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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29024 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Robinson: You don't believe that Thomas Jefferson was a racist?

Rufo: It's not true. It's such a lazy reduction.

Robinson: Do you want me to quote him? [...]

Rufo: So I think to go back and say, "Oh, they're all racist." It's just so lazy.

Robinson: But it's true. It's not lazy, it's just a fact. [...] Again, it seems a way to not acknowledge that the country was founded by people who held Black people in chains and thought they were inferior.

Rufo: I acknowledge that. That's a fact. That's a historical fact. I don't see how anyone would deny that. [...] But to say that they are racist is a different claim because you're taking an ideological term and then back imposing it on them to discredit their work advancing equality. And so I think that I reject it in a linguistic frame, while acknowledging the factual basis that there was slavery.

So Rufo finds himself in a bit of a pickle. He's fully aware that he can't say "Thomas Jefferson, the man who believed blacks were inferior and held 130 of them in bondage, was not a racist" with a straight face. But simultaneously he also expends a lot of acrobatic energy trying to dodge answering a straightforward question.

I agree this makes it obvious that Rufo is refusing to abandon something indefensible because retreating is how battles are lost. I agree it's good to point this out when it happens. At the same Rufo is being quite honest that their actual disagreement is whether Thomas Jefferson should be viewed as a shitty person, so this really doesn't seem like a case of "thinking on your feet exposes the problem with your beliefs/honesty/etc." -- Rufo seems more than willing to be honest.

Robinson's insistence on only having that argument after establishing linguistically favorable footing makes Robinson seem unreasonable here. What's wrong with arguing whether a man who owned slaves and helped found America was a good person without having to use one of the most mind-killing words in all of discourse?

Might as well go around insisting that Republicans admit Hitler was "right leaning" before beginning any debate. "It's just a fact" right?

Robinson's insistence on only having that argument after establishing linguistically favorable footing makes Robinson seem unreasonable here. What's wrong with arguing whether a man who owned slaves and helped found America was a good person without having to use one of the most mind-killing words in all of discourse?

The reason they even got into this argument in the first place was prompted by this question from Robinson:

One of the things that struck me about your book is that you spent a lot of time talking about these radical theorists: here's who they are, here is the influence they've had. And then you say we need a counter-revolution. But I would have liked to see more evidence that they were wrong. Because a lot of the times when you cite something that you say is some crazy critical race theory thing, I find my reaction to be "Well, sounds like they kind of have a point." For example, you say the National Credit Union Administration told the employees America was "founded on white supremacy"; "Critical race theorists argue that America was founded on racism, slavery, white supremacy"; or Derrick Bell "attacked Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as racist hypocrites." But they were. It was founded on racism. They were racist hypocrites.

I didn't point this out but it adds another explanation for why Rufo is so motivated to avoid conceding the "Jefferson was a racist" position, because then it would necessarily follow that "maybe some CRT advocates might have a point". Now, normally this shouldn't be such a cataclysmic event but it is for Rufo because he's an activist who has seen a significant rise in his national profile precisely from speaking in absolutes like this. He can't deploy nuance and so it has to be all-out total war and CRT advocates are not just wrong, but wrong about everything.

Perception is everything in the year of 2023, Rufo conceding is the point.

What's wrong with arguing whether a man who owned slaves and helped found America was a good person without having to use one of the most mind-killing words in all of discourse?

"What's wrong" is that it would be very difficult and awkward in an interview to describe Jefferson in a way that didn't just make people reading go "oh, you're trying to say he's a racist." By any reasonable definition we have, we could consign Jefferson to the category. But Robinson may just genuinely not get that Rufo would never admit it because "Rufo admits CRT was right" is the kind of headline people would unironically parrot forever when discussing him.

Why Robinson decided to interview Rufo is beyond me, it should have been obvious that as "new" as the arguments might be, the incentives for a persona are entirely different from that of a person.

Why Robinson decided to interview Rufo is beyond me

Cause if you don't Rufo will go around insisting that the Left isn't willing to have a discussion.

I don't see anything in the Current Affairs article saying that Rufo approached Robinson.

That's usually not how it works: I doubt most people are salivating to debate Nathan Robinson in particular. But they will attack the Left, claiming it doesn't discuss things anymore and where have the good liberal leftists gone and so on. This is an old game played by right-wingers and is especially good after some form of college illiberalism is thrown their way (e.g. Shapiro, Milo).

I just heard him on Hanania and he basically said as much: the Left doesn't really do debate anymore so the goal is to make it so uncomfortable that they have to.

Rufo literally admitted to the fact. He's just not willing to capitulate on the word, for the exact same reason Democrats don't want to call the estate tax the "death tax" despite it being factually triggered by a death -- because everyone agrees on what the estate tax is and calling it a different name changes nothing about the actual substance of the disagreement. Refusing to use your opponent's loaded terminology has nothing to do with being dishonest.

The problem is that even in an entirely good-faith argument, I don't know how you could come away thinking Jefferson isn't a racist by our standards. Such an argument might also give consider what describes a person when one thinks of them generally - should you think Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father or Thomas Jefferson, racist Founding Father? Or if we have to acknowledge this bigotry in every instance.

This is why I was saying the personas mattered. Rufo's status hinges on him rejecting the philosophy of the social progressives and other radical leftists he identifies, he has every incentive to not give them an optics win. Approach Rufo in a bar with no other people and make the same argument, he'd be far more amenable to it, I suspect.

The proper conclusion is "Jefferson was a racist, but not all racism is as bad as you think it is". But "racism isn't as bad as you think it is" is a taboo position, regardless of its truth. Robinson knows this, which is why he built the questioning around racism in the first place, and which makes it fundamentally dishonest.

Rufo himself declared CRT to be wrong on everything. Robinson was challenging him precisely on the question of what they had gotten wrong when they described the Founding Fathers as racist. How is Robinson supposed to engage with Rufo on the validity of his claims about CRT if not by challenging something as basic as this?

Only a certain kind of literalist on the Internet thinks being wrong "about everything" means literally every single thing, rather than being wrong about major implications in typical cases.

"They are literally right that Jefferson is racist, but they are wrong in what this implies about how we should treat Jefferson" is, by normie standards, being wrong about Jefferson.

"The Founding Fathers were racist" is not a trivial statement in this case. It is very much an important idea that both sides grapple with in their critiques and rebuttals of said critiques. I don't know how you can say that this is a case of "Internet literalism" when it's a crucial point in the CRT edifice. Hell, this is literally one of the basis facts of the 1619 project. Rufo would 100% deliberately trash this because it constitutes a major attack on his stance.

It's not trivial, but it also isn't an automatic win. "Racism is evil, so now that we've established that Jefferson is racist, you'd better not mention him in a positive context ever again unless my side approves of it" is not legitimate. And that's what "Jefferson is racist" usually means.

More comments

Yes.

The proper lesson to learn is not to share a society with people who play these sorts of games. Conversations that start with the other side possessing absolute control over the terms aren't worth having, and Blues have demonstrated an abundant variety of methods for how to terminate conversations one considers unproductive.

Rufo was an impossible position. He was being asked to defend "a racist can still be a good person", which is true but against the current religion.

It's like 500 years ago, when church people were debating what to do about the ancient Greeks and Romans. The ancients were clearly atheist or pagan. Obviously this meant their works were evil and must be banned. Therefore, much like Rufo, people employed mental gymnastics to give the ancients a pass based on "different standards of the time". Dante placed them in the first circle of hell (the least bad one) along with unbaptised babies.

Rufo is smart enough not to say the blasphemous words. Better inconsistent than deplorable.

deleted

I'm trying to see where we disagree here. Perhaps I phrased it poorly. Yes, Christians and Rufo are the on the same side here. In both cases, they are deflecting.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the position of the Christians was that Aristotle was a virtuous person, therefore had he been exposed to Jesus's teachings, he would have been a Christian. It's not his fault he was born too early. "See he's not really an atheist, he's a Christian just waiting to get out". But no, Aristotle was not a proto-Christian.

Likewise, Rufo is trying for the line of "Jefferson's wasn't really a racist". But no, he really was a racist, and that doesn't make him evil.

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