Knight, the far-right, and Christian nationalists
Similar to the Knight Foundation’s asset manager diversity series, this Community Info Coop report focuses on setting benchmarks for the foundation’s DEI spending.
It also offers researchers, organizers, and journalists ways to explore the foundation’s impact beyond its press releases, responding to key questions raised in interviews with seven former or current Knight Foundation staff, dozens of Knight grantees, and a small number of funder peers.
This post is part of a series published by the Community Info Coop analyzing DEI and accountability at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Read more at knightdei.org.
The Community Info Coop’s investigation began when the Knight Foundation invited Brad Parscale, the man behind the Trump campaign’s Black voter suppression strategy to speak at its Knight Media Forum, an annual invitation-only gathering of foundation, media, and civic leaders in 2020.
At the time, Parscale was the Trump campaign’s digital director, presiding over what The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins called the “most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history.” In 2019, Parscale described himself as the “conductor” of the president’s campaign and said he planned to train “swarms of surrogates” to undermine local news organizations in support of the president’s re-election.
There was internal and external pushback to Parscale’s appearance and Knight relented, according to people familiar with the matter.
So the foundation traded one of Trump’s digital directors for another — inviting Ory Rinat, chief digital officer for the Trump White House, to speak on the main stage of the 2020 Knight Media Forum. At the time, Rinat played a critical role in the administration’s misinformation strategy — something forum organizers agreed Rinat would not discuss on stage.
Four months after speaking at the Knight Media Forum, Rinat helped then-President Trump coordinate the gassing and violent dispersal of peaceful protestors who were demonstrating against racism and police brutality. The administration used the incident in a media package promoting Trump as a “law and order” president during nationwide uprisings against systemic racism.
Rinat left the administration later that summer but returned to help defend Trump against impeachment following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Rinat was not the first or last far-right figure platformed by the Knight Foundation.
In 2017, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy spoke at the Knight Media Forum on a panel about trust and journalism. That year, the Washington Post called Ruddy “one of [Trump]’s most prominent unofficial spokesmen.” In 2020, Ruddy would lead Newsmax to delay declaring Biden the presidential election winner for weeks to win over Fox News viewers doubting Trump’s loss.
In 2022, the Knight Foundation hosted Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and documented white supremacist in a conversation on the future of news, trust, and polarization that saw Carlson repeatedly lie about his connections to white supremacy. C-SPAN later streamed the interview to millions of viewers.
In early interviews with the Community Info Coop, Knight Foundation stakeholders expressed confusion about how the foundation could publicly express values of inclusion and equity while simultaneously supporting people and organizations dedicated to reinforcing systemic racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Some Knight Foundation grantees said they would consider reevaluating their relationship with Knight — no matter the financial benefit — because they were distressed by how their relationship with the foundation may be normalizing Knight’s practices.
“[The Knight Foundation believes] in the power of diverse perspectives to drive positive change and build stronger, more equitable communities,” Knight Director of Communications Rebecca Dinar said in response to an email inquiring about far-right affiliations outlined in a 2021 article in The Objective by Community Info Coop researcher Simon Galperin.
The Objective article outlined calls from Knight Foundation grantees, staff, and funder peers for accountability, including changes to the Knight’s tolerance for white supremacy, new executive leadership, and a reconstitution of its board to reflect the communities served by the organization.
The Community Info Coop found that the Knight Foundation awarded approximately $3 million to organizations with far-right affiliations in 2020, including $500,000 in general operating support to R Street Institute and $700,000 for internet policy research to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
The R Street Institute is a right-wing policy think tank that opposed election reform after Trump’s attempted coup in 2021. This included legislation expanding voting rights, banning partisan gerrymandering, and requiring additional campaign finance disclosures for super PACs and other dark money groups like AEI.
AEI is a “lobbying operation disguised as a charity,” according to New Yorker staff writer and investigative reporter Jane Mayer. It is bankrolled by a network of billionaires with ties to right-wing extremism, such as Charles Koch.
“The issue that matters to [the Kochs] is…trying to shrink the power of the government and replace it with their own power,” Mayer told The Intercept in 2017.
Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money” documented the right-wing weaponization of philanthropy, including Koch network nonprofit investments in voter suppression, climate change denial, and white supremacist media. The network has also reportedly aided in radicalizing people into white nationalism through an approach inspired by the Nazi youth program and remained a top corporate donor to Congress members who voted to overturn the 2020 election.
The Knight Foundation supported various other Koch-affiliated organizations in 2020, including the Cato Institute, American Action Forum, Manhattan Institute, and Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank most recently recognized for supporting legislative bans on teaching children about systemic racism and limiting healthcare for transgender youth.
Since its founding, the Heritage Foundation has campaigned for voter suppression and was cited by the State of Texas in a lawsuit that attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Religious historian Randall Balmer described Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich as “one of the architects of the religious right.” Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman said Weyrich’s agenda “goes well beyond legitimate engagement in controversial social and political issues” to impose a fundamentalist government in the United States.
These affiliations call into question the degree to which white supremacy and Christian nationalism may permeate the Knight Foundation’s giving.
For example, the only religious organizations that received grants in 2020 were Christian, including churches and private Catholic high schools. No Muslim, Jewish, or other religious organizations received Knight support that year.
Koch-sponsored policy and research centers at Nebraska University and George Mason University also received Knight funding in 2020.
The earliest Knight Foundation grant to a Koch-affiliated organization identified by Community Info Coop was a $490,000 gift to AEI in 2017 — the first year of Trump’s presidency.
