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.
Idaho, always Idaho.
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”.
Skyler Kressin of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.
Like other members revealed as officers in the filings, Kressin appears to be an affluent professional working as a tax accountant.
Lives in hick resort town in Idaho, check. Occupation, tax accountancy, that well-known incubator of charismatic revolutionaries. Check. Meet your next king! Somewhere down by the lake, we’ll let you know, and make sure to bring your Form SACR-1088, three copies please, and use the name you’d like to be revealed by hackers in the near future.
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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