Passage from “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” by Batya Ungar-Sargon:
“If you’ve never heard of Vox, that’s probably because it’s not for you; from its inception, the site had a very specific audience in mind: young, affluent, and highly educated. Klein and his coeditors were writing for urban millennials under thirty-five heading highly educated households that made over $100,000 a year, the New York Times reported.18
Vox’s trademark style would be a cheeky, barely concealed smugness that flatters its readers into believing that by reading the website—which, not coincidentally, would sustain all of the liberal opinions that young, affluent, educated people already hold—they can rest assured that they are among the ranks of the correct, the informed, rather than one of the stupids.”
The mentality of Mr. Beauchamp reminds me of the quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “if you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” He and his allies are on the wrong train and are trying so hard to tell the world that the right thing to do is run in the other direction.
I keep coming back to Saul Bellow: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
This quote by C. Rufo summed up nicely what is going on in America and is being led by the Biden Administration and Deep/Admin state: "Beauchamp concludes his review with a warning that my “dangerous” book might usher in an “authoritarian” political reaction". Obviously, it's just the opposite. Biden and his Czars and the Radical Left, including most of the media have been diligently attempting to usher in a U.S. Authoritarian/Totalitarian style of government under their propaganda and lies of countering so called digital hate and racism and misinformation with these corrupt DEI organizations. In fact, Beauchamp and these people want to usher in their style of Authoritarian government abuse and power and leave the truth seekers in the dust.
If you wrote a book in 1987 about the USSR's inept response to the Chernobyl disaster, you would expect Pravda to publish a devilishly dishonest hit piece, because that's what communist apparatchiks do. So now it's 2023 and you've written a book about the communist color revolution in America in 2020, and the American Pravda (all the regime-aligned media and "influencers") are doing what communist apparatchiks have always done. I wouldn't expect them to act any differently, given their Marxcissism. The good news: fewer people are paying attention to them, except to point out their lies and ridicule their insane and idiotic ideology. The tide is turning!
“Beauchamp wants to have it both ways: his argument about the rise of left-wing racialism amounts to the position that it hasn’t happened—and it’s already peaked.” I can imagine him thinking “Tribalist, MOI? C’est Impossiliiiible” whether he’s French or not.
You're savvy enough to know that lefty writers, especially radical lefty writers for Vox already know the story they're writing before they interview you. All they need is the actual quote from your mouth to weave into it at the place and context of their choosing. There's no such thing as fair interviews with them. Why bother giving yourself over to a hit piece?
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
When Chris was right. It's amazing what people will do when the facts are against them. The best part of Chris' work is that he does not simply opine but backs it up with investigation. Arguing ith facts so people like Beauchamp "fudge", which is the most polite way to say it.
"Beauchamp’s first criticism is that, contra my argument, left-wing radicalism has not conquered America’s institutions. “The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence—the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like ‘structural racism,’ for example—thus ends up undermining his case,” he writes. “When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover.”
This really is denialism, which characterizes the present. It really is a less respectable Baghdad-Bobbery: citizens know what is happening, and are being instructed that "officially," it is not.
I agree with your conclusion that center-left intellectuals are pretending that we are pre-2014 or even pre-2008 (I date the rise of public wokery to that year). A colleague of this man, who seems preoccupied with you ("Rufo" in numerous, non-analytical mentions), leaned on this review as the final word - his whole pitch was that you are inventing/exaggerating about a phenomenon to react to. I drew the same conclusion as you do here - that he was pretending that nothing has fundamentally changed, and so nothing need be done. That was the substance - the rest was an expression of dislike, and possibly envy (don't know him well enough from his posts to say this).
America's Cultural Revolution is a fine new book by Christopher Rufo. I know, because I've read every word. It should be read by all Americans who want to understand how the left has transformed American society and politics over the course of the past several decades. If you are interested in a brief overview, you may want to read my recent review. https://richardspeed.substack.com/p/cultural-revolution-american-style?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The Debunker, Debunked
Passage from “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” by Batya Ungar-Sargon:
“If you’ve never heard of Vox, that’s probably because it’s not for you; from its inception, the site had a very specific audience in mind: young, affluent, and highly educated. Klein and his coeditors were writing for urban millennials under thirty-five heading highly educated households that made over $100,000 a year, the New York Times reported.18
Vox’s trademark style would be a cheeky, barely concealed smugness that flatters its readers into believing that by reading the website—which, not coincidentally, would sustain all of the liberal opinions that young, affluent, educated people already hold—they can rest assured that they are among the ranks of the correct, the informed, rather than one of the stupids.”
The mentality of Mr. Beauchamp reminds me of the quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “if you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” He and his allies are on the wrong train and are trying so hard to tell the world that the right thing to do is run in the other direction.
His very article, clearly propagandist, is proof of the media takeover by the left. He is not reporting. He is manipulating.
I keep coming back to Saul Bellow: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
This quote by C. Rufo summed up nicely what is going on in America and is being led by the Biden Administration and Deep/Admin state: "Beauchamp concludes his review with a warning that my “dangerous” book might usher in an “authoritarian” political reaction". Obviously, it's just the opposite. Biden and his Czars and the Radical Left, including most of the media have been diligently attempting to usher in a U.S. Authoritarian/Totalitarian style of government under their propaganda and lies of countering so called digital hate and racism and misinformation with these corrupt DEI organizations. In fact, Beauchamp and these people want to usher in their style of Authoritarian government abuse and power and leave the truth seekers in the dust.
If you wrote a book in 1987 about the USSR's inept response to the Chernobyl disaster, you would expect Pravda to publish a devilishly dishonest hit piece, because that's what communist apparatchiks do. So now it's 2023 and you've written a book about the communist color revolution in America in 2020, and the American Pravda (all the regime-aligned media and "influencers") are doing what communist apparatchiks have always done. I wouldn't expect them to act any differently, given their Marxcissism. The good news: fewer people are paying attention to them, except to point out their lies and ridicule their insane and idiotic ideology. The tide is turning!
Asking the liberals to understand Left-wing institutional capture is like asking a fish to understand water.
You can't see the effects of something when you're stuck in the middle of it. Thus the path of least resistance is to disbelieve its existence.
“Beauchamp wants to have it both ways: his argument about the rise of left-wing racialism amounts to the position that it hasn’t happened—and it’s already peaked.” I can imagine him thinking “Tribalist, MOI? C’est Impossiliiiible” whether he’s French or not.
You're savvy enough to know that lefty writers, especially radical lefty writers for Vox already know the story they're writing before they interview you. All they need is the actual quote from your mouth to weave into it at the place and context of their choosing. There's no such thing as fair interviews with them. Why bother giving yourself over to a hit piece?
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
— Daniel J. Mahoney, Solzhenitsyn scholar
When Chris was right. It's amazing what people will do when the facts are against them. The best part of Chris' work is that he does not simply opine but backs it up with investigation. Arguing ith facts so people like Beauchamp "fudge", which is the most polite way to say it.
"Beauchamp’s first criticism is that, contra my argument, left-wing radicalism has not conquered America’s institutions. “The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence—the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like ‘structural racism,’ for example—thus ends up undermining his case,” he writes. “When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover.”
This really is denialism, which characterizes the present. It really is a less respectable Baghdad-Bobbery: citizens know what is happening, and are being instructed that "officially," it is not.
I agree with your conclusion that center-left intellectuals are pretending that we are pre-2014 or even pre-2008 (I date the rise of public wokery to that year). A colleague of this man, who seems preoccupied with you ("Rufo" in numerous, non-analytical mentions), leaned on this review as the final word - his whole pitch was that you are inventing/exaggerating about a phenomenon to react to. I drew the same conclusion as you do here - that he was pretending that nothing has fundamentally changed, and so nothing need be done. That was the substance - the rest was an expression of dislike, and possibly envy (don't know him well enough from his posts to say this).
Gaslighting is a form of abuse.
Well said.
America's Cultural Revolution is a fine new book by Christopher Rufo. I know, because I've read every word. It should be read by all Americans who want to understand how the left has transformed American society and politics over the course of the past several decades. If you are interested in a brief overview, you may want to read my recent review. https://richardspeed.substack.com/p/cultural-revolution-american-style?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Christopher, thanks for helping me complete my post this morning!
The tools at Vox are not the only ones distorting history....
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/he-shall-think-to-change-times