Know Your Enemy
patreon
I Taught the Sheriff (w/ John Ganz)
🕑 Added 2022-09-23 20:14:10 +0000 UTCKYE super guest John Ganz joins Matt and Sam for a characteristically spirited discussion of The Claremont Institute's "Sheriff Fellowship," which invites county sheriffs from across the country to California for a weekend of West Coast Straussian ideological programing.
Drawing on the history of "posse comitatus" movements and recent reports on the role of conservative sheriffs in resisting COVID mandates, propagating 2020 election lies, and cozying up to vigilante militias, we offer a synthesized account of why the mythologized figure of the sheriff — and sheriffs themselves — have such an attraction for right-wing radicals intent on subverting American democracy.
Further Reading:
Jessica Pishko, "Here’s the Secret “Sheriff Fellowship” Curriculum From the Country’s Most Prominent MAGA Think Tank," Slate, Sept 21, 2022.
Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti, "2020 Election Deniers Seek Out Powerful Allies: County Sheriffs," NYTimes, Jul 25, 2022.
Adam Rawnsley, "MAGA Claremont Institute Honors Sheriffs Who Defy Laws They Don’t Like," Daily Beast, Nov 22, 2021.
Ashley Powers, "The Renegade Sheriffs," The New Yorker, Apr 23, 2018.
Kimberly Kindy, "Boosted by the pandemic, ‘constitutional sheriffs’ are a political force," Washington Post, Nov 2, 2021.
Christian Vanderbrouk, "Notes on an Authoritarian Conspiracy: Inside the Claremont Institute’s “79 Days to Inauguration” Report," The Bulwark, Nov 8, 2021.
Michael Anton & Glenn Elmers, "The Stakes: Harry Jaffa’s Philosophy," The American Mind, Sept 19, 2022.
Comments
Bob the Builder
if you get the 10$ one you get one
Tobias Leering
Jon Hamm in season 5 of Fargo brought me back to this episode.
Patrick Reilly
Selfish question: do I receive a DISSENT Mag subscription as part of my KYE subscription?
Mitchell Zimmerman
I haven't listened to this episode yet, but I'll add a suggestion to the "reading" list anyway: High Noon.
Dan L
This is how I feel about sovereign citizenship. It's this diffuse decentralized grift that prays on people's desperation and alienation from the law/legal institutions. It's very expensive and ultimately harmful false hope.
Steve
Growing up in rural Indiana, my first exposure to far-right politics was in my tweens, when a struggling neighbor got pulled into William Gale's ideas. He would listen to cassettes distributed by Gale while working in his fields. This convinced our neighbor that he didn't need to repay his operating loans and only need to file specific paperwork. I remember walking through the foreclosure auction of his home and property in the late '70s. People who dismiss or abstract these ideologies as "theoretical" or harmless, fail in seeing the devastation these ideas have wrought in so many lives.
Know Your Enemy
The Pat Sajak stuff caught my attention, too, ha (Matt)
Ryan Erickson
John Ganz is a gem (Gem Ganz?). Also this may have gotten air on the pod before but reading the Slate article I confess to being fascinated that Pat Sajak is the chairman of Hillsdale College. All those proceeds from bought vowels are feeding the Straussian beast apparently.
Lou Guberti Ng
Ganz: "...that Nazi propagandist" Me: "Goebbels?" Ganz: "Bronze Age Pervert" Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Christian
would love to hear more on the lineage between British Israelism and Christian Identity and Calvinism and white American settlers as the covenantal people and how it informs what we're dealing with today
mjs
A great idea, but also a huge topic. It’s tricky—natural law, natural right, and natural rights are not exactly synonyms. Will ponder (Matt)
Hannah
Reupping my request for an episode dedicated to natural law and the role it plays on the right. It often looks to me like conservatives essentially use it as a way of assuming what they should have to prove, but I do know there's a philosophical history to it I've never studied.
erik w bjorke
I don’t live far from Medina, North Dakota where Gordon Kahl got into a shootout with U.S. Marshals.
