An open letter to a man who neither demoralizes nor deranges me...

...but whom I do find pretty boring

Hi Christopher Rufo,

You don’t know me. I’m a dad in Milwaukee. I run a modest set of organizing trainings and write this relatively niche newsletter (I also wrote a book, but it doesn’t have a super aggro title like America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything). Unlike you, I have not been called “one of the most effective journalists and filmmakers in the country” by Tucker Carlson.

You’ve been on my mind for the last day or so, which I suspect doesn’t surprise you. You’ve been on a media victory of sorts lately, hyping yourself as the mastermind who forced the resignation of Harvard Professor Claudine Gay. I’ve been thinking about one profile in particular, this interview with Ian Ward at Politico. You and Ward spent a fair bit of time discussing the way in which you telegraphed your strategy for Gay’s ouster on a social media site that used to have a slightly silly name and now has a tremendously silly name.

A quick aside: Is this really how you talk? As if “emailing reporters the things that I want them to print” is an act of bravery on the scale of jumping the Berlin Wall? That’s really intense.

But back to the interview. Ward asked you, essentially, why you felt it necessary to lay out your strategy on a public platform. You replied in two different ways—first that you were trying to narrate how to make change for other conservative activists and secondly about how you enjoy that it “demoralizes and deranges your opponents.”

Now, I suspect that there’s a third reason (you’re very pleased with your own intelligence and, as such, enjoy when your fans shower you with praise for being so brilliant that, even when the left knows what you’re doing, we can’t stop you), but since you didn’t name that goal explicitly, I can only judge the efficacy of the other two. As for the whole “sharing your work with other conservative organizers,” well, that’s a smart move. I wish more activists on the left did the same. If I can be earnest for a second, I think that a lot of what you do on a tactical level is pretty sound. I admire your ability to pick a campaign and actually do the power mapping and long-term agitation necessary to see it through to completion. I don’t think your “victories” are as impressive as you believe them to be, for reasons I’ll discuss in a bit, but still. Credit where credit’s due.

As for the second, though, I hope that this doesn’t disappoint you too much, but in all honesty you don’t really demoralize or derange me… like, at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I abhor everything you stand for politically. And you definitely give off a “least fun guy at the Model UN conference” vibe. But you cause me neither demoralization nor derangement. Because I have a professional and personal interest in discourse around social justice, I’m probably more aware of you and your work than the average left-leaning American (I have no doubt that, after publishing this piece, I will receive multiple replies to the effect of “…who is Christopher Rufo?”) but that doesn’t mean I shake my fist ruefully whenever you’re in the news again. Currently, I am feeling pretty darn grumpy due to a medium-long list of minor grievances (I am afflicted with both a sinus infection, a separate ear infection, a case of pink eye, and a wicked case of “not wanting to do work again after a fun but busy, kid-wrangling vacation”). Nothing terrible, but still a decent array, and you absolutely didn’t make the cut. When I saw you were in the news this week, I didn’t groan.

I sighed.

The thing about you, Christopher Rufo, scourge of critical race theory, slayer of all things woke, newfound anti-plagiarism crusader, is that for all of your bluster, you’ve built a career using the exact same game-plan as so many other craven conservative up-and-comers.

1. America goes through a situational moment of increased social justice agitation and/or consciousness about inequity.

2. Groups that traditionally benefit from existing societal power structures get angsty about all of the real or perceived changes around them.

3. A messenger emerges (in this case, you!) who overstates the level of power that various leftist boogeyman hold over society (for example: you would not know it from reading your articles or watching your videos, but Black Lives Matter does not actually control any branch of the U.S. government).

4. Bad faith webs are woven (Cultural Marxism! Herman Marcuse! Angela Davis! Paulo Freire!) in order to prove that leftists are not just shrill and annoying but have been scheming a takeover of cultural and educational institutions for decades.

5. Campaigns are launched, victories (legitimate or inflated) are celebrated, defeats (Ron DeSantis, Moms for Liberty) are minimized, careers (yours) are built, at the expense of others (Claudine Gay, most recently).

6. Even if you don’t win every battle, you do win the broader war (that is, you succeed in maintaining existing societal hierarchies) because, well, that’s the nature of hierarchies. They take more effort to disrupt than to maintain. That’s why I’m not necessarily all that impressed by your victories, by the way. “We took an object that was not in motion and gave it permission to remain motionless” isn’t that much of an accomplishment.

I don’t have to tell you that you’re just using an old playbook. This past August, you made a whole video tribute to Richard Nixon prefaced on the notion that Tricky Dick was an incredible leader because he offered the tonic of law and order to a White America spooked by student radicals and Black Panthers and reeling from the enactment of too-limited but still historic civil rights legislation. That’s literally what you’re doing, my guy! You’re just playing the backlash hits!

By the way, there are a lot of terrific “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” moments in this video, but my favorite might be when you try to rush through the line “although many of J. Edgar Hoover’s methods went beyond the rule of law…” like you’re the narrator in a pharmaceutical commercial rattling off side effects as quickly as possible.

Now, you’re not necessarily wrong that “liberals” writ large have attained certain amount of symbolic influence in cultural spaces (especially compared to how little power they have in government). I’ve written quite a bit about the twentieth century dance between White liberals and White conservatives that created that particular morass. But the fact that there are now interracial couples and trans characters on TV doesn’t mean that cultural Marxists now run the country. You and I both know that. You’re well aware that conservatives disproportionally control state legislatures and the Supreme Court, and have the ability to tie up any potential progressive legislation in Congress. Your goal is to maintain and expand that power while still building a career on the lie that workplace DEI trainings are somehow proof that leftists have established thousands of little Paris Communes all over corporate America.

Again, none of this is novel, Chris! Historians like Carol Anderson have spent their lives documenting this cycle. So no, I’m not demoralized or deranged watching you pretend that getting a Black woman fired from her job is a cool new move you invented. It’s just so, so boring.

More broadly though, what’s the goal here? I’ve read more of your work than I care to (I apologize for piling on, but how can it be so blustery and so dull at the same time?), so I know the pitch: If we can rid our nation’s institutions of “racialism” and other radical ideologies that supposedly “pit identity groups against one another,” then we can live in an equal, color blind society (though not necessarily a democratic one, as you seem pretty comfortable with authoritarian means of fully purging leftists from public life, which, well, yikes). And I know why that message sells. It’s immensely comforting to those of us for whom “not thinking about race or gender or class” has always been so easy. But when in the course of American history did reverting back to existing hierarchies actually move us forward? When did siding with the bosses over labor make working class people’s lives better? When did feigned ignorance at America’s original sins empower Black, Brown and Indigenous communities? When did pretending that trans and queer people don’t exist keep people alive?

Again, whatever you’re doing, it’s obviously far more effective, at least from a career-building perspective, than whatever it is that I’m doing. You get to claim to have successfully ousted an Ivy League President. I’m just a nobody who would like fewer people to die preventable deaths, fewer people to be misunderstood and alienated, and fewer people to be left behind by an uncaring world. And I know that your career benefits from painting all of human history as a battle between a leftist orthodoxy and the scrappy conservative rebels who dare to oppose it, but that’s not how I see it at all. I don’t want a more livable world just for people who agree with me. I want it for all of us. And when I read headlines about a very-pleased-with-himself guy who cares more about his career than he loves his fellow human beings, I’m not mad. You’re not the first, nor will you be the last to pull that con. What a waste. For the world, for sure, but for you as well. What a small, uninspiring, dull approach towards life.

My apologies for not being more deranged or demoralized! I likely won’t be paying that much attention to you going forward, but if you ever want to, like, work on something that will actually help people (like universal healthcare or stronger labor unions or reparations) let me know! You’ve got a lot of hustle, and we could use that for work that actually matters. I’ll tell you what, if you’d like to help us build an equitable, multi-racial social democracy that attends to all of our needs, I don’t mind if you take credit for it.

My best,

Garrett Bucks

End notes:

Paid subscribers, please accept my apologies that, due to all those aforementioned illnesses, this week we won’t have our weekly discussion (I’ve also been less active on the discord!). It’ll be back next week, though! I miss you all!

Speaking of paid subscribers, thanks again for all of you who keep the lights on around here (“keeping the lights on” being defined as “allowing me to afford child care” to keep doing this work. If you’re curious, here’s my financial transparency FAQ. You can either support directly through a Substack subscription, or (if you want non-Substack options) pre-ordering The Right Kind of White and then filling out the thank you survey, or making a donation to The Barnraisers Project. In all cases, thank you!

As for song of the week, all this sickness has me in a bit of a funk, which has led me back to one of those minor key songs with a “just keep going, one foot in front of the other” message that were on heavy repeat in my household in the early pandemic. This one, “Überlin” by R.E.M. has been a longstanding anthem for myself and my transit-loving son.

“Hey now, take the U-Bahn
Five stops, change the station
Hey now, don't forget that change will save you

Hey now, count a thousand-million people, that's astounding
Chasing through the city with their stars on bright.”

Lovely. As always, the song of the week playlist is on both Apple Music and Spotify.