Chris Rufo strutted into a lecture at a school of business at the University of Texas, which you’d think would be a friendly environment for him. It wasn’t. He got torched to the ground.
Rufo brought his anti-DEI argument to UT on Monday and because he is – like many on the right – a catastrophist, he gave it an apocalyptic twist, claiming that initiatives like DEI have made public universities frightening, insecure places.
I think people from across the political spectrum would acknowledge a sense of anxiety [at the universities],he said.A sense of fear. A sense of foreboding. Something has gone quite wrong.
I’m at a university. He’s got the atmosphere turned around about 180° — if there’s any foreboding, it’s over the fact that conservative cultists like Rufo are hell-bent on eviscerating liberal thought on campus — he said as much outright, announcing that “it is necessary to replace liberal voices with conservative ones at institutions like UT.” Combine that with Republican legislatures constantly cutting funding, and yeah, something has gone quite wrong. I’d start with the fact that philistines like Rufo get speaking engagements on campus.
I needn’t have worried, though. My professional colleagues stepped up to the plate and showed that Rufo was an idiot.
Afterward, Rufo took questions. Naomi Campa, a classics professor at UT, challenged Rufo to define what he meant by “truth, beauty, and goodness,” a standard he had repeatedly referred to in his remarks that he said higher education should re-prioritize. A numbing digression followed in which Rufo complained that leftists reject the concept of beauty. He did not, however, offer any insight into what he considers truth, beauty, and goodness to consist of. “I would like some actual examples,” Campa replied with a note of impatience, “not some argument that says beauty is anti-diversity. … I agree that people give word-salad as answers but I challenge you not to do the same thing – because that was word salad.”
I would like to see examples, too. Leftists do not reject the concept of beauty at all — after all, I find beauty in spiders. I suspect that what he means is that we reject beauty because we can see beauty where he can’t, because, like Jordan Peterson, he thinks the only true beauty is white.
He couldn’t give a specific answer because it would give away the game when he specified a bunch of white supremacist ideals.
Ten minutes later, Polly Strong, an anthropology professor and the president of the UT chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told Rufo that she believed in intellectual diversity but that a commitment to the concept wasn’t what she heard from him. She said her personal hero is John Dewey, the pragmatist philosopher who advocated for academic freedom, due process, and neutrality in higher learning and asked if Rufo supported those values.
Rufo thanked Strong for her question but his words came faster and more insistent than before. He derided Dewey, saying it would have been better if he’d never been born, and dismissed his values. “Academic freedom, due process, neutrality – those are means, not ends,” Rufo said. “If you have an erasure of ends, what you get is sheer power politics, you get everything reducible to will and domination, and then you get an academic life that drifts into witchcraft, into phrenology, into gender studies.” Rufo concluded by saying that academics who continue to adhere to Dewey’s principles, “frankly, deserve what’s coming.”
Strong was completely unawed by the implied threat. “The ‘ends’ of academic freedom, due process, and shared governance is education for a democratic society,” she said simply. “That is the basis of John Dewey’s vision and many, many university professors believe that today.”
Oh, man, I could have told her ahead of time that conservatives despise John Dewey. The guy who said “Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous”? They hate democracy. “A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young” — they want students who recite cant.
I do wonder what Rufo thinks is “coming.” Is he already planning the pogroms?
The phrenology remark is amusing, because it’s the people who are backing him who believe in genetic determinism, that race is quantifiable, and who publish in their favorite ‘journal’ of phrenology, Quillette.
The audience was silent after Strong’s remark. It had become clear that Rufo wasn’t dominating his opponents. It got worse for him when Samuel Baker, a UT English professor, came to the mic. Baker reiterated that Rufo’s veneration of beauty and truth was meaningless if he provided no idea of what the concepts mean to him, and he criticized Rufo’s use of violent imagery like “laying siege” and deserving “what’s coming.”
“I just want to be honest with you,” Baker said, “your rhetoric in relation to barbarism and the way you smugly say that the university is not going to like what’s coming – I think that in the context of the world right now, where there is a lot of really tragic violence, that we ought to be careful to remove ourselves from that and from groups with white supremacist associations. I really think you should rethink the glibness.”
Wait for it. Baker doesn’t just point out how shallow Rufo’s ideas are, he nails Rufo on his racist, fascist underpinnings.
By “white supremacist associations,” Baker was referring to reports linking Rufo to the figures who constitute a new alt-right bro culture, including the recently disgraced Richard Hanania – a visiting professor of the Salem Center who was, in his words, canceled after revelations that he’d written pseudonymously for white supremacist publications a decade earlier. Rufo also associates with anti-democratic voices like Bronze Age Pervert, as well as people from the Claremont Institute, who advocate for the overthrow of the 2020 presidential election, and Charles Haywood, an extremist who has called for a war of extinction against the left through his “No Enemies to the Right” philosophy. (Haywood is speaking at a far-right conference in Austin next month, by the way.)
Rufo responded to Baker’s remarks directly: “Well, well – be straightforward. What are you saying? You’re alluding, you’re insinuating –”
“That you hang around with fascists?” Baker replied. “Is that what you’re insinuating I’m insinuating?”
And there it was. The colloquy between Rufo and Baker continued for a moment more before Rufo launched into a strident self-defense, claiming he is more sensitive to fascists than anyone because of his family’s history in Italy. But the damage was done. Minutes later the Salem Center’s Carlos Carvalho hustled him out of the building as Baker and Campa tried to continue the back and forth.
Excellent. I’m proud of my professorial colleagues for smacking that lying poseur around. Do more of that, everyone!
What is DEI?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion
Diversity, equity, inclusion.
O sweet baby Cthulhu. Thierry Baudet of the Dutch political party Forum for Democracy — a party that checks all the boxes of any fascist checklist — goes on about that as well.
I think I can detect a trend in the treatment of Rufo: those professors are being too polite to likely have any lasting impact upon the fascist. I bet he went away planning his revenge, and he won’t be carrying it out with nice words.
“Truth”: Whatever best serves the white, male, cis-heterosexual, Christian majority.
“Beauty”: Young, blonde, thin-but-“buxom,” white women between the ages of 14-20.
“Goodness”: See ”Truth.”
Rufo is making a threat here.
He is a coward though.
It’s not a very specific threat and is so vague as to be meaningless.
He is also an idiot.
It is quite clear that Rufo hates the modern USA, which is after all, based on de facto Diversity, Equality, and Inclusiveness.
Those are part of the US constitution (the 14th amendment guarantees due process and equality under the law) and part of our Federal and local laws as well.
The USA is 60% non-Hispanic white and will become white minority in 2045. This trend won’t stop. And white racists like Rufo will just have to lie a lot and make vague threats to the rest of us.
I’d never heard of Christoper Rufo.
There are so many right wingnut trolls and they are always so generic that they just blend into the background.
Generic.
The Discovery Institute is that creationist nest in Seattle.
“He is an opponent of critical race theory, which he says “has pervaded every aspect of the federal government” “…
This is a lie.
I doubt if very many people in the Federal government could even tell you what Critical Race Theory is. It is like Cultural Marxism, Post Modernism, or “Woke”; scary words strung together that are meaningless.
…and poses “an existential threat to the United States”.[5]
Another lie.
What actually poses an existential threat to the USA are white racists like Christopher Rujo.
A generic right wingnut serial liar and fake fear monger.
Not impressed.
@ 7
Rufo was part of the creationism side of the business. The Disco Toot has a lot of fascist irons in the fire and criminalizing poverty and homeless is one of them. Before the CRT grift, his job was to advocate putting spike strips on park benches and discouraging “vagrancy.”
EDIT: Rufo wasn’t part
Not only is Christopher Rufo, a generic troll, he is also boringly predictable.
They guy is just a Fox NoNews class liar.
He lies about everything all the time.
It isn’t too hard to see right through him. Just assume he is lying and you will almost always have it right.
“sensitive to” != “opposed to”
The laugh is, the far right goes on and on about CRT, while being incapable of actually even sort of accurately describing it, proving that they don’t know CRT from their favorite pastime, CBT.*
But, he’d likely want to invite me to a fight when he brought up Italian heritage being the wellspring of his knowledge of fascism, as I’d respond with commenting to the audience, “figlio di una brava donna”. That’s equivalent to me telling him to his face, “putana su mama”.**
It tells him that I’m Italian myself and know quite a bit about the culture and hence, history and well, precisely what I think of him and by corruption of blood, his family. Hey, I’m not Congress, I can hold for the corruption of blood. :P
And if he invited me to a donnybrook, that’s fine, I’ll ask if he wants me to have one arm tied down first, to make things even. Which will entertain all, given that I have to walk with a cane. Eventually, he’ll get tired of getting back up.
Of course, I cannot apply to his daffynition of “truth, beauty, and goodness,” as I grow quite dark in the summer, my family originating from Sicily and do embrace DEI to the point where, I don’t want to see or hear the voice of an applicant in an interview (as in masking voice, zero visibility of the interviewee), as I want responses, not a view of gender, race or even humanity. Good resume, good responses to job oriented questions, move forward. Don’t give a shit about reproductive equipment or lack thereof, skin color or even if one has skin rather than scales, I care about qualifications and temperament.
Still, a proper escort from the building would’ve been via a steel cable hooked to a long range aircraft that’s ready to take off.
Akira, that whole spike thing is more than sufficient for me to not patronize businesses in areas where such exclusionary methods are utilized. Such as in downtown Harrisburg, where I refuse to shop. If I can’t sit my fat ass down when my back is hurting, fuck them, I’ll spend my money where I’m “allowed” to sit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
Although, in the lede of the article has an interesting set of bolts. Litigation just waiting to happen, as any disabled person that gets bumped into that is sure to fall and suffer severe injury and if it’s me, they’ll have to re-institute slavery just to cover my awarded damages. I’m an extraordinarily vindictive man by nature. Largely, because I’m sick and tired of being dismissed and disregarded and it’s court or if necessary, violins.
*CBT – Cock and Ball Torture.
**What was said in Italian associated his mother with practicing prostitution, one being “son of a good woman” being a polite way of saying the second, a declarative “your mother’s a whore”.
“If you have an erasure of ends”
This is the meaningful quote. He’s afraid to live with the basic uncertainty of life; a lot of conservativism is just a need to control the world – and especially others – because you’re too afraid to cope.
Once again, a right wing jerk determined to cancel anything in universities that doesn’t fit his right wing ideology.
Universities try to teach about reality and how to determine what it is. What Rufo doesn’t like is students learning about reality.’
Unfortunately for ignorant fools like Rufo, reality has a left wing bias.
hillaryrettig1 @ 14, no, it’s far more chilling. “Erasure of the ends”, because the ends justify the means.
Hence, forced euthanasia is cool, so are camps with great big ovens.
You know, the worst side of the worst side of fascism.
Beauty. Of course, doesn’t apply to blokes. But what should a woman look like (look away Paedersen): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
Not my ideal. but somebody’s (well, to tell the truth, my first real girlfriend was a bit biroad gauge, and she was wonderful)
@wzrd1 16 I hear you
Interesting discussion of means and ends.
Its like sciience vs creationism.
Science – follow the evidence to its natural conclusion.
Creationism – start with the conclusion and force all information to fit.
I think that all dogmatic belief and particularly conservatism as expressed by these fascistic types is just whistling past the grave yard. They want their fantasy of reality to be real and they want to and think they can live forever and revolt against anything that tends to contradict their favorite fantasy. Like a spoiled child they will resort to throwing a tantrum and resort to all kinds of pointless violence that will fail utterly to change any fundamental reality at all.
the sad pathetic fools. obstinately ignorant but dangerous just the same
OT
Rufo and the Belgian Thierry dude are perfectly normal compared to the Argentinian guy.
He thinks he can communicate with his dogs, and one of his dogs that died some time ago told him – from the spirit world or whatever – to run for the presidency. His platform is to privatise everything anf close down most government departments.
I watched footage of him at a book fair where he was promoting a book he has written. He is not a healthy human being.
No sense debating the guy, he’s pure bad faith through and through. Rufo needs the Richard Spencer treatment.
mikey @ 22, I was thinking more along the lines of riding him out of town on a rail.
raven@11–
I agree with one big exception — I would never have predicted that he would claim leftists want to reintroduce Aztec sacrifices!
Also, the sheer hypocrisy of feeling fear and foreboding at the thought that someone on campus might disagree with him, yet at the same time feeling perfectly happy to make threats against all who disagree with him.
Had to chuckle.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzompantli)
wzrd1@13–
Yes, that line about understanding fascism because he is descended from Italians is about as idiotic an attempted diversion as I’ve ever seen. Matches the intellectual calibre of everything else he says.
chrislawson: To be clear, he didn’t say he “understood” fascism, or “recognized” it, and he certainly didn’t say he “opposed” or was “alarmed” by it. He merely said he was “sensitive” to it, whatever the frak that means. It seems to me he was desperately trying to find some excuse to try to deflect some spot-on criticism, and all he could come up with was some lame version of “you can’t call me a fascist ‘cuz I come from Italy, on the Atlantic!”
I really wish everyone who hears things like this from the likes of Rufo would confront the premises of such statements directly, and demand the fascists define their agenda.
‘What do we deserve, Christopher? Why do we deserve it? What, precisely, is coming? Where will it be coming from? Who will be bringing it?’
The questioners should be direct, sickeningly polite, and maddeningly persistent. Details and specifics should be pressed for in all cases. Make the Nazi scumbags either say what they mean out loud, or else be exposed as pathetic, craven fools who can’t even articulate their own goals.
He thinks he can communicate with his dogs,…
So? Sounds normal to me. William Lyon Mackenzie King , our longest serving Prime Minister often communicated with his deceased dog/dogs. He also communicated ‘spiritually’ with his mother, other family members and friends.
Rufo in his own words. Never forget.
Christopher F. Rufo
@realchrisrufo
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the
newspaper and immediately think “critical race theory.”
We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex
the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular
with Americans.
2:17 PM . March 17, 2021. Twitter
Rufo in his own words. Never forget.
Christopher F. Rufo
@realchrisrufo
The goal is to have the public read something
crazy in the newspaper and immediately think “critical
race theory.” We have decodified the term and will
recodify it to annexthe entire range of cultural
constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
2:17 PM . March 17, 2021. Twitter
I’ve heard of “dead cat” distractions in UK politics. Will there now be “dead dog” tactics in Argentine (or at least Argentine fascist) politics? If Milei tries to take the Falklands again, could Sunak foil his plans by inducing dead fascist dogs to start chasing dead Tory cats hither and thither? If the dead Tory cats yowl loud enough, maybe Milei’s dead dogs will be unable to get any intel to pass on to him. Endless possibilities wobble the mind…
Also, I’m still SMH over Jordan Peterson’s blithering about “authoritarian tolerance.” It’s almost like he’s eight years old and calling his parents “nazis” when they try to teach him any manners. And some people are calling this twit a “father-figure?”
Rufo made the mistake of engaging in these tactics at a research university, where the most scholarly of the faculty know how much they don’t know. Rufo’s responses demonstrate that he doesn’t know enough to know how much he doesn’t know, such as how Italian ancestry makes him — born four decades after Mussolini was deposed — “sensitive” to fascism. Perhaps my German ancestry (from an embarassing number of years closer to that period) makes me even more “sensitive” to fascism — or, perhaps, I ancestrally appreciate Feuerbach and Nietzche, Mann and Döblin; and would look to Rilke and Göthe, among others, to define “truth, beauty, and goodness.” Because, after all, we’re mere creatures of our ancestry, and have visited upon us the merits and sons of our fathers. (Not so much mothers in Rufo’s crowd, because they’re all in the kitchen.)
† I’m definitely “sensitive to” Wagner, in the sense that I detest the man and despise his music. And I’ve actually sat through the Ring cycle. And Lohengrin.
sins of our fathers
Actually, I am all for truth, beauty and goodness. If fascists were too, they wouldn’t be fascists.
Also, “authoritarian tolerance”? Seriously?
I am all for “truth, beauty, and STRANGENESS”, not that I expect a moron like Rufo to understand anything about any of them.
Every fascist accusation is a confession.
Fck Rufo
Raven @8
More than an opponent of critical race theory, he’s the one responsible for bringing it to the attention of the right as a usable boogieman to scare white voters into electing Republicans. Glenn Youngkin is probably governor of Virginia because of Rufo giving him CRT to run on.
Jeez, what’s he got against the Dewey Decimal System?
@30. jrkrideau : “He thinks he can communicate with his dogs,So? Sounds normal to me. …””
Of course. I communicate with my dog all the time both verbally and with gestures and whistles – eg. sit, stay, walk, food etc.. That’; very common and indeed most people and most dogs do that just fine..
Ohhh-kaaay. That part not so much..