ARCHITECTS OF AUTHORITARIANISM: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right

ARCHIECTS OF AUTHORITARIANISM: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right
F. DARRELL MUNSELL
University Press of Kansas (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The eye-opening story of how a conservative think tank of political philosophers dedicated to the founding principles of the United States became the base of operations for Trump’s agenda of destroying civil rights and undoing American democracy.

From the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the Federalist Society’s decades-long campaign to shape the judiciary, private think tanks have long been the shadowy intellectual engine driving conservative politics. But the Claremont Institute remains the most consequential organization in shaping the MAGA agenda. Founded in southern California in 1979, Claremont’s original mission was “to restore the principles of the American Founding to its rightful, preeminent authority” in American society. Now, historian Darrell Munsell uncovers how the Claremont Institute went from being a home for erudite political philosophers to serving as the base camp for the January 6 insurrection, Project 2025, and President Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

The institute’s political activism began with its endorsement of Donald Trump for president in 2016, followed quickly by its entry into the cultural battles against Black Lives Matter, multiculturalism, critical race theory, and the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public universities, government agencies, and commercial enterprises. By the end of Trump’s first term, Claremont believed that “wokeism” was an existential threat to the Founders’ Constitution and was fighting to win the culture war at any cost—including attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, Claremont lurched further rightward toward populism, Christian nationalism, and illiberalism. Led by John Eastman, Charles Kesler, Thomas D. Klingenstein, and a new generation of young, conservative activists—some from the furthest fringes of the far-right—the Claremont Institute is shaping the movement of National Conservatism with its devotion to replacing constitutional democracy with an authoritarian system of government. Claremont joined forces with the Heritage Foundation and other groups to draft Project 2025, the now-infamous blueprint for the second Trump administration.

Munsell’s revelatory history of the Claremont Institute pulls back the curtain on one of the most influential organizations in American politics and a driving force of the MAGA ascendency. A must read for anyone seeking to understand the hidden forces behind Trump’s agenda.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Founded in 1979, the Claremont Graduate University professor Harry Jaffa with four students from his tenure at Claremont Men's College. Shortly after the school became coeducational, he led the establishment of the think tank, naming it "Claremont" despite it having no official ties to the conservative school consortium he left; the name does not reflect the Institute's present headquarters location in Uplands, California. In fact neither the school he left not the city the Institute is located in make any mention in their Wikipedia pages of Jaffa himself or the Claremont Institute. Telling, no?

The Institute was founded to provide the burgeoning conservative movement of Reagan/Falwell/Dobson times with intellectual underpinnings rooted in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss. I will leave you to slug your way through verbiage like "paleoconservative versus neoconservative" and a most rigororous discussion about how the 1980s and 1990s were watershed moments for conswervative political philosophy. The radical right was born in places like the Claremont Institute, perhaps even principally there; reading about them made every ounce of my intolerance for this brummagem "philosophy" peddled by this Institute awaken and roar in blood-pressure spiking rage.

I am not neutral on this subject, this entire topic of human endeavor, but virulently opposed to it, so I took over five weeks to read the book. I feared for my brain's health more than once. As Author Munsell details how the Institute's truly reprehensible prioritization of cultural issues particularly their obsession with dismantling the teaching of Black history, as well as other elements of educational policy it saw as "left-wing indoctrination in our schools", he pays careful attention to explaining the Institute's complete domination over mainstream Republican Party economic policy.

It is genuinely sick-making for me to read that.

I did not vet all 600+ endnotes, because why? This is Kansas' most respected intellectual institution publishing a book criticizing fellow conservatives. I trust their ducks are in a row. I did very much appreciate Author Munsell's calm and even tone as he catalogs things done, things taught and "supported, that would inspire me to revive the jeremiad.

The Institute was a big contributor to Project 2025, which apparently y'all didn't read carefully enough...they laid out the agenda that Trump's second administrationused to set policies. which, Author Munsell, an historian by trade, says these policies have taken an increasingly authoritarian turn, which is really really worrying coming from a guy who achieved emeritus status at West Texas A&M.

Author Munsell, then, is to be reliably considered a more conservative person than I am, so when he contends (with supporting examples and endnotes) that both Trump and the Claremont Institute have embraced the notion that "...extreme, even anti-democratic measures {are} needed to achieve their policy goals," I read between the lines and start to feel very afraid. It's clear Author Munsell's understanding of the historical context of modern conservatism that informs his worries for our country's future as a democracy. He's written a nuanced examination of an important player on the paleoconservative side. It is also an accessible text that's supported by the previously mentioned mountain of endnotes. Architects of Authoritarianism: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right is both an exhaustive, definitive history of the Claremont Institute, and damning indictment of the modern right (perhaps unintentionally) from within.