On December 7, 2020, #armed #Trump supporters gathered outside #JocelynBenson’s home, yelling threats & repeating Trump's election lies. The #MAGA mob chanted & made threatening demands to overturn #Michigan's election results, accusing Benson of being part of a deep-state conspiracy against Trump. Benson had been decorating her Christmas tree with her 4 yr old son when the mob showed up at her house. No arrests were made.

#law #Benson4MI #MIpol #USpol #PoliticalViolence
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/armed-protesters-gathered-outside-michigan-secretary-of-state-home-1100068/

@theautisticcoach I believe, in those instances, any person #armed with the #prerequisite required for sitting in said location, should have a free pass to #clobber those that don't, with whatever they have on their person, capable of providing a good #wallop

“The point is the process works. We have the peaceful transfer of power. We did in 2020,” #MikeJohnson said, conveniently ignoring the fact that an #armed & #violent mob stormed the Capitol on #Jan6 to try to prevent that transfer of power.

#law #democracy
#VoteBlue #HarrisWalz2024

"Today we once again underline that #international #law and the #laws of #armed #conflict apply to all. No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader – no one – can act with impunity. Nothing can justify wilfully depriving human beings, including so many women and children, the basic necessities required for life. Nothing can justify the taking of hostages or the targeting of civilians."

If the thought of 50,000 #Putinist #Russophiles, #hysterical #homophobes, #armed #ammosexuals, #misogynists, #antisemites, #whitesupremacists, #ConspiracyTheorists, #racists, #reproductiverights #deniers and #Evangelical and #Catholic #Dominionists descending upon #Milwaukee has you upchucking your cheese curds, you are certainly not alone.

Perhaps the most startling element of SACR is one of its long-term objectives.

Per the mission statement obtained by TPM, SACR aims to have its members form the government of an “aligned future regime.”

“They would be next generation
—not founding participants, but those who joined as the project of civic renewal grows deep roots,” the document reads.

“That is, men who ‘grow up in the system.’”

Other goals include providing “preferential treatment for members, especially in business,”
and to both “coordinate allied fraternal networks”
and “defend fraternal networks … against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks.”

In Yenor’s Boise chapter, SACR members attempted to craft a “#Statement on #Marriage” in which local church leaders would proclaim an “intentional effort to celebrate the benefits of family life” because the “culture is hostile to Christian marriage.”

To do that, the group would “promote marriage publicly through a pro-marriage sticker” to be spread around the Boise region.

The same group held events with speakers, including writer and policy researcher #Aaron #Renn.

At one point, emails show, Yenor pitched an Idaho news website to Claremont funders called Action Idaho, saying that SACR would take care of back-end work for the venture.

Other public remarks from members point towards the group’s activities.

After The Guardian published its initial story on the group over the summer, a small controversy erupted among evangelicals who regarded Haywood’s views as dangerous and the prospect of a certain strain of Christianity taking control of the government as troubling.

Fischer hit back in a podcast appearance, describing SACR as a “big-tent thing where men get together.”

“So the local chapters or lodges will have a meeting and maybe 15 guys get together and a speaker comes in and talks about something political, sometimes it’s a political candidate or whatever.
And then we learn and sometimes we just hang out,” he said.

“There’s no sort of great #secrecy associated with it. There’s a little degree of #confidentiality because there’s guys there who are at companies where even being associated with a group that is all men would be seen as suspicious.”

If you make it in, you’re asked to pay regular dues and appear at meetings once a month.

Chapter members’ names are hidden, as are “national or Chapter initiatives.”

Fischer posted a copy of a mission statement and objectives already previously obtained by TPM on Twitter Thursday evening.

The group has public and non-public descriptions of its purpose and goals.

In an “internal” version of the mission statement, SACR says “we are un-hyphenated Americans and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.”

“We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance of that ideal,” the document says.

A “SACR Membership Criteria & Recruiting Guide” obtained via TPM’s public records requests shows questions that the group puts to prospective members.

What are your thoughts on the Republican Party?

What are your thoughts on “Christian Nationalism”?

Comment on the Trump presidency and what it entails for the future.

Describe the dynamic of your household in terms of your role and that of your wife.

Describe your church community and your and your family’s involvement there

Other criteria for membership include #faithfulness (“adherence to traditional Christian sexual ethics”),
#virtue (“restraint and self-denial; household management; leadership and orderliness”),
and #alignment, defined as: “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 more broadly.”

Finally, members are asked to possess one of these three qualities:
#influence,
#capability (“any skill conducive to the technical work of productive #entrepreneurship;
#lawfare;
#cybersecurity”),
or #wealth.

Who is excluded, in some sense, reveals more about SACR than who is allowed in.

The group bans anyone who is not Christian:
Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others.

But it goes further than that and bars “non-trinitarian” Christians;
Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and others cannot be SACR members.

Williams said that the religious exclusivity came from the “long and robust tradition of the intersection between #Trinitarian #Christianity in a broad sort of ecumenical sense and American civic leadership and statesmanship.”

“Too much ecumenism is sometimes counterproductive in these sorts of ventures,” he added.

“Which is not to say that we don’t of course have nothing but toleration in the great American tradition for all faiths as long as they’re genuinely
— as long as they are not hostile to American principles and notions of natural rights and constitutionalism.”

#Women are not allowed in SACR, whatever their faith.

The group emphasizes a traditional role for the man in the household, a robust and muscular exercise of temporal authority by men, and the forceful application of male dominion in civic affairs.

Yenor, the Boise State professor, told TPM in a text that the group’s exclusivity was a way “to bring men together for real community and fraternity,” allowing members to “build each other up and encourage responsibility” in public and private life.

Under Williams’ leadership, Claremont has become well-known for a vision of America in which the country as we know it is all but lost, set to be replaced by a “regime” that its leaders hope to craft to come after the current, “cold civil war” concludes.

While introducing another podcast discussion between Haywood and Anton, Williams called Haywood a “friend of recent years” who was willing to discuss the country’s “decaying republic.”

“The phrase #cold #civil #war is chosen deliberately,” Williams told TPM. “I hope it remains cold indefinitely.”

It’s not only about the republic. Internal SACR messages show that the group envisions itself as stewards of a hard brand of Christianity.

Yenor, in one message that he planned to use for recruitment, summed it up:
“Our belief is that the country’s track is unsustainable, and the only way to secure a future for Christian families is to keep and take back space now closed to Christians.”

What sets SACR apart is that its members come from and are recruited from the upper crust of American society.

They are wealthy — independent wealth is a requirement for membership, per documents TPM obtained. And they are credentialed.

SACR offers a redoubt for powerful people who take the culture war extremely seriously and believe in their bones that hemorrhaging church membership, the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage, and the ebbing status of Christian men in American society are an existential threat to their vision for America, and who have the means to build a society on a different path.

Organized as a 501(c)10, Williams described SACR as analogous in structure to the Masons or Moose lodges
— a national superstructure with chapters around the country, some public and some not.

Its members are, as a rule, secret. But those members who have incorporated chapters, as TPM discovered, end up identified in public records.

In an interview, Williams told TPM that SACR emerged from conversations between himself, self-described “industrialist” #Charles #Haywood, and others around Claremont in 2020.

Skyler Kressin, an Idaho accountant, and Fischer, also participated.

The idea, Williams said, came about amid conversations about “civic projects and constitutionalism and the state of America.”

“Part of the scholarly project of the Claremont Institute has been to lament the rise, really since the late 19th century, of a certain different way of thinking about politics and how to do government outside, we would argue, the American constitutional tradition,” he said.

Haywood, a University of Chicago-educated attorney, incorporated SACR and sits on its board. He did not respond to requests for comment from TPM.

Haywood has laid out an elaborate cosmology of America’s place in time, and his own place in America, through hundreds of blog posts he’s written on his website,
The Worthy House.

To Haywood, American government is a house of cards waiting to be blown over
— run by a cabal that he describes as the “brawndo tyranny,” referring to the energy drink from the 2006 cult classic movie Idiocracy.

Haywood says he can see what will likely come next:
a new #feudalism,
an archipelago of local “#armed #patronage networks,”
a vision inspired by the groups white settler farmers formed in South Africa as Blacks struggled for majority rule.