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Revealed: Charles Haywood, creator of the Society for American Civic Renewal, has said he might serve as ‘warlord’ at the head of an ‘armed patronage network’
The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.
Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.
SACR’s most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organization’s principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho – in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Moscow – and another in Dallas, Texas.
SACR’s public-facing presence is confined to a slick one-page website advertising the organization’s goal as “civilizational renaissance”, and a society “with strong leadership committed to family and culture”.
The site claims SACR is “raising accountable leaders to help build thriving communities of free citizens” who will rebuild “the frontier-conquering spirit of America”. It condemns “those who rule today”, saying that they “corrupt the sinews of America”, “[alienate] men from family, community, and God” and promising to “counter and conquer this poison”.
It also prominently features SACR’s cross-like insignia or “mark” which it describes variously as symbolizing “sword and shield” and the rejection of “Modernist philosophies and heresies”.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.
Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.
Finally, the site advises that SACR membership “is organized primarily around local groups overseen by a national superstructure” and “is by invitation only”, offering an email address for those “interested in learning more”.
Haywood has become more active and prominent as a blogger and commentator on the far-right podcast circuit since selling his solely-owned Indianapolis-based shampoo manufacturing company, Mansfield-King, to a competitor for an undisclosed price in September 2020.
Laura K Field is a political theorist and a senior fellow at the Washington DC based thinktank the Niskanen Center who has written and spoken extensively about the “reactionary conservatism” of the Claremont Institute and those in its milieu.
On Haywood’s sponsorship of SACR and his Claremont ties, Field, the political theorist, said: “What’s creepy about the local-level stuff is that this country has a history of local autocracy … the way they’re acting undermines the rule of law.”
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