Christopher Rufo: No to the Politics of “Whiteness”

Charlie Kirk’s recent tweet about how whiteness is great has been getting some pushback from Conservatism, Inc. Christopher Rufo has been working with Gov. Ron DeSantis to wage a war on wokeness in Florida. Rufo thinks we are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

City Journal:

In recent years, I have devoted considerable time to exposing the radical Left’s politics of “whiteness,” which posits that white identity, culture, and power are irredeemably oppressive and must be “abolished” in favor of alternative modes of being. “Whiteness” represents the metaphysical essence of left-wing race politics: an irreducible force of evil, a master synonym for racism, oppression, inequality, and suffocating bourgeois norms; anything saturated with its properties can be automatically categorized and condemned. In practice, the politics of whiteness has translated into the demonization of European-Americans in primary school curricula, the performance of elaborate “white privilege” rituals in the workplace, and outright segregation in many public institutions. All of it is done to solve “the problem of whiteness.”

Some pushback has resulted. In the years following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, conservatives have exposed the poisonous politics of left-wing racialism, shutting down some of the bureaucracies that push it and proposing a reaffirmation of the ideal of colorblind equality. Unfortunately, some on the right would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, preferring instead to adopt the basic framework of identity politics and simply reverse its polarity. Dismayingly, a sentiment is rising in some corners of conservative politics that the answer to left-wing identity politics is right-wing identity politics. …

The DeSantis / Rufo messaging on fighting wokeness has fallen flat on the campaign trail. It has been a dud because the constituency that is animated by these issues has rejected colorblind liberalism.

1. First, Conservatism, Inc. has always pushed colorblind liberalism while decrying White racism. Rufo’s argument is that we haven’t believed in MLK’s Dream hard enough. As it happens, Joe Biden also believes we have to keep marching toward MLK’s Dream. It has been sixty years since the country embarked on this course after the March on Washington. Colorblind liberalism has been tried. Respectable conservative and progressive liberals both pay lip service to it. It is their rhetorical safe harbor. It was always a bait-and-switch and we didn’t end up in a place anything like what had been advertised.

If at the end of sixty years of colorblind liberalism on the Right, “the demonization of European-Americans in primary school curricula, the performance of elaborate “white privilege” rituals in the workplace, and outright segregation in many public institutions” has become the norm, it is reasonable to conclude that previous generations were duped. We have been led by fools who were tricked by con artists like the Rev. MLK, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. They said one thing to get Whites to lower their defenses. They have relentlessly pushed their own group interests in practice. In their defense, they have been doing this since the late 1960s when SNCC under Stokely Carmichael rejected colorblind liberalism for Black Power. It is mainstream conservatives who have been living in a fantasy world as parties to a social contract that every other racial group abandoned decades ago.

Our people understand this which is why the DeSantis / Rufo messaging – real MLK colorblind liberalism has never been tried, but we are “winning” in Florida – never gained any traction. Their hope was to win over persuadable Trump voters with this gambit, but most people saw right through it.

2. Second, insofar as their has ever been any pushback by Conservatism, Inc on racial issues like affirmative action, it has been sustained by wave after wave of White backlash politics going all the way back to Richard Nixon and the Silent Majority. Colorblind liberalism failed when Whites were still a confident majority. Why would it work now when Whites are becoming an embattled minority? If we keep going down our present road, we will end up with federal courts stacked with people like Ketanji Brown Jackson and that will be the end of colorblind liberalism, which has always been a transition phase. The Left used colorblind liberalism as a tactic to get their way and abandoned it long ago for multiculturalism.

3. Third, Auron MacIntyre and Christopher Caldwell are correct that the Constitution has already been devoured by federal civil rights laws. Rufo thinks the solution to this is to “overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co. through the Supreme Court, rescind LBJ’s executive order on affirmative action, amend the 1991 Civil Rights Act to abolish its disparate impact provisions, and restructure the enforcement bureaucracy to impose the new standard with aggressive DOJ actions.” He claims that “none of that requires “white politics.” This is an ambitious agenda, but what if Democrats can simply indict and arrest their opposition though? How do you accomplish any of this when the other side is no longer bound to or restrained by the Constitution? Every single bit of this also requires White backlash politics.

4. Fourth, Rufo hopefully argues that Asians and Hispanics are shifting politically to the Right, so we do not need to worry about changing demographics. There is a grain of truth to this. The GOP is winning more Hispanic and Asian conservatives. Rufo believes Asians and Hispanics can be mobilized behind a multiracial coalition which will enshrine colorblind liberalism into law … like in California or Washington state where affirmative action is already banned. The argument that Asians are being discriminated against and deserve a larger share of elite positions was recently vindicated at the Supreme Court. While I suppose that is good for Asians, it is unclear why it is good for Whites who are still being dispossessed. Colorblind liberalism inexorably leads to White erasure and dispossession. Ask The Little Mermaid.

5. Finally, Rufo brings up VDARE and people like Sam Francis who criticized Conservatism, Inc. over the years whose warnings went unheeded and who were condemned as racists and marginalized for objecting to the liberal consensus on race. Anyone who was right about these issues like Pat Buchanan or Jared Taylor was hooted down by Rufo’s predecessors which is why we ended up where we are today. In his mind, this is a compelling argument against the road that was not taken.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

At the end of the day, Rufo wants us to fervently believe in the big vision of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s while imagining it could have turned out differently for Whites. He is like a quarterback who lost the big game by fifty points but is still on the field practicing the same plays. This game plan is music to the ears of the conservative donors, party hacks and elderly people who are backing Ron DeSantis. Happily for them, they don’t have to reconsider how they got us into this mess in the first place.

The fact that Christopher Rufo is quarreling with Charlie Kirk over this illustrates how the liberal consensus on the Right is breaking down. Five years ago, Kirk and Rufo would have been in lockstep. Today, so many people have been radicalized in recent years that the old snake oil has to be defended.

36 Comments

  1. “No to the Politics of “Whiteness”

    No to the politics of we are a non-existence.

    If you want to non-exist, you need a separate place (inherent contradiction) to do that, for The Right is slowly but surely canceling that kind of thinking.

  2. Desantis is young enough that he can use his 2024 run to establish himself for a future run. He doesn’t have to win now, a second place finish is good enough. Think of it this way. George HW Bush, Romney and John McCain all finished 2nd before they finished first.

    Are you suggesting that we go back to segregation? The younger generations would never have it and the younger generations would still be screwed. The racial wealth gap exists mainly among Boomers – with younger generations the racial wealth gap has considerably closed – but because Whites have gotten poorer, not because Blacks have gotten richer.

    • That begs the question of why Whites have gotten poorer while Blacks haven’t gotten richer. Whiggerisim?

    • @db/metal gear/iceman

      Besides meatball being young enough to run again, everything you said was wrong.

      The “wealth gap” racially is huge and a black woman who’s freshman a shit tier college would mop the floor with you on factual grounds. Her solutions would be nonsensical but factual you’re incorrect.

      The reason why blacks always talk about “wealth” is because they don’t have it. Largely because they max out on credit and spend all the money they have.

      I think what you were trying to say is income. Yes the income gap has shrank but even there poor uneducated whites out earn poor uneducated blacks, why?

      Because if antiwhite discrimination wasn’t allowed those whites would probably be lower middle class whites but have been artificially pushed down while blacks have been artificially lifted up. Meaning a poor uneducated white that’s being discriminated against -while not an intellectual- still has enough “god given sense” eg smarts eg iq eg lower time preference than his black socioeconomic peers that he can secure better shit tier jobs.

      That’s relevant but a more minor issue, the larger issue is that even if income was TOTALLY equal blacks will (and especially left side of the black bell curve blacks) still spend their money *more* foolishly than poor whites. One could say poor white make terrible financial decisions, which is true compared to middle class & up whites but still make far better choices than poor blacks.

      This holds true not just for the “poors” but middle class & up blacks max out their credit instead of building wealth. Middle class blacks with families will buy a luxury car instead of any type of investment or savings for their children.

      Because of this reality blacks will *always* have less wealth which yes does make them weaker politically as a stand alone group.

      They’re political power comes from wealthy Jews and to a lesser extent wealthy Whites who see it as advantageous to artificially elevate them.

      But a well to do black person -even though they’re being babied- they know they’re not independent which breeds resentment.

      More income won’t close the racial wealth divide.

      This is why race blind conservatism fails.

      Because even people who are fairly well of or very well off get resentful when they can’t do what their peers can do. A black women making 250k a year as some white collar affirmative action isn’t comparing herself to a white guy working HVAC making 80k a year.

      She’s comparing herself to the other whites in her office who are drastically more competent then her and she’s either at worst being ignored by her co-workers in important meetings or at best being pandered to.

      In one sense you could argue she has nothing to complain about. But humans are always going be comparing themselves, their success, achievements, contributions, respect, dignity etc by those closes to them.

      Therefore race blindness will never work. Artificially elevate blacks so there’s less income disparities there’s still wealth disparities and massive resentment being whites & blacks will build up.

      Don’t artificially elevate blacks income and blacks will be earning dramatically less. Which will also build up massive resentment in blacks and a mixture of either guilt or resentment in whites.

      Hunter is correct. The project has failed. It’s doomed to fail. We have to let go of illusions we wish were true and deal with reality.

      The only thing I agree with you on and not Brad is I don’t think TOTAL segregation and especially not Jim Crow style segregation would ever comeback nor do I think it’s necessary

      We could move dramatically towards separatist solutions from where we’re at and not even get close to Jim Crow.

      There’s a huge gulf between radical forced integration and Jim Crow segregation.

      Hell if we didn’t demonize people -especially Whites- for wanting to be around their own kind but left it all as a matter of choice. Things would be dramatically better.

      That would be a liberalized pro-white politics.

      Rufo & Meatball Ron aren’t doing that. They’re not saying selling a liberal pro-white freedom of association solution.

      I’m not a huge fan but I respect people like Douglass Murray far more than Rufo or Meatball.

      He’s basically a liberalized pro-white. He won’t say others shouldn’t have rights but he’ll never say he’s not proud to be whites, whites create better civilizations and if non-whites want to live in our societies they’ll have the same rights but they have to play by our rules. And if they don’t want to conform to white norms then they should leave.

      Douglass Murray unlike other civ nats doesn’t shy away from the norms he’s seeking to enforce are white norms.

      While civic nationalism has issues with building up resentment between groups as well. Him being upfront about it gives it better chance of success.

      Rufo & Meatball are just scum that simply support white genocide. If they started rounding up whites and mass killing them Rufo would say “they’re not killing White people! White People don’t even exist!”

      Then he’d find or makeup another identity for them and say they’re being killed because of his made up or side issue/identity he’d give to those being killed

      “They’re being killed because they like hockey, La crosse, fencing, archery and rowing…” “So you mean they’re killing white people?” “No! they hate swimmers, fencers and farmers!” “What does mudding and fencing have in common Rufo?” “Cultural Marxist hate success! Mudding and fencing are markers of excellence!” “Mudding is culturally lauded as a marker of success???” “Shut Up! KAREN!”

      • @Non-Racist…

        “There’s a huge gulf between radical forced integration and Jim Crow segregation. ”

        Yes, and you can be sure that individual states, and various Western Countries, are irrevocably headed back to some area in this gulf.

        Proof of this is watching Western European Countries pass laws forcing Islamic Migrants to comply with Western European Culture.

        Austria and Switzerland are most notable, in this respect.

        This process of reWesternizing and reChristianizing Western Countries is just beginning.

        10 years from now things will be quite different from where we are now, and wildly different from where were were 10 years ago.

  3. Whiteness exists inarguably.

    You don’t have to make the historical argument for this, though its a strong one, as its true by simple virtue that the Left says it does and has chosen us as the targets of their destructive efforts.

    They know who we are. There is no ambiguity and no quarter has been given.

    Maybe if Rufo had White kids he would understand the threat more intuitively.

    • ” . . . Maybe if Rufo had White kids he would understand the threat more intuitively.”

      /\/\/\ This /\/\/\

      He is the male equivalent of a mudshark. He has made his choice in life and his future is invested now, permanently, in life with the colored people. No doubt he is hoping he can end up living with the White folk when the country breaks down and people naturally segregate for survival. The last thing he wants is a colorblind society where Tyrone lives on one side and Manuel on the other side, each with about ten of their homies.

      All the liberals are that way, stick the diversity on other White people but not for me.

      • “The people of Israel and the Priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations….For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands.” – Ez. 9:2ff

        “We have married foreign women from the peoples of the land and have broken faith with our God… Therefore let us make a covenant with OUR God to PUT AWAY all these waves and their [bastard] children, according to the counsel of the commandment of our God.”- Ez. 10:2ff.

        “Beware of all whoredom, my son, and chiefly take a wife of the seed of thy fathers, and take not a strange woman to wife, which is not of thy father’s tribe: for we are the children of the prophets, Noe, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: remember, my son, that our fathers from the beginning, even that they all married wives of their own kindred, and were blessed in their children, and their seed shall inherit the land.” – Tobit 4:12

        RUFO is a RACE TRAITOR. GOD DAMN HIM TO HELL, and his spawn to “dashing against the rocks,” per the psalms. THAT is BIBLICAL RELIGION!

  4. The corporate world has never equally assimilated Blacks and I don’t think it ever will. It’s high on diversity, but its diversity is Indians, Asians, you could argue Jews if you have Jew fetish.

    However, increasingly it’s not working out for Whites either and there’s a good opportunity to topple the corporate world and set up more of a welfare state. I suspect we’ll see things like UBI and guaranteed jobs in our lifetime, though I know some other commentators won’t be happy with that. Getting rid of wage slavery is the real solution. Nobody would accept going back to a Jim Crow like system post-Boomer.

  5. Hey guys I know what to do! The left is growing in wokeness every day! So let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing the last 60 years that hasn’t worked, let’s just do it harder this time!

    • All you have to do is believe harder in MLK’s Dream and conservative ideology. It will all work out. I promise we are on the cusp of victory

      • “All you have to do is believe harder in mlk’s dream and conservative ideology” whether inadvertently or not, you reference here, the bullshit conservatism of the party of Lincoln, C.K. CHESTER SON, determined the litmus test, for true, unadulterated, pure conservatism and lad’s that would simply be and I quote “[WHAT are you trying too conserve?” CHRISTENDOM, thee classical CHRISTIAN CIVILAZATION of the WEST” y’all want to go socialist, be my guest,.you will be called out, on it…, I personally, remain a conservative…..

      • Yeah, I’ve seen MLKs dream, the south bronx, just lovely. Every major city with a large black population looks like Hiroshima ’46.

        As to WHITENESS, i think more and more WHITES are encountering ‘diversity’ hires in daily life and it’s popping their pretend bubble.

        They can only pretend things are fine until reality crushes their rainbow bubble.

      • You can experience MLK’s dream up close and in person in a place once known as the “Paris of the West” – Detroilet. Similar experiences can be had readily in the place where Fancis Scott Key penned “The Star-Spangled Banner” known now as Lagos-on-Chesapeake, Killadelphia (the City of Brotherly Love), etc. This was and is the actual dream of the semi-retarded field-negro MLK and his rodent-faced masters.

  6. Came to my mind as I watched the video in those four Twitter posts:

    “If we divide mankind into three categories–founders of culture, bearers
    of culture, and destroyers of culture …”
    —Mein Kampf, Volume I, Chapter XI, “Race and People”

    • “When the Yellow man finds an oasis in the desert, he maintains it.
      When the Black man encounters an oasis, he turns it into a desert.
      When a White man finds a desert, he turns it into an oasis.”

      “White people invent and forget.
      Yellow people copy and remember.
      Black people do neither.”

      Robert Frenz…R.I.P.

  7. Rufo is funded by jewish political power. I knew this before I just found out he was working with DeSantis. It is all about jewish political power in every way, shape, and form.

    • Mike, and what Jewish political power is doing is trying to sell us lies, to distract, misdirect, misinform and confuse us. In order to lead us away from Christ. And why don’t the Jews want us to be with Christ, Mike? To lead us toward evil. Don’t follow the pied pipers, be your own man with your own thoughts, your own ideas and your own heart. A Christian heart.

  8. The irony in Christopher Rufo’s retort/rant is that Rufo himself has, whether he knows it or not, merely given a “polite” vocabulary to white backlash politics for people who want to engage in them but pretend like they’re not actually doing that, because they’re too squeamish or cuckish to embrace them in those explicit terms.

    Or, to put it another way, Rufo be like: “Tell me it’s anti-white without telling me it’s anti-white.”

  9. Rufo claims that neither V-Dare nor Sam Francis have/had an audience.

    V-Dare must have something enough to cause the Attorney General of New York State to get it into lawfare gear. And in case nobody has noticed, there has been a Sam Francis revival since 2016.

    A hundred years from now, there will still be a lot of people reading Sam Francis, nobody reading Christopher Rufo.

  10. One other big problem with Rainbow Rufoism is that it has no real natural constituency anymore. Like you said, correctly so, the mainstream left only ever latched onto it as a cynical bludgeon to dismantle real white identity politics. But their intention all along was merely to use colorblindism as a caretaker to their real end game, which was/is anti-white identity politics, reversing the phase and polarity. It was just a matter of waiting for the timing to be right.

  11. You can’t stop the passion-fueled aggression of the Left with conventional conservatism (i.e., watered-down liberalism) anymore than you can stop a charging elephant with a BB gun. Nothing will do the job except conviction inspired by blood, soil, and faith.

  12. Part of the problem here is that Rufo, et al are all lying about what MLK’s ideals were. He was a subversive who was working for jews for his entire “ministry” and supported racial preferences for blacks and the whole shitlib program. He was removed by his overlords when his utterly degenerate lifestyle became a serious potential liability for them in 1968 Murika (a very different place). King was just another degenerate shabbas-goy for jew supremacism – as are all of those who worship him as is he were some kind of sainted figure for good. There was no goodness therein. Everything about the man was a lie.

    • ” . . . Everything about the man (MLK) was a lie.”

      Indeed, starting with his preposterous “Dr.” (of divinity) credentials. Even the Washington Post, no strangers to lying themselves and still champions of MLK, their cardboard hero, admitted that MLK plagiarized his doctoral dissertation in 1955 from Boston University. This was known in 1955 but the university administrators and fellow travelers, craven bastards that they always are, covered this up for as long as they could. The fix was in.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/10/11/university-panel-finds-king-plagiarized/c74c474d-dc27-41cb-a6b1-6f6c57ecfff2/

      ” . . . initial rumors about plagiarism did more harm to King’s reputation . . . ”

      Yet these scumbags raised their fraudulent, wife beating, whoring, drinking, stupid, scoundrel-hero high because he was the best they had. “(I)nitial rumors” didn’t harm “Dr.” King’s reputation, such as it was. “Dr.” (sic) King’s actions, his plagiarism, violence, whoring and communist affiliations harmed his reputation which the moral cowards, good liberals and conservatives all, knew about and lied about.

  13. “Your skin color is no more your identity than…”

    Most ppl just can’t understand that skin color is a genetic marker, it’s a signal from nature about who you are and who your kind is.

    Just as two white stripes down the the back means, don’t pet THAT kitty.

  14. The sight of an Asian woman with a white man has always discusted me. And they always have kids to seal the union permanently.
    Be it interracial marriage, the loss of manufacturing or endless immigration, the future of the West is circling the drain.

  15. “The DeSantis / Rufo messaging on fighting wokeness has fallen flat on the campaign trail. It has been a dud because the constituency that is animated by these issues has rejected colorblind liberalism.”

    The constituency is also rejecting white nationalism. It’s also rejecting Mike Pence’s attempt to be the hardcore anti-abortion candidate. The only thing the constituency cares about is the Donald Trump personality cult. Attacking him from the left is dead on arrival. Attacking him from the right, as DeSantis is attempting to do, is just as pointless, because the electorate doesn’t care about policy, it just wants to see Donald Trump return to the presidency.

  16. Chris, Chris Rufo what happened to Kamala? Is she still alive? Why no more trips to the border, or Ukraine? Why didn’t Kamala go to China and try and sooth tensions, everybody else did? The Irishmen, and that Irishmen Joe Biden are not going to surrender power to that coon, they want to pass the torch to one of their own, a Kennedy or a Newsom, Irish. Yeah Chris lets not duel on the politics of whiteness, lets get real about those who are in power and want to remain there, it is a blood thing, Chris.

  17. “…This is a Home Depot in California. How can anyone say with any sincerity that progressive policies aren’t a problem?…”

    Change the illegal supreme court decision that makes State Senates have population based Senates to regional based Senates like they used to be and all this would stop. Immediately.

    Another of my favorite legal tools is these three.

    1. Separate all schools on the basis of, if the children are bastards, or not. Let the savages flock together and torment each other, and leave the rest of us out of it.
    2. Let the Federal government make gulags in the sparse regions of the west. Have any of you ever driven across the country? There are vast, really big wastelands, millions and millions of acres. All of these could be reclaimed by permaculture. It’s amazing what just digging trenches to channel all water horizontally will do. There are videos of a Australian permaculture expert who went into Jordan and took a hard packed, desert, salt encrusted, wasteland and in a few years with terracing, a bit of mulch and planting beneficial plants to hold the soil turned the whole area into a garden. It’s astounding what can be done.

    Greening the Desert Video – Parts I and II (French Subtitles)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reCemnJmkzI

    How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

    Geoff Lawton: The Permaculture Designers Manual in One Hour

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUIGzy0bqFY

    The governemnt should allow States to send all these looters and convicts to desert labor camps, “Great American Western Desert Permaculture Project”, for some nominal fee like $3 a day. When they find they will have to work in jail then it will not take even the dumbest Negro long to figure it’s better to do anything than be there.

    Look at this before and after picture in China.

    http://vidaverde.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Loess-plateau.before.after_.jpg

    And one more for good measure. In New York State in the 50’s and before they had a law that any felony committed with a firearm got the immediate death penalty. You rob a store, do any sort of shoot out, anything with a gun and if you got caught, they tried you and two weeks later they electrocuted you in the chair. It was very effective. They had almost no crime. Criminals didn’t want to get electrocuted so they didn’t use guns and shopkeepers had baseball bats. Criminals didn’t want their heads caved in so there was hardly any crime at all. Since liberals are all for federal gun control laws we should extend that to criminal cases and anywhere in country you committed a felony with a gun or a felon was caught with a gun, immediate death penalty. We could solve most all gun crime in likely less than two years, or at least vastly lower it.

    People keep saying we can’t ever solve our problems but with a few changes, and some serious kicking ass law enforcement to make it stick, a large majority of our problems could be solved.

  18. “…How do you accomplish any of this when the other side is no longer bound to or restrained by the Constitution?…”

    Start with making cheating in elections very difficult. This is not hard to do. Make everyone who has a mail in ballot registered and they have to vote a week or earlier before the election. No more ballots after that time. All mail in ballots counted first before any others and have each checked by pol watchers from both parties. Have cameras in each election area. When you go in you get videoed. Have a sheet with all the registered voters names on the sheet. It’s marked out and you get a ballot when you show ID. After you mark the ballot a picture is taken of it and it is immeditely uploaded to a server. The server counts the total and actual picture of the ballot is publically, able to be downloaded in BitTorrent for each district in real time. The voter could be given a HASH function number so they can call up their ballot in the combined stack of ballots that are a part of each polling places combined ballots. So if it was changed, people could see their ballot was missing and they could also see if extra ballots were added. The number of ballots, the number of signed in voters, all should match. No more counting in the dark for days.

    Once you get accurate and legal voting, you get the House and eventually the Senate to limit the voting to people who are not stable. Further details here,

    https://occidentaldissent.com/2023/08/21/the-atlantic-the-constitution-prohibits-trump-from-ever-being-president-again/comment-page-1/#comment-3658483

    All of these slowly add up to stopping all this nonsense and taking the country back. it doesn’t have to be done overnight. In fact some of what I propose is already organically being done right now. The severe pozz of the Jews is more than anyone can stand and it will not continue forever. If they completely steal the vote then at some point these thieves will, I believe, start having accidents. They can’t protect themselves if people decide they will stop them.

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