Thomas Klingenstein
Chairman of the Claremont Institute board of directors; New York investment fund manager; former largest single donor to Claremont (providing ~$2.5M, roughly half the budget, as recently as 2019); coined “woke communism” as the Claremont frame for progressive ideology; “In war, you don’t negotiate until you’ve won”
Who He Is
Thomas Klingenstein is the chairman of the board of the Claremont Institute and a New York investment firm executive. He has been the single most important financial patron of the Claremont project: as recently as 2019, he provided 9 million and Klingenstein was no longer providing a majority of the funding (“They’re increasingly less reliant on me, and that’s a good thing,” he told Elisabeth Zerofsky). Other major donors include the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.
Klingenstein is not an academic or political theorist; he is the money-and-strategy layer of the Claremonter operation. But his public statements reveal the explicitly martial, zero-sum worldview that the institution’s more cautious senior scholars (like Charles Kesler) keep at arm’s length.
”Woke Communism” and the Cold War Frame
Klingenstein’s signature contribution to Claremont’s rhetorical arsenal is the framing of progressive “wokeness” as a form of communism — a totalizing ideology that must be defeated, not merely debated. Ryan Williams’s editorial program at The American Mind joined this Klingensteinian “woke communism” frame to the traditional Claremont critique of the administrative state, producing the institute’s current synthesis.
Klingenstein’s most revealing statement on strategy: “If it’s true that the country is as divided as we think it is, and if the situation is as dire… if you’re actually in a war, even if it’s a cold war, you behave differently. You’re less inclined to compromise. You’re more aggressive. In war, you don’t negotiate until you’ve won.”
This is Claremont’s operational doctrine stated plainly: the normal norms of democratic politics — compromise, negotiation, accepting electoral outcomes — do not apply because the conflict is a war, not a political disagreement. The friend/enemy distinction (Schmittian Decisionism) is embedded in Klingenstein’s framing even if he would not use those words.
Relationship to Ryan Williams
Klingenstein was the power behind Ryan Williams’s elevation to the Claremont Institute presidency. When Trump entered the 2016 race, Klingenstein and the board “decided that we were going to become a little more ‘small-p’ political, in addition to the philosophy.” He saw an opportunity: the conservative movement “was less sure of itself” and was in “a period of flux.” Williams was installed at 35 — young enough to reach the internet generation — and given a mandate to expand the institute’s political footprint.
On John Eastman
After January 6, Klingenstein stood by Eastman with characteristic bluntness: Eastman is “one of ours” and a friend, he said, while noting that Claremont’s support was “not exactly a defense” of his advice to Trump. This framing — tribal loyalty (“one of ours”) combined with strategic deniability (“not a defense”) — exemplifies the institute’s post-January 6 positioning.
Cross-References
- Claremont Institute — the institution he chairs and funds
- Ryan Williams — the president he empowered
- Decisionism — the Schmittian zero-sum logic underlying “in war, you don’t negotiate”
- John Eastman — “one of ours”
- National Conservatism — Klingenstein has also donated to and participated in NatCon orbit