Christopher Rufo's Take on the Problems on the Right (Candace Owens)

This past week, Christopher Rufo waded briefly into the "intra-Right" conflict that broke out between Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, and which ended with Candace Owens leaving The Daily Wire.

Here's his extensive tweet:

I generally avoid intra-Right conflict, but the ongoing Daily Wire-Candace Owens dispute is an important moment for the Right, which, I believe, merits comment.

First, it's not a violation of "free speech" to let a multimillion-dollar contract expire, which is reportedly what…

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 5, 2024

Here's the full statement:

I generally avoid intra-Right conflict, but the ongoing Daily Wire-Candace Owens dispute is an important moment for the Right, which, I believe, merits comment.

First, it's not a violation of "free speech" to let a multimillion-dollar contract expire, which is reportedly what happened. The Daily Wire is not obligated to subsidize Candace Owens's speech, especially if she is deviating from the publication's editorial standard or causing problems for the business. DW is not an open platform such as YouTube, Facebook, X, etc., and the owners of a publication are under no obligation to subsidize someone whose trust and friendship they no longer enjoy. Owens spent months taking public shots at @benshapiro and @JeremyDBoreing, which is a tacit request to get canned and then play the martyr.

Owens is a gifted speaker, who has been able to turn controversy into attention—a valuable capability—but she does not advance a serious politics. She is clearly traveling down an ugly, but, unfortunately, well-trodden path. She has rationalized Kanye West's antisemitic rants, speculated about Jewish gangs murdering people in Hollywood, accused @BariWeiss of being a CIA asset, and claimed that Emmanuel Macron's wife is a man. There is an audience for this kind of material—Inforwars does a robust business in vitamins and emergency prep kits—but it's a political dead end.

Why does this matter? Because the Right faces an inflection point. There are serious people who are trying to advance a serious political movement with a vision for governing—I consider the Daily Wire to be among them. And there are unserious people who are willing to sell kayfabe and conspiracy, leading us nowhere. I care about politics because I believe we have substantive work to do for the country. This requires putting together a coalition that is capable of taking responsibility. The choice is ours.

First, let me state my views on Candace Owens:

1. She is very well-spoken

2. She is well-researched on a number of topics.

3. She is photogenic, which contributes to her charisma, her appeal

4. She is a strong self-promoter

5. She interviews incendiary people and takes incendiary positions to get attention.

6. Ultimately, she got lots of attention because she was an articulate black conservative, and conservative influencers lionized her for more likes, views, and shares.

I have lost a great deal of respect for Candace Owens. She is more interested in making a name for herself than making a difference. She was the face of a somewhat broad movement on the right, Blexit, but what was the result of this movement? Did black voters become Republicans? Did they vote Republican in larger numbers? Did they more strongly embrace our country's civic culture and history?

According to final data from Election 2020, regardless of how disputed the election results remain, the black vote did not shift considerably in Trump's favor. All the government handouts didn't make a difference, and all the diversity rhetoric didn't really matter.

As for Blexit, Candace O made lots of dough, but not much else was accomplished. How many black voters were registered? How many of them registered as Republicans? Do we have any data on these outcomes?

Recently, she began attacking the The Daily Wire and support for Israel. She had the audacity to accuse Israel of being an apartheid state, of resegregating the different ethnic populations in Jerusalem, when different ethnic quarters had existed in Jerusalem for centuries!

She also interviewed Andrew Tate and gave one of the most shameless softball interviews, similar to what Tucker Carlson had also done. Not once did she confront him on the sex-trade allegations. Not once did he push back on his insufferable arrogance. Not once did he really seek fact-finding in her interview with that very disordered man.

She wants to grift, throw bombs, engage in "engagement harvesting" to boost her profile.

And there is no better subject to stir up some populist dissidents on social media than to talk about, and talk badly about, Israel.

She jumped into that fight, she said things about Israel that are not true, Ben Shapiro corrected her, and then she played victim because he corrected her.

This is not serious conservatism. The country is not going to be saved with relentless clickbaiting and engagement harvesting. We need substantive policy achievements and true intellectual activism to turn the constitutional ship of state around.

Rufo's criticism is well-place. We need a robust cultural rebranding in this country. We need to articulate and advance key policies, not just engage in grimy grifting for a quick buck. This issue with putting profit ahead of purpose is particular to the Right, since people on the Right focus on money, economic growth, freedom, and an understandable revulsion to government power.

At this point in our history, however, we need to take back the levers of power and restore natural law and natural order in our country. Headlines, views, debates, relentless chatter are not going to fix what is ailing this country. A profound restoration of our Founding Values, and a commitment to advancing those causes, will restore this country. Candace Owens is not serious about this fight. I agree with Rufo: Shapiro and his team at The Daily Wire are more committed to this effort. Are their tactics and investments the best means for accomplishing these goals? We are still waiting to see those results.

Revolt Against the Mouse: Disney Pays the Price for Going Woke

REVOLT AGAINST THE MOUSE Our campaign against Disney has put a price on woke capital.  Two weeks ago, amid the controversy about The Walt Disney Company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, I released exclusive internal videos from Disney that revealed the company’s plans to inject gender ideology into its children’s programming. The videos drove the news cycle for more than week, generated billions of media impressions, and shifted the national debate about public education and gender ideology. More importantly, my team helped connect the story to public policy, using it as a supporting narrative for activism against woke capital. The goal was to force Disney to pay a price for transgressing the values of middle-class families and forcing left-wing gender ideology onto children. And the early evidence suggests that this campaign was a smashing success. Here are some of the outcomes: • Ensured that congressional Republicans will not vote to extend Disney’s copyrights on characters such as Mickey Mouse when they expire at the end of next year, delivering a multibillion-dollar intellectual property loss to the company. • Inspired multiple Disney employees to speak out against the company’s left-wing sexual politics, putting a countervailing internal pressure on executives. • Sparked grassroots demonstrations at Disney’s theme parks in Orlando, Florida, and Anaheim, California. • Strengthened the position of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans, who courageously stood up to Disney and passed the Parental Rights in Education Act. Following the anti-Disney backlash, some Florida legislators are even considering eliminating Disney’s special exemptions and tax breaks within the state. We are building a new model of conservative activism: waging narrative and symbolic warfare, mobilizing grassroots parent-driven protests, designing robust policies to change incentives, and supporting strong leaders who are willing stand with families against hostile and nihilistic elite institutions. As always, this activism depends on your support. Please consider becoming a $5 or $10 monthly patron and help strike a blow against woke capital. Share Tweet

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Christopher Rufo: The War on Innocence

 Christopher Rufo talks about the ongoing War on Innocence across the United States, which is happening beacause of the Critical Racist Theory and LGBT push in the public schools.

Check out his latest report on fighting this Cultural Marxist rot:

THE WAR ON INNOCENCE A Kentucky summer camp teaches "sex liberation," "BDSM," and "self-pleasure," to minors.  The principles of queer theory have escaped from the college campus and made their way into a summer camp for children in rural Kentucky. Last year, a nonprofit coalition called Sexy Sex Ed organized a series of “Sexy Summer Camp” events targeted toward minors that included lessons on “sex liberation,” “gender exploration,” “BDSM,” “being a sex worker,” “self-managed abortions,” and “sexual activity while using licit and illicit drugs.” The program is the brainchild of Tanya Turner, who calls herself a “femme, fat, queer, magical pleasure worker” who was raised by “a host of witchy women” in a “coven-like mountain matriarchy” and uses “crystals,” “sex toys,” and “tarot” in her teaching. She founded Sexy Sex Ed in 2012 and has run dozens of events across the Appalachian region, recruiting LGBTQ youth and working with a number of regional philanthropies, including the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, Southern Power Fund, Chorus Foundation, and Rise Healthy for Life, which is affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist church. According to the organization’s promotional materials, the purpose of Sexy Summer Camp is to teach “teenagers and people of all ages to openly discuss personal and political consent, sexual safety, and anatomy.” These euphemisms, however, obscure the true mission of the camp’s programming. The agenda for last year’s events, which I have obtained from the organization’s publicly available calendar, reads like the syllabus from a radical queer theory seminar. The sessions included “Sex With Me Self-Pleasure Workshop,” “Gender Diversity,” “Let’s Talk About Sex,” “Sexy Trans Sex Ed,” “The 3 P’s: Pee, Poop, and Pleasure,” “Sex on Drugs,” and “Eugenics in Appalachia.” The biographical details of the instructors reveal even more about the camp’s political orientation: one describes herself as a “radical queer mountain woman” who loves “social justice”; another calls herself a “young, nonbinary queer” who “spends time co-facilitating sex education workshops for fellow Appalachian youth”; a third identifies as a “young, fat, differently-abled, queer community organizer” who is “fighting for inclusivity for people like her.” Such a program would hardly cause a stir on the campuses of Oberlin or Barnard, but Sexy Sex Ed is hosting its programs in a deep-red state and recruiting children as young as 13 to discuss graphic sexual practices with the instructors and adult co-participants in their thirties and forties. The camp organizers have admitted that they target vulnerable youth, including foster children, who are at high risk of sexual abuse. In one video, founder Tanya Turner says, “Masturbation is really healthy, and I recommend it to people of all ages. All ages. As soon as my nephews could talk, they were doing that.” In a saner world, these statements and materials would all be red flags. Yet Sexy Summer Camp has received lavish praise in the media. Yes! magazine told readers that the program “helps rural young people feel more comfortable discussing their bodies, sex, and reproductive health to empower them to advocate for themselves.” CNN reported that Sexy Sex Ed is “what women in Appalachian Kentucky really want,” framing the summer camp as a way to “bring honest conversations to young people to fill the void left behind by homes and schools.” Programs like Sexy Summer Camp are unfortunately becoming more common in the United States. Another organization in Indiana was recently exposed for hosting a camp for children as young as eight that featured an instructor who encourages children to explore “gender identity,” “kink,” and “condom demonstration[s].” Activists have tried to launder this type of material into schools and nonprofit programs through the guise of “comprehensive sex education,” another euphemism that might lull the public into complacency. Parents should proceed with caution: summer camps, which once taught archery, fishing, and hiking, might now be teaching kink, polyamory, and BDSM. Before making summer plans for their children, families should take a close look at the curriculum and make sure it does not look like that of the Sexy Summer Camp in Kentucky. Originally published in City Journal. P.S. My work on critical race theory is shaping the national agenda. Please support it with a $5 or $10 monthly contribution here. Share Tweet

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