On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Christopher Rufo, writer, filmmaker, and director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth and Poverty, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to break down the dangers of critical race theory, the belief that the United States is irredeemably racist, and how it informs devastating and widespread cancel culture.
“We have a kind of a society-wide problem where moving away from equality towards equity, moving away from justice towards social justice, we’re creating a system of policy and practice that is antithetical to our Constitution, antithetical to the Bill of Rights, antithetical to American law,” Rufo said. “The idea on the top line is just social justice, but really if you kind of peel back the layers of ideology and you get to the core of this belief system, they’re advocating for a kind of cultural revolution, steeped in Marxism, adjusted to identity politics, and now activated through Black Lives Matter, through critical race theory, and absurdly through even corporate HR departments.”
This ideological permeation of American institutions, Rufo warned, is spurring on a dangerous cancel culture movement.
“People feel more able to freely speak their mind in China than they do in San Francisco. And it’s not because we have a kind of repressive censorship state like the Chinese Communist Party operates, although we seem to be kind of slightly edging in that direct general direction. It’s because we have a kind of culture of self-censorship and kind of a wall of fear that is maintained by the kind of arbiters of cancel culture in order to shut up the opposition,” Rufo said.
Despite the crackdown on peoples’ beliefs and speech by arbiters of this form of cultural Marxism, all hope, Rufo said, is not lost.
“We have a great country. We have a great Constitution. We have great rights that have been protected by law and by courts. And this is a kind of fad. This is a moral panic,” Rufo said. “Despite this kind of brutal surveillance state, police state gulags murders, and wiping out culture in somewhere like China, the truth and the kind of culture of the people somehow always finds a way to survive. The challenges that we’re facing today are nothing like the challenges that other people around the world face in the 20th century. That doesn’t mean we should be complacent … but the American way of life will outlive the kind of wokeness epidemic of 2020 and 2021. I’m confident of that.”
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