Christopher Rufo: A New Civil Rights Agenda

January 18, 2024 Hunter Wallace Affirmative Action, Anti-Racism, Anti-White, Conservatism, Diversity, Politics, Populists, Progressives, Race Realism, Race Relations, Racism 42

Christopher Rufo is back countersignaling Charlie Kirk on race.

Last summer, he wrote that article called “No To The Politics of Whiteness” in which he scolded Kirk for warming up to White identity politics. Today, he is upset with Kirk for rejecting “civil rights icon” Martin Luther King, Jr. He makes basically the same argument which is that real colorblind equality has never been tried and that the civil rights revolution could have played out differently.

City Journal:

“This year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked by contentious debate about the state of civil rights law in America.

On the left, as always, the failure to achieve equal outcomes along racial lines requires greater state intervention. On the right, a different critique has gained traction, most notably in Christopher Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement and Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke, books arguing that American civil rights law has metastasized into a “second Constitution” that has led inexorably to left-wing racialism as the nation’s new orthodoxy.

Happily, another avenue is open to us: reform. The ideological capture of the Civil Rights Act is neither fixed nor inevitable. 

The goal of these reforms is finally to realize a regime of full colorblind equality. The principle, first promised by the Declaration and supported today by a large majority of Americans, would mean that the state would treat all Americans equally, regardless of ancestry, and leave as much discretion as possible to individuals to determine their own futures, without the government imposing or requiring racial favoritism of any kind. Rather than pit ourselves against one another, we should aspire to a higher standard that subordinates racial faction to a broader national identity. …”

In Rufo’s worldview, we need an idealized version of MLK to maintain a coherent national narrative. White identity politics is immoral and counterproductive. “Antiracism” could have played out differently for Whites. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be reformed into a “night watchman state.” Also, the stubborn persistence of racial gaps in spite of trillions of dollars and decades of coercive measures by the federal government doesn’t need to be explained by destigmatizing hereditarianism.

As Charlie Kirk has realized, the common thread is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality and consequences. Actually, the real MLK was not a conservative, a champion of colorblindness or free market capitalism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. It simply replaced one racial caste system with another. It led to the consolidation and centralization of power in an unaccountable civil rights bureaucracy which had unanticipated downstream cultural consequences. “Antiracism” mutated into the more virulent woke strain because of the persistence of racial gaps. Racial division existed before, during and long after MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the canonization of MLK as an American hero delegitimized the Founders and all of American history before the Civil Rights Movement, which is why everything from the Washington Redskins to Aunt Jemima have been cleansed in recent years.

The Supreme Court has already struck down affirmative action. It could expand on that precedent to eliminate disparate impact. Even if Christopher Rufo accomplished all of his proposed reforms, there is no reason to believe that racial division would go away. There is no reason to believe that non-White identity politics will diminish. The existence of racial gaps is perceived as proof that the country is irredeemable and tainted by “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” The inevitable widening of such gaps which would occur under a “night watchman” civil rights state would simply boil the pot and intensify racial division. Decades of burning incense at the altar of MLK has done nothing to stop it.

Conservative liberals like Rufo want to make “antiracism” work, civil rights work, MLK work as a source of national unity. They believe colorblindness can work. Again, they flee from reality and history as it has played out into the fantasy world of a Mirror Universe that no one lives in.

42 Comments

  2. The problem is that when there is a cultural and historical divide, there must be separation and secession. The woke activists for “rights” (who actually fight for the rights of some by persecuting others and taking rights away from all those who do not think like them) want the demonization and destruction of Western and European culture and this is not conspiracy but we have seen it clearly in recent years with the cancel culture and historical revisions and the blaming of Westerners of European descent.

    • Marcel- “…want the demonization and destruction of Western and European culture.”

      If one has had a normal education, this clearly is a signal that ALL ‘woke’ and ‘cry’ schemata, because Jewish/Marxist in derivation, are also ANTICHRIST.

      There is no religious neutrality. This is a RAHOWA, and the Whites are on God’s side (Christendom= Europe, as writers from the first to the twentieth Century attested to):

      “Europe is the faith, and the faith is Europe…I say again, renewing the terms, The Church is Europe: and Europe is The Church.” -Hilaire Belloc, A.D. 1920. 

      As Justin Martyr (d. A.D. 165) so clearly said, ‘Christ is our King, and Christianity is our race which you knew once as Israel.”

      Jews are already antichrists, per the entire N.T., and the reality is that we MUST engage in a war for Christ’s Kingdom. There is no alternative, no putting it off, no ‘waiting for the rapture.’ [Eph. 6:12] Foolish anti-incarnational protestants seem to think that ‘spiritual battles’ don’t have this world consequences. May I remind us all of Calvary?

      • This is a biological, evolutionary struggle, just as it always has been for all life on this planet. Right now, Whites are losing, and no god is coming to help them, or to care if they survive or disappear forever.

        • Whites, are they really losing? The country is split and 30 million problem children are on one side, which happen to believe in the same God but aren’t vocally hated by their White virtuous comrades which somehow only despise White Christians….right…..Biological, evolution won’t be won by a race that has never built any significant structures, or even domesticated an animal on the world’s largest most resourceful continent on Earth. So, the low IQ crowd may be protected now, but if biology comes to a head, people will stick with their own.

  3. Chris is attempting to sell, DEI, the religion of the Moshiach to the right. No Chris sorry,we have our religion and ours is superior to yours.

  4. Interesting post, although I look at identity politics and racial conflict from a different perspective.

    “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. It simply replaced one racial caste system with another”:

    But a change from the economic CLASS system did not take place. The class system is actually conserved by the “change of racial caste system” (racial identity politics). Identity politics is a distraction, and “civil rights” is an illusion where there is class and economic inequality. Furthermore Michael King would never have been “canonized as an American hero,” or promoted at all if he had really been communist as some say he was. He was a very loud-preaching but meaningless, compromising, middle of the roader, just the kind that is (like Obama) awarded Nobel Prizes for “peace,” for helping to confuse the masses and cover up the real struggle.

    • Communism is a meaningless term,just like capitalism.The Jews used both as vehicles to subvert and control.The Jews controlled Lucifer Coon so he was no middle of the road anything.He sold his cursed black soul to Satan in return for sex and money.Coon knew the Jews controlling him hated Whites and that was good enough for him.The Jews in the USSR never implemented communism,they exerted control via Satanic power and confusion.Should not 180 million Slavs et al been able to defeat 5 million Jews who murdered them at will?Satanic power is their power and they have made a deal with the Devil and soon the bill will come due.Christ is Master.The good Lord is my everything.Blessings to you and all here in good faith.

      • While the Slavs didn’t overthrow Jewish power in the USSR, a Georgian gangster did. The Slavs (chiefly those in the party elite) benefitted as a result. The main benefit for the Slavs (and many other groups in the Soviet imperium) was not being exterminated and enslaved by Hitler, who was likely controlled at least indirectly by the Rothschild cartel. As I’ve noted before, no Rothschilds or other banksteins were liquidated by Hitler, only non-elite Jews in a number far less than the fabled six million. Yes Stalin was married for a time to a Jewess and he even kept some Jewish toadies in the party which proved to be a fatal error on his part.

        Your first sentence is dead on. Communism is a scam – merely the flip-side of finance capitalism (usury-racketeering). The promises made by both are lies used to dupe their followers. The dialectic thereby established works the same as the Democrats and Republicans (Harlem Globetrotters vs. Washington Generals). The ultimate purpose is planetary enslavement under the yoke of a Satanic elite – many of whom are of course jews.

        At the end of the day, it’s down to a choice of whose yoke one chooses to live under: Christ or Satan’s. Absolute freedom is an illusion, yet another Satanic sleight of hand.

    • @Merthyr Rising,

      Correct. But no worries for Marxists. While it isnt overtly disbarred just yet, classism is still considered in a negative light, especially outside of extremely wealthy societies. In turn, there are local and state laws which make it difficult except for the wealthiest associations to exist on the basis of class. Ultimately, court precedence is breaking down those barriers to marxist government backed egalitarianism so that even the wealthiest enclaves are starting to be eliminated.

      I am opposed to such forced government mandated egalitarianism in most circumstances, especially in regards to civil society. Having only White, Christian, property owning, wealthy men in a club is fine with me, as long as only Black, Moslem, non-property owning, poor women can have a club too. What I am opposed to is concentration of property, wealth, and power. That should be striven against. But against against a group just because it is exclusionary is the antithesis of our historical ideals of free association.

  5. “we need an idealized version of MLK to maintain a coherent national narrative”

    Yeh, lie to yourself in order to support a corrupt destructive agenda, sure /s

    “Whether it’s the Founders or Dr. King, ”
    How dare that bastard put those two in the same sentence.

    This rufo guy just slings gibberish.

    • Dying regime firing from all cannons.

      In the late Soviet Union, they also screamed that we must not abandon communism but instead of, bring back those glorious high ideals because of what Lenin did the revolution.

      Western communism collapses exactly like Soviet one.

      • I hope so. But having seen the formers demise up close and the resulting aftermath, I must strongly recommend to prepare for it by organizing. Because others will. This is the future near Hunters fishing hole or anybody fishing hole if current trends continue. The Wild Wild East was a thing just as the Wild Wild West was and will be again.
        https://youtu.be/8MhuNw0IeTs?feature=shared

  7. This is a nice summation of reality, HW:

    > As Charlie Kirk has realized, the common thread is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality and consequences. Actually, the real MLK was not a conservative, a champion of colorblindness or free market capitalism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. It simply replaced one racial caste system with another. It led to the consolidation and centralization of power in an unaccountable civil rights bureaucracy which had unanticipated downstream cultural consequences. “Antiracism” mutated into the more virulent woke strain because of the persistence of racial gaps. Racial division existed before, during and long after MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the canonization of MLK as an American hero delegitimized the Founders and all of American history before the Civil Rights Movement, which is why everything from the Washington Redskins to Aunt Jemima have been cleansed in recent years.

    MLK was a fraudulent puppet, nothing more. By 1968 his sexual depravity was on the verge of being exposed by Hoover’s FBI, which would have totally destroyed the Jewish-run “civil-rights” movement and exposed it for the battering ram against heritage Americans it was. That’s why King was tossed into the garbage bin of history. The puppet had served his purpose and could now be made into a handy martyr – and ultimately a saint.

    The so-called “civil-rights” movement was merely the precursor to today’s Church of Woke, which has now replaced Christianity as the national religion – yet another goal of the oligarchy. The near-concurrent 1965 chain-migration act (Great Replacement) was another prong, and feminism yet another prong (among many others). At the same time the usual suspects took over conservation and morphed it into environmentalism, introducing junk-science on an industrial scale to advance all manner of wickedness – all ultimately to secure total hegemony over the entire planet. Thus we end up with Big Pharma and Wall Street in charge of the medical system. Yes jews were deeply involved and often in control. Even so, they could not have accomplished all of this without much willing assistance from white traitors plus gaslighted normies who went along with it all.

    Rufo sounds like the die-hard Marxists who keep on insisting that their doctrine has yet to be applied correctly, regardless of the mountain of corpses and ruins they stand in. Like them, he’s either stupid or lying. Au contraire, civil-rights was applied exactly as its creators intended it to be: One small elect ruling over a vast open-air gulag of equal slaves, their whims capriciously enforced by an utterly amoral and mercenary nomenklatura. It makes no difference whether you affix the label “communist” or “market capitalism”. It’s all Neo-Feudalism at the end of the day, dressed up as anything they want to call it.

    • “makes no difference whether you affix the label “communist” or “market capitalism.” It’s all Neo-Feudalism”:

      Socialism, capitalism and feudalism are three different systems, not three different labels for the same thing.

      “like the die-hard Marxists who keep on insisting that their doctrine has yet to be applied correctly, regardless of the mountain of corpses and ruins they stand in”:

      The ruins and mountains of corpses are really caused by the outmoded capitalist system struggling to preserve itself by making endless war against the new, superior system (socialism).

      There is no “third alternative.”

      • MR, Mr. Clops is correct, and you are incorrect: while in theory, socialism, capitalism and feudalism are three separate socio-political complexes, in practice, they are all extraction rackets for the members of their authoritative apparatuses (the elected and appointed government officials within each complex). That is, those same officials commandeer things of value beyond their statutory salaries in return for allowing wealth generating assets to operate with impunity within their jurisdiction. Stationary bandits, nothing more, nothing less.
        In its late stages, this dynamic evolves into strict Fascism: the authoritative and commercial apparatuses doing for each what the other cannot do alone-business enforcing results the government is prohibited from doing, while government legitimately cripples business’ profit-seeking competitors. That is what we see today everywhere in the modern cumulative economy. The end result is Feudalism, generated from the selfish materialism of citizens translated into wage and debt slavery by the rule makers and the tempters of our want of things.
        As I have shown before, it does not matter what nominal form of government exists, the result is the same: controllers of wealth generating assets pay tribute for authorization to plunder the masses. Even collectivist societies do so if economically advanced enough to afford the waste of corruption. Your assumption that selfish materialism can be converted to altruistic empathy via socialism has been shown to be a chimera. Like all other systems of exchange, those with stronger supply/demand positions capture the bulk of the gains from trade. As it has always been.

  8. “In Rufo’s worldview, we need an idealized version of MLK to maintain a coherent national narrative. White identity politics is immoral and counterproductive. “Antiracism” could have played out differently for Whites. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be reformed into a “night watchman state.”

    Conservative liberals like Rufo want to make “antiracism” work, civil rights work, MLK work as a source of national unity. They believe colorblindness can work. ”

    None of this crap is workable; it’s verbal bullcrap. Only thing that will serve whites is racial succession.

    • It sounds like the same kind of crap liberals would spout about communism: It’s really a wonderful system if only the right people ran it. Like communism, we’ve had 60 years to make civil rights “work”. It has turned out to be not only a failure but evil, especially for Whites.

  9. The court cuckold Meacham speaks honestly; King is the architect of the negrophilic, licentious, pathologically antiwhite 21st century America.

    Rufo is a Bush era cuckservative throwback worried his kids are going to get caught in the racial crossfire, so he pretends a scale of justice hangs in the balance. David French is smarter. French knows when to kneel.

  10. Civil Rights Act – 1964
    Immigration Reform Act -1965
    Fair Housing Act – 1968

    Only after just one of these laws is repealed should we talk about any thing more radical. I’m sad as well. Just reality.

  11. I remember when Gary North said MLK was nothing. They wrote his speeches, financed the whole spectacle, staged the sit ins for him, but most of all, North said, most of all, they pointed the cameras at him. If they had angled the cameras at some other Negro, then King would have been a zero.

    And I add, if that nigra was named James Earl Ray, then we really would have a federal James Earl Ray holiday.

    It is not that 86 IQ nigger, it never was. It is the Jews.

  12. City Journal, National Review, The WSJ, Fox TV, etc. Christopher Rufo, Rod Dreher, David French and the rest of the cuckservatives are like the comic relief character in a movie who never has a clue, takes a beating but is essential to the plot, playing the part of the entertaining dumbass. If City Journal, National Review, The WSJ etc. Christopher Rufo, Rod Dreher et al. didn’t exist the Left would have to invent them to make the whole scam of U.S. politics work. Being a “True Conservative” is just another business ultimately, another way to make money although it looks like the whole “Conservative” thing is played out now. See Charlie Kirk for details.

  14. Rufo is irrelevant, as is anybody else that only writes about politics but does nothing in meatspace to make their vision reality.

    Charlie Kirk, like him or hate him and agree with him or not, has made a meaningful impact for young Whites on college campuses, who otherwise have zero voice and no chance and absolutely no support. Thats more than the dissident right ever managed. Conservatism isn’t ideal, but its better than young people going queer for social status and dying their hair blue.

    We only ever made it more difficult for people like him to slide further right as he has begun doing, because our fringe space was always radioactive with toxic autism, accelerationist future school shooters and FED entrapment schemes for anybody with sense to not want to be a fair distance away from it.

    Its better now by far that everything meaningful the dissident right ever espoused is now mainstream so that we can blend in to the herd be comfy and have friends again lol.

    I for one am glad the dissident space is basically gone.

    Oh and fuck MLK. I feel no need to idealize that philandering plagiarist communist coon. If we are going to paper over human errors, then lets do it with Jefferson, who actually wrote his own material.

    • Having been involved in all that, I can say I am 100% in agreement with you. Thank God, I won’t have to deal with austists, accelerationists, assholes, dipshits, feds, uc, plants, and doubles again in such numbers. Though there is still work to do, I am looking forward to drinks with smart friends and allies once again. Is it worth the effort to bring them to AR or VDare type conferences?

  16. Colorblind night-watchman state my ass.
    We’ve seen what that looks like in practice; mass poverty, degeneration and deracination.
    That was Thatcher and Reagan’s dream.
    It doesn’t work for 90+% of people in the long run.
    Gimme socialism or gimme Christian/white nationalism or both.
    The neoliberal era has an expiry date/shelf-life.
    After it gets thrown out we will fight over what supersedes it.
    Maybe my generation won’t fight but ‘generation alpha’ will, they will truly be the no-future generation.

    On a side note I heard drones are getting cheaper and easier to produce.
    It’s getting to a point where a rag tag group of guys can militarily rival a superpower like the US from caves and garages like the ones in Yemen.
    They don’t even know where these guys are launching these drones from, which then go onto bomb the crap out of the US’s military bases and navy.
    Carol Quigley said when the best weapons are cheap and easy to produce, it levels the playing field between the haves and have nots, leads to multipolar world order or disorder and, actual as opposed to ceremonial democracy, where government legitimately fears the people/militias.

    Anyway, these neoliberals stuck in the good ol’ 1980s and 90s, those times ain’t coming back, not when 90% of people can barely make rent working full time let alone dream of becoming home owners themselves, that dream is dead for this generation of kids.
    But many of these kids are gonna dream, and come up with all sorts of things independently of legacy media and legacy institutions.

  17. 2014-Non-white births surpass White births for the first time in American history.
    2019-the majority of public-school students are now majority non-white.
    2023-White people became a minority (43 %) in America’s military.

    Therefore, any movement that does not champion a free and independent White Ethno-State is a dead end. The Ethno-State resolution is the only solution! Memorize that!

  18. We have gotten to the point where too many people don’t remember how clean and safe America was before MLK!

    • “too many people don’t remember how clean and safe America was before MLK!”

      Hell, most of them weren’t alive !

      Brad’s parents were just teens, not socially aware.
      To be socially cognizant at that time someone would have to be in their 70s.

  19. I note how Glenn Beck always goes on about MLK. “We need a Martin Luther King,” he opines, “But…where is our Martin Luther King?”
    I think a lot of the MLK worship comes from women. I remember a woman who, in 1965, went to St. Louis to hear King speak, and regarded it as a defining moment in her life. It had to be mentioned at her funeral. Another woman, now very old, had her eyes light up when she produced a snapshot of King she took as a teenager. It almost feels like a kind of subliminal yearning.
    I saw the same with Obama. Women seemed to idolize him. My writer’s group met in an “arts center”, and in our room, some older woman “artist” had created tapestries of the recently elected Obama with him in spiritual, hands out poses and a “third eye” on his forehead. It was pretty creepy, but these older (now) women are like that.
    I’ve started to believe Andrew Anglin when he says women are really causing the
    decline of civilization…they’re perfect conduits to advance Jewish policy.

    I agree with an earlier post. When I recall 1968, King was losing ground as black militants were taking over. he seemed to have served his purpose. Also, I remember how it was said over and over if blacks just got civil rights, all would be well.
    That’s it. “We just want to be treated fair…don’t YOU want to be fair?” so, the civil rights came, was made law, and almost the next day King started talking about “social and economic justice.” In other words, handouts. it was that quick, that thorough.

  20. “To maintain a coherent national narrative ” sounds calm and reasonable eh ? Ya just like the serpent in the garden, he is a ” New Breed Lincolnite ” if you want your blade dulled, then tie in with his crowd, they can keep their ” Coherent National Narrative, we can write our own script …..

  21. Great article Hunter. I am pleased to hear you repeat the strides made by Kirk in coming to our side. There are others doing the same and they should be encouraged by repeating them here at OD. That way your readers who are supportive of this change, can feel encouraged to entry into mainstream and speak out on these issues. For those who do so, just remember, keep it on topic, don’t drift into talking about other far right shit. The entryism game is a long one, play it like an endurance sport.

    “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. It simply replaced one racial caste system with another.”

    I think we need to be more judgemental regarding this subject. For in fact, we didn’t have an official racial caste system in the US post-1867 and pre-1965. There was no explicit government decree that a certain number of jobs, positions, offices, etc in public or private had to be White or which were denied Blacks. There was no government agency or government officers and clerks enforcing such codes, merely one which allowed civil society to determine by free association of they wanted to discriminate on the basis of race.

    Thus, there were Black congressman, Black officers, Black CEOs, Black University Presidents, Black Professors, Black Doctors, etc. Also, they weren’t limited in attending training or education to obtain those positions simply on the basis of their skin color. In fact, there wasn’t enough Black students to fill medical schools, in contrast to today where there aren’t enough slots open to Whites. The only government racial system that existed was primarily segregationist in orientation and it mostly existed at State or local level. Black officers commanded White troops, Black managers ran White clerks in government, and Black Civil servants proliferated in the South. This hardly the staff of a White racial caste system.

    What did exist in prohibited or discriminatory means existed in civil society. Some public restaurants did exclude Whites, some corporations only hired Blacks, and some unions were reserved for Blacks and vice versa. There were some places that excluded Whites from visiting such as all Black beaches, parks, and entertainment areas. There were clubs which were denied Whites. There were even illicit activities which deliberately discriminated against Whites such as many numbers rackets in East Coast cities. While these represented a dark time for Whites who righteously felt excluded, these were civil establishments or society associations which determined to be exclusionary against Whites, they were not government ordered. Whites, could and did in turn organize likewise.

    In contrast after 1965, discrimination against Whites became mandated by government in certain situations and ultimately as time has gone on in all situations. Whites were no longer allowed to organize on the basis if race,, ethnicity, or perhaps in anything. While, public establishments like restaurants, clubs, or entertainment venues could no longer discriminate and excluded Whites, Blacks were guaranteed a certain percentage of them through various government backed or enforced programs and laws. In other areas of civil and illicit society Blacks became favored such as in sports or continued to be favored such as the numbers rackets.

    In sum, what I am saying here is that by repeating the axiom that there existed a White racial caste system in the US between 1867-1965 which was replaced by a non-White racial caste system is not correct. That is a “whitewash.” Its actually worse. While in that era we had the freedom to have a discriminatory social system where race was considered, along with class and religion and ethnicity, one where Blacks and Whites were equally allowed to discriminate in most civil society, it was not Federally mandated. That system, which allowed for overt discrimination against Whites in civil society, was replaced by overt discrimination against Whites by government decree in both private AND public. This is much worse a devolution than saying we replaced a White racial caste system with a non-White caste system. Instead, we simply just replaced Whites.

  23. I was told my great-grandmother watched all of MLK’s televised funeral. She “wanted to make sure that nigger was put in the ground”.

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