Michael Anton
Claremonter and “Paleo-Straussian”; author of The Flight 93 Election; served on Trump’s National Security Council
Also known by his 2016 pseudonym: Publius Decius Mus
Who He Is
Michael Anton is a West Coast Straussian and Claremonter who became the most prominent intellectual voice of early Trumpism. Field describes him as a “Paleo-Straussian” — someone who combined Straussian political philosophy with elements of Paleoconservatism.
He wrote for the Journal of American Greatness, an anonymous blog (discussed in Chapter 3 of Furious Minds) that developed Trumpist intellectual arguments before Anton became publicly identified.
In September 2016, under the pseudonym “Publius Decius Mus,” he published The Flight 93 Election in the Claremont Review of Books. The essay went viral after Rush Limbaugh read it on air on September 7, 2016 — the day after publication. The same-day amplification (documented in The Shaming of the Never Trumpers) is the wiki’s load-bearing case of the Claremont Institute→Limbaugh→mass-conservative-audience pipeline functioning in real time. After Trump won, Anton’s identity was revealed in The Weekly Standard. In January 2017 he joined the Trump administration’s National Security Council (in an equivalent position to Ben Rhodes under Obama).
Intellectual Lineage
Anton is a devoted student of Harry V. Jaffa and speaks glowingly of both Jaffa and Allan Bloom. He represents the political activist wing of the Straussian tradition — willing to use Strauss’s methods (including pseudonymous writing and esotericism) in the service of explicit political ends.
Field (in Furious Minds Ch. 1) credits Anton with defining Trumpism in September 2016 as “secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy” — a formulation that captures the “ribs” of the New Right’s politics, even if (Field argues) it hides the true “spine,” which is social traditionalism and rejection of liberal pluralism.
The Pseudonym
Writing as “Publius Decius Mus” was itself a Straussian gesture. Publius Decius Mus was a Roman consul who sacrificed himself to save Rome. The choice of pseudonym signals both the sacrificial drama Anton wanted to invoke and his familiarity with classical political models. The use of a pseudonym allowed him to write more radically than he could under his own name while employed in conservative institutions.
Key Arguments (in The Flight 93 Election)
- 2016 is an existential moment: “charge the cockpit or you die”
- Conservative intellectuals are hypocrites — they diagnose crisis but refuse to act with urgency
- Trump articulated “the right stances on the right issues — immigration, trade, and war”
- Immigration by “Third World foreigners with no tradition of liberty” is a permanent electoral threat (Field: this echoes the Great Replacement conspiracy)
- The future without Trump: Caesarism, secession, collapse, or permanent liberal oligarchy
After The Flight 93 Election
Anton served on the NSC through 2018. He continued writing and speaking in New Right circles. He remains a prominent Claremonter figure.
Notably, after the 2020 election, Anton published “Game-on for the Coup?” — an essay linked approvingly in The Fight is Now by Claremont Institute leadership. The essay argued that Democrats were planning to use urban vote-counting practices to steal the election. This made Anton an intellectual architect of the “Stop the Steal” narrative.
Field’s Assessment
Field acknowledges that The Flight 93 Election made a “positive analytical case for Trump” that was distinctive — most conservatives either rejected Trump outright or supported him reluctantly. But she characterizes the essay as “riddled with apocalypticism and conspiracism” and notes that its immigration argument relies on demographic replacement theory. She sees Anton as genuinely intelligent and genuinely dangerous — someone whose Straussian training allows him to dress nativist politics in serious philosophical clothing.
Cross-References
- The Flight 93 Election — his most famous essay
- The Fight is Now — the 2020 statement that linked to his “Stop the Steal” essay
- The Claremonters — his intellectual home
- Claremont Institute — institutional affiliation
- Harry V. Jaffa — his intellectual hero
- Leo Strauss — the tradition he works in
- Journal of American Greatness — where he wrote anonymously before 2016
- West Coast Straussianism — his philosophical school
- 2016 Election — the occasion of his most famous essay
- January 6 2021 — the downstream consequence of his Stop the Steal arguments
- Rush Limbaugh — the September 7, 2016 amplifier
- The Shaming of the Never Trumpers — Limbaugh’s broadcast transcript
- Angelo Codevilla — Anton’s named structural antecedent