Feb. 2, 2017 Update: It is Michael Anton.
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, left, stands with K. T. McFarland, and Michael Anton during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. Flynn said the administration is putting Iran “on notice” after it tested a ballistic missile. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Weekly Standard:
The Anonymous Pro-Trump ‘Decius’ Now Works Inside The White House
The enigmatic writer’s real name is Michael Anton, and he’s a fast-talking 47-year-old intellectual who, unlike most of his colleagues, can readily quote Roman histories and Renaissance thinkers. But readers knew him throughout 2016 as Publius Decius Mus, first at a now-defunct website called the Journal of American Greatness and later in the online pages of the Claremont Review of Books. As Decius, Anton insisted that electing Trump and implementing Trumpism was the best and only way to stave off American decline—making a cerebral case to make America great again…
After working as a speechwriter and press secretary for New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, he entered Bush’s White House in 2001 as a communications aide for the National Security Council—a job that took on greater weight after 9/11. Anton was part of the team that made the case within the administration and to the public for invading Iraq—and he was enthusiastic about the war. That team** helped craft one of the more infamous sentences in a State of the Union address, from Bush’s in 2003: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
His evolution on the issue of Iraq is perhaps Anton’s most notable shift, but it’s not the only one informed by his experience as a member of the governing class he so artfully assailed as Decius. After leaving the Bush administration in 2005, Anton was a speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch at the media conglomerate News Corporation, then the director of communications at megabank Citigroup. For the last year and a half, he’s been a managing director at the investment firm BlackRock. With that résumé, it’s no wonder the man who referred to the “Davos class” as a “junta” and wrote that it would “be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice” chose to write under a pseudonym. Anton would no doubt happily accept that he is a “traitor to his class,” which is what his Journal of American Greatness compatriot Julius Krein called Donald Trump in these pages. (Anton himself has contributed many pieces to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and its website, as recently as last year.)
Anton may also be a traitor to his class of conservative intellectuals, though his writings on Trump rejected by the Claremont Review of Books in early 2016 eventually found their home there by the end of the election. More consequential, in his new position as senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, he brings his brand of intellectual Trumpism right to the White House and the locus of power. The job was initially given to Monica Crowley, the writer and television pundit, with the intention that she be a public face for the Trump White House on national-security issues. But Crowley was forced to withdraw just days before Trump was inaugurated after reports revealed she had plagiarized her last book and her Ph.D. thesis. Anton’s role will likely involve less camera time and more shaping of the White House’s national-security message behind the scenes.
* After reading the article, it is clear that Publius Decius Mus is not from the alt-right. That does not mean that his analysis is wrong of course. However please note he did not mention the possibility (read: de facto certaintity) of the collapse and breakup of the U.S. and the civil war, race war and the ethnic cleansing that will go with that collapse.
Imagine the reactions if had included that in his article.
* True Conservatism, Inc., has become a cult, hence the need for Decius to remain anonymous. Everyone has seen what the Scientologists will do to an apostate, so imagine how vicious someone like Ben Shapiro is now that his Uncle Abie act no longer is in demand.
* Although not being from the alt-right makes it EVEN BETTER; he’s a recovering conservative who INDEPENDENTLY came to many of the exact same conclusions. He’s not a joiner, he’s one of those few people who is able to correctly identify relevant facts and derive from them logical conclusions.
* It’s interesting, is it not, that a man who advocates moderate, limited goals – sane immigration policy, limited government, respect for the constitution, and the presidential candidacy of Donald J Trump – should feel safer under the cloak of a pseudonym?
And yet you can call the white race “a cancer”, openly advocate socialism, glorify communism, demand the slaughter of the unborn “on demand and without apology”, indoctrinate little children into homosexuality and transgenderism, gleefully caper and cavort as you promote every imaginable sort of sickness and depravity, and not only does it not damage your career, but – if you’re in academia, the media, or the public sector – will probably enhance it?
* Taking the Flight 93 image a bit further, French and the rest of the cucks are back in the galley sipping tea while telling each other how brave they are. Consoling the cabin crew with promises to “fix this problem very soon, just after getting consensus on what exactly the plan should be”, and sneering at the men in the corner praying for victory.
Meanwhile Trump has grabbed a drink cart and is rolling towards the cockpit door.