Targeted, Doxxed, Defiant

The origin story behind our new podcast with BlazeTV

In this week’s episode of Rufo & Lomez, we’ll be talking about our origin story—where we came from, how we developed our politics, and where we hope the Right goes in the future. On this show, we’re going to do more than repeat the headlines and react to news clips. We’re going to dive deep into the topics that matter, explore the hidden forces that shape our culture, and ensure that you are equipped to navigate the difficult waters ahead. All that and more in this week’s episode of Rufo & Lomez.

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The following is a rush transcript for paid subscribers. Sign up now for premium access.

Rufo: It’s a big launch week. I thought we’d slow down at the start, tell people who we are, what we’re trying to do with the podcast, and why we care about politics, culture, and the experiences that shaped us. From my point of view, we had similar upbringings. As we got to know each other over the last few years, there were many moments where we realized we’d been on parallel tracks. Start at the beginning: where did you grow up, and how did you get here—from your humble origins, your bootstrap story from Northern California?

Lomez: Okay, we’ll get there. We do have a similar background, but before that, I’m trying to remember when our paths first crossed. Let’s work backward. We were going to start this podcast a year ago. We had a conversation—we did a few prototypes, not with Blaze. You and I got on a call and talked. I don’t remember the exact impetus; maybe you do. We had fun, but life intervened. You had another kid; we can get to that. I was busy. The plan was to restart in the fall, and Blaze was a willing partner. Thank you, Blaze. We’re excited to be here, to meet the Blaze audience, and to be part of this team. Before that, you were making videos and experimenting with a million things. I helped write scripts for one of them. Do you remember the specific moment our paths crossed? I was aware of you. You were a prominent Republican activist. Where did we first connect? I don’t remember.

Rufo: I think we first crossed digitally. I saw some of your tweets. I’m always interested in what’s new and creative. I sensed that your pseudonymous writing offered something different and was keyed into the culture in a way distinct from mainstream establishment conservatism. That was interesting to me. We struck up a friendship, talked, and then you came out—I can’t remember if it was pre-docs or post-docs—for a visit. We worked on some pre-docs together, right?

Lomez: Yeah. For those who don’t know—I’m new to some of you—I was anonymous online. I wasn’t a political activist or commentator; I was a guy who posted. When I started, I was an academic teaching in the UC Irvine English department for over a decade and became increasingly disillusioned with academia. We can get into that—this episode or later. It’ll recur.

I started posting online as a refuge to express my contempt for the left. I felt it ruining my life. I lived in California. I enjoyed teaching at UCI, but an ideology was taking over and obliterating everything it touched—my job, livelihood, and cultural hobbies. I love literature; I later landed in publishing and now run a publishing company. I started going online to express all this. It was probably around the first Trump presidency or later that we connected online. I was an online creature. But you—had you been online for long before becoming prominent, or was coming online part of building a profile for what you were doing?

Rufo: Online came second for me. I spent the first 10-plus years as a documentary filmmaker. That world is no better than a UC English department. I saw the same trends you felt in academia. I saw it in the mid-Obama years. By 2012 I was hearing arguments that became mainstream by 2020: race is a social construct, yet the central prism for everything, determining your position in the hierarchy. Identity became so pervasive that when applying for grants, a colleague joked, “I’m going to identify as bisexual to qualify, because I’m a white guy.” It was a laugh, but indicative of ideological capture. Those of us inside culture industries saw proto-woke early. If you were an intern at Heritage and worked in a GOP office, you understood woke by 2020 as a political problem from the outside. We saw it first from the inside and then pivoted—late career changes.