We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasnski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. Not today's guest once again is Christopher Ruffo. He
is the author of America's Cultural Revolution, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.
It's a really really interesting rene. Highly recommend it before we get to that,
and just want to say thank you to everyone for your comments. Last
week. We had some great guests, some big guests, Kim Strassel,
Liz Wheeler. It was just a great lineup, and we have a really
good lineup heading into the fall, so over the next month or so,
and then as we get into the post Labor day time, it's now the
election cycle. It's the twenty twenty four cycle, where like a month out
from the first debate, which is crazy and hard to believe because it feels
like we just did this, and of course we did, but it's only
been a couple of years. So we're going to get back into the election
cycle, groove back into the swing of things. So I just appreciate everyone
listening. And you know, whenever we have an audio glitch, I always
like to jump on and warn you first. This one is kind of funny
and kind of an embarrassing audio glitch. A lot of people know. So
Federalist Radio Hour used to be taped every single day in a studio before the
pandemic. Since the pandemic, you know, especially during the pandemic, there
was no way to get into a studio, and Federalist Radio Hours one of
the longest. I assume it's one of the longest running conservative podcasts. I've
never actually crunched the numbers, but that's thanks in no small part at all.
It's a Ben dominicic being a visionarian and understanding where this medium was going
and putting so much time and energy and so many resources into it. So
we take audio quality very seriously, always have. But you probably know that
I run a journalism training program during the summer months. It's called National Journalism
Center. We work with twenty interns party Young America's Foundation and place them all
over and so in the summer sometimes I have to record on the go.
So I've been recording on the goal with this great little microphone that I got,
but it's we're just having some technical issues with that. So I got
another microphone, and long story short, actually this is just long story long.
I realised I've been like rambling for a couple of minutes now. But
you know, it's I think it's a sign of respectory of listeners. You
know, as a somebody who listens to podcasts, I know how important,
especially when you're listening with headphones. But in this case, I got a
new like travel microphone, and part of the system that I have where I
was recording wasn't working, and so in this microphone, then another actually then
another glitch happened as we were recording. So we had like a perfect storm
of errors. And this is after like actually prepping a lot for Chris to
come on, because he's such a great guest and the book is so good.
But you will hear me breathing over Chris talking, because well, it's
just for a lot of different reasons. If you know what audio is,
you know the importance of having multiple tracks going, you know the importance of
monitoring the audio and working on the different tracks as you're recording. So I
won't get into the details of it, but basically there was an issue with
recording two separate tracks and you could just really here be breathing. That's why
I say it's embarrassing because it picking up like every breath and just like amplifying
it that I take. So on that note, we this was just a
really good conversation with Chris. His book is excellent, and so we wanted
to get it out to you all. But I do I promise you this
is the last time you can hold me to account for this, So the
last time you'll have an audio glitch. Usually when that happens, I'm able
to rerecord or do something to that effect, unless there's like a real time
crunch. But I promise you this is the last time you'll have an audio
glitch on Federalist Radio Hour, because we're putting a lot into making sure that
doesn't happen, a lot of resources, a lot of effort. And one
of the cool things about Federalist Radio Hour also is that we have never had
like a professional podcasting staff. The Federalist is tiny. You'd be surprised to
know how small our staff is, and so we all just sort of pitch
in on the audio side, on the podcasting side, it's just it's it's
so cool and I love that about us. And you know, that's where
I think our podcast is like closer to a lot of folks, you know,
closer to a lot of folks in that it's you know, it's not
this like big corporate operation in Manhattan, you know, where you have bosses,
you overseeing what said or whatever else. It's it's pretty raw and organic.
So on that note, I just want to thank everyone for listening and
give you a little update. But please enjoy this conversation with the one and
only Chris Ruffo. Chris, thank you for joining the show. It's great
to be with you. Yeah, it's it's a really really, really really
interesting book on so many different levels. We got into it a little bit
with my coast rank Graham over on counterpoints to the sorting, and I loved
hearing kind of the back and forth. I want to start with something I
thought that I had because our listeners are definitely familiar with critical race theory.
They're familiar with your protriques of critical race theory, broader sort of critical theory
world. I want to start in a sort of historical question. As I
was reading the book, I realized so much of the development of the New
Left, it sort of was forged in the cauldron of the Cold War.
And I want to ask how the end of the Cold War, as we
get to the eighties and the nineties and you have, you know, Judith
Butler, the evolution of the new Left into something a little bit different,
a little bit Marcusian. Maybe, how does the end of the Cold War
effect the direction the left takes into something that feels a lot more elite than
Marxist. I think that the failure of global communism that was really kind of
conclusively revealed by the end of the Cold War changed left wing politics. In
some ways, they've retreated to issues of race, gender, and identity that
required less of those structural, economic, and revolutionary changes. But in other
ways they accelerated into those issues. I mean, they used them and wielded
them as tools for achieving power in a way that's had a profound influence on
our country, and in most cases, a profoundly negative influence. But it
also had a critical impact on the right. The end of the Cold War
put the right to sleep, you know, conservatives frankly felt that they had
defeated communism, it had been vanquished forever, and they stopped being vigilant,
they stopped paying attention, and they let the left, and the radical left
in particular, complete its long march through the institutions without any resistance. And
so the end of the Cold War, although it was a triumph for the
politics of the political right, also created an opening for the political left that
they exploited quite brilliantly, and I think exposed some of the tendencies to either
abdicate or retreat on behalf on our side that have left us in a weak
position institutionally today. Yeah. So William F. Buckley's writing got him in
at Yale in the fifties, and you rite, you have this great section
in the book about how, you know, the new left kind of looking
around at a certain point they end up taking to the academy and becoming,
you know, the establishment of the university system essentially. And I want to
ask you just sort of about the conditions you kind of just answered this question
interestingly enough, But answer this incredible question of Now we take for granted that
there are you know, former Weather underground guys all over the university system.
But what conditions allowed for them to enter the academy even as you have pretty
high profile, high profile critics like William of Buckley. Although this isn't the
context of communism, Um, how do you end up, you know,
with these this total takeover of one of the institutions at a time when the
public really had no interest in that takeover happening. I think the answer is
that in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the left wing radicals learned politics in
the streets. They were prepared to riots, to attack the police, to
plant bombs, to to take other extreme measures to advance their political cause.
And although that failed, they took those lessons that they learned with them as
they entered and really infiltrated academic institutions. And so when you have these battle
hardened revolutionaries going into faculty meetings with these timid, bespectacled you know, a
small l liberal academics, there's no contest there. The radicals are gonna win.
They're gonna certain their will, their authority, They're gonna decisively take over
in time. That's exactly what they did. And at the same time,
as these radicals are moving through the university systems. Conservatives are in a sense
retreating. They're they're they're taking solace in the nineteen eighties and nineties and in
economic positions, positions, in business positions, and let's say, the hard
sciences, feeling that they could essentially let go of the culture, the humanities,
the liberal arts. And then by the time you get into the two
thousands, even the twenty ten, the conservative position is, look at all
these morons with blue hair graduating with gender studies degrees. Hahaha, They're never
gonna be able to get a job. But that was always a naive and
self satisfied view that was not true at all. And in fact, those
you know, blue haired gender studies, you know, the lunatics, are
now like teaching your kids, you know, the pronouns in kindergarten. They're
staffing the HR bureaucracy and corporations. They're you know, leading the di initiatives
at public universities. They weren't unemployable in the traditional business sense. They were
useless economically, but they were highly employable in these new ideological positions. And
that's exactly what they did, and that's exactly how they took their ideas into
positions of power. I wonder, as somebody who's studied Marxism really closely,
if there's a I'm genuinely curious about this. I don't know the answer because
I haven't liked closely at it, I'm not familiar with the literature. If
there's an potential argument that we're at a point in the sort of Marxist process
that societies go through from capitalism to the ultimate sort of ends where a Marxist
might sort of step back and say, actually, you know, the contradictions
are heightening, or a Leninist, the contradictions are heightening, and we are
we are actually just in the middle of this uncomfortable period. But this is
in a sense sort of what Marx predicted or what he was describing. Is
there an argument for that as at all, especially in the context of the
class argument that you make in this book that's so important, you know,
I don't think so. Actually, I think that the opposite is more true,
because you know, class has more or less disappeared from the debate,
and in a sense, the neoliberal economics have become supreme everywhere, including the
last remaining large communist country, the People's Republic of China. They don't even
believe in the materialist dialectic anymore. They don't believe in the labor theory of
value. They don't believe that societies are based on class conflict that will eventually
culminate in a classless society. They too have become comfortable, which with what
I believe is inevitable. There will be a social hierarchy. There will be
social classes. There always have been in the past, there always will be
in the future. You know, groups will never be fully equal in every
measurable way. There's going to be distinctions and differences. And so I think
that even even mark you know, you ever, once in a while,
I'll come across an orthodox Marxist economic mark system. It's like you're talking to
a museum exhibit. I mean, it's really fascinating. It's like these people
rattle off about all these all the kind of orthodox Marxist theories, and you
say your theories have no harmony or no relationship to reality. I mean,
it's like it's kind of actually fascinating in a way. But I think besides
some people who have really insulated their minds, you know, pretty much everyone
on the left, certainly the mainstream left, even the radical left, the
EI left, whatever you want to talk about, historical materialism just doesn't hold
water anymore. Yeah, no, that's that's a really good perspective. When
we were talking about the book with Ryan Graham of The Intercept and my coaster
over at Counterpoints I mentioned earlier, we were talking to you about this today
and he sort of took issue with the role that MARCUSA plays in your book,
and I thought that was kind of interesting. It was an interesting critique
because you actually outline pretty well how MARCUSA influences Angela Davis and sort of ushers
in this tradition you know, in the sort of mid century period that was
really effective. But for the benefit of this audience, could you talk to
us a little bit about I know, you obviously already were very famili You're
with Mark Crisman as you were writing the book and sort of putting together this
narrative, which it really is. It's so compelling because it goes through it
as a narrative. What do you think stands out about his influence over the
left at that really critical time period. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean the
I approached the book with a storytelling frame because I wanted it to be interesting
and entertaining as well as, you know, educational. But I think your
colleagues critique was quite interesting. And I've actually had the same critique from someone
on the right, an author named Richard Hanania, and both Hannania and Grim
offered the same critique, And the essence of the critique is, well,
you're looking at these personalities. You're looking at specifically at intellectuals like Herbert Marcusa.
You're attributing all this power to them. But isn't it more true to
say that there were structural and economic forces at play that were more determinative of
the arc of the historical process, And aren't you overweighting the power of intellectuals?
And I think that the answer is no to both of those critiques,
for slightly different reasons for each one. But but but the ultimate thing is,
you know, the ideas shape policy, the shape law, they shape
politics, They shape these movements, and and of course the deeper let's say,
societal or economic or political trends are extremely important, but they always express
themselves ultimately through individuals. And Marcusa served to rationalize the politics of the nineteen
sixties, to turn it into a coherent story to give it a language,
and so I reject a kind of materialist reduction or it says, oh no,
no, it's all these structural things and the ideas don't matter, the
intellectuals don't matter. And I think both in grim and Hanania's case, you
know, their own work betrays that even they do not believe it, because
why would they be writers, why would they be intellectuals. Why would they
be talking to me if they didn't believe that the ideas actually mattered and determine
the course of events. And so I think the truth is some sort of
mixed. But what I did in the book, and I think it's the
correct way of doing it in this case, is I told the stories of
the individuals as symbols of these larger processes and then try to relate their ideas
and their personal stories to these larger trends. And ultimately, I think that's
more entertaining too, for the readers to say, oh wow, I get
to grasp these human stories and have that reveal maybe a more profound truth than
some dry statistical analysis with a bunch of charts and tables at the back.
Yeah, that's fair. Can you talk to about Freers such an interesting moment
in the history of the left that I think it's glossed over a lot.
I didn't know a lot of the history you include in the book, but
just sort of like for the audience, you guys should go buy the book,
but maybe what their appetites a little bit crisis to what they can expect
from that chapter. Yeah, there's a whole section on education. And the
figure that I profile most in depth is a Brazilian Neo Marxist pedagogist named Paolo
Frera, and he's kind of an interesting figure because, of course he comes
from the Third World, but he served a term as a visiting scholar at
Harvard and then over the course of the last fifty years has actually become the
most influential educational theorists in the United States and actually the third most cited academic
in all of the social sciences. I mean, he is truly like the
god of the education schools in the United States. And I go through his
actual record and that's the thing that to me was the most instructive. It's
like, well, you know, he preached kind of a Marxist style of
education, but does it work? That seems to be a fair question to
ask, and the historical record in his own life, he actually became the
leading kind of education propagandist or education consultant to the Marxist Leninist governments of in
Africa and in Latin America. And he actually ran the education program for a
small country called Guinea Bissau after it was liberated from Portuguese rule in the in
the nineteen sixties and then you know, into the seventies where he worked there,
and and some scholars went in afterwards and they said, oh, wow,
pala Fare was in charge of education, you know, and he wanted
to bring literacy to the to the to the impoverished masses. How did he
do? And they found that he actually is likely to have taught exactly zero
people how to read. I mean like he had an illiterate society when he
arrived. They did all this work, and then he left in the society
was still more or less illiterate. And so it's like, wait a minute,
if you can't teach people how to read in these places, why should
we change our very successful educational system in the United States to model it on
your theories? And so over and over that's what you'll find in the book
is idealism that turns into disillusionment, that turns into despair, that turns into
nihilism. That's the process that I see over and over. I'm curious for
your thoughts on why, because, especially since you've worked so closely on,
for instance, stop Woke or with Governors santisis various policy proposals, many of
which were creative and targeted, but should have, from my perspective and probably
your perspective, happened years ago. These are things that probably could have been
on the table. I get that the threat wasn't as sort of open and
bold as it is now, especially post twenty twenty, but why was the
conservative movement not targeting legislation like this? Wasn't you know why we're policy solutions
like these not on the table at the conservative movement for so long, despite
the fact that there are so many organizations in the conservative movement and there has
been so much conversation the conservative movements since William of Buckley largely founded it about
the academy, about the corruption of the university system. I think because conservative
politicians felt a sense of fear. I think because conservative politicians, you know,
were persuaded incorrectly in my view, that the culture War was not something
that was substantive or important. And then I think also because conservatives who had
fought on these issues for many, many decades, had consistently lost on these
issues. And so if you're a politician, or you're ambitious, or you
want to make a name for yourself, you know, why would you pick
up a set of losing issues that you weren't sure was worth fighting that could
you had had high risk and low return. And the reason that I think
that everything changed was first and foremost, um, the country changed dramatically after
twenty twenty, the George Floyd riots, critical race theory, gender ideology,
the real clear understanding that our institutions had been captured by these ideas. And
I think it also created an opening for some some political creativity, some activisms,
a lot of the projects that I've been working on to actually turn these
ideas into winning ideas for conservatives. And then when we had these great leaders
like Governor to Santus in Florida and others demonstrate that, uh, that that
not only were these important issues to work on, but they actually made you
more popular. They got you in the headlines, They rallied the base,
they galvanized voters, they won over swing voters. UM. Certainly Glen Youngcan
in Virginia won his campaign on critical race theory in twenty twenty one. UM.
You know, politicians are our creatures of opportunity, and so we created
the conditions through the narrative work, through the activist work, through the journalistic
work, for politicians to win. And what I've learned, like the biggest
lesson I've learned about politics, is create the conditions for politicians to win,
and they're going to do what you desire and and and it's in a sense,
channeling self interest into a productive and mutually beneficial arrangement or system of incentives.
And that's kind of it. I don't I don't know, maybe it's
maybe it's more complex than that, but that's how I think of it,
and I think, you know, in my experience, it's worked. I
just read the great Mary Harrington's review of the book right before we started taping.
I gave it a glance, and it's largely positive. She has one
point where she says, you know, the book basically could have had more
on what conditions speaking of conditions created an opening. Its actually used the same
language for the new Left and the contemporary left to have people rioting in the
streets in nineteen sixty eight and in twenty twenty. And I'm paraphrasing Mary,
that's son exactly how she said it. I'm sort of taking extending the argument.
And that's an interesting question because it gets to what conservatives can be doing
in the future. You know, is there something This is probably a fair
question because the book does touch so much on class appropriately, so is there
something the conservative movement that the Republican Party needs to do on the economic question
to make critical race theory less palatable to people from coast to coast on economics,
I don't think so. I don't think that people feel one way or
another about critical race theory because of economic conditions or their own economic fortunes.
I'm not sure that you'd find a lot of argument there. I think actually,
one thing that I really hope conservatives can do, and it's a great
question to head off some of these dynamics, to kind of take the legs
out from underneath them is more of a demographic and political coalition question. And
um, what I think conservatives have a huge opportunity to do right now is
to split what we could. You know, what has traditionally been called the
minority vote. So people say, oh, it's the minority vote, it's
a it's a voting block. It goes left, you know, kind of
non whites. You know, originally in our kind of demographic history mostly you
know, predominantly white and black population. Now you have a white and multiracial
population. But we think of minority voters as a block. That that's not
true. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Asian Americans and Hispanics and
Latinos are are very much open to the message from conservatives on a number of
issues. And we've had elections even in places like Boston, New York,
San Francisco where Asians have broken hard towards conservative play is like Florida and Texas
where Latinos have broken hard towards conservatives. And so I think that if conservatives
can make a concerted push to win over the most gettable votes, that's kind
of how you where you have to line up, but specifically with Asians and
Latinos, if you can, if you can have a broad, you know,
multiracial political coalition, you can sap the entire narrative energy and advantage that
the left has, which is to say, you know, essentially the critical
race theory whiteness is evil, and you know bipoc are are are great and
virtuous. They've created that division that has been successfully for them, successful for
them rhetorically. But if you can say that no, no, no,
this is not a pure kind of white non white question or a pure kind
of racially tribal question, you depolarize that that conflict, which I think is
good for the country, and you also deprive your opponents of a rhetorical tool,
and in fact, you can build a broader base of support that is
less vulnerable to that line of critique, both substantively and also rhetorically. And
so I think conservatives need to do that. And Asians of Latinos are of
course also a fast growing demographic and I think going to be one that is
determining elections. So that, to me is the most important thing that political
leaders need to be working on. I think there's a huge opportunity there.
One area that just fills me with despair is thinking about litigating so much of
this over social media, and yet you've been really successful social media seems to
me like it's been a net benefit to the cause of eradicating critical race theory
from in so many institutions that have embedded itself in without the public necessarily realizing
it. So I wonder just on that super almost it's almost a silly question,
but do you think social media has been overall helpful or full in the
fight against CRT and basically the broader cultural left that you describe in the book.
I think social social media is essential and it's the most powerful tool that
we have as conservatives. And while of course I share everyone's concern about censorship,
about deep platforming, about you know, whatever kind of machinations you know,
people are trying to do to suppress conservative voices, the real truth,
the kind of bedrock reality of the situation, is that conservatives have more ability
to reach the public today than they've ever had before. And even though we
don't have the mainstream media institutions on our side, we can bypass them and
in a way that is just unprecedented and offers us huge advantage and conservatives too.
We thrive on low cost communications methods. Talk radio is the one in
the eighties and nineties. The Internet is the one for the you know,
twenty twenty, twenty twenties, and so I know in my own experience,
but also my observation that this is an essential tool that we have to master
and offers us really unlimited opportunities. You know, that's interesting because from my
perspective, one of the reasons Marxism starts to catch I mean, obviously this
is an industrial era, industrial revolution era philosophy, but then a lot of
the reasons some of the starts catching tractions because the effects of industrialization that are
negative. I'm obviously not saying they're all negative, but the ones that are
create conditions that make it really easy for miserable people to flock to a moral
relativism. You know, if you are starting, because of technology to a
question objective reality and objective truth, that lays the groundwork for people who are
saying or have really bad philosophies to come in, and because you see your
truth versus another person's truth, it's just easier to gravitate towards bad ideas.
And I feel like social media really creates those conditions just psychologically, especially for
young people who grow up you know, without landlines even and in the age
where by fens just sort of in the air. And you're a dad,
so you probably have a little bit more insight into this than I do.
But it seems like just on a psychological level, social media is sort of
dangerous in that terrain. Yeah, for sure, Yeah, certainly. And
my comments before, you know, we we have political opportunities. I think
there's huge potential. It's an essential tool, but of course, you know,
like everything else, that comes also with some costs, and we're seeing
those costs, and I think that politicians are becoming more comfortable with figuring out
how to you know, restrict or regulate social media. I know that as
a father, I restrict and regulate social media in the sense that my kids
don't have any devices. They don't have to sell the phones, they don't
have you know, you know, they have a little TV time, everyone's
little while movies like nineties movies that I let them a I. Um,
you know, we're like getting really into Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Ninja Turtles and
all that. But but you know, it's a question, you know,
of how you use it. It's a question for what ends, um,
But it is a reality that we have to grapple with and and and I
kind of, you know, in my personal life maybe maybe have a bit
different policy than in my political life, where I'm very very online. UM.
But for the questions we're talking about today, UM, I just think
that we need to have strength messaging. The movement needs to get more sophisticated.
UM. And in the way we communicate. UM. I think that
there's so much room for improvement. UM. And I hope that as many
people have told me, and I don't think I'm you know, being boastful,
but they said, hey, you know, I've learned a lot watching
you work and watching your activism go from social media to the actual real political
world. And so I'm hoping that I can, you know, even teach
others in our sphere some of the lessons that I've learned, you know.
And you're a part of catching Gunald Trump's attention on embedded CRT in the federal
bureaucracy. And if you combine Trump and de Santis in polling right now,
that's like seventy percent of the Republican Party, about fifty percent of it to
Donald Trump, about twenty percent of it to run to Santis. So I
feel like the sentiment when it comes to this sort of cultural leftism embedded in
our bureaucracy, embedded in our institutions is now mainstream, and the Republican Party
so on that. No, Chris, I want to ask you what you
think Republicans are still doing wrong when it comes to sort of defeating the cultural
left. There is the party? Is the Republican Party? Is the conservative
movement still getting some key things? Any key things wrong? Yeah? No,
I mean I think your your point is is great, and I think
you know Trump and de Santis are both ready willing and able to fight the
culture war. I think if either of them gets into office, they'll be
working hard on these issues. I'm, of course I'm supporting Governor to Santis.
I've worked closely with him. I also worked with President Trump and his
team, and I still know many of his advisors and have good relationships there.
But they know what the fight is and that's why voters are responding to
them. But yet we still have some of these kind of old school Republicans
and in the Nicky Haley vein of things that just don't get it. And
it's like I remember watching Nicky Haley's campaign launch and the whole thing was you
know, I'm a minority woman. Hear me, roar. The left is
so terrified of me because they've never seen a minority woman, you know,
with her high heels on, you know, stomping out, you know thet
It's like, what are you doing? You aren't giving an identity politics frame
to your campaign which seems, you know, sassy and bold on the surface,
but actually concedes the entire premise of your argument to your opponents. And
guess what if that's your frame is you know, who is more identity?
You know they're going to win every time. Ultimately, they don't give a
they don't give two. You know, they don't care at all about your
actual identity. You know, they'll they'll say that you're the black face of
white supremacy if they have to. Right, do you think you're going to
out identity politics that left Nikki Haley? No? And then you say,
well, what are your actual policies? And it's like unlimited warfare all over
the planet, um and and then and then you know, but don't intervene
when when they're they're giving pornography to kids in public schools. It's like these
folks are insane. They want to intervene militarily in other countries, but they
don't want to intervene uh politically in our own institutions at home. It's just
that whole faction of the of the Republican Party deserves to be buried in salted
over for good. That just is not going to cut it anymore. Well,
and as recently as ten years ago, that was really the mainstream,
and we look at the Republican Party's autopsy in twenty twelve, this is very
much mainstream here in Washington, DC. It was absolutely the winning the day
in the Republican Party, and actually to suggest otherwise would have been incredibly contrarian.
And so I guess on that, like, that's where I want to
ask, why do you think it is that you stepped in with fresh perspective
and and part helped rebrand some of these conversations, like very staid attacks on
the left and the cultural left in particularly the conservative movement has sort of been
attached to, but wasn't winning with Well, why do you think just on
a personal level, you had fresh perspective that sort of moved the ball forward.
Yeah, I mean, certainly up for others to decide, but I
would say venture a personal guest. I think a lot of it has to
do with the fact that, you know, I am as a younger person,
I was on the left, so I know how how they think.
I know the ideas, I know the weaknesses. I've lived in those kind
of environments for a long time. And then also, my background is not
the traditional you know, um you know, you know Washington intern background,
you know road tie, you know, you know, country club background.
I actually worked as a documentary filmmaker for many years and developed some storytelling skills,
narrative skills, language skills that were kind of wildly different than what you'd
get in a you know, Republican staffer, you know, break room.
And I think that those those those messages and stories and narratives that I was
able to build the last few years, were able to scramble the left defenses,
really get behind enemy lines and then land some really vicious blows against their
their ideology, against their institutions in a way that they were not prepared to
counter because no one had come at them in that manner. Yeah, and
I think Ryan, after reading the book, was surprised at how fluently you
speak the language of the Left. And that's incredibly important because they have I
mean, it is a different language. And on that note, I actually
wanted to ask you about queer theory because there's sort of a the left of
somewhat baffled or the center somewhat baffled right now, and how the tea being
attached to the LGB suddenly seems to have initiated backlash to just Pride as talk
about a brand. The brand of Pride, which was pretty popular with Americans
has suddenly become controversial again, and that seems to be thanks in large part
to the tea. A lot of people might wonder how CRT and queer theory
are connected. You were just talking about pornography. People might wonder how CRT
and Marx and Marcus are are related, but actually they really are you right
about it? CRT as the sort of uber discipline. What is what is
the influence of queer theory and how is it attached to this kind of broader
issue of CRT. Yeah, it's it's it's actually a really interesting intellectual history,
and queer theory and critical race theory emerge on parallel tracks. Their origins
are not they don't share the same origins. They're they're the kind of intellectual
children of different lineages, but they've managed to come into this coalition. Of
course, and the coalition for the left is race and sex. Both are
the two big issues. So critical race theory and queer theory have become the
dominant ideologies on those two axes. And sometimes it works together, sometimes it's
at odds or in contradiction. And I think that queer theory comes more from
the postmodern vein. That's very clear in their literature, um and and queer
theory is more interested in transgression, is interested in in violating sexual norms.
Yeah, oh yeah, I mean it's all fuco and and so that's when
you get things like quite different. You know, Andrew Sullivan when he was
fighting for gay marriage, a lot of different opinions about it, but his
argument was, well, you know, gay couples want to assimilate to middle
class bourgeois norms and have the same civil protections as everyone else. I think
that is, you know, turn out to be with some kind of legal
maneuvering and Supreme Court decisions or interventions, depending on how you look at it,
fairly persuasive to people. But then you have the kind of queer theory
camp that comes in and they says, yeah, but what we really want
to do is kind of create schools, turn schools into you know, quote
unquote queer spaces, and to explore queer sexualities and to provide students with new
gender pronouns and and boutique sexualities, and then to share books like this book
is Gay that teaches them how to use gay sex apps, or gender Queer
which depicts, you know, of pedophilia and explicit sex. And and then
some parents are saying, hey, wait a minute. You know, I
know that you know, Tim and Bob are the you know, the married
couple that live next door. They seem to be, you know, doing
fine, not not hurting anyone. But why is you know, my my
child elementary school teacher now suddenly, you know, bringing pornography into the classroom.
Um. And that's that raises a lot of questions that I think activists,
even on the left, UM, have tried to avoid answering. But
I think eventually they're going to have to start answering, um, what is
the relationship between all those two things? And that'll be a very interesting conversation
once it gets started. My last question for you Chris Is, if you
were sitting with Nicky Haley and explaining to her, Um, you know,
you're trying to take this academic argument and take it to somebody who frankly wants
to win elections. Nicki Haley, Tim Scott, they want to win elections.
Goverbd Asa Hutchinson wants to win elections, and they're, you know,
actually using a really outdated way of talking about this that's both morally wrong but
also politically disadvantageous. So if you had to explain to them, this is
what I think Ron des Stantis really gets. He understands the stakes, he
understands exactly what you just explained, that these are connected. But if you
had to explain to Nicki Haley why you can't out identity the left based on
this, let's just say, the argument of the book itself and the work
that you've done, what would you tell her to convince her that she's wrong
both. I mean, I think that would be a very difficult job,
given how committed she is to that that way of framing things. And I
think what I would explain to her is that rhetorically, I mean substantively,
I could explain to her all day why it's a mistake in position. But
even just rhetorically calculating in partisan political benefit or immediate political benefit, I could
say, you know what, there's maybe an immediate gratification to deploying that kind
of rhetoric, but you're never going to actually win with that kind of hic
And so you have to actually go higher than your opponents. You have to
take the moral ground that is above the framing that they offer. And and
do you want to be the kind of person that is given a set of
ideas by your enemies and then tries to defeat them with those ideas, or
do you want to have a set of ideas that is so far above how
they're thinking that that if you reframe the debate on that higher ground, you
will inevitably destroy them. Um, you know, I think, you know.
I mean maybe then you'd also have to maybe hypnotizer and keep program the
Reagan brain or I don't know what it is, but I got to be
hard. I would maybe bring in some kind of you know, some expert
psychologists to help, But but that's kind of the basic for ust of what
I would try to explain. I was gonna say, you would probably have
to promise that if she gives up the identity politics, we can invade a
country. We will give you one invasion Canada. Yeah, exactly. Actually
I was I had to do one more quick question for you, and I
suspect this one will be really quick. I'm sure. I know you've worked
with a lot of Republican lawmakers. I am just have this morbid curiosity right
now to know if any Democrats, as you've become more and more high profile,
have reached out any elected Democrats, democratic candidates, democratic organizations have reached
out to sort of talk through some of this and get your advice on any
of it at all. No, unfortunately, No, I've had many individual
Democrats, right I reach out, of course, say hey, I'm a
Democrat, but this stuff is just out of you know, out of out
of control, um. But institutionally I have not you know, my my
my door is open. I would love to talk to Democrats, but we're
just in a very um polarized political, uh and institutional setup right now.
So UM, I don't worry about it. It's like, you know,
we need to win where we can win using the methods and and coalitions we
have available. But I'm certainly open to that and if you have any any
recommendations. Absolutely. Chris Rubo is the author of the new book America's Cultural
Revolution, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. It's out now. You should
absolutely buy it. It's a great read. He's also with the Manhattan Institute.
You can follow his work there. Chris, thank you so much for
joining the show. Thank you so much. You've been listening to another edition
of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski, culture editor here at the
Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, the lovers of
freedom and anxious for the Fray