Christopher Rufo - Fighting America's Cultural Revolution

George Floyd. And the book seeks to answer a simple question, how did our institutions suddenly seem to have been deranged by critical race theory and other ideologies so completely and so quickly? And I try to give a very comprehensive answer to that question in the pages of this book.

of the word. They wanted to use the institutions and force their ideology on others. But the second element, and this is something I think you'll be particularly interested in, is that the right essentially fell asleep after the end of the Cold War. Many of our leading intellectuals and political figures decided that, you know, we had defeated the communists and that ideology would never rise again. It had been totally invalidated by the process of history. We had

reached the end of history in a sense. But the left wing radicals did not stop at the fall of the Soviet Union. It didn't deter them, it didn't force them to abandon their ideology. They just changed it and adapted it and kept working, and unfortunately the right kind of seeded responsibility and really stopped standing guard on the institutions until it was too late, until they discovered that they had lost control of those institutions altogether.

So they said, the one place where we think that we have the base of power, what they called the initial revolutionary institution, was the university campus, and so they decided to start there and then slowly worked their way out into media, K through twelve schools, government bureaucracies HR program, and then you know so called racial sensitivity training, which became DEI training. And this was really a remarkably effective strategy.

They started very small, with a very small group of people, but they were able to spread their influence throughout the institutions in a really sophisticated way that was largely undetected by the right for far too long.

kind in the West. And then also the key concept, really the heart of the story of the book is their so called long March through the institutions. And this is what they called it way back in the early nineteen seventies, and it was a direct illusion to then.

It wasn't a chairman then, but he was a general in the Chinese Communist Army, and they had this long march through China, actually a long strategic retreat, and then they were able to establish dominance once they had become secure and start the communist revolution, the rule of imunist revolution in China. And so they adapted not only the language, not only the philosophy, not only the basic Marxist Leninist revolutionary theory, but they but they really adapted a lot

of the strategies and tactics, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. But if you look at the ferment that was happening around the world, it was also happening in our country.

wherever fine books are sold. I want to ask you, Chris in a second, about how the counter revolution is going, because I'm sure that's a big part of what you're writing about as well. You've got, you know, the bud Light boycott, the success of the Sound of Freedom. Recently, some of the professional sports leagues and teams feeling like they can't get away with quite the same amount of left wing stuff. So we'll get to that in a second. But just a word from our sponsor here, Taunt the Towers.

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at T two T dot org. That's t the number two T dot org. Chris, how are we dealing with the counter revolution against the left wing lunatics who have taken over all of our institutions? Or at least most of them.

awaken to successful strategies of counter revolution. And so I think it began with the fight against CRT in late twenty twenty, It continued in the fight for control of local school boards in twenty twenty one, it moved to gender ideology in twenty twenty two, and now we find ourselves pioneering successful strategies to fight that woke capital or kind of left wing culture war from America's largest companies. And so this is a period of of learning, of study,

of experimentation, of creating prototypes and new strategies. And I think, you know, I've been involved in many of these campaigns. I've learned a lot, and I'm very optimistic at heart because the story that we have to tell, the tactics that we have at our disposal, the political opportunities that are on the horizon are really only limited by our

own creativity and our own willingness to fight. And as we become more creative, as we have more appetite for actually going out and fighting these fights, I think we're going to see success after success. And you know, the last chapter in the book is devoted to figuring out exactly how to do that, outlining some laying out rather some strategies for the right to achieve this counter revolution to come.

defending the most extreme stuff. And one thing that has been I think a surprise to a lot of folks who are just paying attention to what's going on in the news is that they're not willing to take it seems a tactical retreat on say, drag Queen Story Hour for kids. Instead, they either say it's not happening, or they say it is happening and it's a good thing, and that just feels.

And I think that you find even the kind of Robin DiAngelo's and Ibram Kendy's and BLM leaders having lost all credibility, having really been exposed for pushing a false ideology. And I think that the left in some sense through in the towel in some ways on these issues on gender and sexuality. That hasn't happened yet, and I'm still trying to really piece together why. But what I do know is just kind of a basic you know, what's the status quo right now is that they have doubled down,

tripled down, quadrupled down on these things. Drag Queen's Story hour, you know, porn, pornography in schools, all of these various expressions of you know, queer theory and ideology, and then also the kind of performance of these ideologies. I think, for whatever reason, they're they're more committed to this than on CRT, for example, they're more dogged in the defense, and then they are willing to double down to a

greater degree. And I don't know if it's because this campaign to expose this started a year later than CRT, but but something is happening there that I think we'll start to understand better in the coming months and years.

without engaging. But you will come across people on the gender debate who say, no, for a fifty year old man to be dressed as a woman wearing a thong and in fishnet tights, you know, jiggling his like butt in front of families with children is somehow one of the blessings of liberty. I mean, this is something that we see, you know that they stick with this, and I think that it's interesting because it's it's definitely a political live it should be a political liability for them.

I want to ask you more though, about what you think is going to happen to DEI and just the CRT critical race theory, DEI diversity, equity inclusion, the racial entitlement state in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision that we just saw on college admission specifically. So let's get into that in a second here. But first of everybody, look, the my Pillow team is celebrating twenty years in business.

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amazing specials. All right, Chris, what do you think happens to the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy now that there's the very real threat, certainly for college campuses. You know, universities of legal action if they discriminated on the basis of gender and race. But some of these programs in the corporate world seem like they're perhaps in jeopardy or are they just going to continue on? How do you see that playing out?

state universities. And then I worked with Governor DeSantis and legislators in Texas to help advocate for legislation that passed in both states to actually just abolish all of these programs altogether. And so I'm happy to say that in Florida and Texas those DEI programs are have been abolished legislatively. Are they still going to try to kind of hide them and sneak them and do them around the edges, change the names. Yeah, of course, and we have to

be vigilant. But what we've done is set the precedent that these programs are not only unnecessary, but they're actually counterproductive to the mission of universities, schools, corporations, all of

the various domains where they've taken hold. And we've seen even in the corporate setting, as the economy has tightened, as the kind of hysteria following the death of George Floyd has receded, companies are quietly shedding many of their DEI jobs, including very lefty companies in Silicon Valley and other places in California have been quietly firing reams of their DEI employees because they're finding out that these people

only create problems. They don't offer any solutions. They're kind of a waste of head count.

we want to have strict color blind equality. We're going to treat everyone equally as an individual, and we're going to have no left wing, highly ideological DEI departments in any of our state institutions. It's not necessary, it's not good, and it's not something that we're going to do. And you know, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, was that feasible. I don't think so. But we've built the case over over a few years, starting with CRT,

and we're going after it relentlessly. We've now abolished it in two of the largest red states, and I think that when legislatures are back in session in other states, we're going to see a remarkable domino effect to start to wipe out some of these DEI departments for good.

I've talked about this this video many times. Was it was it your work that got the video out there of the woman who said that she had a Yeah, yeah, I had tip to you. That was amazing that the head of creative content at Disney said that she had a pan sexual and a non binary like pant sexual child and a non binary child.

those are the status symbols. But now like having children with unique sexualities is the thing that you want to show the world and shows how tolerant and open and cultured and advanced and free thinking you are. And so she she's bragging through her things. I have a one pan sexual child and one transgender child, and and and and so therefore I I'm kind of the moral authority, but I think it comes from a place of of

of kind of a sense of moral of fear. You know, these are this is you know, a middle aged white woman, she's got to stand out in the corporate environment. Well, what better way than to have a kind of a kind of small cornucopia of sexual identities among your offspring. I mean, it's it seems bizarre when you actually see the video from the public point of view, but if you're actually inside these places and institutions, this is just like the normal conversation. This is the day to day

banter and chitter chatter that happens. And so my job is to take this stuff and expose it to the public and to actually have some real feedback for these folks. And I think that with Disney, we certainly did that that was quite a big quite a big story.

figured it out after a while. I had a dead battery situation. Stuff stuff goes on what happens if you either leave it in the back of a chair or on an airplane, or if you have it crash and files are corrupted. That's why you need I Drive. With iedrive, you can back up everything on your PC, Mac, your server, everything.

craziest DEI stuff you've come across so far. If you had to give an award for the DEI craziest, it would be.

are a cornerstone of our defense. And laboratory decided to send their white male employees to a three day white male re education camp in which they had to learn about their privilege. They had to learn about how they had internalized oppressions. They had to actually write fictitious letters to women and minorities apologizing for their whiteness. And I had all the documents, you know, from this session, and it was just like the most humiliating, degrading, just sad

and pathetic thing I've ever seen. And then, okay, whatever, something's degrading and said and humilating, you know, such as life. But then you think, wait a minute, these are people that build our nuclear weapons. It's not just a make work job in the bureaucracy. It's actually pretty important to have guys that are competent and good at their jobs. So I would say that is of all the stories, probably the one that sticks out in my mind the.