Charles Haywood and how 'no enemies to the right' shields the woke right

Conservative radio show host Erick Erickson published an article last week detailing how self-described “warlord” Charles Haywood has been building an “armed patronage network” (again, Haywood’s own description) that has infiltrated Christian and secular conservative organizations. According to Erickson, those in Haywood’s orbit embrace “white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies … to varying degrees.”

The article went viral. Praise and criticism were both intense. Erickson’s supporters insisted that the long-form, densely cited essay was sorely needed. Erickson provided receipts and connected dots. Or did he?

Who is Charles Haywood?

Charles Haywood is a University of Chicago-educated lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who sold his shampoo company in 2020. In his 2021 article, “The Foundationalist Manifesto,” he outlines his vision of the ideal society. The manifesto identifies the “singular” problem with modern society as “autonomic liberalism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment” which Foundationalism “plans to destroy.” His new order will usher in a “limited dictatorship” or “aristocratic” rule but it “will not be democratic, because [democracy] is unnatural and destructive at scale.” The government will have “unlimited means” to enact their virtuous goals with a “light touch.”

What are those goals?

According to Haywood, the ideal government would deport “all illegal immigrants and legal immigrants of the past several decades [who are] not culturally compatible.” It would forbid men and women from “freely choosing the path they want.” Women will “not be permitted to choose career over family” and “men will not be permitted to choose not to have a family.” A “free society” will exist, but “virtue” will always take precedence over “the free market” such that “political choice will dictate the limits of economic choice.” Finally, “Christianity will be the officially favored religion” such that Christians will “receive state preferment” as well as “preferment in the private sphere, from jobs to social status.”

To prepare the ground and sow the seeds for his semi-utopian vision, Haywood founded the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) in 2020. According to members like Blaze CMO Andrew Beck and New Founding CEO Nate Fischer, it is “a (mostly) secret conservative brain trust” and a “fraternal organization for Christian men who are Gen X and younger.” Haywood has also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the conservative Claremont Institute, whose president Ryan Williams is also a member of the SACR. All these claims, and many others, were well-documented in Erickson’s article.

Ironically, the idea that Haywood is a fringe figure with no influence among conservatives or Christians was blown apart by the responses to Erickson’s piece.

Auron MacIntyre, podcaster for The Blaze, claimed that Erickson was speaking to the media “so that he can announce who Antifa should murder next.” Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, announced that “If Antifa assassinating another Christian conservative is the price that must be paid for Erick Erickson to get on television, he’s more than happy for someone else to pay that price.” Of all the responders, the most prolific was William Wolfe, Executive Director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, who proclaimed “Erick Erickson is ginning up potentially lethal violence,” that his article “amounts to a call for the assassination of a group of conservative Christians” and that “if you shared Erick Erickson’s call to violence and something happens to any of the men he put a target on, their blood is on your hands.”

These widespread, overwrought reactions seem odd if Haywood is merely an isolated pundit with a blog.

Needless to say, Erickson’s piece did not in any way endorse violence. However, in today’s charged political climate, accusations of racism, antisemitism, and neo-Nazism are certainly fraught. So, were they justified?

Haywood’s views

On social media, Haywood has repeatedly used racial slurs, writing, for example, that “All changs and jeets pillaging our education system at the expense of indigenous Americans must be sent back.” When admonished by a sympathetic commenter that “Ethnocentrism needn't be hostile in expression,” Haywood didn’t deny the charge, but replied that “excessive politeness is read as weakness, especially by jeets and changs.” He likewise criticized Republican governor Mitch Daniels as a “loser” who “did nothing to defeat his enemies” but instead “[overwhelmed] Purdue with jeets and changs while deprecating actual Indiana residents, especially white men.”

Haywood later shared a July 4th speech by white nationalist Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau, calling it “very good” and stating that “this guy is very impressive.” In that speech, Rousseau identified the “enemies of our people” as “the Jewish cabals, the Mexican cartels, the African criminals, and the homosexual peddlers of vice and exploitation.” Rousseau went on to state that humanity is “divided into races” by “nature itself or Nature's God if you prefer” and insisted that “Race is an immutable fact of life. You can either take the side of your heritage and your future or you can follow in abject submission to those who wish to destroy it.”

To what degree do Haywood’s supporters and grant beneficiaries share these sentiments? It’s nearly impossible to know, in large part because of Haywood’s doctrine of “no enemies to the right.”

NETTR and Haywood’s allies

In 2022, it was discovered that a prominent Christian Nationalist podcaster had been running an anonymous alt-account where he shared his racist, sexist, and antisemitic views. In response, Haywood (in)famously announced “Who cares? No enemies to the Right.” Haywood quickly turned this catchphrase (NETTR) into a strategy of political engagement, which he articulated in a long, printed interview. Because “any firepower directed at the Right is necessarily antithetical to the goal of destroying the Left,” he argued that we should never publicly attack anyone who is “not Left.” Any criticism of those on the Right should only be “done privately” and should be “strictly tactical, to agree on how may we cooperate to achieve our joint ends.”

Many Christian conservatives in Haywood’s camp have taken this dictum to heart. As a result, they reject public critique of even the vilest speech and behavior provided it originates with someone “on their team.” They will not issue rebukes or disavowals on the grounds that doing so would be “helping the Left.” Oddly enough, this restraint does not extend to Christian conservatives like Erickson, who is openly, consistently, and highly critical of the Left but is also willing to call out immorality and hypocrisy within the Right.

The upshot is that, by design, it is nearly impossible to determine what many of the people in Haywood’s circles actually believe. Are they Constitutional conservatives who are privately sickened by the inroads that white supremacy and antisemitism are making within their movement? Or are they reactionary neo-fascists who are “hiding their power levels”? There’s virtually no way to know.

Regardless of Haywood’s views, the Bible's command is clear: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph. 5:11). Erickson’s piece exposed sin and error within some segments of conservatism. There is no question that the woke left currently holds far more institutional power than the dissident right.

Christians are entirely correct to oppose critical race theory and queer theory on biblical grounds. We should see them as serious threats to the health of the church and the welfare of the culture. But we need not ignore the sin in our own camp.

If we turn a blind eye to it for the sake of political expediency, we will be accountable not to man, but to God.