Corporate media partners with Antifa propagandist to wage war against conservative think tank

The censorship-industrial complex surges into overdrive ahead of the 2024 White House race.

This is a The Dossier guest post by Christopher Brunet, an investigative journalist who also serves as an editor for The American Conservative. Please follow him on X (https://X.com/realChrisBrunet) and subscribe to his Substack.

If you’d like to write a story for The Dossier or become a regular contributor, please pitch us at Jds921@protonmail.com

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Who is Jason Wilson? It doesn’t really matter—his X bio describes a ‘‘reporter covering far-right extremism and bad vibes’’—hardly a unique or interesting archetype; these snarky extremism and misinformation researchers are a dime-a-dozen. 

What matters is what Wilson represents: he’s the tip of the spear in what appears to be a coordinated smear campaign. Over the past three months, Wilson has published eight hit pieces in The Guardian, a left-wing publication, targeting The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank. These attacks include profiles on Claremont’s board chairman, a senior fellow, a donor, an award recipient, a 2020 Lincoln Fellow, a 2017 Lincoln Fellow, and an unrelated conference where several speakers had ‘‘current or past connections with the far-right Claremont Institute.’’

Jason Wilson on x.com

I reached out to Wilson to inquire if he, or his editors, had a specific reason for publishing eight negative articles against the Claremont Institute within such a short period. He replied blandly, ‘‘I pursued these stories because I considered them newsworthy. I presume that others covering aspects of Claremont's activities have made similar judgments.’’ 

It’s possible Wilson is just a lone Antifa wolf on a quixotic crusade. 

‘‘Wilson is not simply a pro-Antifa activist who also happens to write for the Guardian,’’ explains Quillette. ‘‘He actively leverages his role as a regular Guardian writer to promote Antifa, whitewash its violence, and signal-boost its leaders (whom he presents as “experts”)—often under the guise of neutral news reporting … He also defends such tactics as doxing, stalking, de-platforming and shaming as valuable means to attack individuals whose views he dislikes.’’

Alternatively, Wilson may not be acting alone; The New York Times, The New Republic, Business Insider, Media Matters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and Radley Balko’s Substack (Balko just transitioned to Substack after 9 years at The Washington Post) have joined in the recent dogpile, just to name a few. This coordination is itself newsworthy: imagine if there were suddenly dozens of articles in prominent outlets attacking organizations like The Mises Institute, Ayn Rand Institute, or Cato Institute. People would rightly wonder what's going on.

The most recent attack came this month from The New York Times, where Damon Linker (yet another extremism and misinformation expert) begins his piece called ‘‘Get to Know the Influential Conservative Intellectuals Who Help Explain G.O.P. Extremism’’ with a section titled ‘‘The Claremont Catastrophists’’ before ending with a section called ‘‘Combating the Catastrophists.’’

‘‘These [Claremont catastrophists] are giving Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable,’’ laments Linker. The ‘‘unthinkable’’ to which he refers is ‘‘to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants throughout the federal bureaucracy’’ and also ‘‘staffing the executive branch with more aggressive right-wing lawyers.’’ 

That goal, to deconstruct the administrative state, is hardly a sinister secret--it’s explicitly at the core of Claremont’s mission. Upon appointing Ryan Williams as Claremont Institute’s new president in 2017, the press release boasted that ‘‘Our new political landscape provides a rare opportunity to … help dismantle the administrative state.’’

''Many of our critics on the left and 'center' see us a threat because we have influence and present a view of America they want to destroy. These critics ... would like nothing less than the continuing transformation of America from a popular regime of self-government into a woke oligarchy that could very well usher in a new age of mediocrity, ugliness, and misery,'' Williams told me upon being reached for comment. ''Enemies like these only strengthen our resolve to continue the fight.''

Linker’s lamentation over Claremont's mission exemplifies a recurring theme in the recent media onslaught: nervousness and frustration regarding Claremont's intentions to destroy the administrative state. There's clear concern from this chorus of ''misinformation experts'' that Claremont’s conservative advocacy might actually succeed in impacting the upcoming 2024 election, thus shaping the next Republican administration and the future of the federal public service. 

‘‘[Claremont Institute] are likely to be considered for top jobs in the event of a Trump restoration in 2024,’’ warns The New York Times.

‘‘[Claremont] will provide the next Republican president with policy papers and vetted personnel on day one of their administration,’’ writes Media Matters.

‘‘They stand a reasonable chance of being seated at the highest levels of government—at the right hand of a President Trump or a President DeSantis,’’ concurs The New Republic.

What annoys these ''adults in the room'' the most is how Claremont always refuses to make groveling apologies for their people, including inflammatory figures such as Pedro Gonzalez, Charles Haywood, John Eastman, Michael Anton, and others who cross the media's red lines. 

For example, when Gonzalez, a 2021 Lincoln Fellow, was unceremoniously ‘‘canceled’’ by Breitbart News and The Washington Free Beacon this past summer, Matthew Peterson, a Senior Fellow at Claremont, defended him: ‘‘Everyone responsible for this attack on [Gonzalez] is dead to me. To the extent they’re alive they are now enemies. Listen to me closely: the Trump-DeSantis primary fight is not the issue. Fight all you want. Play like the left with this sword & you WILL die by it—that’s a promise.’’ 

The message is clear: Claremont prioritizes serious governance over mudslinging.

“Meeting with Michael Anton and all those guys who are serious and intelligent and no bullshit, it leveled me out, and I would have been better served if I had listened to them even more,” Gonzalez told me upon being reached for comment. “Without serious institutions like Claremont, you’d only have lunatics and grifters pushing the rightward edge of the Overton window.'' 

As this censorship-industrial complex surges into overdrive ahead of the 2024 White House race, it's clear they are on a mission to whip up hysteria against anyone right of center in an attempt to silence their voices and render them untouchable for any prospective administration. Of course, only 7.1% of full-time U.S. journalists self-identify as Republican--one wonders if that number is higher, or lower, than the percentage of journalists who self-identify as Antifa?--so this smear campaign only goes one way. For the mainstream media, there are no enemies to the left, only enemies to the right.