Slipping the Right a Rufo

There is a stark divide on the American right separating supporters and opponents of Israel. The anti-Israel sentiment of the “far” right originates in opposition to Jewish power and influence, what we’re conditioned to call “anti-Semitism”. Here at least the charge “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism” is apt. On the near side of respectability is the pro-Israel right, comprised of conservative Jews, every right-leaning politician and anyone with public ambition of any sort, leading a dwindling number of non-Jews still bamboozled into thinking affinity for Israel is warranted and reciprocated–now aging out to the snarling paroxysms of Sean Hannity. Some might characterize this latter group as “cucks” or “simps”, suckers akin to the Yiddish freier; the oblivious and manipulated mass necessary to any great political movement. Keeping them gulled and gaslighting the next generation to replace them is a necessity growing in difficulty as trust in the traditional media evaporates and alternative media abounds–exposing the pernicious nature of our relationship to Israel. Censorship, as we see, is not enough. Resentment of Israel and its control over foreign policy threatens critical mass.

But for the moment on the right the pro-Israel side is respectable but largely dishonest, and the anti-Israel side is honest but entirely disreputable. Nearly the only thing the two share is an opposition to the current revolution taking over American institutions through applied critical theory, or “wokism”, an opposition that is beginning to infiltrate the center left. But the chasm Israel has cleaved through our polity and society extends to the left, where it intersects wokism, another fissure dividing us (and in no small part the work of the Diaspora). In this way the far right and the progressive left find themselves faced off against the pro-Israel center right and center left; the woke split runs perpendicular to the Israel divide, dissecting the field into four isolated quadrants.

Not, of course, that the anti-Israel side would represent an alliance without wokism; right and left arrived at the same place from opposite directions and with opposite goals. In the first months of the anti-Israel protests there were some naive attempts on the far right to establish an alliance with the Arab and Muslim opponents of Israel, but the notion appears to be a non-starter. Needless to say there is no question of a far-right/far-left alliance in opposition to Israel’s dominance of US foreign policy. I suspect there’s nascent anti-Semitism brewing on the far left after the last year of Israeli brutality, cheered on by sadistic Jewish supporters here–one can always hope after all–but time is short.

For the left opposition to Zionism and Israel’s “apartheid state” is a logical piece of the woke bundle, originating in opposition to colonialism and in the same concern for the oppressed by which they’ve strayed into “trans rights”, radical feminism, Marxism–actual and cultural–black idolatry kitsch, identity politics…whatever comes next.

They are consistent. Despite the pro-Zionists’ characterization of them as antisemitic, they are more accurately described as anti-white or anti-western. In fact if anyone is capable of separating Zionism from Judaism it’s white leftists, who see in Zionism the modern manifestation of western colonialism while also seeing Jews as the apex identity atop the hierarchy of oppressed peoples without straining their eyes in the slightest.

But the spector of white ethno-masochists aligned with non-white ethno-advocates united in their resentment of the west protesting Israel provides an opportunity to Israel’s loyal proxies on the American right, an opportunity to conflate opposition to Israel with wokism and hatred of whites and the west. Some of them even seem to believe it.

Cue Chris Rufo in Compact:

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war more than a year ago, perplexing forms of open anti-Semitism have cropped up on both sides of the political aisle. First visible on the political left with an eruption of protests and even of violence on Ivy League campuses, it also appeared soon enough on the political right.

What has transpired is a complex story about the academy and the internet, the elite and the fringes—one that we must confront directly as it reveals something rotten in our politics. This concerning trajectory can only be changed through the restoration of higher principles that once kept these threats in check. In the face of dangerous identity-based ideologies, it is crucial to return to America’s historic defense of colorblindness, meritocracy, and fair play.

Left-wingers have participated in anti-Israel and pro-Hamas agitation, in some cases even defending the Hamas militants who massacred approximately some 1,200 innocents, including at a music festival. Keffiyeh-clad student protesters captured buildings at Columbia, eventually setting off a wave of copycat flashpoints at other universities. Elites institutions like Harvard—which previously had issued statements on political controversies ranging from Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to the war in Ukraine—suddenly went silent on the Israel-Hamas war in the name of protecting freedom of speech.

Rufo has made a name for himself making war on the DEI regime, wokism and its enforcement arm “cancel culture”; then October 7 happened. More to the point Israel commenced the current slaughter in Gaza, prompting the subsequent wave of anti-Israel protests on university campuses. Suddenly the language and tactics of cancel culture were everywhere on the pro-Israel right: Jewish students were made “unsafe” by the language of pro-Palestinian protesters precisely in the same way minorities and trans students are said to be threatened by the presence of right-wing speakers or fellow students. Authorities, in this case university administrators, were complicit by not denying the radicals freedom of assembly. The “stochastic terrorism” concept was invoked in everything but name.

The “violence” Rufo asserts above is difficult to find: we do know the universities responded in a heavy-handed fashion that bears no resemblance to their inaction and tacit or overt support for the George Floyd protests of 2020, which involved no end of property destruction and were of a whole with deadly riots throughout the country. At UCLA police stood down as pro-Israel students attacked an anti-Israel encampment. Columbia called police to break up another–something that would have been unthinkable in the case of BLM or similarly left-wing protests.

So the most salient point of comparison between 2020 and now is how quickly the universities folded to pressure leveled by Jewish donors and groups–the same people who responded to 2020’s mayhem with silence or vocal support for BLM–bringing the hammer down on anti-Israel protests.

Note how free speech goes from sacrosanct to suspect when Rufo laments how adiminstrators “went silent…in the name of protecting freedom of speech”, just as it does for the radical left, and with the same rationalization that the protected group, minorities in one case, Israelis and Jews in the other, occupy a special and sacred place by virtue of their suffering.

Making it all the more ironic Rufo appears to be of that class anti-racist conservatives seeking to circumvent white political advocacy by denouncing it as “the woke right”, or identity politics and cancel culture for white people. Rufo of course made his mark in the campaign to silence the anti-Israel protests when he took down Harvard president Claudine Gay by exposing the DEI-hire’s history of plagiarism in alliance with billionaire donor Bill Ackman and rabidly pro-Israel Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York (top contributor AIPAC, naturally) who led a series of congressional hearings of university heads for their failure “to sufficiently condemn student protests calling for ‘Jewish genocide’ “, referring of course to the phrase “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” which is a call for a single democratic state of Israel making “the Jewish State” untenable. Meanwhile Israel engages in its program of extending the Jewish State from the river to the sea through bombardment and settlement–actual genocide.

Rufo’s piece has the clumsy feel of something rushed to print to satisfy a benefactor (further muddying things we now learn George Soros is funding Compact magazine, which fronts at least as a conservative outlet) and the thrust of the piece is a call for more censorship in favor of Israel, just as Bill Ackman has been calling and increasingly paying for, through his donations and newfound support for Donald Trump.

Meanwhile there is another campaign within the pro-Israel right seeking to commandeer the racism of whites justly resentful of the privileging of non-whites the left has achieved through oppression narratives, notable with the new enthusiasm for the old ideas of Steve Sailer and his “human biodiversity” approach countering those leftist narratives with proof of uneven racial distribution of IQ; this appears now on the scene as if ready-made to justify both Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians and Jewish subjugation of the west, and Steve’s new generation of champions is disproportionately Jewish and elitist, of course, if not always openly.

And now clumsy Chris seems to have discovered this angle:

These institutions have failed to keep in check the simplistic oppressor-versus-oppressed ideology that undergirds the worldview of today’s left. The provincial-minded elites that call the shots in these institutions tend to filter every conflict through this ideological lens, looking primarily to skin color and then power dynamics as the main criteria for judging the rectitude of a cause. Palestinians, with their slightly darker skin tone and less developed economy and military, fit the “oppressed” mold, thus making the Jewish state their “oppressor.” 

Chris goes on; boldface is mine, obliviousness is Rufo’s (also note the HBD-based justification for Jewish actions in the last sentence):

Though this line of thought dates back to the 1960s (think of the Black Panthers’ alliance with the Palestinian cause), this is the first time that it has come to dominate discourse on university campuses. This is thanks in part to the collapse of intellectual diversity on campus. But it also has attracted numerous students and professors because of the prevalence of victim worship and the subsequent resentment toward successful groups. In their eyes, Palestinians are a kind of eternal victim. A pseudo-historical narrative tells us they have been victimized for time everlasting, and lack any agency in their own fate. Ironically, the oppression of the Jews dates back to biblical times, yet American Jews are one of the most successful groups in academia and other intellectual professions. The success of a minority group throws a wrench into the left’s narrative gears.

I guess antisemitism as “the oldest hate” was actually referring to another group of semites.

Chris Brunet worked with Rufo on the Claudine Gay story but has subsequently fallen out with him. He too seems convinced Rufo is now entirely a mouthpiece for powerful benefactors; here he is posting Nick Fuentes videos on his substack on the subject.