The Right accuses their critics of the conspiracy they themselves engage in
People on the right have some really weird ideas about their ideological enemies: that weâre âgroomers,â that weâre secretly on some billionaireâs payroll, that we hijacked the education system to promulgate revisionist histories, that we steal elections, and, of course, that we are secretly plotting to take over America and subjugate them.
If youâd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, hereâs a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/10/teneo/#i-grasp
The weirdest thing about this is that itâs the right that engages in revisionist race-history:
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-myth-of-the-happy-slave-explained
And itâs the right who stole a presidency:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
Election-rigging is a right-wing specialty:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/23/state-of-play/#patchwork
Itâs the right who pay for fake grassroots activism:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/raising-them-right-far-right-fight-college-campus-1234636392/
Any time some right-wing politician comes out against queers and calls them groomers, chances are good that heâs spending his free time on Instagram, sending fire emojis to naked boys:
https://www.ibtimes.sg/randy-mcnally-tennessees-anti-lgbtq-lt-gov-caught-liking-commenting-young-gay-mans-racy-69364
Thatâs especially true when weâre talking about evangelical youth pastors:
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-texas-pastors-charged-abusing-children-1765910
Itâs almost like that old playground rebuttal, âI know you are but what am I?â contains a deep political truth:
https://doctorow.medium.com/takes-one-to-know-one-104d7d749408
Of all the absurd libels of the right, the weirdest one is that leftists are secretly funded by woke billionaires spending dark money to foment the overthrow of the USA. The idea of âleftist billionaireâ is laughable on its face: how did this imaginary billionaire make their billions while paying a living wage and providing decent working conditions?
But itâs easy to understand how a group of people who are so positively *aslosh* in dark moneyâââpeople whose every political maneuver is a carefully planned scheme to separate terrified xenophobes and rubes from their moneyâââfor âalternativeâ covid therapies, apocalypse-ready MREs, âsound moneyâ gold coins, and so. much. culture. war. nonsense.
What Iâm trying to say is: when the right accuses the left of being driven by cabals of shadowy, crepulent billionaires and their pathetic lickspittle Renfields, it is because the right is indeed in the thrall of those crepulent billionaires.
Meet Leonard Leo, a crepulent, shadowy billionaire. Leo was last seen around these parts when he was revealed to have been the bagman behind the ultradark money group Judicial Crisis Network. After spending $27m to block confirmation for Obamaâs SCOTUS pick, Merrick Garland, they spent tens of millions more on campaigns to seat Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Coney Barrett was seated thanks to a $15.9m campaign to make an unqualified, unhinged ideologue seem like a viable lifetime member of the highest court in the land:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/29/betcha-cant-eat-just-one/#pwnage
Leo controls the Judicial Crisis Network, which worked with the Federalist Society to allow Trump to appoint a whopping 28% of all US federal judgesâââlifetime appointments for slavering Renfields whoâll follow his political lead. Witness the firepower of a fully operational billionaire.
Leoâs post-Trump side-hustle is a âFederalist Society for everythingââââa secretive, lavishly funded cabal aimed at taking over campuses, corporations, news outlets with an army of âunder 40sâ conservative operatives. Itâs called Teneo, and it was a secretâââuntil its internal memos, videos and other materials leaked to Propublica.
Propublicaâs Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein collaborated with Documentedâs Nick Surgey to report out the leaks, describing how Teneo when from âa dinner club with partisan overtonesâ to a dark-money juggernaut whose annual donations grew by leaps and bounds (2017, $750k; 2020, $2.3m; 2021, $5m):
https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents
These financial good fortunes are not the result of excited small-money donors hoping to help Teneo with its good worksâââitâs a handful of ultra-wealthy sociopaths hoping to use a minority of willing lackeys to project their will over all of us.
Teneoâs network members are a Monsterâs Manual of the wildest wingnuts in public life, from Josh Hawley (who wrote its founding manifesto) to JD Vance to Elise Stefanik to BenShapiro to three of Ron DeSantisâs top aides. Also: federal judge who struck down Bidenâs mask mandate and the heads of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA.
The stated goal of Teneo founder Evan Baehr (a tech bro turned conservative organizer) was for Teneo members to infiltrate âthe House and the Senate, as governorsâââone might be elected president.â
In a leaked video, Baehr identifies the âwokeâ enemy he seeks to vanquish, describing a hypothetical meeting between âa billionaire hedge funder, a film producer, a Harvard professor and a New York Times writer.â These four cook up a plan to give middle-school kids âfree access to sex-change therapy paid for by the federal government.â The filmmaker promises to make a documentary to support the project. The Harvard professor promises to falsify studies to reassure people that the therapies are safe. The Times reporter vows to âprofile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender.â
This irony is that this unhinged conspiratorialism was hatched by someone who was and is actively conspiring to take over the country with members of his secret society. After years in the wilderness, Baehr connected with Leo, who turned on the money spigots. Together, they recruited an âinner coreâ of FedSoc members âand recruit[ed] them for either specific roles to serve as judges or to spin up and launch critical projects.â
Other shadowy billionaires piled in: Home Depotâs trumpy founder Bernie Marcus, Charles Koch, and Betsy DeVos and her family. The new âTeneo 2.0â sought to âto help members find jobs, write books, meet spouses, secure start-up financing or nonprofit donors and learn about public service.â
Their vision is to create âSilicon Valley of Conservatismâââa powerful network of communities where the most influential young leaders, the biggest ideas, and the most leveraged resources come together to launch key projects that advance our shared belief that the conservative worldview drives human flourishing.â
They funnel money to speakers from the absolute depths of the swamp: Erik âBlackwaterâ Prince, David Brooks, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. New members are assured that their involvement with Teneo is âprivate and confidentialâ and the group has kept a low profileâââPropublica asked Sheldon Whitehouseâââa bitter critic of Leoâsâââabout the group and got a blank stare.
Teneoâs latest project is to recruit âstate attorneys general, state financial officers, state legislators, journalists, media executives and best-in-class public affairs professionalsâ to fight ESG policiesâââall the froth youâve encountered about the evils of ESG are the result of this secret, coordinated project.
(To be clear, ESG is bullshit, but not because itâs bad for capitalismâââESG is a dumpster fire of greenwashing:)
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#profiteers
Teneo organizes donors for members who run for local, state and federal office. Will Scharf, whoâs hoping to become Missouriâs next attorney general, has received donations from dozens of Teneo members, giving the maximum allowable donation of $2650.
The paranoid style in American politics never went away. From the Witchfinders General of New England to Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society, there has always been a rump of Americans who are very rich and very frightened and who want to put us all in their place.
For these fevered schemers, the Jack Chick tracts that depicted secret Satanic societies seducing innocent kids through Dungeons and Dragons games were hard-hitting documentaries, and as far as theyâre concerned, theyâre fighting fire with fire.
Image: Jack Chick https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=0046
Tendeo https://www.teneonetwork.com/
Fair use https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property
[Image ID: A page from the Jack Chick tract 'Dark Dungeons,' depicting a sinister society of robed figures gathered in a circle, welcoming in a new initiate. The pentacle on the floor has been replaced with Teneo's stylized 'T' logo. The dialog has been replaced with text from Teneo's 2019 Community Vision report: 'The Silicon Valley of Conservatism â a powerful network of communities where the most influential young leaders, the biggest ideas, and the most leveraged resources come together to launch key projects that advance our shared belief that the conservative worldview drives human flourishing.]















