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The man dubbed Vice President JD Vance’s “philosopher king” is the UK chair of an organisation funded by a series of right-wing billionaires who have variously condemned democracy as “destructive”, called for a “limited dictatorship”, and urged US citizens to fight a “cold civil war” against the left, Byline Times can reveal.
Dr James Orr heads the Edmund Burke Foundation (EBF), which between 2019 and 2023, received $351,722 from the Thomas D Klingenstein Fund, according to publicly available tax returns. Klingenstein is a far right megadonor who has described American politics as a “cold civil war” between a conservative resistance and “totalitarian regime” of wokeness.
“If we are to save this great republic, Republicans must understand we are in a war. And then they must act accordingly,” he wrote in 2021, adding that “we need political generals who will fight as if the choice were between liberty and death.”
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In March 2024, the Guardian revealed that Klingenstein had funded Action Idaho, a far right website which “reserved a particular antipathy for Idaho’s LGBTQ+ community”. Action Idaho’s efforts culminated on 15 June with the mass arrest of Patriot Front members who were attempting to disrupt a pride event in Coeur d’Alene”, according to the Guardian.
In 2023 the Edmund Burke Foundation also took $25,000 from the Howdy Doody Good Times Foundation (HDGTF) in 2023. HDGTF is the foundation created by shampoo billionaire Charles Haywood to fund projects such as Society for American Civic Renewal, an invite only society whose website uses rhetoric that has been characterised by one expert on the far right as “palingenetic ultranationalism”, and supposes that a national rebirth can be achieved through revolutionary upheaval. On his personal website the Worthy House, Haywood has written that “ultimately no final question can be solved without conflict, usually involving violence”.
Haywood has also condemned democracy, writing in 2021 that “the new government will be a protector of the collective of society in its spiritual aspect; it will represent the nation as it should be, not reflect the general will. It could be Augustan—a limited dictatorship (and almost certainly will be to begin). It could be aristocratic, like Venice in its prime. It will not be democratic, because that system is unnatural and destructive at scale”.
The Edmund Burke Foundation puts on the annual National Conservatism (NatCon) conference which gathers thinkers and politicians from radical right political movements around the world. Conservative MPs Suella Braverman and Danny Kruger appeared at the National Conservatism conference in 2023, the same year as the donation from Haywood, as did Michael Gove and Miriam Cates who were then MPs. Nigel Farage has also spoken at NatCon, attending the 2024 edition in Brussels.
Jason Wilson, a journalist and expert on the American far right, who first broke the story of Haywood’s involvement with the Society for American Civic Renewal said of Haywood’s blog, “I suppose if you were to ask me to characterise the blog, it’s a very openly kind of neo-fascist point of view […] he’s a big fan of Francisco Franco”.
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Wilson added that by donating to NatCon which is “kind of successful”, donors like Haywood and Klingenstein get to “have a say and shape the agenda of a pretty large swathe of American right wing politics”.
The Edmund Burke Foundation also received $550,000 from Donors Trust between 2022 and 2023, $810,100 from the National Christian Charitable Foundation (NCCF) between 2019 and 2023 and $50,000 from Vanguard Charitable Endowment Foundation. In 2023 Open Democracy reported that Donor-Advised Funds such as Donors Trust, NCCF and Vanguard CEF act as funnels for donors to pour money into various far right causes while avoiding detection.
It is not publicly declared who donated to the Edmund Burke Foundation through the Donor-Advised Funds.
Dr James Orr, Vance’s ally, the EBF’s UK chair and a Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University recently caused controversy when he claimed that a lot more people have got in trouble for “free speech offences in the UK than in Putin’s Russia” on the BBC.
Orr also previously provoked controversy when he tweeted about pro-Palestine protesters marching on 09 October 2023, “import the Arab world, become the Arab world”. Orr was accused of racism following the statement, including by students at Cambridge University, but stood by the remark in August 2024, when the death toll in Gaza stood at around 40,000 and 1.9 million were internally displaced.
Orr and other figures in the NatCon movement such as EBF’s chairman Yoram Hazony are staunchly pro-Israel.
EBF has also taken donations from the Jewish Philosophy Fund, the US trading name of the Israeli research centre Herzl Institute founded by Hazony, who co-founded the EBF and the Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Foundation which funds several lobby groups that attack NGOs critical of Israel such as UN Watch, NGO Monitor and pro-Israel lobby group Middle East Forum (which once paid Tommy Robinson’s legal fees).
NatCon will take place for the first time under the second Trump administration in Washington DC in September. So far listed speakers include Steve Bannon, Trumpist senator Josh Hawley and the radical right billionaire Peter Thiel.
James Orr, the Edmund Burke Foundation, Charles Haywood and Thomas Klingenstein were contacted for comment.
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