Morning Wire XX
[0] From the Isles of Target to your local public school to the new Barbie movie, social justice political messaging permeates American popular culture.
[1] But how did these ideas take root and push out traditional Western values?
[2] In this episode, we talk with one of the most preeminent observers of this trend, author Chris Rufo, about how we got here and what's next for American culture.
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[4] It's Saturday, July 29th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us now is journalist and author Chris Rufo.
[6] Chris, thanks for coming on.
[7] Oh, thanks for having me. So first off, you have a new book coming out on this topic, and it presents a pretty strong, overtly conservative critique of our current cultural moment, particularly what you say is the progressive or left -wing influence on our culture.
[8] First, give us a little overview of your book.
[9] Absolutely.
[10] So America's Cultural Revolution, which debuted last week as the number one bestseller on Amazon tells the story of the radical left's 50 -year long march to the institutions.
[11] And it starts in the late 1960s with the Marxist revolutionary movements and then goes through this entire arc of conquest through the universities, through the K -12 schools, through the DEI departments in America's Fortune 100 companies.
[12] And then finally culminating in that summer of 2020, the George Floyd summer, when it was finally revealed to so many Americans that the cultural left had taken the high position in all of our prestige institutions.
[13] And so the goal of the book was really to explain, how did that happen, where did these ideas come from, and how did they attain power?
[14] Now, you touched on this briefly, but if you had to identify an inflection point where this transformation of American society really gained steam, where would that be?
[15] Yeah, there was something that's very interesting that happened in the 1960s.
[16] In the late 60s, the Black Panther Party, the Communist Party USA, the weather underground, all of the organizations that comprised the so -called new left believed for a time that they could violently overthrow the United States government through armed revolution.
[17] They were planting bombs.
[18] They were assassinating police officers.
[19] They were robbing banks and taking hostages.
[20] And that, of course, completely alienated the public.
[21] These groups splintered.
[22] They were infiltrated.
[23] Their ideas failed.
[24] And for a time in the early 70s, it appeared that they were totally defeated.
[25] And so out of desperation, they changed their tactic.
[26] They said, we're not going to do violent revolution.
[27] We're going to take over the universities.
[28] And we believe that if we take over the universities, we can take over how people think, how people teach, and then how people make political decisions.
[29] And so that initially began this conquest of the universities as a point of weakness.
[30] But over the course of the next 50 years, proved to be their greatest strength.
[31] Now, are there any other examples of countries that have flirted this much with, this particular ideology that have ultimately turned around and rejected it?
[32] Or are we an uncharted territory right now?
[33] That's another interesting wrinkle to this whole story that the left has conquered the culture of the United States as far as our institutions, but hasn't yet conquered the economy.
[34] And so it's almost as if this isn't really a orthodox Marxist philosophy.
[35] It's not even at heart a socialist philosophy.
[36] It's something that is totally different.
[37] And maybe, analogous to those philosophies in the realm of culture.
[38] And so we're in this uneasy environment where we still, for the most part, have a capitalist economy in the United States, while we have, of course, now this neo -Marxist cultural conquest of our institution.
[39] So we find ourselves in a very uneasy political situation in which the base and superstructure, to use those old Marxist terms, are in the hands of different philosophies.
[40] And it's not exactly sure.
[41] sure in the immediate term and in the medium term, how that will play out.
[42] Now, I've also heard, often in conservative circles, that what we're experiencing in our culture right now could also be described as a religious revival of sorts.
[43] Is that a better description of what we're seeing?
[44] I'm not sure that's exactly right either, because this isn't a religion.
[45] I think that many people have said that wokeism is a religion or is akin to a religion, but actually it's the absence of religion.
[46] And so it is predicated.
[47] on an atheistic philosophy, it's predicated on a material reading of the culture, and then also prioritizing lateral power, meaning power between groups and society, rather than a vertical power, meaning a transcendental or a hierarchy of a kind of spiritual power.
[48] And so I think that that is also a misnomer.
[49] And one of the things that I tried to do in the book is to give people a real sense of what are we looking at?
[50] How can we describe it?
[51] How can we think about it?
[52] because my view is that if you don't know the answer to those questions, you're unlikely to come up with solutions that are necessary to defeat it.
[53] So if we're looking at other countries where we've seen left -wing uprisings in the past, what comes next in the revolutionary playbook?
[54] Are there any upcoming plays that you anticipate?
[55] Yes, the play that is going to happen, and I believe is already happening, is the consolidation of ideology into administration.
[56] And so what that means is that the revolutionaries or the kind of pseudo -revolutionaries that are fighting the culture war on behalf of the radical left, will be trying to entrench their power within bureaucracies.
[57] So this means DEI departments.
[58] This means affirmative action programs.
[59] This means solidifying their control over academic departments and universities.
[60] And so the fight is going to be there.
[61] And for conservatives, it's important to understand.
[62] You don't win the culture war by winning the narrative in the media.
[63] That's important.
[64] That's essential.
[65] I think it's a precondition.
[66] But ultimately, you win the culture war by contesting their power within the bureaucracy.
[67] And I think conservatives, and the Daily Wire is certainly a big part of this, are getting very good at fighting back in the media, in the culture, in the spectacle.
[68] But we have really just scratched the surface on fighting back within the bureaucracy and wielding administrative power.
[69] And so smart conservatives, people who want to really know what time it is, the people who want to be, you know, six months or a year ahead of what's happening, pay attention to the fight over the bureaucracy, get involved if you're within a bureaucracy, and then support your great legislators if they're taking on the fight in this sophisticated way.
[70] Now, I think most people will remember that in 2020, the focus was really on race, but over the past few years, it seems like the focus has shifted somewhat to gender identity.
[71] I think that's left a lot of people feeling like, okay, you know, what's next?
[72] Do you anticipate any new frontiers of grievance and or oppression being revealed by critical theorists?
[73] Or do you expect a cyclical return to some of the old themes?
[74] Yeah, we've been on this wheel.
[75] So what happens is that when people get tired of the left kind of monomaniacal focus on one issue, they spin the wheel.
[76] But I think that what will happen is that you ultimately level out to the three great thrusts of left -wing ideology, race, class, and gender.
[77] The kind of top three.
[78] So, It will depend on how things go practically, but conservatives should be ready to fight on those three great fronts of race, class, and gender, because we know as the wheel spins, it will inevitably land there at some time in the future.
[79] You mentioned the fact that this ideology has really gained a foothold in administrative structures.
[80] In many cases, we're seeing very controversial rules being codified into things like bylaws and disciplinary handbooks.
[81] So, for example, treating people differently based on race is broadly unpopular with people of all races, but it's pretty common to see in places like universities.
[82] Is that a liability for the progressive or woke movement, as critics call it, that these unpopular ideas are being laid bare in such a stark way at the administrative level?
[83] So do you think having this ideology distilled into concrete rules that mandate unequal treatment is going to cause regular people to say, hey, wait a minute, you know, this doesn't make much sense?
[84] I mean, I hope so.
[85] I think that's already beginning.
[86] and certainly one of the main lines of argument in the book is to point out exactly where these ideas lead once they attain power.
[87] What do curricula look like?
[88] What do corporate policies look like?
[89] And then all of these things that we've seen related to CRT and DEI in recent years provide us a large target because they are absurd.
[90] They are discriminatory.
[91] They are in some cases just flat out evil.
[92] And so I think that conservatives have an opportunity to not only point out the flaws of this as a system of governance, but to also present alternatives.
[93] And so the metaphor that I use, if we're in America's cultural revolution, we really need to have a counter -revolution, something that understands the problem and presents a solution at a scale that will be required to reverse these trends, because it's one thing to say that this curriculum is wrong.
[94] This curriculum is bad for kids.
[95] But it's another thing to say, and therefore we'll run for school, board, we're going to take over the local schools, and we have an alternative curriculum that is much better.
[96] That's hard work.
[97] That is the challenge.
[98] And if we're not willing to do that, we're really not interested in winning.
[99] So with this counter -revolution that you're describing, what would it take for conservatives to swing the culture back in their direction?
[100] Activists on the left have obviously been extremely active and pretty aggressive in advocating for their ideals.
[101] Is the right going to have to match that level of energy?
[102] That's right.
[103] And I think that aggressive is certainly part of it, but it's in aggression, not a kind of unbridled aggression.
[104] It's using aggression and using anger and using emotions and passions, but channeling them towards something that is ultimately responsible, something that is ultimately a reflection of what most parents want, and something that is going to stabilize and strengthen institutions for the future.
[105] And so conservatives are in a very interesting bind.
[106] We certainly feel, the emotions of outrage and anger, but we have to be able to subdue those and channel them into very productive causes.
[107] And so when conservatives don't do that, you get kind of disasters, but the parent protests and school boards, that's an example of very successful conservative activism.
[108] They had the anger, they wanted to protect their kids.
[109] It was the mama bear phenomenon, but they were always polite, respectful, positive, concrete, and constructive.
[110] So to me, that's where we need to channel our energies.
[111] That's the kind of passionate activism that drives this counter revolution.
[112] Along the same vein of counter revolution, there's a growing trend among conservatives to push an alternative economy.
[113] Obviously, the Daily Wire is a pioneer in this area, as are some other companies.
[114] Do you think that's part of the solution?
[115] Yeah, there are really two key strategies that conservatives are debating right now.
[116] And this is something I talk about in the last chapter of the book, do you try to retake or reconquer existing institutions, or do you try to found and build new competing institutions?
[117] And I think that the debate is really a disservice to our own side, because the answer is quite obvious.
[118] You have to do both.
[119] And so in education, for example, we have to go in and retake school boards.
[120] We have to go in and write new state curricula.
[121] We have to go in and take over state boards of education, especially in red states.
[122] At the same time, however, it's very important for us to get universal school choice so that parents can take their tax dollars to any institution they want.
[123] And it's important that we have alternative private schools that serve conservative communities, religious schools, parochial schools, classical schools, homeschools, and so we have to fight on all fronts.
[124] And I think we've been successful, at least in recent years, making incremental changes on these fronts.
[125] And so, you know, we need the Daily Wire.
[126] We need Fox News.
[127] But we also need to push into some of those center or even center left -leaning institutions and make our voices hurt there.
[128] Now, you sometimes hear people muse that this leftward drift was baked into the American experiment from the start just based on the freedoms granted in the Constitution, basically that our system makes us too rich, too free.
[129] And that creates this hotbed for certain types of thought movements and cultural changes.
[130] is, do you think there's any truth to that?
[131] I think that there actually is a point where many of these ideas will be utterly discredited again.
[132] And so the interesting read of the history, something that I go into great detail in the book, is that this ideology was utterly defeated by 1972.
[133] So it was very riding high in 1968.
[134] It was utterly defeated in 1972.
[135] That's the year that Richard Nixon won a 49 state landslide.
[136] All of the radical organizations had been crushed by the FBI.
[137] and the public, you know, wanted no part in it, to the point where even the New York Times editorial page was saying that these were bad ideas, discredited ideas, and had no future in the country.
[138] And so we had a period of stabilization.
[139] We had a period of rightward drift, certainly in the 1980s, in the 1990s, even the early 2000s.
[140] These ideas, though, are like zombies.
[141] They can never quite be killed.
[142] They always revive themselves.
[143] And so this is our generational challenge.
[144] Those of us, as millennials, you know, maybe Gen Z below us, Gen X above us.
[145] This is our generational challenge to defeat this ideology here at home.
[146] And I think, though, that it is totally within the realm of possibility that we can do so.
[147] All right.
[148] Well, Chris, thanks so much for coming on and talking about your book.
[149] I'm looking forward to reading it.
[150] Thank you so much.
[151] debuted last week as number one on Amazon, available everywhere.
[152] So I hope everyone goes to buy a copy.
[153] That was independent journalist and author Chris Ruf.
[154] And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.