Thread by @deonteleologist

So, I read Rufo's "Critical Race Theory Briefing Book." It's not exactly surprising, of course. But it's worse than I anticipated. Rufo hits four out of five of the key tenets of White supremacist victim ideology.

Time for a thread. 🧵

To orient ourselves, it's worth remembering that Rufo is shamelessly lying about what CRT is. He has in fact told the world that this is his goal: to mislead the American public by turning it into a one-size-fits-all "culture war stuff I hate" label.

This doesn't excuse any of his lying of course, it just helps us understand what he is actually trying to accomplish.

Here's his attempt at a definition. Red highlights, throughout this thread, denote blatant falsehoods.

His additional sources here: both authored by himself.

One especially annoying aspect of Rufo's writing is that he will acknowledge devastating criticisms but try to hand-waive them away, as he does in his description of the alleged essentialism of CRT.

Also worth noting the first sentence in the DiAngelo quote is fabricated.

Even if one steelmans, Rufo perennially relies on the same fallacy: he takes one scholar's controversial opinions and attributes them to CRT as a whole, despite the fact, as Crenshaw reminds us, "there is no canonical set of doctrines or methodologies to which we all subscribe.”

This is so far from the truth. CRT is interested in how institutions and systems prop up White supremacy, in how racism transcends the interpersonal level of beliefs, attitudes, and desires.

Furthermore, "complicity" is not a psychological notion.

Here we see the first of another crucial fallacy for Rufo: deliberately confusing the descriptive & the normative. CRT scholars are NOT opposed to a society with equal rights for all. That's the dream we all want to live in. They reject the notion that we already live there.

Here's @sandylocks explaining that point quite clearly.

The same exact issue as the previous screenshot comes up here. In theory, if we could have a perfect meritocracy, I see no reason CRT scholars would object to it. Their point is that we don't have a meritocratic system, and racism is partly why -- hence "the myth of meritocracy."

Once again, we go back to the fallacy of attributing a CRT scholar's beliefs to all CRT scholars. Indeed some CRT scholars don't believe 1A protects hate speech. This is really not much more radical than existing precedents such as the "fighting words" doctrine.

Here is where things start to get extremely concerning. Rufo is willfully misrepresenting CRT to push the absolutely deranged "White genocide" conspiracy theory. His quotes are from Ignatiev, who isn't a CRT scholar. Here are Ignatiev's clarifications:

Note also how Rufo's inclusion of Ignatiev as a critical race theorist completely undermines other commitments he attributes to CRT. Ignatiev is quite transparently anti-essentialist and he denies outright that all or even most White people are racist.

CRT scholars endorse segregation? That's interesting. I'm pretty sure Derrick Bell, founding father of CRT, was deeply invested in the NAACP's integration campaign.

Note here that NEITHER of the sources are even from academics at this point. Just pure bad faith.

Rufo claims CRT scholars call for a FORCED REDISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY. Absolute nonsense. Everyone should read Cheryl Harris' "Whiteness as Property," it's truly a masterful essay. It absolutely does not do what Rufo claims. This is pure fearmongering & stoking White resentment.

Rufo concludes by telling his audience to be more like him: don't have any regard for the truth; the function of language is not to represent reality, but to gain political power. Manipulate. Distort. Do whatever it takes.

Now, remember that thing I mentioned at the beginning of the thread about White supremacist victim ideology? Let's take a closer look at that, given everything Rufo has claimed.

The first tenet, popularized by David Duke in his anti-AA crusades, claims White people are being discriminated against by policies that benefit racial minorities. This trope is present throughout--e.g. "CRT says the solution to past discrimination is present discrimination."

The second, which Rufo also affirms, is that Whites are being denied their civil rights. This pops up in many ways for Rufo--e.g., the claim CRT is actually AGAINST civil rights, that it advocates forced racial segregation, wants to take Whites' property away, etc.

Rufo doesn't affirm#3, the belief that Whites should be allowed to be proud of their whiteness. But he does affirm the fourth, the claim that White people suffer from lowered self-esteem bc of anti-White bias. This is evident in his claims about CRT promoting white guilt.

And fifth, of course, is the notion of White genocide, the elimination/extermination of the white race. Rufo has invoked this explicitly not only in this "book," but also in several other places, always based on lies about what CRT or ethnic studies scholars have written.

CORRECTION: The quote is not fabricated, it comes from DiAngelo’s 2011 article, not her much more popular book. Thanks @EncyPolitica for pointing this out.

How much does Rufo hate CRT? Why is he so willing to push White supremacist conspiracy theories for the sake of clout? Well, he is a one issue voter, as he explains here to Dave Rubin. Why does he have so much raging hatred for an academic movement? Your guess is as good as mine.

This man went from Seattle nobody who runs for city council on a platform of contempt for the homeless to one of the most influential propagandists for the GOP.

Rufo nearly single-handedly created the moral panic surrounding CRT in K-12 schools. (He had a fair amount of help from James Lindsay.)

He's nothing but a professional bullshitter. See here if you want more evidence than this thread can provide. [fin] conceptualdisinformation.substack.com/p/chris-rufo-p…

Honorable mention for his role in the moral panic has to go to @sullydish. How could I forget?