If you aren’t a Leftist, you must be a member of a Right-wing militia.
This level of thinking is all too common in politics, particularly but not solely on the Left.
Fewer Leftists believe this than say it, but I think it is the genuine opinion of the majority of Leftists and liberals. For people whose opinions are based on feelz not facts it is an easy trap to fall into.
Katie Campbell of KUOW, an affiliate of National Public Radio, exemplifies the way that this juvenile way of thinking has seeped into the MSM in the era of Trump.
The man who led the campaign against Claudine Gay cut his political teeth right here in Seattle. Now, he’s writing the playbook against what he calls “the [left’s] long march through institutions.”https://t.co/B38KeUceMW
— Katie Campbell (@katiecampbellwa) January 19, 2024
Campbell profiles Christopher Rufo, who is widely credited with leading the charge that eventually got Harvard President Claudine Gay out of her office (although she remains a Harvard professor for some reason). Rufo’s resume in conservative politics is much longer than that, but until he took down a member of the credentialed elite he was largely ignored by the Left.
Now he is public enemy number one and must be discredited.
So far the attacks on Rufo have had the opposite effect, revealing the utter corruption of the elite, the MSM, and the DEI crowd. Campbell manages to continue that trend by revealing her own inability to think outside a very narrow ideological box.
The particular angle Campbell takes is, perhaps, one of the most bizarre: Christopher Rufo is a traitor to the spirit of Seattle, which is supposed to be filled with Leftist automatons who mouth and act upon whatever the vanguard of the proletariate tell them to.
Seattle journalist Will James covered Rufo’s background last year for KNKX in a detailed look at how Rufo became the conservative figure he is today.
In his piece on Rufo, James — who is currently on staff at KUOW — asked this question: “How did Seattle, one of the most liberal metro areas in the U.S., incubate one of the country’s most powerful conservative influencers?”
The fact is Rufo isn’t the first such influencer-type to come out of the liberal bastion much of the country believes Seattle or the Pacific Northwest to be.
Consider Ethan Nordean, the former Proud Boy leader now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy. Members of the far-right Proud Boys, under Nordean’s authority, were among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Nordean is from the Auburn area.
Venture further back in the region’s history to the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan had a significant presence in the region, and to 1936 when far-right “Christian Party” presidential candidate William Dudley Pelley appeared on the ballot in Washington, the only state to include him. Pelley was the leader of the fascist Silver Shirts.
David Neiwert has covered this history extensively, following its evolution right up to Christopher Rufo.
“What I think actually happens in a culture like Seattle’s, where we’re kind of monochromatically liberal, is that some people feel like they need to find a way to stand out in order to make themselves special,” Neiwert said of conservative figures like Rufo, who has described himself as an “urban conservative.”
Christopher Rufo, in other words, is acting out like a teenage would, and adopting a vile White Supremacist ideology because he wants to reject the cool kids.
It never occurs to these political savants that Rufo deserves to be heard on his own merits, because there can be no merit at all if you disagree with the Seattle way. You are a Proud Boy, a KKK member, or some other form of lower-than-human being. At best you want to stand out, at worst, you want to commit genocide against a population you dislike.
The funny thing is that Rufo is actually very smart, affable, and thoughtful. He is fighting his fights–which include DEI and alphabet ideology–because they are destroying our country and ruining the lives of children. You may disagree with his reasoning–I agree wholeheartedly, but others clearly don’t–but there is nothing prejudiced about his goals.
Rufo, in fact, has put in more effort to help the downtrodden than any NPR mouthpiece. He has even been a member of the liberal media. “As a filmmaker, Rufo has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three “forgotten American cities.” His book, America’s Cultural Revolution, is an outstanding history of the modern American Left and how DEI developed and took over the Elite.
But as an NPR leftist, it never occurs to Campbell to even give a second thought to why Rufo is doing what he is doing or to take seriously his project.
He is just a bigot. A White supremacist.
Because he thinks differently.
America’s elites dismiss people who think differently, mostly because they have never had to think differently. They live in bubbles like Seattle where everybody thinks alike, and interact only with people whose level of intellectual sophistication is such that they can no longer answer the question “What is a woman.”
You should expect this level of thinking in a sophomore bull session; these days it is what passes for analysis in the MSM, where Joy Reid is considered brilliant and Kamala Harris is considered presidential material.