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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 The 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!
Looks like a seismic shift. Bye bye Bushies/ Paul Ryan/ WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Pagehttps://t.co/oxKid5rU7J— VDARE (@vdare) October 4, 2023
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) 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 id 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.
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Thanks for shining some light on complex issues
Rufo, like most half enlightened people, shy away from the third rail, race realism, Black IQ, Black crime.
With race realism, all explanations are extremely parsimonious, straightforward, simple.
Obedience to the egalitarian dogma and the “racism” taboo forces people into lengthy convoluted explanations.
Embracing race realism is totally taboo, check the fate of being totally unacceptable in polite society, like vdare, amren, etc.
The 4HONESTY.com rule demands our opposition to any restriction regarding factually true speech on factually true hate facts.
We demand full disclosure that there is a competing theory of race realism, not a cover-up. Even if they oppose the theory.
Also full disclosure that any race realist research results can cause career ends for researchers and journalists. This is called “conflict of interest” and must be published in all papers.
I am listening to the audible version of Rufo’s book. Interesting, but sometimes tiring in its details. Audiobooks make it hard to glance over lengthy details, like Angela Davis entire life story.
Most of these people, even Angela Davis, are well meaning idealists dreaming of improving the world. (Not sure if that even applies to Stalin)
They are misled and live in a false dream world, like most of our politicians. They have terribly false beliefs. Not many of them believe in race realism. Race realism is not really a belief, but result of an HONEST serious academic study using scientific methodology.
Race realism is not even acceptable as a competing theory. Scientific HONESTY would require mentioning it. Actually, even Ibram X Kendi occasionally mentions race differences as competing explanations, only to discard such racism without need for evidence.
I wonder if Ibram X Kendi knows the truth?
We have a mathematical problem. Whites are barely a majority of the country now and a fair number of them are of the self-hating variety. There are more non-white children than white already and the process seems irreversible (I live in California and have seen the process at work here). Whites seem committed to race suicide. To reverse this trend would require the mass expulsion of non-whites, an impossibility now in liberal democracies (whose elite are committed to importing massive numbers of non-whites). It would also require a pro-natalist government policy for whites, also not on the agenda of our elite. The bottom line is that liberal democracy must go if you want a pro-white government. Then another problem arises: both American conservatives and leftists are committed to liberal democracy (with their own versions), a system that will inevitably put whites at the mercy [sic] of non-whites. As an alternative system, monarchy appeals to me but the American people are firmly anti-monarchist (that King George III thing). That leaves some sort of dictatorship. We are likely to get a de facto leftist dictatorship in any case, with the facade of liberal democracy (we can see its structures already, e.g., lawfare). So it will be a right-wing or left wing authoritarian regime, likely the latter.
“White Identity Politics” is problematic, uniquely so or not, because it doesn’t work. “White” is too vague, too generic to be embraced by any normal person. The “white nationalist” movement has been around for over 50 years and hasn’t even come up with an anthem to sing or a flag to march behind while singing it. The track record is so bad that there are even Antifa-allied trolls infesting this site urging us to go in that direction.
There are moderately successful identitarian movements among whites– in Hungary, the Baltic, Finland, Denmark, and especially Ireland, where there are, or were, two.
Expecting English-speaking whites– Anglo-Saxons– to unite is as race-unrealistic as expecting blacks to be law-abiding or Chinese to be honest dealers. It won’t happen without some powerful external control. We split during the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation (into three camps), the American Revolution (where the Germans and Dutch were the middle of the road while the English fought among themselves), the Civil War (two camps of race traitors sending their young white men to death), and now white Protestants have split into two camps so alien to each other that Catholics, of all people, now hold up the center.
Look at Namibia. Whites are seven percent of the population. How united are they? They speak four languages– Afrikaans, German, English, and Portuguese. Next door in 3%-white Botswana, it’s Afrikaans, English, and Serbian. Multiracial societies are unstable; multilingual societies are an oxymoron.
As far as race-mixing goes, I’m not going to abandon Rufo, John Derbyshire, or Bruno Gollnisch because they have Asian wives. The Siamese, Mandarins, and Japanese aren’t going to gang up against their husbands anytime soon. The aforementioned Finns and Hungarians have some Asian blood, the Afrikaners even a trace of Bantu.
Because it fails when we do it. At least explicitly. Races are different. What works for one will fail for another, and even do damage. Three “nations” (none are or ever were), the US, the USSR, and Zambia, all instituted space programs in the 1960s. White Identity Politics is like the Zambian space program– it gets nowhere, and is roundly laughed at.
The most successful right-wing movement in the US the past half-century has been that of the gun owners. It blows everything else out of the water. The “color-blindness” you denigrate has been a central tactic of theirs. One doesn’t have to believe in this to make use of it– Charlton Heston may have been a soppy racial liberal, but there’s no way on earth Wayne LaPierre is.
Color-blindness worked in this case as a tactic, holding up a mirror of sorts, because it painted the opposition into a corner. (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.) Either non-whites are equal to whites and have the same RKBA, or they are not and do not. Or whites themselves no longer have an RKBA. (The stance of RKBA’s English homeland today.)
All three of these positions are untenable for various reasons, thus they are stymied. We just have to employ the same shrewd tactics of gun owners to the other issues.
If you have a better idea, please show us your victories.
White people are never going to form around White Identity, and not only for PC or generic Christian brotherhood reasons.
1. “White” is only a meaningful “identity” in relation to something else. A fish in the water is not “Wet Conscious” until out of the water.
White identity is national identity: American, German, English, Italian etc. In America, White identity is our European roots. These are mostly mixed in America. These in turn differ amongst Northern and Mediterranean, Protestant or Catholic. Church affiliation is also identity. One’s town or even borough (Brooklyn). Politically our identity is our state. Cuturally, our region (South, California, Northern or Southern Cali, etc.) or city-of-world-importance (NYC, LA)
2. The other important white identity has been class. In England this continues to be true. Esp. speech and all it shows about your class and region of origin. America has been very different and has not really had string class identity except at the top. But they have no power to command social deference, unlike true class system. American labor consciousness has not been about class; it is labor v management for concrete conditions of employment, workers can have bourgeois material life (see Tom Wolfe), and they envision bourgeois futire for descendants whther at skilled worker level or “higher”. Also, very high level of private enterprise and self-employment by skilled trades and associated suppliers. (white-blue collar)
3. White people have never had to think as White, except in relation to interactions with some other race. And have never been the minority, so such race identity consciousness. Most have few or no direct interactions with blacks. In America, this varies as to region or city vs. outside city.
4. Personal experiences of normal blacks who fit into the group and not play race card etc, will negate feeling of White Identity EVEN IF you continue to be a race realist in Steve Sailer terms.
You are in a small town with no blacks. You see a black guy in suit walking towards a church, an invited guest surely and therefore okay guy. So color is only different thing about him. This will not make you feel White Identity. He is a dot of information.
Ok, turns out he is a rare black plumber, who just moved to the town, to live somewhere decent. Someone knowledgeable in trades tells you, “Hey that guy does a good job, knows his stuff.” So you get him to fix something, sure enough, good plumber, good dude, acts and talks normal not like “nigga” at all. He will fit in just fine around here.
They don’t feel White Identity, he is one of us now, except black. And he likes Trump, agrees about ghetto blacks, says N-word about ghetto black mentality etc! You would gladly protect him if necessary, against white criminals. So, now where’s his Black Identity, to prompt yours to start forming?
(Yes, there are such black guys.)
None of this means you turned lib. But you’re not going to define yourself as an Opposite of this guy, EVEN if you still feel that way nowadays on the level your essay addresses.
I say nowadays. I would call myself a race realist more than I used to, but that is about probabilities and percentages, and nondispositive. (All races equally Bad for same offense. All races equally good for same law-abidingness.)
4. For almost all whites, as for other races in America, all the people who have ever harmed or actively treaten you or loved ones in any way, large or small, is white. Certainly in the biggest things such as family, spouse, employer, or white criminals. And even if you are under threat of black crime by proximity, or it even happens to you, at the same time the foregoing continues to be true as to whites as source of all other badness harming you in life.
5. If you live amongst urban blacks, as I have as a minority white, you see that the worst thing is not the doing of crime, which really does vary as to sub-neighborhood, differing greatly between proximate block regions, for various reasons ommitted here.
Wife and I or property have never been threatened or harmed by any black people in 30 years. They tell us they like that we make our block look better. I think they like us to be there for benign orderliness.
We are not in what I would call a Bad Neighborhood in the black areas.
It is the Not Doing of anything civic or group-minded. However, this INCLUDES political activism. Most of these people do not care, and are not really demanding any of the radical measures being advocated. Libs would NOT want me to interview ghetto blacks about their various attitudes towards other blacks, for example, or many orher lib sacred cows.
6. You could say blacks have no other core identity concept, but whites do. The problem is that blacks are not a proletariat. They have refused, and when they did try were too often prevented. In the auto industry they were working union men, which was good, of course. But there was still white/black involved, including within that structure, and of course as minorities outside. We have already noted no meaningful true class division and identity in American proletarians, and that union workers can make bourgeois livings. So, union blacks can still have sense of Black Identity and not share a class identity with the union worker whites. But again, the interaction will not spur White Identity consciousness in the white co-workers. There is no hostility between them to cause this.
6. We already know that white libs see Good Whites vs Bad Whites. And always will. So, it is ridiculous to say “Whites need White Identity,” when at least plurality are enemies and most of the rest brainwashed to feel that at least all the past whites were bad but that’s all different now.
6. White liberals gin up and provoke black consciousness and resentment and magnify it. In the name of blacks. Who mostly don’t care.
During Trayvon episode and George Floyd and riots, the neighborhood black people did nothing. No signs, no marches, not hating me and my wife etc.
The only protest on my street was white suburban NPR types marching to show the blacks they are GoodWhites. If I see a BLM or other lib sign in a rowhouse window down here, it is a white gentrifier-ooccupant, ga-ron-teed, not a black tenant.
Tearing down or removing statues has been mostly white people — mobs and politicians and construction workers!
Anyway, Black Identity is still only meaningful to as just one other interest group identity/concept like Rainbows or feminists, and only as to those topics, not others.
Never forget that blacks are as brainwashed and driven into hysterias by the media as EVERYONE ELSE.
With a White identity Whites will never survive in this world, as can be seen already as the US and Europe fall to black and brown hordes bent on destroying the cultures they invade. Rufo does nothing to stem that tide, in fact he embraces it in his foolish color-blind perception.
Where exactly would someone like myself belong here? I support white identity politics (at least for so long as everyone else does it), support greater immigration (but want there to be many more cognitive elites coming here to compensate for the duller Hispanics, and am very wary about mass non-cognitively elitist immigration from Muslim and Sub-Saharan African countries), and think that people should support some income and wealth redistribution (enough to help the poor and needy, but without causing dysgenic effects) but otherwise just accept that outcomes among different groups (including races and ethnicities) are going to be unequal to some degree so long as different groups will have different average IQs, different propensities for violence, et cetera.
Re support more cognitive elite immigration
No. Think about this, e.g. Indians
You are importing a foreign ruling class, which is utterly illegitimate, even if they are good/useful people.
Indians are No. 1 foreigner political force, at the very top: VP Harris, + two top current GOP candidates.
Obama himself was son and stepson of foreign elites. (His blackness and mental formation was of foreign source, not American black.)
Note, NO Hispanics or East Asians are anywhere near that or anywhere in sight.
And of course, not just Indians in politics but the whole ruling apparatus: academia, media.
And Indians are much more actively connected to home country and much more active dual-citizens than Hispanics, with concrete interests in US and India.
OTOH
The “duller hispanics” are either workers and taxpayers and voters, or a social drain, but in either case they are not new rulers.
AND the good ones are great workers who truly are needed because American white males are now too lazy and cannot be found for laborer or skilled trades anymore.
Conversely, there are NO Indians (dot) in contruction work.
Which is necessary and important unlike importing coders and academics and lawyers and politicians.
See?
Indians will become our new Jews. But is that the worst possible outcome? Jews have contributed a lot to the US (in terms of scientific, mathematical, literary, historical, et cetera research) even though many of them also spread leftism in the US.
Rufo is just virtue signaling to the left by blocking VDARE and, much like a radical leftist whom he claims to decry, in his opposition to white identity politics as the only effective weapon to use against anti-white CRT and DEI.
Sam Francis was right when he said it will take a countervailing racial power to take on and fight the anti-white racial power that whites find arrayed against themselves and their vital interests. That countervailing racial power is white nationalism/pro-white identity politics.
Tucker/Cucker Carlson and Rufo are cucking and virtue signaling when they oppose white identity politics and in Carlson’s case he said it would not be good for the nation.