"In 2017, at Evergreen State College, a biology professor had his class invaded by a frenzied mob hurling ‘Fuck you, you piece of shit’ type abuse. The professor, ironically a lifelong progressive, “had refused to obey an edict from Evergreen’s Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services that all white faculty cancel their courses for a day and…white students were also ordered to absent themselves from the school to show ‘solidarity’.” Evergreen’s president expressed his “gratitude” for the mob’s “passion and courage”". This and dozens of other examples are examined in Heather Mac Donald's copious examination of DEI 'helpfulness' in her book The Diversity Delusion. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
“The central purpose of universities is to pursue truth.”
The central purpose has become the accumulation of assets. Money. Administrations are led by people chosen because that is where they excel. The money, in turn, comes from private-sector research grants, secondary only to government research grants. That tends to explain the interest in DEI.
It was my way of pointing out the government’s primary role. Wasn’t meant to mislead, or I wouldn’t have even stated it was anything other than money for research, rather than for education. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, I was truly not trying to focus on the private sector.
If I had a research need and money to spend for it, research universities are an excellent resource for that. But I knew these guys well because I worked for these guys. Rather than spending their time on furthering education, they 1) publish papers to further their own careers (“publish or perish”), 2) “develop” grants by writing and presenting proposals, to get them. And it isn’t easy work. Performance and progression within a department is often measured by financial acquisitions; the numbers must be close and considered, because executing it needs to produce results under budget, and of course the university has its ways of extracting their share off the top. Grad students are needed to carry out the work, which means there has to BE work, and the prof’s educational contribution, sponsoring them.
Want to know what happened to education in modern, large universities?
Oh Chris, please do not be fooled by the Prog-Marxist two step. They are going to play a 'Mott & Bailey' on you, see James Lindsay's explication of this fave tactic of the left. Now the NY Times can say they aren't biased cuz they published you. They, and their radical comrades, expect 'backlash' from reactionary forces. And be clear Chris, they believe you are a reactionary force against social justice. They do not think you are reasonable or are making good points. I do find this claiming of victory on the Right becoming more common, which is sad to me. DEI programs are proceeding apace in 10s of thousands of organizations of all kinds as I write this. We aren't winning. We haven't even stopped losing this war yet. In fact, they have won decisively ALREADY and are now properly seen as consolidating their power.
What Chris has done that is incredibly important is frame this battle correctly for the Right. We have been the victims of a massive, 90 year cultural revolution that in its final phase from the '70s on focused on institutional capture and succeeded beyond any Leftist's fever dreams. They OWN the institutions of America. From the Boy Scouts to your local college or university to the administration of govt at every level of society to news, arts, entertainment - do I really need to go on?
We have lost a cultural revolution. The counter-revolution must focus on taking back these institutions as Chris is doing in Florida. So now we have maybe 10 colleges/unis in the nation out of 4300 that aren't teaching ideas based on neoMarxism, the bizarre melange (this stupid spell checker doesn't have melange as a word, lol - our culture is so broken) of postmodern, poststructuralist and critical theory based ideas. This is what losing looks like, not winning. Be clear. And we cannot be satisfied with symbolic victories.
We need 1000 Chris Rufos, well funded and sent out into the world to overtake cultural and educational institutions. Think about this, as an aside that may illuminate how pathetic the Right is (I'm of the Right). We have all this money - has anyone used it to take control over a social media company? A conservative corporate raid of say Google or Facebook? Take over the board, take it private, fire half the useless turds who work there and make it fair and welcoming to conservatives? Nope, instead I get Getter - a frikking echo chamber. Same in education. Are we trying to take over any Ivy League schools? Even one? Second tier? Nope - I get some podunk state college in Florida, lol.
One could read my comment the wrong way, as though I don't appreciate Chris's work. Quite the contrary, I'm a huge fan. It's just that we still have no chance of beating these folks and some op ed in the NY Times is not meaningful. Sorry. The propensity for those of us who oppose the Left to smoke our own 'hopium' is boundless it seems.
Indeed, there must be a first step. But to me, your work in Florida is literally the first counter-revolutionary action I've seen that actually removes the entire neoMarxist agenda. from an institution. Almost every other 'victory' I see looks temporary to me, at best. I just want to see real action by the Right to take back institutions and while many conservatives act like they agree when I say stuff like this, I'm pretty sure they have no idea how important the idea of a 'cultural revolution' is to the left and what it entails. They feel it but have been so subverted about Marxism they don't really understand it.
I agree, but I also think that eventually this unrelenting “progressivism” will reach the point where the so-called silent majority will become irreversibly angry. The Covid playbook revealed “the man behind the curtain” to some extent, and there’s more awareness than a few years ago. I can feel it starting to simmer. If it is forced to go that far, it will not be pretty.
Thanks so much for this comment, it's the kind of 'hopium' the Right is smoking far too much of IMHO. Cast your mind back to 2010-12. 2015-16. 2019-20, did you not also get a sense we were at a 'tipping point'? I surely did. Hell, I thought we were at a tipping point in 1980... But in fact, the Dems showed us how they will maintain control without our consent. 1. Cheating in elections. 2. Truly fascistic alliances with big tech and media. 3. Prosecution and destruction in any way possible of anyone who opposes them.
Go talk to some of the "Momma Bears" who ran for school boards and are now being opposed in well funded campaigns with unions behind them. They are being personally destroyed, shamed for any mistake they may have ever made publicly in the past and you can GUARANTEE that every Leftist weapon from NGOs, nonprofits, unions, state, local and federal govt will drive them from their school board seats. Why? Cuz this already happened before. One of the big problems with the 'newish' Red Pill crowd is they don't realize that just cuz they were asleep doesn't mean everyone has. Many a conservative has fought a local battle for a city council or town board or school board etc. seat after being outraged. Only to be driven from office, or isolated, abused and stripped of power.
We are not the majority. We are a minority about the size of the Left's hard core radical base, maybe even smaller. We are not organized, Most of our 'voices' are idiots who are more about monetizing our rage than actually erecting an actual offense or defense that has a chance of winning. I see almost no signals that we are 'turning things around'.
Be clear, while you and I are typing, millions of school kids are being taught about Drag Queens and how the U.S. was a corrupt, immoral, oppressive and exploitative project from the beginning, based on slavery and hate. Millions. And it will happen tomorrow too. Our tiny little progress is almost meaningless.
You seem to believe elections matter and that the will of the people still matters. Nope. What matters is power, and the Left has almost all of it. It won't be taken back by being nice or obeying the law or winning elections. It will only be taken by force, and these leftist lunatics will only stop when they are forced to. Anything else is hopium - a very popular drug in the Red Pill and Right wing of our politics.
Hint: They do not care that we see through their lies. At all. They only care about winning. And they are kicking our asses so completely. Start from this position. We've lost the against a cultural revolution that has already subverted the majority of Americans, including many Republicans and independents. There is no 'silent majority' - we are a minority. We have flooded our nation with people who do not care about any of this via immigration and our education system.
The idea that there is some 'majority' sitting on the sidelines, just waiting for it to get bad enough is what kept conservatives on the sidelines while the Left ran the table. The time for such wishful mythology is long over...The Right is too disorganized and and conflicted and fractured to mount any effective defense or offense. If we don't take these SOBs out of power, people like me will be in concentration camps by 2030. You too maybe.
It's time to fight. Too bad too many conservatives don't want to hear it. Playing by the rules is how we lost. Stop pursuing a losing strategy.
The “hopium problem” is very real and I give my best effort to be reasonable about expectations and about my opponents. But always a good reminder to be cautious and realistic.
It's a full on 'Hopium Addiction Epidemic' on the Right, Chris. Most do not understand what a cultural revolution is. They do not know they live in a world utterly shaped by Marcuse, for example. I watched the Tucker Trump interview last night, and it depresses me.
Neither of them grasp the cultural revolution the Left threw in any meaningful way. They paw around and mewl but never really get to the core of what we are facing. Which is why we are losing so badly and have for 50 years. The subversion started before that, but we at least were fighting the commie scum head on at first. After the '50s? Those Marxist revolutionaries ran amok due to the Dems/Left destroying all true 'anti-communism'. Conservatives need to start from the 'Sit Rep' that tells them we've already lost the war. The Left's Cultural Revolution was a success. We are backlash they are trying to silence, and it's about 5 minutes before they are locking us up in concentration camps.
Mark my words, they will steal the 2024 POTUS election, and I believe that will be the end of our Republic. I have no confidence the Right will erect a strong enough opposition to stop them, and very few on the Right have the stomach for actual revolution. That's one of my biggest disappointments in the Right actually. I moved to New Hampshire and took up shooting and have become quite lethal with my pistol and rifle. I thought maybe I'd meet some other counter-revolutionaries at the gun range. All are preparing for what is called in code 'the zombie apocalypse' and they spend outrageous sums on gear and training. But I've not met a single one who thinks it's 'go time'. Hell, it was 'go time' under the commie lowlife FDR in my book...
Thank you for your stamina, your persistent rational and realistic hope, and for your incredibly effective activism. Leadership is a lonely place to stand sometimes, because you have to keep yourself pumped up as well as encouraging everyone who counts on you. It sucks sometimes.
I agree with you about the hopium addiction. And there's another aspect to it that I've been banging on about for a while now. Lots of conservative intellectuals are almost falling into a kind of upmarket conspiracy theorising - trying to pass the whole mad wokeification of the Western world off on a few Weathermen-types or a 'managerial elite'. They seem afraid to confront just how many tens of millions of lefty sheep-dipped graduates there are now in the West.
This is what I wrote on this Substack a while back: Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers.
I do admire Rufo for his activism and it may well be that simplifications and bogeymen are part and parcel of what is needed to get people outraged enough for a conservative reaction to reach critical mass. But his analysis is a cop out nevertheless by not facing the fact that millions of the university-educated are complicit in the advance of Woke.
"But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture?"
You capture a culture by first capturing its morality and then inculcating that morality in its children.
The New Left has been a smashing success because they were able to piggyback off the Civil Rights movement and style themselves as Official Defenders of the Oppressed. Thus any attack against them had the same appearance (morally) as kicking a kitten. Also, they have ruthlessly and expertly wielded their superweapon, the Bigotry Accusation, the scarlet letter of our time.
The foundational morality of the post-60s West is more or less white guilt/shame and once you install the buttons that work guilt/shame in people's brains, you might as well have installed a remote control.
Add the fact that this new harder-edged morality was being crafted at the same time that the West underwent massive secularization and voila!, there you have it—a new strong belief system (a sort of politicized Leftish version of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where we're all constantly judged by our attitude toward the "historically marginalized") gradually conquered a society with no stronger beliefs than money and status.
Everything here is more or less downstream from morality....
Reminder: in the original parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan was Good because he helped the injured guy, not simply because he was a Samaritan.
exactly yes...we shall be judged by how we treat the wounded/lesser among us, regardless of their tribe (or in our case their race, gender, or immigration status).
it is amazing how various Christian principles have been picked up, dusted off, wielded and weaponized in our post-Christian times....
While an interesting insight I think you see the power structure inaccurately. There is always a group of people who are highly suggestible in any group. Where I think you might want to look instead is in the numbers of Marxists scumbags who escaped Europe and brought their Bolshevism here. There were over 500 commie agents in FDRs govt - our subversion began in the '30s.
I disagree with your dismissal of actually naming our enemy as 'simplifications and bogeymen'. It's neoMarxism. Most conservatives do not understand that we have been subjected to a cultural revolution. You use Freire and Marcuse as throw away lines, do you realize you live in a world more shaped by them then the great Western philosophers? Our entire education system is Friereian, with Social and Emotional Learning being adopted by virtually all school systems in the U.S. now. Marcuse invented The New Left, and the entire nightmare of the Weatherman and the Black Panthers and others emanated from all that, and has never stopped. It just moved into the universities to incubate and then was set loose on our society.
Bad take. Think harder, you seem to want to blame individuals, expecting everyone to be able to sort this all out on their own. Where did you get that crazy idea about how human beings are?
You either are less knowledgeable about all this than you think you are, or you are just terribly confused. In either event, you really miss who the enemy is.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't want to get into some silly ding dong but the fact that you have 100% missed my point is your cognitive failure not mine. Ask yourself this: how many people who have emerged from tertiary education in the West over recent decades hold 'Progressive' views and subscribe (to some or other extent) to its various bogus 'social justice' victimhood narratives? Does it not run - as I said - into the tens - if not hundreds - of millions? If not how do you account for voting behavior and how do you account for the fact of all the institutions of civil society being woke-dominated - not just at the top but at middle management levels too? I have to say that your reply was irritating, patronising and ill mannered. Try in future to actually read and understand what is being said before firing off in this ill-thought out blustering way.
A 'silly ding dong'? Lol. I did not miss your point. Your point is incorrect and misguided from my POV. And your new point in this comment is different from your old one but I'm not going to bother to show you how. It's clear you can't take criticism. That you won't admit that a large portion of any group of people are easily leadable/influenceable, there is nothing to discuss with you. And I already asserted that we are at the effect of a cultural revolution since the '30s, so your point about Progressive subversion was actually my point. But they were subverted due to the scumbag leadership who did the subverting, not cuz they are defective people. They are just not that smart and not that curious.
What's sad is that you revert to framing your response as my 'cognitive failure'. By how you write, I can tell your IQ is about 115-120, you are nowhere near as intelligent or impressive as you seem to think you are. Carry on, I'm done here.
I agree it is difficult to maintain hope when we are clearly playing defense and are not a coherent team. I hate to add to the despair, but when I look at polls that include Gen Z, I feel like throwing in the towel. If young people really want to live under the level of authoritarianism they currently embrace and foster within their generation, it won't matter if we win a series of battles over the next five or so years.
I think the Grey Lady's grand scheme is to diversify her portfolio. She knows that the ideology of the elites is a house built on sand that can come crashing down. Although her readership is deep into TDS and other hysterias of the elite left, the NYT is willing to disappoint them on occasion by presenting alternative viewpoints so that she'll be in the game no matter how things turn out.
Absurdly delusional and exactly the kind of 'hopium' I was talking about. You seem to believe that we are on the cusp of some serious change or political realignment. Do you not understand the Dems haven't had a legitimate hold on power since say Truman? They lie, cheat and steal in every election. 2020 was just the most overt, they dropped the mask cuz of their hatred of Trump.
They publish Rufo so they can plausibly make the claim they aren't biased. Their readership isn't interested in non-leftist views. Fyi, I read the NYTimes for 25 years...It became garbage by the end of Clinton's POTUS term. What it's about is elitist and wannabe elites subscriptions. They have given up on ads, and focus exclusively on the 8 million or so digital subscribers. This is a matter of great pride within NYTimes as WaPo failed due to its reliance on classified ads, and other ad revenue and was not able to build a digital subscriber base as quickly as NYTimes did.
It's all a game to them to confuse people, and it seems it worked on you. And they are not scared their 'house built on sand' is coming down, lol. They actually see that the Left's cultural revolution has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and see us as the predictable backlash.
"They publish Rufo so they can plausibly make the claim they aren't biased. Their readership isn't interested in non-leftist views." I suppose you don't see the contradiction in these two sentences.
"We have “politicized” DEI—that is, we have subjected it to democratic debate, forcing the Left into a defensive posture."
I love this reframing of the leftists' projections and bad faith critiques! You expose their authoritarian policy of repressing dissent by taking back control of language.
Those of us behind enemy lines can throw sand in the gears and help document the problems. Push the DIE stuff to semi-ridiculous conclusions, so you appear to be the most faithful, but do so via email susceptible to FOIA requests. There are ways to be "helpful" that instead force their hand.
Thanks for all of your writing efforts which are bringing desperately needed truth to the important issues of our time. You are a literary treasure that is making a difference.
Thank you for your tireless efforts. Your a national hero who will go down in history as one of the leaders in the fight against a destructive social movement.
It's rarely said that DEI's pernicious goal is to displace white males. If you don't believe me, ask yourself what the DEI definition is of 'marginalized or oppressed people'. It is everyone except heterosexual (Christian) white males. Sadly, in our society today their is a war on straight white men.
The senior executives of medium and large size companies are mostly white males, and they consistently pledge their support for all the DEI officers they have. Many of them also make public statements about how they attended DEI sessions and "learned so much." We can speculate that the DEI officers themselves want to get rid of white men, but it appears they do not want to get rid of the execs who hired them. It is primarily the relatively or completely powerless white men they all are targeting. The woke movement exists to serve and sustain the ruling class, which is still mostly led by white males.
I agree with you that many senior execs are white males who don’t give a crap for other men or are just afraid. I think it’s shameful. My observation is that their are many woman on boards and in senior leadership. Not to be sexist, but in general women tend to be more empathetic for those perceived to be victims. Theirs an wide empathy gap in our country for white men. The radical feminist did a good job widening that gap into a chasm.
We just need to look at who benefits financially or are driven by woke ideologically .. These are the liberal elites and the race hustlers. The liberal elites are busy virtue signaling, keeping from being cancelled or suffering from some neurotic white guilt. The race hustlers seek power and money.
These cohorts are creating great suffering & resentment for the average folks. Unfortunately, I think they are also the most insulated from their poor decisions.
Yeah, I agree. The whole thing is like end stage corruption. It seems like the white demographic is under attack, but the people doing the most effective attacking are other white people in positions of power. Bureaucrats, a lot of them, and that is where women sometimes have power. But in leadership of major companies the leadership is still majority white male.
Your last couple sentences sum up the problem well, in my opinion.
Thank you for all of your hard work. God bless you!
When falsehoods are held up as undeniable truths, we must all stand up and fight back, even in the smallest way. Your example is one we should all follow.
Exactly as you claim Mr Rufo - the arrow has moved towards a more open university system and closer to pure knowledge versus political action as the inherent stance in schools ( and beyond) . Congratulations on a successful beginning ! The man of the hour ! Grace !
"The prior certitude—DEI as an incontestable good—has turned into a question: Does DEI help or harm education? As is often the case, posing such a question is the first step toward answering it."
Does DEI help or harm education?
"In 2017, at Evergreen State College, a biology professor had his class invaded by a frenzied mob hurling ‘Fuck you, you piece of shit’ type abuse. The professor, ironically a lifelong progressive, “had refused to obey an edict from Evergreen’s Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services that all white faculty cancel their courses for a day and…white students were also ordered to absent themselves from the school to show ‘solidarity’.” Evergreen’s president expressed his “gratitude” for the mob’s “passion and courage”". This and dozens of other examples are examined in Heather Mac Donald's copious examination of DEI 'helpfulness' in her book The Diversity Delusion. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
Heather is a national treasure.
thanks for sharing that article on the book review.. worth the read..
You're welcome....you might find some of my other articles on this broad theme of interest too? https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
We're all going to have to face who's been doing this to us, as uncomfortable as it may be.
https://files.catbox.moe/qaz3op.png
“The central purpose of universities is to pursue truth.”
The central purpose has become the accumulation of assets. Money. Administrations are led by people chosen because that is where they excel. The money, in turn, comes from private-sector research grants, secondary only to government research grants. That tends to explain the interest in DEI.
Yes, this is part of what’s happening.
True, but only part of the problem.
Agreed.
Academic capitalism is now the purpose of higher education globally.
Doesn’t really seem academic.
> The money, in turn, comes from private-sector research grants, secondary only to government research grants.
Interesting way to phrase that sentence, putting the focus on the private sector despite admitting it's secondary to the government.
It was my way of pointing out the government’s primary role. Wasn’t meant to mislead, or I wouldn’t have even stated it was anything other than money for research, rather than for education. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, I was truly not trying to focus on the private sector.
If I had a research need and money to spend for it, research universities are an excellent resource for that. But I knew these guys well because I worked for these guys. Rather than spending their time on furthering education, they 1) publish papers to further their own careers (“publish or perish”), 2) “develop” grants by writing and presenting proposals, to get them. And it isn’t easy work. Performance and progression within a department is often measured by financial acquisitions; the numbers must be close and considered, because executing it needs to produce results under budget, and of course the university has its ways of extracting their share off the top. Grad students are needed to carry out the work, which means there has to BE work, and the prof’s educational contribution, sponsoring them.
Want to know what happened to education in modern, large universities?
It was outbid.
Oh Chris, please do not be fooled by the Prog-Marxist two step. They are going to play a 'Mott & Bailey' on you, see James Lindsay's explication of this fave tactic of the left. Now the NY Times can say they aren't biased cuz they published you. They, and their radical comrades, expect 'backlash' from reactionary forces. And be clear Chris, they believe you are a reactionary force against social justice. They do not think you are reasonable or are making good points. I do find this claiming of victory on the Right becoming more common, which is sad to me. DEI programs are proceeding apace in 10s of thousands of organizations of all kinds as I write this. We aren't winning. We haven't even stopped losing this war yet. In fact, they have won decisively ALREADY and are now properly seen as consolidating their power.
What Chris has done that is incredibly important is frame this battle correctly for the Right. We have been the victims of a massive, 90 year cultural revolution that in its final phase from the '70s on focused on institutional capture and succeeded beyond any Leftist's fever dreams. They OWN the institutions of America. From the Boy Scouts to your local college or university to the administration of govt at every level of society to news, arts, entertainment - do I really need to go on?
We have lost a cultural revolution. The counter-revolution must focus on taking back these institutions as Chris is doing in Florida. So now we have maybe 10 colleges/unis in the nation out of 4300 that aren't teaching ideas based on neoMarxism, the bizarre melange (this stupid spell checker doesn't have melange as a word, lol - our culture is so broken) of postmodern, poststructuralist and critical theory based ideas. This is what losing looks like, not winning. Be clear. And we cannot be satisfied with symbolic victories.
We need 1000 Chris Rufos, well funded and sent out into the world to overtake cultural and educational institutions. Think about this, as an aside that may illuminate how pathetic the Right is (I'm of the Right). We have all this money - has anyone used it to take control over a social media company? A conservative corporate raid of say Google or Facebook? Take over the board, take it private, fire half the useless turds who work there and make it fair and welcoming to conservatives? Nope, instead I get Getter - a frikking echo chamber. Same in education. Are we trying to take over any Ivy League schools? Even one? Second tier? Nope - I get some podunk state college in Florida, lol.
One could read my comment the wrong way, as though I don't appreciate Chris's work. Quite the contrary, I'm a huge fan. It's just that we still have no chance of beating these folks and some op ed in the NY Times is not meaningful. Sorry. The propensity for those of us who oppose the Left to smoke our own 'hopium' is boundless it seems.
Yes, I’m well aware of this. It’s a dialectic, absolutely, and I intend to set the frame and finish on the winning side. Step by step.
Indeed, there must be a first step. But to me, your work in Florida is literally the first counter-revolutionary action I've seen that actually removes the entire neoMarxist agenda. from an institution. Almost every other 'victory' I see looks temporary to me, at best. I just want to see real action by the Right to take back institutions and while many conservatives act like they agree when I say stuff like this, I'm pretty sure they have no idea how important the idea of a 'cultural revolution' is to the left and what it entails. They feel it but have been so subverted about Marxism they don't really understand it.
I agree, but I also think that eventually this unrelenting “progressivism” will reach the point where the so-called silent majority will become irreversibly angry. The Covid playbook revealed “the man behind the curtain” to some extent, and there’s more awareness than a few years ago. I can feel it starting to simmer. If it is forced to go that far, it will not be pretty.
Thanks so much for this comment, it's the kind of 'hopium' the Right is smoking far too much of IMHO. Cast your mind back to 2010-12. 2015-16. 2019-20, did you not also get a sense we were at a 'tipping point'? I surely did. Hell, I thought we were at a tipping point in 1980... But in fact, the Dems showed us how they will maintain control without our consent. 1. Cheating in elections. 2. Truly fascistic alliances with big tech and media. 3. Prosecution and destruction in any way possible of anyone who opposes them.
Go talk to some of the "Momma Bears" who ran for school boards and are now being opposed in well funded campaigns with unions behind them. They are being personally destroyed, shamed for any mistake they may have ever made publicly in the past and you can GUARANTEE that every Leftist weapon from NGOs, nonprofits, unions, state, local and federal govt will drive them from their school board seats. Why? Cuz this already happened before. One of the big problems with the 'newish' Red Pill crowd is they don't realize that just cuz they were asleep doesn't mean everyone has. Many a conservative has fought a local battle for a city council or town board or school board etc. seat after being outraged. Only to be driven from office, or isolated, abused and stripped of power.
We are not the majority. We are a minority about the size of the Left's hard core radical base, maybe even smaller. We are not organized, Most of our 'voices' are idiots who are more about monetizing our rage than actually erecting an actual offense or defense that has a chance of winning. I see almost no signals that we are 'turning things around'.
Be clear, while you and I are typing, millions of school kids are being taught about Drag Queens and how the U.S. was a corrupt, immoral, oppressive and exploitative project from the beginning, based on slavery and hate. Millions. And it will happen tomorrow too. Our tiny little progress is almost meaningless.
You seem to believe elections matter and that the will of the people still matters. Nope. What matters is power, and the Left has almost all of it. It won't be taken back by being nice or obeying the law or winning elections. It will only be taken by force, and these leftist lunatics will only stop when they are forced to. Anything else is hopium - a very popular drug in the Red Pill and Right wing of our politics.
Hint: They do not care that we see through their lies. At all. They only care about winning. And they are kicking our asses so completely. Start from this position. We've lost the against a cultural revolution that has already subverted the majority of Americans, including many Republicans and independents. There is no 'silent majority' - we are a minority. We have flooded our nation with people who do not care about any of this via immigration and our education system.
The idea that there is some 'majority' sitting on the sidelines, just waiting for it to get bad enough is what kept conservatives on the sidelines while the Left ran the table. The time for such wishful mythology is long over...The Right is too disorganized and and conflicted and fractured to mount any effective defense or offense. If we don't take these SOBs out of power, people like me will be in concentration camps by 2030. You too maybe.
It's time to fight. Too bad too many conservatives don't want to hear it. Playing by the rules is how we lost. Stop pursuing a losing strategy.
The “hopium problem” is very real and I give my best effort to be reasonable about expectations and about my opponents. But always a good reminder to be cautious and realistic.
It's a full on 'Hopium Addiction Epidemic' on the Right, Chris. Most do not understand what a cultural revolution is. They do not know they live in a world utterly shaped by Marcuse, for example. I watched the Tucker Trump interview last night, and it depresses me.
Neither of them grasp the cultural revolution the Left threw in any meaningful way. They paw around and mewl but never really get to the core of what we are facing. Which is why we are losing so badly and have for 50 years. The subversion started before that, but we at least were fighting the commie scum head on at first. After the '50s? Those Marxist revolutionaries ran amok due to the Dems/Left destroying all true 'anti-communism'. Conservatives need to start from the 'Sit Rep' that tells them we've already lost the war. The Left's Cultural Revolution was a success. We are backlash they are trying to silence, and it's about 5 minutes before they are locking us up in concentration camps.
Mark my words, they will steal the 2024 POTUS election, and I believe that will be the end of our Republic. I have no confidence the Right will erect a strong enough opposition to stop them, and very few on the Right have the stomach for actual revolution. That's one of my biggest disappointments in the Right actually. I moved to New Hampshire and took up shooting and have become quite lethal with my pistol and rifle. I thought maybe I'd meet some other counter-revolutionaries at the gun range. All are preparing for what is called in code 'the zombie apocalypse' and they spend outrageous sums on gear and training. But I've not met a single one who thinks it's 'go time'. Hell, it was 'go time' under the commie lowlife FDR in my book...
Thank you for your stamina, your persistent rational and realistic hope, and for your incredibly effective activism. Leadership is a lonely place to stand sometimes, because you have to keep yourself pumped up as well as encouraging everyone who counts on you. It sucks sometimes.
I agree with you about the hopium addiction. And there's another aspect to it that I've been banging on about for a while now. Lots of conservative intellectuals are almost falling into a kind of upmarket conspiracy theorising - trying to pass the whole mad wokeification of the Western world off on a few Weathermen-types or a 'managerial elite'. They seem afraid to confront just how many tens of millions of lefty sheep-dipped graduates there are now in the West.
This is what I wrote on this Substack a while back: Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers.
I do admire Rufo for his activism and it may well be that simplifications and bogeymen are part and parcel of what is needed to get people outraged enough for a conservative reaction to reach critical mass. But his analysis is a cop out nevertheless by not facing the fact that millions of the university-educated are complicit in the advance of Woke.
"But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture?"
You capture a culture by first capturing its morality and then inculcating that morality in its children.
The New Left has been a smashing success because they were able to piggyback off the Civil Rights movement and style themselves as Official Defenders of the Oppressed. Thus any attack against them had the same appearance (morally) as kicking a kitten. Also, they have ruthlessly and expertly wielded their superweapon, the Bigotry Accusation, the scarlet letter of our time.
The foundational morality of the post-60s West is more or less white guilt/shame and once you install the buttons that work guilt/shame in people's brains, you might as well have installed a remote control.
Add the fact that this new harder-edged morality was being crafted at the same time that the West underwent massive secularization and voila!, there you have it—a new strong belief system (a sort of politicized Leftish version of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where we're all constantly judged by our attitude toward the "historically marginalized") gradually conquered a society with no stronger beliefs than money and status.
Everything here is more or less downstream from morality....
Reminder: in the original parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan was Good because he helped the injured guy, not simply because he was a Samaritan.
exactly yes...we shall be judged by how we treat the wounded/lesser among us, regardless of their tribe (or in our case their race, gender, or immigration status).
it is amazing how various Christian principles have been picked up, dusted off, wielded and weaponized in our post-Christian times....
or maybe we're not so post-Christian after all!
"Leftish version of the Parable of the Good Samaritan" Yes, that's it! A big part of its seductive power.
I wouldn't be the first person to notice the Christian roots of "Social Justice"...
While an interesting insight I think you see the power structure inaccurately. There is always a group of people who are highly suggestible in any group. Where I think you might want to look instead is in the numbers of Marxists scumbags who escaped Europe and brought their Bolshevism here. There were over 500 commie agents in FDRs govt - our subversion began in the '30s.
I disagree with your dismissal of actually naming our enemy as 'simplifications and bogeymen'. It's neoMarxism. Most conservatives do not understand that we have been subjected to a cultural revolution. You use Freire and Marcuse as throw away lines, do you realize you live in a world more shaped by them then the great Western philosophers? Our entire education system is Friereian, with Social and Emotional Learning being adopted by virtually all school systems in the U.S. now. Marcuse invented The New Left, and the entire nightmare of the Weatherman and the Black Panthers and others emanated from all that, and has never stopped. It just moved into the universities to incubate and then was set loose on our society.
Bad take. Think harder, you seem to want to blame individuals, expecting everyone to be able to sort this all out on their own. Where did you get that crazy idea about how human beings are?
You either are less knowledgeable about all this than you think you are, or you are just terribly confused. In either event, you really miss who the enemy is.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't want to get into some silly ding dong but the fact that you have 100% missed my point is your cognitive failure not mine. Ask yourself this: how many people who have emerged from tertiary education in the West over recent decades hold 'Progressive' views and subscribe (to some or other extent) to its various bogus 'social justice' victimhood narratives? Does it not run - as I said - into the tens - if not hundreds - of millions? If not how do you account for voting behavior and how do you account for the fact of all the institutions of civil society being woke-dominated - not just at the top but at middle management levels too? I have to say that your reply was irritating, patronising and ill mannered. Try in future to actually read and understand what is being said before firing off in this ill-thought out blustering way.
A 'silly ding dong'? Lol. I did not miss your point. Your point is incorrect and misguided from my POV. And your new point in this comment is different from your old one but I'm not going to bother to show you how. It's clear you can't take criticism. That you won't admit that a large portion of any group of people are easily leadable/influenceable, there is nothing to discuss with you. And I already asserted that we are at the effect of a cultural revolution since the '30s, so your point about Progressive subversion was actually my point. But they were subverted due to the scumbag leadership who did the subverting, not cuz they are defective people. They are just not that smart and not that curious.
What's sad is that you revert to framing your response as my 'cognitive failure'. By how you write, I can tell your IQ is about 115-120, you are nowhere near as intelligent or impressive as you seem to think you are. Carry on, I'm done here.
I agree it is difficult to maintain hope when we are clearly playing defense and are not a coherent team. I hate to add to the despair, but when I look at polls that include Gen Z, I feel like throwing in the towel. If young people really want to live under the level of authoritarianism they currently embrace and foster within their generation, it won't matter if we win a series of battles over the next five or so years.
I think the Grey Lady's grand scheme is to diversify her portfolio. She knows that the ideology of the elites is a house built on sand that can come crashing down. Although her readership is deep into TDS and other hysterias of the elite left, the NYT is willing to disappoint them on occasion by presenting alternative viewpoints so that she'll be in the game no matter how things turn out.
Absurdly delusional and exactly the kind of 'hopium' I was talking about. You seem to believe that we are on the cusp of some serious change or political realignment. Do you not understand the Dems haven't had a legitimate hold on power since say Truman? They lie, cheat and steal in every election. 2020 was just the most overt, they dropped the mask cuz of their hatred of Trump.
They publish Rufo so they can plausibly make the claim they aren't biased. Their readership isn't interested in non-leftist views. Fyi, I read the NYTimes for 25 years...It became garbage by the end of Clinton's POTUS term. What it's about is elitist and wannabe elites subscriptions. They have given up on ads, and focus exclusively on the 8 million or so digital subscribers. This is a matter of great pride within NYTimes as WaPo failed due to its reliance on classified ads, and other ad revenue and was not able to build a digital subscriber base as quickly as NYTimes did.
It's all a game to them to confuse people, and it seems it worked on you. And they are not scared their 'house built on sand' is coming down, lol. They actually see that the Left's cultural revolution has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and see us as the predictable backlash.
The good news is that in internet is making them less relevant every day.
"They publish Rufo so they can plausibly make the claim they aren't biased. Their readership isn't interested in non-leftist views." I suppose you don't see the contradiction in these two sentences.
"We have “politicized” DEI—that is, we have subjected it to democratic debate, forcing the Left into a defensive posture."
I love this reframing of the leftists' projections and bad faith critiques! You expose their authoritarian policy of repressing dissent by taking back control of language.
Exactly, “politicizing” political things is only right!
Thank YOU for taking issue with DEI when others would not. Many of us agree with you - & are deeply disappointed in leadership.
Working on it.
Those of us behind enemy lines can throw sand in the gears and help document the problems. Push the DIE stuff to semi-ridiculous conclusions, so you appear to be the most faithful, but do so via email susceptible to FOIA requests. There are ways to be "helpful" that instead force their hand.
So many of us are strongly supportive of all your efforts. A giant thanks to you.
Thanks for all of your writing efforts which are bringing desperately needed truth to the important issues of our time. You are a literary treasure that is making a difference.
Thank you for your tireless efforts. Your a national hero who will go down in history as one of the leaders in the fight against a destructive social movement.
It's rarely said that DEI's pernicious goal is to displace white males. If you don't believe me, ask yourself what the DEI definition is of 'marginalized or oppressed people'. It is everyone except heterosexual (Christian) white males. Sadly, in our society today their is a war on straight white men.
Right, it’s actually a small demographic that is held up as the villain.
The senior executives of medium and large size companies are mostly white males, and they consistently pledge their support for all the DEI officers they have. Many of them also make public statements about how they attended DEI sessions and "learned so much." We can speculate that the DEI officers themselves want to get rid of white men, but it appears they do not want to get rid of the execs who hired them. It is primarily the relatively or completely powerless white men they all are targeting. The woke movement exists to serve and sustain the ruling class, which is still mostly led by white males.
I agree with you that many senior execs are white males who don’t give a crap for other men or are just afraid. I think it’s shameful. My observation is that their are many woman on boards and in senior leadership. Not to be sexist, but in general women tend to be more empathetic for those perceived to be victims. Theirs an wide empathy gap in our country for white men. The radical feminist did a good job widening that gap into a chasm.
We just need to look at who benefits financially or are driven by woke ideologically .. These are the liberal elites and the race hustlers. The liberal elites are busy virtue signaling, keeping from being cancelled or suffering from some neurotic white guilt. The race hustlers seek power and money.
These cohorts are creating great suffering & resentment for the average folks. Unfortunately, I think they are also the most insulated from their poor decisions.
Yeah, I agree. The whole thing is like end stage corruption. It seems like the white demographic is under attack, but the people doing the most effective attacking are other white people in positions of power. Bureaucrats, a lot of them, and that is where women sometimes have power. But in leadership of major companies the leadership is still majority white male.
Your last couple sentences sum up the problem well, in my opinion.
> but it appears they do not want to get rid of the execs who hired them.
Yes, they do. And they occasionally even succeed. That's why the execs are so afraid of them.
Thanks, Chris. Proud to be a long time supporter.
Appreciate it!
Thank you for all of your hard work. God bless you!
When falsehoods are held up as undeniable truths, we must all stand up and fight back, even in the smallest way. Your example is one we should all follow.
Thank you!
Good progress!! Thanks.
Step by step!
Yes!
Good work Chris. I always appreciate your courage.
Exactly as you claim Mr Rufo - the arrow has moved towards a more open university system and closer to pure knowledge versus political action as the inherent stance in schools ( and beyond) . Congratulations on a successful beginning ! The man of the hour ! Grace !
"The prior certitude—DEI as an incontestable good—has turned into a question: Does DEI help or harm education? As is often the case, posing such a question is the first step toward answering it."
There is a saying:
"To ask the question is to answer it."
And another one:
"If the shoe fits..."
Right!
Hope you enjoy every success as much as we all do. Thankyou, Chris!