About
The American Mind is an opinion website, podcast, and newsletter from the reactionary Claremont Institute. One December 2021 republished article by Thomas Klingenstein, the institute’s chairman and a major donor, opened by asserting that prosecuting Kenosha murderer Kyle Rittenhouse is a sign “the ‘woke communists’…are turning America into a totalitarian police state.”
Media Bias/Fact Check classifies The American Mind as having a bias to the right and “mixed” in terms of fact-based reporting “due to poor sourcing and lightly promoting a conspiracy theory regarding the deep state and replacement theory.” The same site mentions that an essay from Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams included “hints of a white nationalist perspective.” Other articles decry the idea of “whiteness” and allege that this concept is being used to discriminate against people of the Jewish faith. A March 2020 piece by Klingenstein entitled “Trump’s Virtues,” alleges that “we are still in need of the qualities of great leadership.” The site also published an editorial that claims that the white supermacist “replacement theory” is not racist.
In August 2020, after massive Black Lives Matter protests filled the nation’s streets over the summer, Klingenstein stated, “We on the Right are confronting an enemy that wishes to destroy our way of life.”
January 6, 2021
- On December 1, 2020, John Eastman published an essay in The American Mind entitled “The Constitutional Authority of State Legislatures to Choose Electors.”
- The title of a Jan. 5, 2022 essay asks, “Does Anyone Care About January 6?” and whitewashes the attack on the U.S. Capitol as a “supposed insurrection.”
- An article from later that month by Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman, “Setting the Record Straight on the POTUS ‘Ask’,” attempts to whitewash the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Eastman had drafted a plan in which Vice President Mike Pence would refuse to recognize the electoral votes from seven states at the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings.
The Big Lie
- In September 2020, The American Mind published Michael Anton’s article, “The Coming Coup,” which accuses Democrats of “openly talking about staging a coup.”
- About a week later, The American Mind’s editors published an editorial, “Stop the Coup.”
- The American Mind helped spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election including unfounded concerns about mail-in ballots by notorious voter suppression architect Hans von Spakovsky.
- The site also shared conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and China in the aftermath of the 2020 election.