The Fight is Now
Authors: Ryan P. Williams, Arthur Milikh, Matthew J. Peterson, James Poulos, and American Mind Editors
Published: November 4, 2020 — the day after the 2020 election
Published in: The American Mind (Claremont Institute publication)
What It Is
A statement published by the leadership of the Claremont Institute on the morning after the 2020 election, before votes were fully counted, calling on Republicans to fight the election results. It is a primary document in the history of the “Stop the Steal” movement and a direct precursor to January 6, 2021.
Signatories:
- Ryan P. Williams — President, Claremont Institute
- Arthur Milikh — Executive Director, Center for the American Way of Life
- Matthew J. Peterson — VP of Education, Claremont Institute; Founding Editor, The American Mind
- James Poulos — Executive Editor, The American Mind
Core Argument
The essay makes three claims:
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The Democrats stole the election — “the Democratic Party just broke all the norms related to voting in America.” The statement cites lawsuits, COVID-related rule changes, and mail ballot counting delays as evidence of deliberate fraud. It links to reports from Detroit and Philadelphia as “troubling irregularities.”
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Republicans must fight legally and publicly — “Swarms of lawyers must push for transparency in all the Democratic city machines now churning out votes for Biden.” The FBI should investigate. Recounts must be demanded.
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Republicans must take to the streets — “President Trump should plan several more rallies. Huge ones.” The essay explicitly calls for rallies and protests against what it characterizes as an illegitimate count. “Weak sisters on the right must be called out.”
The essay ends with a call for psychological resilience: “In military doctrine, psychological operations only work on a populace that is already experiencing a defeat.”
Significance
- Published just hours after polls closed, before any credible claim of fraud had been investigated — demonstrating that the “Stop the Steal” narrative was pre-planned, not evidence-driven
- Came from the institutional center of the Claremonter movement, not its fringe
- Directly echoes the catastrophism and emergency politics of The Flight 93 Election — the same “charge the cockpit” logic applied to the post-election period
- The Claremont Institute’s institutional imprimatur gave the Stop the Steal narrative intellectual legitimacy within conservative circles
- The calls for “huge rallies” anticipate the January 6 rally at the Ellipse
Field’s framing: This document is evidence that the New Right “fully cohered” only after January 6 — but also that the road to January 6 was paved by institutions like the Claremont Institute that legitimized the stolen election narrative immediately after November 3.
Contradictions
- The essay decries Democratic “norm-breaking” around election procedures while itself breaking the norm of accepting vote counts before they are complete
- It invokes legal process (“bring out the lawyers”) while simultaneously calling for extra-legal street pressure (“bring out the people”)
- The authors hold PhD-level credentials in political philosophy but the essay relies on innuendo and links to partisan media rather than evidence
Cross-References
- Claremont Institute — institutional author
- Michael Anton — linked approvingly (“Game-on for the Coup?”)
- The Flight 93 Election — the 2016 template for this 2020 statement
- January 6 2021 — the event this statement helped precipitate
- The Claremonters — the movement this statement represents
- 2016 Election — the prior election that established the “charge the cockpit” framework