Christopher R. Rufo is a brilliant, young conservative thinker and journalist that I subscribe to his reader-supported publication. Today, 10/12/23, he wrote an online article called The Smear: How the Daily Beast tried—and failed to tarnish his reputation. I will quote from his article where I find it pertinent and will then comment on what I extracted.
Rufo: “Last week, the Daily Beast ran a story with a shocking headline: ‘Influential Anti-Woke Activist Is Open to working with Racists and Fascists.’ Even more shocking, as I read the first few paragraphs the ‘influential anti-woke activist in question was me.”
My response: Rufo is smart, famous, and influential. He knows what the cultural Marxists are up to, what they think, how vicious, unscrupulous, deceitful, ambitious, power-hungry, totalitarian and addicted to power-accumulation they are.
And he has used simple, clear language to alert the public to these enemies of America, what they are scheming and attempting, and how to stop them. He has a target on his back a mile-wide so they are going to try and take him out --if they can. Every smart and good man or woman that opposes tyrants needs to be censored and de-platformed.
Rufo: “According to the report by Jared Holt, I had hosted a X Spaces debate on the concept of ‘no enemies to the Right’—a variation of the French Revolution principle ‘no enemies to the Left’—during which one participant ‘floated an ear-burning idea’ of ‘an armistice between establishment Republican Party and the racists and fascists who are excited about its current trajectory.’ By some property of guilt-by-association, Holt and the editors reasoned, I too, hold these views—so they attacked.
There was however, one problem. The articles and its claims against me were entirely false. As I wrote to the Daily Beast editors in protest: “I have never suggested in any way, shape or form that I am ‘open to working with racists and fascists—and your claim that I have done so is deliberately false, malicious and defamatory, with a clear intention of tarnishing my reputation.’ In fact, I told them, I have ‘repeatedly argued the opposite,’ making the case against ‘right-wing racialism,’ which, life its left-wing counterpart, critical race theory, is antithetical to American principles.”
My response: Rufo is truthful about his record, being against racialism on the right or on the Left. Racialists, tribalists, ideologues and tyrants on the right or the Left are anti-antithetical to American principles.
He implies or understands, I believe, like me, that those that the groupists or racialists, on the Right or Left, these true-believers, have more in common with each other than not. They promote group ethics, group identity and group rights, and totalitarian power over all citizens, including those ruling society, whether they are a favored in-power tribe or group, or the ruled citizens of said society, the oppressed, subjugated, exploited have-not groups at the bottom of the authoritarian society, ruled by an oligarchy, a dictator or majority mob rule, or all three at once, all three factions cooperating to keep the whole society under bondage, including the elites themselves at the top. All have agreed to suffer injustice and lie to each other about how fine the system is.
Rufo: “The editors didn’t even need to look through my past work to understand my view. During the announcement for the debate in question, I made it explicit, writing that, while some elements of the so-called dissident Right have disrupted state orthodoxies, other have ‘fallen into some predictable dead ends,’ such as right-wing racialism, which must be rejected. ‘Some elements on the fringes of any political movement are moral non-starters,’ I wrote. ‘Anyone who has spent some time in large organizations will recognize a plain truth: sometimes addition is accomplished by subtraction. This might even be true in politics, which has always attracted an element of the pathological.”
My response: It seems to me that Rufo has been careful to be conservative without siding with Right-wing racialists and fascists, and he would not be against modern liberalism, but he seems to denounce the woke as Marxist radicals that have side with or are in secret in league with Left-wing racialists and Communists. He is against racialists and tyrants of all stripes, and he is morally admirable for his view here.
Rufo: “In addition, during the debate, I challenged supporters of ‘no enemies to the right’ with a specific case illustrating the point. I asked the panelists what should be done in the case of someone like white nationalist Richard Spencer, ‘who is not only wrong morally, politically, (and) practically,’ but serves as a ‘foil that is used by the Left to then tarnish the Right as a whole.’ In other words, given such a repugnant figure, both a moral and pragmatic case can be made against the proposition ‘no enemies to the right.’”
My response: We need not worry about or plot to wipe out enemies on the Right or on the Left, as long as they remain nonviolent. Not that we should not robustly oppose the views and power-seeking efforts by either Fascists or Communists, but we should not obsess about them either, and Rufo is admirable in that he will not allow the Left to smear him and other principled, dissident conservatives as being neo-racialists and neo-fascists. His proposed, thoughtful cultural and political counterrevolution to the Left and its long march through America’s institutions to implement Marxist Revolution here is a worth, conservative counter-thrust that must not be derailed by Leftists out to smear Rufo to kill his program of American reform. If they can undermine his reputation, then this ad hominem assault will tarnish him and retard his cause.
Rufo: “Now, the controversy. Following my challenge, one of the debaters, Charles Haywood, suggested that, despite his opposition to a ‘clown’ such as Spencer, in the hypothetical case that a right-wing racialist were to garner real political power—a situation analogous to the Spanish Civil War, he later explained—he would pragmatically work with such a figure in order to ‘destroy the power on the Left.’ The debates on the other side of the proposition, Neil
Shenvi and Michael Young, the latter of whom worked as a researcher on my recent book, strenuously disagreed, arguing that it was imperative to ‘rebuke evil’ in any of its forms.”
My response: I side with Shevni and Young, that all forms of evil should be rebuked, but Haywood has a point to that he may have to work with a fascist to defeat Communism; it is a tough world, and right and wrong, become gray sometimes. In the main though, America’s foreign policy should be for the little people in every country, exploited and tyrannized by right-wing and left-wing thugs: we want these people t be free, rich, employed and running their government from the bottom up.
Rufo: “This was the opening that Daily Beast writer Jared Holt needed to launch his attack against me. There is of course, ample room for criticism of Hollywood’s position. But Holt was not interested in this—he didn’t even mention Haywood’s name in the article. He was interested in taking Haywood’s controversial statement, assigning it to me through bad-faith transference, and then using it to tarnish my reputation and that of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with whom I have worked on education policy. Think of the children’s game ‘telephone’, except, instead of innocuous babble, Holt’s game includes baseless accusations on behalf of a well-financed political operation.
Who is Jared Holt, and why might he be playing such a game? In a word, Holt is a political operative masquerading as a journalist. Holt is an employee of the George Soros-funded Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international NGO that advocates Internet censorship in the name of fighting ‘disinformation.’ The irony should be obvious: Holt himself runs a prolific trad in disinformation, including the attempt to smear me, in the effort to damage the reputation of political opponents in United States. Prior to his position at ISD, Holt did the same dirty work for the Atlantic Council and Media Matters, whose stock-in-trade is publishing hit pieces against conservative journalists.
Even for the Daily Beast, which has never enjoyed a reputation for high standards, Holt’s false and defamatory claims against me were too much. Hours after I contacted the magazine’s editors, they retracted Holt’s key claims, deleting the false headline, editing multiple paragraphs, adding additional material debunking Holt’s argument, and appending a 500-word editor’s note –more than half as long as the article itself—featuring my full rebuttal. Holt deleted his social media post featuring the defamatory content and endured significant criticism.”
My response: Rufo is a formidable opponent. He goes on to conclude that Left-wing media outlets are more than willing to lie about opponents for political advantage. Conservatives can attack back successfully.
He defends himself successfully and conservatives can learn from this. Speak the truth, have reasonable proposals, and control the language, ideas, and narrative so that one’s points gets out there as one intended.
One final thought: in our constitutional republic, among us, we supercitizns of good faith and with an abiding interest in balancing personal liberty while united to run a free but organized society, we need liberal: modern liberals as well as classical liberals; we need conservatives.
We need not right-wing extremists: religious zealots, fascists, and racialists.
We don’t need left-wing radicals: rabid environmentalists, secular humanists, transhumanists, vehement atheists, Marxists, tribalists or racialists.
Now these fringe groups should not be suppressed legally, and their ideas should be incorporated into evolving society where possible legally and peacefully.
We need to be leery of fringe, fanatical thinkers of any stripe: supercitizens must understand that ideologues and zealots of any stripe hate anarchist individator supercitizens.
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Political, religious, cultural, economic extremism is always mob-centered with a demagogue, a guru, or dictator manning the show. These mass movements are inherently anti-individual, anti-liberty, pro-group rights, pro-tyranny and pro-hierarchical and totalitarian, centralized Big Government,
Suerpcitizens must defang fanatics by stealing their thinker, and never allow them to run things.
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