To defeat a radical movement, you will need radicals on your own side, even if you don’t agree with them. Christopher Rufo knows this, because his book America’s Cultural Revolution: How The Radical Left Conquered Everything, is essentially the history of such a process. It is a worthwhile read and may even surpass Pat Buchanan’s The Death of the West in forcing orthodox conservatives to understand how we ended up here. But Rufo makes a major strategic error in attacking “White Identity Politics”—because he’s given his foes a club they will use against him for the remainder of his career. Rufo risks becoming just another footnote in the long list of conservatives steamrolled by the Left, while pleading pitifully that there is a colorblind American tradition we should all accept.
America’s Cultural Revolution is not a story from an ideological conservative, unlike Buchanan’s Death of the West. Rufo says he was radicalized after seeing the way Leftists reacted to the homeless crisis in Seattle. The Cultural Revolution in 2020 further motivated him: he noticed “government agencies were teaching that ‘all white people’ are racist,” public schools were separating children into “oppressor and oppressed,” and that even corporate America was endorsing the idea that the country was a “white supremacy system.” Thus he presents a work of “counter-revolution,” specifically targeting the Cultural Revolution spearheaded by four key activists and thinkers, including Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, and Derrick Bell.
Each of these contributed a key element. Marcuse reinvented the Marxist rhetoric of revolution through a cultural lens, Angela Davis championed blacks as a revolutionary class, Paulo Freire reinvented education as revolutionary pedagogy, and Derrick Bell gave us Critical Race Theory. Arguably, the last is the culmination of all Critical Theory. Rufo writes:
It has harnessed the essential frame of Marcuse’s critical theory, absorbed the strategy of Angela Davis’s critical praxis, merged with the application of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, and combined them all into a formidable, if largely invisible, political movement, which has moved from the margins to the center of American power.
The normie political observer will probably be shocked by what he learns from this book—notably the open embrace of violence and Totalitarianism by numerous Leftist activists. Marcuse himself was targeted by Critical Theorists who attacked him because of his admitted expertise in the Western Canon. But this didn’t actually change his mind about the need for revolution. Angela Davis dodged a guilty verdict after being charged with kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy because the white jurors were convinced she was a “symbol of resistance,” with one juror flashing the Black Power salute and saying “I wanted to show I felt an identity with the oppressed people in the crowd.” Davis then transformed American education, pioneering “Black studies.” Paulo Freire completed the metamorphosis of the teaching profession with an “ideal education system that deconstructs society’s myths, unmasks its oppressors, and inspires students to ‘revolutionary consciousness.’” As Rufo points out, where this has been implemented, it has been a disaster, from Guinea-Bissau to Portland.
Bell’s own Critical Race Theory, despite its vast influence, was deconstructed by none other than black professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who pointed out that these activists were members of a privileged class with significant institutional support, including protections against “Hate Speech.” As Gates pointed out, the very act of trusting institutions to quash “Hate Speech” presupposes that you know the institutions will take your side—an implicit acknowledgement you are in power [Let Them Talk | Why civil liberties pose no threat to civil rights, by Henry Louis Gates, New Republic, September 20, 1993].
Rufo points out that
Critical ideologies are a creature of the state, completely subsidized by the public through direct financing, university loan schemes, bureaucratic capture, and the civil rights regulatory apparatus.
But these are vulnerabilities that can be attacked. “They [Critical Race Theorists] are not a threat to the system; they are entirely dependent on the system,” he writes. “Their ideology is not revolutionary, it is parasitic, relying on permanent subsidies from the regime they ostensibly want to overthrow.”
This is no news to us, but to readers used to Conservatism Inc. boilerplate, this realization is absolutely essential. The idea that this is their system, not ours, and that we have no moral duty to conserve it, is extremely important.
Yet Rufo doesn’t take his own ideas to their logical conclusion, even if we leave questions of race aside. He points out that “resentment” has been raised to the level of a “governing principle,” but says
[the] radical Left cannot replace what it destroys … The ultimate tragedy of the critical theories is that, as a governing ideology, they would trap the United States in an endless loop of failure, cynicism, and despair.
Critical Race Theory, he argues, will simply repeat the failures of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which despite massive spending “failed to stop the rise in social pathologies among poor populations of all racial backgrounds.”
Fair point, but why should Leftists care? Destruction is the point. Has the catastrophic failure in Zimbabwe led to nostalgia for Rhodesia? Experience seems to show nonwhites will choose a failed utopian vision that promises victory for their people (even if it never delivers) over a more practical, compromised reality that means they have to share power.
Rufo brings up the destructive consequences of these ideas in communities that have put them into practice. But have these “communities” learned any lessons? The black “community,” despite decades of set-asides and government action, remains embittered, resentful, and practically monolithic in its support of far-Left ideology. After the largest single-year homicide increase in American history, Progressives are stronger than ever in American cities, which are practically no-go territory for conservatives.
The Great Society may have failed as policy, but it was a brilliant political success in creating a dependent population that can be counted on to support Democrats in every election, forever.
Critical Theory, especially Critical Race Theory, is doing the same for wealthy, university-educated populations, providing a source of funding, moral righteousness, and power for those who toe the line. What difference does policy success make compared to that?
The laziness of Critical Theory is a feature, not a bug. It allows Leftists to handwave away all failures as proof of oppression that can be solved by more redistribution. It’s not just elite theorists who gain from such a theory, but the very “communities” that Rufo is counting on to revolt against it. It provides a ready excuse for failure instead of the tough love they may need.
Nonetheless, Rufo says Americans must not embrace white identity politics.
[F]rom the late author Sam Francis to the website VDARE, such efforts have failed to garner an audience, much less a political coalition, beyond the fringes. Such a politics, is perceived, rightly, as victim-oriented and antithetical to deeply held American principles.
[No to the Politics of “Whiteness”—The case against right-wing racialism, City Journal, August 30, 2023]
(Significantly, Rufo has prudishly blocked VDARE.com on Twitter, although we have never Tweeted at him.)
But in fact Sam Francis is far more influential now than he was during his lifetime, with his critiques of the managerial state breaking through into the mainstream and the concept of “Anarcho-Tyranny” now widely accepted among conservative pundits. VDARE.com’s model of politics has essentially taken over the Republican base, with immigration patriotism animating the successful 2016 Trump campaign.
Immigration top issue for GOP voters in NEW HAMPSHIRE!! And nearly *3 in 5* want to end Birthright Citizenship!
— VDARE (@vdare) October 4, 2023
Looks like a seismic shift. Bye bye Bushies/ Paul Ryan/ WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Pagehttps://t.co/oxKid5rU7J
It was Trump’s failure to follow through, notably with his pathetic attempts to appeal to minority voters with the “Platinum Plan” and Jared Kushner’s Jailbreak Bill that cost him white working-class voters in 2020. Despite relentless deplatforming and lawfare, VDARE.com is at the heart of the American Right in a way undreamed of during the Bush years.
Yet leave all that aside. “Victim-oriented” politics are at the heart of any electoral movement, because people are motivated by righteous indignation about being exploited. What is the Republican coalition aside from people angered by liberal “elites?”
More than this, what “American principles” does VDARE not share that Rufo does?
If we consider race, VDARE has American history on its side. The white racial consciousness and the premise that America should remain a white (if not Anglo) majority country was unquestioned until very recently, at least until the 1965 Immigration Act (itself passed under false pretenses). There must be something to assimilate to, and there’s little evidence that cultural norms can pass unchanged to a totally different demographic.
That’s essentially the history of the entire Western world since the age of mass immigration, with Swedes, French, British, Americans and everyone else confused (or pretending to be confused) at why non-whites won’t simply behave like white people. Without a large white majority, Western culture and its premises collapse. A nation is not laws, land, or constitutions, but its people.
The uncomfortable fact Rufo doesn’t really address (and can’t) is that America really was founded on ideas and premises that today would be considered “racist.” If he thinks that’s bad, he has little argument against those who want the statues of the Founders torn down, unless it’s the lame defense that their work led to egalitarianism in the future.
The overall thesis of Critical Race Theory—that inequality is the result of implicit or explicit discrimination—is ultimately inarguable unless you are willing to concede that races will not perform equally.
Rather than trying to win on the Left’s terms, we must argue that attempts to deconstruct our cultural norms are invalid not just because the consequences are disastrous, but because nations by their very nature are not universal.
A different people can’t be allowed to simply dismantle our cultural and constitutional order because they don’t like it. More than this, America can’t be “colorblind” without ceasing to be America—because without a white majority and white cultural norms, America is nothing but a geographic expression and a home for random individuals who have no reason to care about one another compared to anyone else.
It’s uncomfortable to bring this up, because I don’t want to launch a personal attack. But Christopher Rufo has an interracial marriage to an Asian woman. The personal is the political, and so it’s not surprising Rufo isn’t rallying to white identity.
Clearly, Asians suffer from the attack on merit and some have taken action against Affirmative Action. Perhaps a white/Asian political alliance (along with some talented members of other groups) could make a stand for meritocracy.
However, in practice, Asians are even more dedicated to the Leftist racial agenda than Hispanics. A white/Asian coalition is simply a fantasy, reminiscent of the GOP dreaming about winning the black or Hispanic vote by purging its ranks to prove they are morally righteous. Such a course has only made things worse.
Besides, even if Rufo could wave a magic wand and get his goal, you will still deal with the problem Murray Rothbard pointed out: under color-blind law, you are going to have an unequal society when it comes to the average income and socioeconomic status among racial groups [Egalitarianism as a revolt against nature, and other essays, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1974]. You therefore must defend inequality as such, say freedom is more important than equality, and probably set up a barrier to those in the less successful groups simply voting to overwhelm the existing system.
Of course, it’s best to avoid this problem altogether by not inviting racial diversity through mass immigration. But we are arguably past this point.
Besides, if white collective identity is a problem, Rufo will constantly need to purge his own ranks. If a parent or student ever joins an effort to fight Critical Race Theory at a school, there better not be any hint of a “racist” Like, Follow, or Repost on social media. One comment by one person could compromise an entire organization.
Of course, this also means that JournoFa can easily pressure Rufo to disavow anyone they don’t like. And what can Rufo say in response? He’s already given them the only weapon they need.
As White Identity Politics inexorably grows in a country where an emerging white minority is being targeted on explicitly racial grounds, Rufo also risks making himself irrelevant. Why should whites refrain from organizing on racial lines when other groups do so and are rewarded for it?
All this is unnecessary. One doesn’t need to endorse White Identity Politics to fight against Critical Race Theory.
However, one could simply respond that White Identity Politics are inevitable as long as the Left operates this way. Since they are the ones with power, the onus is on them to abandon it. If they won’t, no one has any right to complain. Portraying White Identity Politics as uniquely problematic, and lumping VDARE.com in as an exemplar of the movement, makes this seem like a bad faith attack.
We are fighting against those motivated by a fanatical moral vision, and you can only fight a faith with a faith. An uncertain trumpet will not suffice.
Attacking VDARE.com does nothing but dynamite the foundations under Rufo’s own position.
Every political movement is a spectrum. Rufo will find that, without allies to his Right, he will be not just alone, but defeated by the contradictions of his own ideology.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him | Tweet him @VDAREJamesK] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. His latest book is Conservatism Inc.: The Battle for the American Right. Read VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow’s Preface here.
