CV NEWS FEED // Two days after Harvard ex-President Claudine Gay resigned, conservative scholar Christopher Rufo penned an essay outlining several ways people can continue to push back against leftist control of institutions.
“First Harvard, then America,” he wrote in a Thursday X post linking to the piece. “The fight has now begun.”
Rufo has been a longtime critic of both Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology. He made headlines last month for bringing to light the plagarisim allegations that precipitated Gay’s resignation.
“The Right is reorganizing,” Rufo wrote in the Thursday essay subtitled “A Manifesto for the Counterrevolution.” The “manifesto” was published by the magazine IM–1776.
“Most intelligent conservatives, especially younger conservatives, who joined the political fray at a moment of sweeping ideological change, already recognize that familiar orthodoxies are no longer viable, and that ideas without power are useless,” he continued:
What [the Right] needs is a spirited new activism with the courage and resolve to win back the language, recapture institutions, and reorient the state toward rightful ends.
…
The world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism is gone, and conservatives must grapple with the world as it is — a status quo that requires not conservation, but reform, and even revolt.
Rufo made frequent reference to the emerging grassroots and largely youth-driven elements of the conservative movement, which he called the “New Right.” He contrasted the New Right with the more libertarian-leaning “establishment.”
“For fifty years,” he explained, “establishment conservatives have been retreating from the great political tradition of the West — republican self-government, shared moral standards, and the pursuit of eudaimonia, or human flourishing — in favor of half-measures and cheap substitutes.”
“Following a libertarian line, the conservative establishment has argued that government, state universities, and public schools should be ‘neutral’ in their approach to political ideals,” Rufo wrote. “But no institution can be neutral — and any institutional authority aiming only for neutrality will immediately be captured by a faction more committed to imposing ideology.”
“In reality, public universities, public schools, and other cultural institutions have long been dominated by the Left,” he went on. “Conservative ideas and values have been suppressed, conservative thinkers have been persecuted, and the conservative establishment has deluded itself with impotent appeals to neutrality.”
Later in his piece, Rufo took aim at the phrases “free marketplace of ideas” and “invisible hand.” These mantras are both often used by the libertarian wing of the American right to explain opposition to socially conservative policies.
“The chief vectors for the transmission of values — the public school, the public university, and the state — are not marketplaces at all,” Rufo argued. “They are government-run monopolies. In truth, the hand that moves culture is not an ‘invisible hand’ but an iron hand clad in velvet — that is, political force.”
Rufo outlined that his proposed “New Right activism must focus its efforts on three domains: language, institutions, and ends.”
“As the Gospels state, In the beginning was the Word — and this is true also in politics,” he wrote:
To change the language means to change society: in law, arts, rhetoric, or common speech. The Right must build a new vocabulary to overcome the regime’s euphemistic rule, which enacts abuse of power through abuse of language. The point is to replace contemporary ideological language with new, persuasive language that points toward clear principles.
“From language begins a longer process of legitimation,” he stated. “Institutions are where the word becomes flesh.”
He added:
Conservatives can no longer be content to serve as the caretakers of their enemies’ institutions, or as gadflies who adopt the posture of the “heterodox” while signaling to their left-wing counterparts that they have no desire to disrupt the established hegemony. Rather, the New Right needs to move from the politics of pamphlets to the governance of the institutions.
Rufo highlighted the importance of the political right being rooted in the vast majority of its members’ faith in God.
“[T]he Right still has access to the language of ends — the language of God,” he wrote. “My conviction is that ends will ultimately triumph over means; men will die for truth, liberty, and happiness, but will not die for efficiency, diversity, and inclusion.”
“As the battle begins, we will learn and adapt,” he concluded. “But one thing is clear: the fight is here.”
Per the think tank’s website, Rufo “is a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.”
Readers can find his full essay here.
