Revealed: US professor was behind extremist site that spread conspiracies
www.theguardian.com
Documents show Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, which attacked LGBTQ+ people and Republicans deemed not rightwing enough

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13676673

BSU’s Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, which attacked the university, LGBTQ+ people and Republicans deemed not rightwing enough

Boise State University (BSU) professor and Claremont Institute scholar Scott Yenor was the hidden hand behind Action Idaho, a far-right online media platform that featured inflammatory rightwing commentary on politics in that state, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The documents, obtained through public records requests, also show that Yenor sought and received funding for the initiative from wealthy and influential donors like Claremont Institute board chair, Thomas D Klingenstein.

He also attempted to hire a rising conservative writer, Pedro Gonzalez, to lead the initiative. Gonzalez was later embroiled in a controversy about antisemitic remarks he made in online chats in 2019 and 2020. They also show him tapping a network of expertise that overlaps both with the Claremont Institute and the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), a secretive fraternal Christian Nationalist organization the Guardian has reported on extensively.

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    The documents, obtained through public records requests, also show that Yenor sought and received funding for the initiative from wealthy and influential donors like Claremont Institute board chair, Thomas D Klingenstein.

    In March 2022 the site published an article by Anna K Miller, a director at the rightwing Idaho Freedom Foundation and a longtime Yenor collaborator, praising a Title IX complaint filed against BSU by mens’ rights activist and former University of Michigan professor Mark Perry.

    Last June, Breitbart reported that in 2019 and 2020 Gonzalez had sent a slew of messages in Telegram chats, including one called Right Wing Death Squad, which expressed crude anti-Black racism and antisemitism, and admiration for white nationalists like Nick Fuentes.

    A recording of the speech was available on Yenor’s YouTube channel at the time of reporting, and in it Gonzalez castigates the “globalist American empire” and bemoans “a shifting in the locus of sovereignty away from the real nation, the flesh and blood people of America, and the soil on which they live and die and to award international bureaucracies in an abstract global village”.

    Regardless of Gonzalez’s eventual decision, Yenor immediately began using his name in funding discussions with wealthy donors, including Claremont Institute board chairman Thomas D Klingenstein, who lives in New York City.

    The document continues: “Action Idaho will be governed by a Board of Directors, including Scott Yenor (Meridian, ID) and Theo Wold (former Trump White House advisor) and Josh Turnbow (media producer), who will set the overall strategic objectives for each quarter.”

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