a
“Red Caesar” could be attractive to
“the reds” in the Republican coalition,
who he says are
“under constant rhetorical, political, and, increasingly, physical attack,
especially in blue states”,
-- making them “more likely to turn to a Caesar”.

Anton stops short of openly calling for authoritarian rule,
but in general, he writes that the advantages of Caesarism include
“continuity and stability”
and “the prospect of avoiding conflict”,
and that it “tends to engender calm”.

#CurtisYarvin #MichaelAnton
#RedCaesar

Stephen Wolfe grew up in Napa, California,
and his father was an admirer of the right-wing pundit and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

After attending West Point and serving in the Army, Wolfe earned advanced degrees before leaving academia to
“do the Wendell Berry thing”
in North Carolina with his wife and four kids.

Over the summer, Wolfe, 41, agreed to speak with me on the condition that I refer to him as “Dr. Wolfe”
and call him an “expert on Christian nationalism.”

The Dr. Wolfe I spoke with was a more muted version of the firebrand I’d watched online.

He said his ideal version of America would be led by a Caesar figure.

Gay marriage would be strictly prohibited.

Women would not be allowed to vote
—instead, men would vote for their households.

When I brought up the bit from his book about heretics being killed, he grew annoyed.

“I do think it’s permissible, in principle, for a state to suppress theological heresy,
but that doesn’t mean that it’s prudent or proper,
suitable in every circumstance or every tradition or way of life.”

The Founding Fathers, he added, had encouraged religious liberty,
so killing heretics would not be appropriate in the United States that we inhabit.

We turned to remarks he had made at a recent conference convened by Brian Sauvé:
“I think we need to reflect on this idea of Judeo-Christianity,
or Judeo-Christian worldview,
or Judeo-Christian whatever,
and really eradicate that from our thinking.

Because if we say that America is a
Judeo-Christian country,
then it can’t be a Christian country, okay?”

What role, I asked him, would Jews play?

After a deep sigh, he told me that they would be allowed to “exercise their religion freely.”

We spoke a week before Vance’s RNC speech,
and Wolfe’s remarks helped me understand what the TheoBros heard in Vance’s phrase about
"America as a people".

The founders, Wolfe noted, intended for their country to be “Anglo-Protestant with an American inflection.”

America, he continued, is “a place of settlement and rootedness,
but it’s an open ethnicity in which people can become one of us.”

Which is to say that, like some others, Wolfe is not necessarily opposed to the idea of nonwhite people in America
—as long as they agree to assimilate to the Anglo-Protestant dominant culture.

In this telling, America is not a pluralistic society at all,
but rather one in which there exists an uneasy truce between Christians and those they reluctantly tolerate.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wolfe what motivated him.

“I want Christians to be more assertive and to recognize the Christian heritage of the American way of life,
and to seek to restore that,” he said.

“This is a Christian country, and we’ve got to work to restore it to what it once was"

In his keynote address at Sauvé’s conference, titled “Why Multicultural Pluralism Fails and What to Build Instead,”
Wolfe called the concept of America as a melting pot
“an early 20th-century idea cooked up by a Jew in New York who despised the confident Anglo-Protestant establishment.”

WASPs were the “distinct ethnicity” of America, he insisted,

and America should only welcome those who aspired to assimilate.

As he put it, “This is our homeland, and we welcome you on the condition of conformity.”

Or, in the words of JD Vance, America “is a group of people.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/theobros-jd-vance-christian-nationalism/

William Wolfe served in the Trump administration
both as the deputy assistant secretary of defense
and as director of House affairs at the Department of State.

He is also an alumnus of #Heritage #Action,
a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation,
the arch-conservative think tank behind Project 2025,
whose chief architect, Russell Vought, posted on X that he was “proud to work with @William_E_Wolfe on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.”

A few months later, the Bucks County Beacon uncovered a lengthy online manifesto on the goals of Christian nationalists.

The document, which listed Wolfe and Joel Webbon as contributing editors
and Oklahoma Sen. #Dusty #Deevers as a co-author,
called for “civil magistrates” to usher in “the establishment of the Ten Commandments as the foundational law of the nation.”

The manifesto doesn’t specify exactly how Christian nationalists should achieve these goals.

As Tabachnick, the extremism researcher, interprets it, the TheoBros are imagining a utopia where “they are going to be free to be entrepreneurs in all different senses,
including the tech world that they’re mixing with so freely.”

The key, she said, is that authoritarianism “is required to have the utopian vision.”

Last year, the extremism watchdog group Right Wing Watch posted a video of Wolfe quoting a scripture passage.
There are times when “even the God of peace proclaims by his providence, ‘to arms!’” he says.

“If we have ever lived in a point of time in American history since then that we could argue that now is a time ‘to arms’ again, I think we are getting close.”

William Wolfe’s Christian nationalism manifesto made the rounds on social media,
but in mainstream conservative outlets,
it was #Stephen #Wolfe
(no relation to William)
who brought TheoBro ideas to the wider world.

In his book, which was praised by editors at the Federalist and the American Conservative,
Wolfe paints America as a “#gynocracy” whose government and culture have been feminized by unhappy women leaders.
(Sound familiar?)

He has stated on X that women should not have the right to vote, and that “interethnic” marriage can be “sinful.”

One eager customer is 38-year-old TheoBro #Andrew #Isker
—the pastor who interned at Wilson’s church,
studied divinity at New Saint Andrews,
and co-wrote a book on Christian nationalism with #Andrew #Torba,
the openly antisemitic CEO of the social media platform #Gab.

In July, Isker announced on X that he planned to move his family of seven to lead a church in a New Founding community in Tennessee.

Life in his native Minnesota, he said, had become untenable because of permissive laws around trans rights and abortion,
not to mention how hospitable the state has been to #refugees.

“Minnesota is one of the top destinations for resettling foreign people hostile to our way of life,” he said.

That month, Isker spoke at a Texas conference about the
“war on white America”
alongside #Paul #Gottfried,
the mentor of prominent white nationalist #Richard #Spencer.

The conference was hosted by the "True Texas Project",
a far-right group with ties to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Like many TheoBros,
Isker sees much to like in Vance.

In early July, before Trump announced his running mate, Isker referred to him as
“Senator JD Vance (R-Heritage America).”

In late July, he posted a video of Vance and told his 29,000 followers,
“You need to double down on childless cat lady discourse.
Kamala sees happy, large families and hates them.
She wants them destroyed.
She wants you to never be able to have this.
She is a nasty, bitter harridan who hates all that is true, good, and beautiful.”

One problem is that there simply are not enough TheoBros to populate Christian communities like the one Isker plans to move to.

Enter #William #Wolfe,
the founder of the
"Center for Baptist Leadership", which aims to persuade members of the Southern Baptist Convention that it,
the largest of all Protestant denominations in the United States,
has fallen prey to the corrupting forces of liberalism.

Baptists are only the beginning.

Wolfe wants to win over the entire evangelical mainstream,
which he and other TheoBros refer to as “#Big #Eva.”

In August, he posted on X,
“Once you realize that Big Eva thinks it’s a bigger sin to desire to preserve the customs, heritage, values, and cultural homogeneity of your own nation
than to kill the unborn in the womb, you can better understand their moral framework.”

An even more well-connected Wilson emulator is
#Josh #Abbotoy,
executive director of "American Reformer"
and managing partner of a venture capital fund and real estate firm called "New Founding".

A former fellow of the right-wing think tank the #Claremont #Institute, Abbotoy reported that he recently participated in a #Project2025 presidential transition “strategic planning session”
hosted by the right-wing think tank the #Heritage #Foundation.

Bucks County Beacon reporter Jennifer Cohn revealed venture capitalist #Chris #Buskirk was listed as the editor and publisher.

In 2022, Buskirk co-founded the #Rockbridge #Network,
a collection of powerful Trump donors including Catholic judicial kingmaker #Leonard #Leo and Silicon Valley billionaire #Peter #Thiel.

Another co-founder of the Rockbridge Network?
None other than
JD #Vance.

Thiel, Vance’s mentor and former employer, is also a major funder of the National Conservatism movement.

Obsessed with global birthrates, Thiel spent $10 million on his protégé’s successful 2022 Senate campaign.

In July, shortly after Trump had announced Vance as his running mate,
Cohn surfaced a tweet by New Founding’s network director,
#Josh #Clemans:
a photo of Vance with several New Founding staffers.

The caption read “Our guy.”

New Founding lists as a partner the "Society for American Civic Renewal",
a secretive fraternal order founded by Indiana shampoo baron #Charles #Haywood,

who describes himself as an aspiring Christian “#warlord.”

According to founder #Nate #Fischer, New Founding wants to “form the backbone of a renewed American regime”
and that its members
“understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise.”

But its main public-facing project appears to be turning tracts of land in Appalachia into Christian communities.

Promotional materials describe a community of
“unmatched seclusion”
where
“simple country faith”
protects local culture from rainbow flags and crime.

Potential buyers, he advises, should not delay.

“Who’s going to grab the land?
Is it going to be good, based people who want to build something inspiring,
something authentic to the region’s history,
or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?”

SACR and its members harp on the idea that America is in a fatal stage of rot, and that they are an oppressed people waiting to rise up on behalf of a silent majority.

The SACR website speaks to the deeply held grievance and sense of a lack of masculine purpose which animates the group.

SACR exists, the website says, because “a man is no longer encouraged to fly to the stars,”
because “those who rule today spit on such ambitions;
they corrupt the sinews of America.”

“They have alienated men from family, community, and God.

We counter and conquer this poison, rebuilding a society where a man can find genuine fulfilment,
true to his nature and calling,
rejoicing in virtue and vitality,” the website says,
before offering a Google docs link where men can apply.

At the end of the day, SACR’s members are not oppressed.

Claremont is free to publish whatever it likes
— it’s widely seen as tremendously influential on the right generally and in MAGA circles specifically.

SACR chapters can meet; Haywood can blog
— in fact, on Tuesday he wrote an encomium to The Camp of the Saints, a 1970s French novel in which a horde of Indian immigrants overwhelms, degrades, and exterminates the white West.

“The goal of the Left was always total expropriation of white people and then, if at all possible, their extermination,
a goal made explicit by many powerful people in 2020,” Haywood wrote.

“How, given this history, should white Americans respond?”

SACR may be his answer.

In emails from November 2020, Yenor wrote to Skyler Kressin, the head of the SACR chapter in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and on the group’s national board.

Yenor sent a screenshot of an Amazon link to
“The Super Afrikaners,”
a 1979 nonfiction account of the #Afrikaner #Broederbond,
a semi-secret society which ruled South Africa under apartheid.

“That good?” Yenor titled the subject line, highlighting the book — long out of print — and its $95.62 price.

“That’s the one,” Kressin replied.

South Africa, with its visions of white settlers driven away from status and wealth, appear consistently in Haywood’s writings, and in Fischer’s as well.

The Broederbond, an Afrikaner-only, Calvinist-only group of elites which functioned as a series of hundreds of independent “cells” across the country, offers an eerie reflection of SACR’s structure.

Williams told TPM that the Afrikaner Broederbond came up in conversations over what SACR would be, but denied that it served as a model for the group.

The grievance, perceived loss of status, and lack of metaphysical meaning that these men feel are very real, to them.

But there’s enough in America’s own history to understand the aims and tradition in which SACR is operating.