The Claremont Institute, a conservative "think tank" of the usual sort, had a long-running Listserv in which hundreds of big-league conservatives could exchange ideas, strategies, and so forth. It all went to hell when Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie, who was fired from his position after it came to light that he attended a white nationalist event featuring white nationalists, emailed his fellow Claremont conservatives to complain about his treatment and ask for a media push on his behalf.
Which was responded to supportively by white nationalist promoter and fellow Claremont conservative Charles Johnson.
Which caused prominent conservatives on the list, including "senior administration officials," to freak the hell out when they realized they were on an email list with actual white nationalism promoters—and that there was no way this information wasn't going to come out, sooner or later—and ask moderators to remove them from the list.
Upon which the Claremont Institute shuttered the email list entirely rather than sort through it all. According to POLITICO, this demonstrates the gosh-darn challenges of keeping garbage-spewing trolls and racists out of the conservative "intellectual" movement.
The episode provides a window into the challenges facing the Trump-friendly right as it has struggled to build an intellectual movement that can outlast Trump — and to rid itself of bigots and fringe elements who have glommed on to some of the president’s immigration rhetoric.
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. The conservative "intellectual" movement never had these problems with racism before Trump showed up. Ol' Bill Buckley would never have tolerated such a thing. Why oh why do we keep attracting these frothing racists when all we've been trying to do is warn Americans that black people are dangerous, Islam is an illegitimate religion, and immigrants are coming to outbreed us all, upon which lily white Americans will be helpless against the onslaught of non-white "culture" and there will be food trucks everywhere.
Here's an alternative hypothesis: The Claremont Institute has dabbled in racism and white nationalist rhetoric for approximately Forever, which is precisely why trollish little twits like Charles Johnson and the "oops, how did I ever end up at this white nationalist conference" Darren Beattie are on their email lists to begin with. It is what they do. They supported Donald Effing Trump willingly, and early on, and it wasn’t because they liked his stance on Diet Coke consumption. Like Tucker Carlson on Fox or every staffer ever hired at the National Review, they are quite happy to mainstream racist fears and racist theories into more would-be dignified circles because plausibly deniable white nationalism sells like ice cream on a summer day in those crowds.
But it’s got to be deniable, and Charles Johnson stupidly piping up with a defense of white nationalism on a Claremont email list chock full of top conservatives f--ked the whole premise. So they've got to flush it, and all the "senior administration officials" and media figures and other denizens will have to move to new email lists with people who haven't yet donned that particular leather jacket and jumped that particular shark.
Yeah. Oops. However does this keep happening, just as it has for decades, to every single conservative group from CPAC to National Review to these poor wags? It is a conundrum.
