Hey, wanna join an exclusive secret club?
First, you’ll have to answer a few questions. Are you a woman? Are you LGBTQ+? Are you something other than a “real” Christian (i.e., Mormon, Christian Scientist, Jehovah’s Witness, or—White, Hetero, Gun-Totin’, Prosperity-Gospelin’ God forbid—Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist)? Do you have to hyphenate your heritage? Do you lack the wealth and/or clout to help usher in a “U.S. Constitutional order brought much closer to its origins after about a century of ... corruption and undermining by progressivism?”
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you better move along. Nothing to see here. Go start your own fucking club. But don’t call it the Society for American Civic Renewal; that name’s already taken, chump! You can call your club the Naive Liberal Simps Soon to Be Crushed Beneath the Bloodsoaked Truck Treads of American Civic Renewal.
In the latest episode of “Conservatives Swan-Dive Off the Blooming Deep End in Their Trump Underoos,” Josh Kovensky, an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, takes a close look at the Society for American Civic Renewal, its truly bizarre membership criteria, and the group’s vision for our country.
Talking Points Memo:
The group speaks earnestly about itself and tries to downplay its more controversial views. It is, the group’s leaders say, merely another in a long line of fraternal organizations that try to foster civic engagement. But there’s a lot that’s almost zany about the group’s aims and activities. An Idaho chapter sought to fight back against marriage equality by making stickers representing traditional marriage to compete with the rainbow, pro-LGBTQ-rights symbols which adorned coffee shops in the area. In another episode, that chapter supported a quixotic bid to court wealthy conservative donors into funding a website focused on unearthing the spread of DEI in Idaho. The man who incorporated the national umbrella group is an Indiana shampoo tycoon who refers to himself as “maximum leader” and blogs about Rhodesian anti-guerilla tactics and how the must-read dystopian fiction novel for white supremacists, The Camp of the Saints, is actually a vision of America’s present.
Oh, man, they had me at “maximum leader.” Where do I sign up?
Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian theocracy. To join, the group demands faithfulness, virtue, and “alignment,” which it describes 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 acceptance of traditional Natural Law in ethics more broadly.” More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.
And that’s not all! To join, you have to answer a series of questions about … stuff … to the satisfaction of the group’s leadership:
- 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
Not that SACR asked, but my responses?
- “Sucks”
- “Eww”
- “Mad Max dystopia, but where Mel Gibson plays himself and is eventually cast out into the wilderness for being too woke”
- “I bought her a gestation crate for our anniversary but she refuses to get in it and just does whatever the fuck she wants”
- “Involvement? I’m just happy I wasn’t assaulted by the clergy!”
Guess I won’t get in. Of course, I have a bit of a jaundiced view of exclusive men’s clubs and secret societies in general. What exactly are they discussing that they’re afraid women might overhear? I picture a roomful of weirdos back-slapping each other, bragging about the size of their … portfolios, and sniffing each other’s underpants like Dennis Hopper sucking oxygen in “Blue Velvet.”
That might be a little off, but only slightly.
Kovensky noted that TPM’s reporting, as well as a forthcoming story from The Guardian, which has covered the group before, flushed some of these kooks out of their hidey-holes. On Thursday, several of the group’s leading members “came forward publicly to acknowledge their memberships in the organization and published an internal document that TPM had already obtained.”
Kovensky was eventually able to obtain the office emails of one member, a Boise State University professor, through a public records request. He received a wealth of internal correspondence and other documents from early in the group’s founding. The picture presented was eye-opening.
The trove reveals SACR’s core mission: to create a mini-state within a state, composed entirely of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian men. It’s explicitly patriarchal, demanding that group members assume a dominant role at home, and celebrates the use of force and existence of authority. Amid all the hearkening back to the founding fathers, America’s first principles, and patriotism, there are few mentions of democracy in the materials TPM reviewed.
One of the founders of the group, an industrialist and attorney named Charles Haywood, has, according to Kovensky, “laid out an elaborate cosmology of America’s place in time, and his own place in America” on his website, where he also refers to himself as a ‘maximum leader.’”
In 2022, reports Kovensky, Haywood appeared on a podcast with former Trump official Michael Anton to discuss “caesarism,” the idea that America desperately needs a strongman to get itself back on track. During the podcast, he also “wholeheartedly” endorsed a national divorce. Which, come to think of it, might not be so terrible, so long as they take full custody of the toddler.
All that is scary enough, but as recently as Tuesday, Hawyood was upping the fear factor on his blog, writing that “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. How, given this history, should white Americans respond?”
In its initial reporting on the group from August, The Guardian had still more on Haywood—who, again, is a founder of SACR:
One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” or “APN”, defined as an “organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down” in which the warlord’s responsibility is “the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest”.
The “possibilities involving violence” that APNs might face, Haywood writes include “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it”.
Further on, Haywood writes: “At this moment I preside over what amounts to a extended, quite sizeable, compound, which when complete I like to say, accurately, will be impervious to anything but direct organized military attack”, adding that “it requires a group of men to make it work … what I call ‘shooters’ – say fifteen able-bodied, and adequately trained, men.”
But wait, there’s more!
In anticipation of The Guardian story, SACR member Nate Fischer released on Thursday an “internal” version of the group’s mission statement, and—hoo-boy—it’s a doo-doo doozy.
The manifesto mission statement also seems to reference … Toni Morrison and her famous 1992 quote: “In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
No, seriously.
“We are un-hyphenated Americans and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies,” the SACR mission statement reads. “We ambitiously point to an ideal based on that dual inheritance. We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance of that ideal.
“To that end, our organization seeks to recruit men of good character whose loyalties are grounded in strong virtue, correct religion, the moral life, and piety toward their forebears. Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm. Our conviction is that a brotherhood of these men will form the backbone of a renewed American regime that will reflect the past while facing, and vigorously shaping, the future.”
So there you go. Yet another kooky fringe group hopes to turn the calendar back to the days when women couldn’t vote, decide for themselves whether to give birth, or avoid being ruled over by wealthy Christian warlords in more-or-less open warfare with the federal government.
Well, actually, that last one should frighten men, too—assuming they’re denied admission to the secret treehouse. But then that’s their problem, now isn’t it?