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Revealed: Charles Haywood, creator of the Society for American Civic Renewal, has said he might serve as âwarlordâ at the head of an âarmed patronage networkâ
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.
SACRâs most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organizationâs principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho â in Boise, Coeur dâAlene and Moscow â and another in Dallas, Texas.
SACRâs public-facing presence is confined to a slick one-page website advertising the organizationâs goal as âcivilizational renaissanceâ, and a society âwith strong leadership committed to family and cultureâ.
The site claims SACR is âraising accountable leaders to help build thriving communities of free citizensâ who will rebuild âthe frontier-conquering spirit of Americaâ. It condemns âthose who rule todayâ, saying that they âcorrupt the sinews of Americaâ, â[alienate] men from family, community, and Godâ and promising to âcounter and conquer this poisonâ.
It also prominently features SACRâs cross-like insignia or âmarkâ which it describes variously as symbolizing âsword and shieldâ and the rejection of âModernist philosophies and heresiesâ.
The people I know that wish for collapse get real quiet when I loudly say to them so you want your friends children to starve to death? Because I was in a combat zone and thatâs what happens.
Fuck those degenerates.
I always imagine those people have a Hollywood version of a collapse/apocalypse. They think theyâre gonna be in the group that always perseveres no matter what
The other day I was talking to a friend who served in Vietnam and he said something kind of along the same lines. âI donât get these people who want to kill other people; their fellow countrymen. Iâve done it and those guys were trying to kill me but it was bad enough that I donât ever want to do it again.â
Personally Iâve never experienced that. I hope I never do. People that wish for such devastation are extremely ignorant at best and malevolent at worst.
Step 3 is always ??? with this shit. The reality is that radicals need to accept that theyâre not going to win in their lifetime, and they need to be creating organizations poised to help long term.
But they donât actually want to help long term. They see collapse as a chance to seize power for their own benefit as even the loose control we have to check the power of the powerful is too much for them.
For these turner diary nuts, yeah. I was also including anarchists that see acceleration as the only option here and kind of criticizing my own desire to see a world that respects human rights in my lifetime. Admitting Iâll argue and pine for change my whole life and thereâs no chance to see that change is a tough pill to swallow.
I get it. Part of my job is human rights advocacy. It is highly depressive and is getting to the point where I donât really think we can change things really for the better in at least the next decades. If we had fewer existential threats I would think based on history that the day when we again decide human rights are a good idea would come again. I am purely doing it for the belief that defending human rights even when not changing anything is worth it.
People have no idea what it means. Like no grasp even when stories are everywhere. Iâm an aid worker. Focusing on refugees. They canât even imagine what they go through and what the people who never got to me/safety survived until unsurvivable came in front of them.