See also: Sorry, Chris Rufo—“Colorblindness” Isn’t A Fight We Can Win

Crossposted from Occidental Dissent.

VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow writes: We’re again crossposting the brilliant Hunter Wallace tonight, this time on Christopher Rufo’s CITY JOURNAL article “No To The Politics Of Whiteness.”  Later this week, we will post the VDARE Book Club’s assessment of Rufo’s new book America’s Cultural Revolution: How The Radical Left Conquered Everything. Rufo was invited to participate but did not have the courtesy to reply.

Of course, I am particularly irritated by Rufo’s claim that VDARE.com is one of the advocates of the “white racial consciousness” he decries. In fact, the immigration policies we advocate would benefit Americans of all races—although we certainly do think it’s OK to be white.

I don’t know how Rufo has reached his conclusion, since he has blocked us on Twitter although we have never tweeted at him (or done anything other than write approvingly about him). I can’t imagine he bothers to look at the site. 

My late first wife Maggy was the first publisher of CITY JOURNAL. Its parent Manhattan Institute hosted a lunch for me when my 1995 immigration book ALIEN NATION was published. I was a regular at Manhattan Institute events in New York for nearly 40 years, resulting in coverage in FORBES and elsewhere, until we were abruptly cut off when Reihan Salam took over as President.

Under these circumstances, it seems to me that CITY JOURNAL owes me a right of reply and I have reached out to Editor Brian Anderson [Tweet him], whom I have known for years. 

Wallce concludes acidly: 

Finally, Rufo brings up VDARE and people like Sam Francis who criticized Conservatism Inc. over the years whose warnings went unheeded and who were condemned as racists and marginalized for objecting to the liberal consensus on race. Anyone who was right about these issues like Pat Buchanan or Jared Taylor was hooted down by Rufo’s predecessors which is why we ended up where we are today. In his mind, this is a compelling argument against the road that was not taken.

“In his mind…” That’s a wicked thrust at the mentality of Conservatism Inc. I invite Christopher Rufo to consider why Donald Trump was elected President—and may very well be again. 

Christopher Rufo: No to the Politics of “Whiteness”

Rufo and family.

Mob violence outside the Pink Taco in Manhattan

Is this what happens when massive amounts of economic migrants arrive? pic.twitter.com/FgubElPPYk

— National Conservative (@NatCon2022) August 31, 2023

What happened to New York City? pic.twitter.com/z8kz2JLss3

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) August 31, 2023

This is a Home Depot in California. How can anyone say with any sincerity that progressive policies aren’t a problem? pic.twitter.com/giFYdfGnl9

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 31, 2023

I'm sorry but we just cannot keep living like this

Extreme problems require radical solutionspic.twitter.com/gG5aWEWFZi

— Dan Lyman (@realdanlyman) August 30, 2023

1956 Dems got "just" 60% of black vote. 1960 number jumped 10 points after MLK's arrest and JFK called him in jail. If you're asserting Trump getting arrested will move black vote 38 points in GOP's favor, you are saying Trump's arrest is almost 4x more impactful than MLK's. https://t.co/GEz6ieAmYQ pic.twitter.com/ZAlajtITkQ

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) August 31, 2023

Charlie Kirk’s recent tweet about how whiteness is great has been getting some pushback from Conservatism Inc. Christopher Rufo has been working with Gov. Ron DeSantis to wage a war on wokeness in Florida. Rufo thinks we are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

City Journal:

In recent years, I have devoted considerable time to exposing the radical Left’s politics of “whiteness,” which posits that white identity, culture, and power are irredeemably oppressive and must be “abolished” in favor of alternative modes of being. “Whiteness” represents the metaphysical essence of left-wing race politics: an irreducible force of evil, a master synonym for racism, oppression, inequality, and suffocating bourgeois norms; anything saturated with its properties can be automatically categorized and condemned. In practice, the politics of whiteness has translated into the demonization of European-Americans in primary school curricula, the performance of elaborate “white privilege” rituals in the workplace, and outright segregation in many public institutions. All of it is done to solve “the problem of whiteness.”

Some pushback has resulted. In the years following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, conservatives have exposed the poisonous politics of left-wing racialism, shutting down some of the bureaucracies that push it and proposing a reaffirmation of the ideal of colorblind equality. Unfortunately, some on the right would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, preferring instead to adopt the basic framework of identity politics and simply reverse its polarity. Dismayingly, a sentiment is rising in some corners of conservative politics that the answer to left-wing identity politics is right-wing identity politics. …

The DeSantis/Rufo messaging on fighting wokeness has fallen flat on the campaign trail. It has been a dud because the constituency that is animated by these issues has rejected colorblind liberalism.

1. First, Conservatism Inc. has always pushed colorblind liberalism while decrying white racism. Rufo’s argument is that we haven’t believed in MLK’s Dream hard enough. As it happens, Joe Biden also believes we have to keep marching toward MLK’s Dream. It has been sixty years since the country embarked on this course after the March on Washington. Colorblind liberalism has been tried. Respectable conservative and progressive liberals both pay lip service to it. It is their rhetorical safe harbor. It was always a bait-and-switch and we didn’t end up in a place anything like what had been advertised.

If at the end of sixty years of colorblind liberalism on the Right, “the demonization of European-Americans in primary school curricula, the performance of elaborate “white privilege” rituals in the workplace, and outright segregation in many public institutions” has become the norm, it is reasonable to conclude that previous generations were duped. We have been led by fools who were tricked by con artists like the Rev. MLK, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. They said one thing to get whites to lower their defenses. They have relentlessly pushed their own group interests in practice. In their defense, they have been doing this since the late 1960s, when SNCC under Stokely Carmichael rejected colorblind liberalism for Black Power. It is mainstream conservatives who have been living in a fantasy world as parties to a social contract that every other racial group abandoned decades ago.

Our people understand this, which is why the DeSantis/Rufo messaging—real MLK colorblind liberalism has never been tried, but we are “winning” in Florida—never gained any traction. Their hope was to win over persuadable Trump voters with this gambit, but most people saw right through it.

2. Second, insofar as there has ever been any pushback by Conservatism Inc. on racial issues like affirmative action, it has been sustained by wave after wave of white backlash politics going all the way back to Richard Nixon and the Silent Majority. Colorblind liberalism failed when whites were still a confident majority. Why would it work now when whites are becoming an embattled minority? If we keep going down our present road, we will end up with federal courts stacked with people like Ketanji Brown Jackson and that will be the end of colorblind liberalism, which has always been a transition phase. The Left used colorblind liberalism as a tactic to get their way and abandoned it long ago for multiculturalism.
3. Third, Auron MacIntyre and Christopher Caldwell are correct that the Constitution has already been devoured by federal civil rights laws. Rufo thinks the solution to this is to “overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co. through the Supreme Court, rescind LBJ’s executive order on affirmative action, amend the 1991 Civil Rights Act to abolish its disparate impact provisions, and restructure the enforcement bureaucracy to impose the new standard with aggressive DOJ actions.” He claims that “none of that requires “white politics.” This is an ambitious agenda, but what if Democrats can simply indict and arrest their opposition though? How do you accomplish any of this when the other side is no longer bound to or restrained by the Constitution? Every single bit of this also requires white backlash politics.
4. Fourth, Rufo hopefully argues that Asians and Hispanics are shifting politically to the right, so we do not need to worry about changing demographics. There is a grain of truth to this. The GOP is winning more Hispanic and Asian conservatives. Rufo believes Asians and Hispanics can be mobilized behind a multiracial coalition which will enshrine colorblind liberalism into law … like in California or Washington state, where affirmative action is already banned. The argument that Asians are being discriminated against and deserve a larger share of elite positions was recently vindicated at the Supreme Court. While I suppose that is good for Asians, it is unclear why it is good for whites, who are still being dispossessed. Colorblind liberalism inexorably leads to white erasure and dispossession. Ask The Little Mermaid.
5. Finally, Rufo brings up VDARE and people like Sam Francis who criticized Conservatism Inc. over the years and whose warnings went unheeded and who were condemned as racists and marginalized for objecting to the liberal consensus on race. Anyone who was right about these issues like Pat Buchanan or Jared Taylor was hooted down by Rufo’s predecessors, which is why we ended up where we are today. In his mind, this is a compelling argument against the road that was not taken.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

At the end of the day, Rufo wants us to fervently believe in the big vision of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s while imagining it could have turned out differently for whites. He is like a quarterback who lost the big game by fifty points but is still on the field practicing the same plays. This game plan is music to the ears of the conservative donors, party hacks and elderly people who are backing Ron DeSantis. Happily for them, they don’t have to reconsider how they got us into this mess in the first place.

The fact that Christopher Rufo is quarreling with Charlie Kirk over this illustrates how the liberal consensus on the right is breaking down. Five years ago, Kirk and Rufo would have been in lockstep. Today, so many people have been radicalized in recent years that the old snake oil has to be defended.

Hunter Wallace writes for Occidental Dissent.