I somehow got on the mailing list for Imprimis magazine from Hillsdale College. Each month, I receive this small, 6’’ by 10’’ magazine in my mailbox, with a single 6-page essay from some far-right politician or think-tank propagandist. At the back is a donation envelope and a form to request a free subscription for some unlucky associate. I wonder if I got my subscription as a prank, or an associate thought I needed my mind changed (about a LOT of stuff), or if some marketer just decided that I fit the profile of someone who may give them money or otherwise help the Republican party gain power.
I’m impressed by the intensity of this propaganda campaign — I’ve never seen anyone deliver a polished essay into millions of mailboxes for free on a monthly schedule, but I guess that’s what you can accomplish with a billion-dollar endowment funded by far-right hacks and ideologues. This junk-mail campaign is complemented by a push into K-12 curricula and charter schools, though that has been complicated by their open disdain for teachers. Altogether, Hillsdale is shaping up to be a major force in distributing far-right propaganda from a pro-establishment perspective.
Each edition of Imprimis covers a different topic from a far-right perspective. The topics of these essays include: minimization and justification of the January 6 attack on Congress; conspiracy theories targeting scientists and transgender people (this is perhaps the most ridiculous of the bunch); attacking anti-racism by promoting racist stereotypes (in addition to characteristic straw-man argumentation); and a long essay about imperialism that is apparently just a setup for a conspiracy theory about the World Economic Forum, yet completely avoids examining the WEF itself (but does fit in digs at San Francisco and Chicago). There’s also a diatribe against the CIA, accusing it of politicization and incompetence, building these accusations on top of other far-right conspiracy theories (e.g. portraying COIVD-19 as a bioweapon).
The Hillsdale charter school program was shut down following the outrage generated when the public saw a video of a ‘private reception’ at which the Hillsdale President mocked teachers and shared the stage with the TN governor. Tellingly, Hillsdale allies express a sense of betrayal that someone reported on what was said there. Apparently, in their world, there’s an expectation of privacy when powerful people address an audience of over one hundred people (based on my estimate of the event from the video). If that’s the world they live in, I can understand how they see conspiracies everywhere. They apparently think that the world operates in a way that large conspiracies are easily kept secret, whereas my understanding is more in line with Ben Franklin’s: "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
Anyway, I suppose my junk-mail could be worse than Imprimis — one of my neighbors received an unsolicited copy of the Epoch Times, and I had the joy of pointing out the conspiracy theories in that edition to this unsuspecting friend. At least for Hillsdale College, they can claim to be more of a school than Prager U.