Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 839 | How Christian Women Got Played by Progressivism | Guest: Chris Rufo

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

Starting point is 00:00:19 We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Summer of 2020, how could any of us forget the black squares, the violent riots? Riots are the voice of the unheard is what we were told by corporations, by government officials, by activists, even your pastor. and some of your favorite Bible study leaders were promoting things like white fragility, Ibrahim X. Kendi's, how to be an anti-racist. How did all of this happen? The DEI, the ESG, the programs based on racial essentialism and this idea that systemic racism and white supremacy

Starting point is 00:01:23 are the biggest problems that America is facing today. Well, none of this stuff happened in a vacuum. It actually has an extremely long and complex history going back at least half a century. Today we've got Christopher Rufo. He is the author of the new book, America's Cultural Revolution, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. And specifically today we talk about things like how the ideas of critical race theory have infiltrated our public school system, our academia, or corporations, almost every single

Starting point is 00:02:03 institution and industry. But this really goes for almost every progressive idea. He's going to tell us where all of this stuff comes from, help us wrap our heads around it so we can courageously push back against the destruction that we have seen it bring over the past several years. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code All right, guys, happy Monday. Before we get into that conversation, just a couple things. First, it's Monday.

Starting point is 00:02:47 So just a reminder to do the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God, no matter what that is, big or small, no matter what you're feeling, whether you are scared or you feel alone or you feel intimidated or you just feel like everything is mundane and nothing. matters, do the next right thing. Do the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God. All right, that's one thing I wanted to say. Then I just wanted to give you a preview of some of the things that we'll be talking about this week. Tomorrow, we are going to be talking about something that I've been saying that I wanted to talk about for a long time. We're going to be talking about two things. One of the things that I've said that I've wanted to talk about for a while

Starting point is 00:03:26 is romance novels and the toxicity of female romance novels and how I personally think that that that is helping destroy marriages and actually destroy people's perception of themselves, perception of reality, what life should look like, but also really damaging relationships because it's setting up such awful expectations. And also how it's kind of a form of pornography. So we're going to go through some examples of that and why I think that this is really destructive specifically for the women that it's targeting. But on the flip side of that, I also want to talk about a toxic message that men are being fed

Starting point is 00:04:02 from the likes of people like Andrew Tate. We referenced this a little bit last week, but we're going to get into it. Because I think some people on the right may be well-intentioned or confused about Andrew Tate, the kind of person that he is and even the message that he conveys. So I've got a message for both men and women, masculinity and femininity tomorrow

Starting point is 00:04:23 that I think the children are really, really going to like and want to share. And then today you'll notice that when we talk to Chris Rufo, we mostly talk about how this kind of, idea of critical race theory and racism, you know, white supremacy, all of this stuff, infiltrated the mainstream through academia. But we don't really touch as much on things like ESG and corporations, CEIs, we've talked about several times before. But we are going to get into that even more and some recent revelations about these things with one of your favorite

Starting point is 00:04:57 guest, one of my favorite guests, and that's Justin Haskin. So that will be on Wednesday. So if you Notice that that part of this conversation was missing. We only had so much time and so much to talk about. But I just wanted to note that. So we have a lot of great episodes coming out this week. As you can tell, I'm still remote. So it sounds a little bit different, looks a little bit different. Thanks for bearing with us.

Starting point is 00:05:18 Next week, we will be back in studio. Everything will look normal. All right, I think that's all I have to say. If you love this podcast, leave us a five-star review. wherever you listen, that would mean a whole lot to us. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political.

Starting point is 00:05:44 They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over.

Starting point is 00:06:04 hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Chris Rufa, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Tell us about your book, which is coming out tomorrow, right? Yeah, that's right. My book, America's Cultural Revolution, is officially released tomorrow, but we just heard this morning. It's already the number one bestseller across all categories on Amazon. And, And the premise of the book is quite simple.

Starting point is 00:06:42 I take the chaos that was unleashed in the summer of 2020 with the George Floyd riots, critical race theory, then gender ideology in schools. And I peel back the onion to just say, where did this come from? How did this happen? How did all of a sudden all of our institutions seem to be in very quick order captured by these radical left ideologies? So I did the deep dive, went into the archives, and I really peel back 50 years of history showing how the left conducted their long march to the institutions, and what ideologies, what ideas, what concepts, and specifically what people are responsible for the mass institutional derangement we've seen over the last few years.

Starting point is 00:07:25 So for the average person, it has seemed really quick. Maybe if you're not paying attention to politics at all, it seems like since 2015, like Trump was the impetus for all of this. maybe for those who have been paying attention a little bit longer, perhaps they would say 2008, maybe some people would say 9-11, but a lot of people would say the past, somewhere in between the past five to 20 years, things have gotten increasingly crazy with an acceleration in the past few years. But it sounds like what you're saying is that this goes back a lot further than most people realize, right? Yeah, that's right. So what we have in the late 1960s in the United States, mass urban rioting. You had left-wing revolutionaries that were promising to overthrow the state

Starting point is 00:08:13 through violence. They were planting bombs in places like the U.S. Capitol building and detonating them. They were assassinating police officers in cities like New York to make political statements. They were kidnapping innocent Americans and holding them hostage to achieve political goals. And the revolutionary ideology of that time failed in the 60s and early 70s. The American public really just was revolted by these displays of violence. But the same people, the same ideologies, the same principles that were driving that movement then went underground. They started first to get into the academic system and higher education, universities, and then slowly started conquering institution after institution, masking themselves in critical race theory, masking themselves in so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion. But what I found by going back into the history is that the lessons that I uncovered in my investigative reporting about critical race theory in schools were almost identical, minus some euphemistic language, to the revolutionary pamphlets of the 1960s.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So the question is, how did the left-wing radicals get their ideas from the furthest fringes of society into the kindergarten classroom of your kids? That's a question worth asking. and if we want to get it out of our classrooms, if we don't want our kids to be indoctrinated into CRT and other ideologies, I think it's important to understand how these things work. Yeah, so going back to the 60s and 70s and some of these riots that you're talking about, again, someone who has been paying attention to politics or history for a while would know that, but I would say the average person doesn't.

Starting point is 00:09:53 For the average person, the summer of 2020 is the worst that America has ever been. the most divided it's ever been, the most scared people have been for the future of the country, for the safety and future of their children. But you're saying the 1960s kind of mirrored that division and that violence and that chaos that we saw today. So tell us specifically what are some of the similar ideas and why do they always have the same result of violence and anarchy? Well, it's a great question, and the answer is pretty interesting. If you look at all of the buzzwords that were in the New York Times, that were in all of the left-wing press, that was repeated ad nauseum on MSNBC, systemic racism, police brutality, white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera,

Starting point is 00:10:47 these were all terms that were developed by left-wing radicals such as Herbert Marcusa, Angela Davis, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, weather underground in the 1960s. They had the idea that if there's any disproportionate outcome between different racial groups, that means that the whole system is racist and operates to oppress people. And that critical race theory style idea of dividing people into oppressor and oppressed based on their skin color comes from the neo-Marxist revolutionaries at that time. And so it's a really fascinating thing. As I was watching 2020 unfold, and then I did the research for the book, I realized that this was just really a repetition.

Starting point is 00:11:28 It was almost as if the left-wing activists and Tifa and Black Lives Matter were reenacting the late 1960s. And so digging into it, you realize that there's, in some sense, nothing new under the sun. But in another sense, you see how these ideas gained power. And that's the difference. In the late 1960s, the major corporations, the major media, even the New York Times, rejected the violent radicals and revolutionaries at the time. But in 2020, all of the Fortune 100 companies, all the K-12 schools, all the universities, all of the other prestige institutions and the federal government, they all supported.

Starting point is 00:12:07 They literally bent the knee to BLM. And the BLM activists themselves say that Black Lives Matter, BLM, is a reincarnation of the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s that sought to overthrow the government of the United States to squash the Constitution and install a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary vanguard into power. And so we're dealing with something that is not spontaneous. It's not random. It's part of a 50-year plan that's been executed patiently and then suddenly exploded into American life. So it just didn't stick in the 1960s, really.

Starting point is 00:12:47 And I think, I mean, I'm sure you explore this further in your book. there are variety of reasons for that. I think, I think the country was more Christian, was more conservative, was more patriotic, was more cohesive. So it was kind of easy to push back against what was seen as kind of these radical fringes. And it wasn't politically expedient at the time either. And it wasn't lucrative at the time to support people like Angela Davis or people on the side. So what was it about academia then? Because you said that this stuff started infiltrating the colleges. Why was it academia that welcomed these radical fringes with open arms instead of joining the rest of society, which said, you know what? No, we don't want to be for your racist essentialism and your radicalism.

Starting point is 00:13:35 Why did academia accept it and then teach it? I think that it's really a psychological question or a social psychological question. If you look at academics as a whole, they're utopian. They believe in the possibilities of the mind of reshaping society. according to their ideas. And they've always had a weak spot for revolutionary and utopian ideologies, like Marxism, socialism, far-left radicalism, critical race theory, et cetera. And so it was already a welcoming environment for some of those ideas. But the second point, and I think this is really important, is that academics by temperament and academic administrators, also by temperament,

Starting point is 00:14:16 are fundamentally weak people. And that, That sounds harsh, but I think in my analysis of the history and then my own experience working in higher ed reform, I think it's true. So that the average academic administrator, even one who says, you know what, bombing buildings, assassinating police officers threatening to violently overthrow the government is wrong. They know that morally. They know that intellectually. But temperamentally, they're unable to resist the people within their ranks who push those

Starting point is 00:14:46 ideas. And so what happens in academia is a dynamic of the most intolerant. the most aggressive, the most dominant personalities, even if they represent a small percentage, were able to dominate the intellectual and the administrative environment. In the late 1960s, in the early 1970s, they made their coup. And then over the course of the next 50 years, what they did was consolidate their power, hire more people who shared their beliefs, push out any conservatives, any moderates, any classical liberals, silence, intimidate, choke off the supply of academic jobs for those

Starting point is 00:15:21 kind of people, to the point where now you have in many academic departments, even in large public universities, 25 to 1, 50 to 1, even 100 to 1 liberals to conservative. And among those, let's say 100 liberals, you have approximately a quarter of those in the humanities that are out and out self-declared Marxists and radicals. And they set the tone. They dominate the discourse. And they've really achieved that in academia first. And then once they consolidated their power there, they started moving out into the other institutions of society. And now we see, I mean, every day I get a message that says, I'm in X industry and as you know, it's progressive. I'm a social worker. I work in some kind of government office. I am a therapist.

Starting point is 00:16:20 I'm a doctor. And it's just kind of like a given at this point, at this point, that all of these institutions have become captured and to be conservative or to just be heterodox and have different opinions about gender or whatever or race is seen as something that you kind of have to suppress or that you have to be ashamed of. And even like your HR manager will tell you, hey, I know you don't agree with what's being said, but you just kind of need to be quiet if you want to keep your job. And so what are some things over the past 50 years that have accelerated the infiltration of these radical ideas from the streets to academia and then to, the rest of these industries that are now totally dominated by this stuff?

Starting point is 00:17:07 It's a brilliant question. And a couple years ago, when I first started doing this investigative reporting, I looked at companies like Bank of America, Target, Verizon, you know, Wall Street firms, all of these large corporations that were, you know, the essence of capitalism, literally the Bank of America. And Bank of America, for example, was teaching that the United States is systemically racist, that white people should bear historical guilt for crimes committed by people who share their ancestry, that America was irredeemable, that they should start having separate loan schemes,

Starting point is 00:17:43 separate interest rates for people of different racial categories at other banks. We're contemplating this type of thing. And you think, like, wait a minute, this is radical left, race-based Marxist ideology that is now inside the Bank of America and other large corporations. you know, credit card companies even. This is crazy. What's happening? But what I looked into and I found, I think, really for the first time it's been exposed

Starting point is 00:18:09 in the book, is that the origin of these so-called racial sensitivity programs, racial consciousness programs, now called diversity, equity, inclusion programs, the actual origins, the woman who developed these programs at a large scale in the beginning, in the 1970s and into the 1980s, was the third wife of the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcusa, the godfather of this revolutionary left. And she did her thesis on Marxist ideology as a graduate student. And her idea was, we're going to take the core Marxist ideas, filter them through the lens of race, and then take them into corporations to start re-engineering consciousness, re-engineering manners and mores and cultural habits,

Starting point is 00:18:57 to create a fertile ground for then overthrowing the existing capitalist order. And so, you know, when you actually look into the history, it starts to say, wait a minute, this idea that we're just promoting diversity and inclusion is totally false. The origins of these programs betray a totally different world. And they also betray this really insidious and sophisticated campaign that I trace decade by decade by decade to take these core ideologies and then push them into the institutions using euphemism, using misdirection, using obfuscation, to try to change the consciousness of you in the workplace, to try to change the consciousness of your kids in the classroom, and even,

Starting point is 00:19:44 kind of very, very surprisingly to me, even trying to change your consciousness in your place of worship. There's no institutions that are safe, that are safe. And that's really what I try to demonstrate using the historical record. So they tried to change the consciousness of America by using these euphemisms, changing the language. But it sounds like they were also changing the conscience of America. So it's moral manipulation. It's kind of emotional extortion playing upon, I think, the natural goodness of a lot of Americans to want to, you know, fight for equality and to fight for people who seem vulnerable, who don't have the same rights as they do. And so I could see how you find fertile soil, not just in the open minds of academics,

Starting point is 00:20:29 but in maybe the truly empathetic hearts of the American people, people in institutions, corporations, whatever. And in churches, especially, as you said. But then, because I do want to get to the church part, but then for the corporations, like Bank of America, for the rest of these institutions like academia, it becomes not only acceptable, but actually like politically necessary and financially extremely lucrative. So it went from something that was French to something that, okay, maybe you can accept these kind of radical concepts of race and equality and Marxism and stuff to now you absolutely have to

Starting point is 00:21:10 or your business will fail or you won't be able to survive as a university or else that's what they think anyway. I mean, you saw that with the outcry from the Supreme Court decision about affirmative action. So how did that happen? How did it go from, okay, we're kind of ruminating on these ideas to, oh, my gosh, if you think anything else besides the Marxist view of race and equity, then you are completely outside of what is normal and right. It's a really interesting progression and really a political technique that they've mastered. And even conservatives seem to be powerless to resist it. I think in some sense because they don't know that it's happening.

Starting point is 00:21:51 But the technique is a two-periodic. part technique. The first part is to get into an institution, gain a beachhead, get a few people in there, and then plead for tolerance, openness, pluralism, acceptance, inclusivity. So they preach these very open, tolerant, empathetic values to gain entry or access into the institution. And in a sense that they're right. I mean, these are good values to have in and of themselves. You want to be tolerant and empathetic and understanding of other people, all things being equal. But that's really just the first part, because once they get in preaching relativism, tolerance, et cetera, the second step is to start then once they have power, once they've gained a critical mass, then to start enforcing, start to requiring, start to really mandate these values in the workplace, where if there's any deviation from these values, now that is unacceptable. And so it's really a strategy of seeking tolerance from their enemies and then imposing coercion on those same people when the time comes.

Starting point is 00:22:59 And so conservatives have to get much smarter with this. You know, well, yeah, diversity and inclusion, that sounds great. You know, they just want to teach tolerance. I mean, if that were truly the case, there's an argument for it. But then conservatives find themselves, oh, wow, now I'm in, you know, racial reeducation camp. but I have to write a white privilege letter and apologize to my colleagues and I pay now a different interest rate on my credit card because of my ancestry. I mean, things can go in that direction quite quickly. And so we have to be on guard. And I think that Americans are particularly

Starting point is 00:23:34 susceptible to idealistic thinking, to the guilt emotions, American Protestants. Certainly their guilt can be played like a fiddle sometimes. And then also, especially, especially, among, you know, frankly, among brioocracies that have large numbers of female employees, you see empathy as a good virtue being hijacked for bad ends. So in a sense, it's exploiting the natural feminine empathy, that good quality. And so with those emotions, with those vulnerabilities,

Starting point is 00:24:10 they can do a lot of damage. They can really hijack institutions quickly. Yes, that's what, my next book is on as the danger of the empathy extortion that we kind of see, especially among women. And I saw that, especially in the summer of 2020. And you mentioned to the church, I'm talking mostly like Christian women who would say that they are conservative. Like they would say that they're pro-life. They would certainly not call themselves a Marxist. And if they read, for example, like Angela Davis's ideas, they would say, oh my gosh, no, I don't believe that. That's too

Starting point is 00:24:45 radical. And yet they were the ones posting the black squares. They were the ones tying your morality to reading white fragility and admitting that systemic racism and prolonged white supremacy are, you know, central problems in American life and that we have to do the work and we have to educate ourselves and sit down and shut up if you're white, basically. It was, particularly white. And Christian women that I saw spearheading what, quite frankly, is like Marxist propaganda that has been like washed over with Christian language in the summer of 2020. I mean, when you were researching this, did you see that that was part of the acceleration over the past few years that the evangelical church, or just, I guess the church in general, has now played a big part

Starting point is 00:25:38 in kind of pushing this stuff? Yeah. Yeah. And you're exactly right in your analysis. I think that's That's very well said. And I think that it's, look, all of these movements, they have a vanguard and they have a mass. And so the vanguard of this movement, the BLM activists, are radical atheists. They're, you know, kind of Marxist theoreticians. They're, you know, really street fighters. They encourage street violence in order to achieve their political ends. And all of these, you would think, you know, Marxist, atheists, you know, violent revolutionaries would not be able to gain

Starting point is 00:26:14 a foothold in, you know, a kind of suburban, middle class, you know, evangelical or Protestant or even some Catholic churches. But they did something, I think, really interesting. They had sophisticated marketing. And so it was almost like a product or a lifestyle brand for a brief moment in 2020. There was a sense that everyone was copying each other in order to be more pure, to be more good, to be more idealistic, to be more supportive. You see the proliferation of the different symbols of the ideology that were really rapidly shifting. And so there's a natural inclination to jump on trend. Certainly on a place like Instagram is built on these trend cycles. They were able to hijack the aesthetic sense so that it actually felt and appeared that they were

Starting point is 00:27:01 for good, for justice, for equality. And I think they, you know, frankly tricked a lot of people. The good news, though, is that many of the people who were swept up in the fervor of 2020 have since re-evaluated. And I saw even a news clip the other day, maybe a day or two ago, the Seattle City Councilman that represents downtown Seattle, who was all about defunding the police in 2020, is now up for re-election. And he's putting out glossy mailers that's saying, I love the police, we need to fully fund the police. I've always supported the police. A total lie. But it shows you how much public opinion has really shifted. And so the good news that I try to get to, in the book, is not just doom and gloom, is not just the conquest of the institutions,

Starting point is 00:27:49 but also how to fight back, how the America's culture revolution can be met with an equal or greater counter-revolution. And I argue that the antidote to the revolution of 2020, to the revolution of 1968 is the revolution of 1776. And if we go back to those founding American principles of liberty, equality, equal protection under the law, we can actually get the country working again, get the country on the moral high ground, and get the country successful as it should be. And so, you know, I'm just really excited about the books launch. I encourage all your viewers to purchase a copy and start reading and start learning. Certainly people have kind of shifted over the past few years as we've seen the implementation of a lot of these radical ideas in cities.

Starting point is 00:28:51 And so we've seen their tangible results. There's not a city that is run by Democrats that has gotten better or even stayed the same over the past five years or the past few years since 2020. I mean, people are leaving those cities no matter your ethnicity, no matter your socioeconomic class, if you can, because no one wants to live in a society based on anarchy. No one wants to live in a policed list law enforcement less society. I mean, we were told that these forms of quote unquote liberation would lead to equality and happiness. and justice. But I think what we're realizing is that when these leftist radicals use these words, equality, liberation, justice, as you said, these euphemisms that people latch on to because who wants to be anti-equality, they mean totally different things than we do, right? And so I think even like

Starting point is 00:29:44 racism or oppression or marginalization, all of these things that you want to be against, they mean something totally different. And I think. I think you're right. I think some people are waking up to, oh, what I thought was moral is actually really destructive. That's right. And the history is really interesting. I think it's important to keep in mind that, of course, in the United States, look, we had slavery, we had segregation. Those were both moral evils that needed to be abolished to be transcended. But all of these revolutionary movements started in 1968, 1969. A few years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And so by 1968, there was full legal equality for everyone in the United States. And of course, there's still a legacy of some of those historical processes. But it's a very curious thing that the most violent political revolutions of the modern period

Starting point is 00:30:43 happened after the achievement of equality. And even if you look at 2020, we've had equal rights in this country for more than 50 years, a half century. But those ideas of systemic racism and oppression, et cetera, are still vibrant, but they've shifted a little bit. Now it's psychological, subconscious, implicit bias. So they have to keep adapting their argument to, because I think that the ultimate paradox for these movements is that we have a system of equal rights and protections. The government does not discriminate against anyone, except for, in the case of admissions, hiring, et cetera, against whites and Asians, especially white and Asian men.

Starting point is 00:31:25 But even if you put that aside as kind of a minor issue, affirmative action, which of course I oppose. But even if you put that aside, this is a revolution at the end of the process of political equality. And I think that there's a deep disillusionment and disappointment, which leads them to even more radical solutions. Maybe we'll have equality if we get rid of the police. I mean, it's like, are you people insane? I mean, there's no, you get a sense of desperation. And when people are desperate and idealistic, that's when you get chaos. That's when you get bad ideas coming to the fore.

Starting point is 00:32:00 And so we have to be on guard against these ideas. We have to dig into the true nature of them. And we have to understand the unintended consequences that come from policies driven by revolutionary fervor. Yeah. And I just have one or two more questions. One thing that I think is really interesting that you point out is how, Minneapolis kind of came the epicenter of a lot of this stuff. And it's not even the city.

Starting point is 00:32:25 Like if you look at the cities with like the highest concentration of black Americans, Minneapolis is, I mean, it's up there, but it's not one of the top. Why is it Minneapolis? Why did Minneapolis become so central to this revolution? Well, I mean, first, I think because it was at first a localized revolution in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Right. You know, so that, that's, That was the central focus and then it kind of parachuted out into other cities and you saw it spread. But the point about Minneapolis actually holds even truer if you look at cities like Seattle and Portland. I profile both of those cities in the book.

Starting point is 00:33:03 And Seattle and Portland are quite literally the whitest big cities in America. They have the fewest African Americans largely because they're really far. I'm up in the Seattle area, actually between Seattle and Portland. and it's just far from the deep south. So as people were moving during the Great Migration in the earlier part of the 20th century, you'd have to cross over a tremendous amount of territory. And yet it was the site of the most violent

Starting point is 00:33:33 and extreme protest riots, et cetera. You had the Chaz-Chap, Autonomous Zone in Seattle. You had more than 100 nights of rioting, the seizure of the federal courthouse in Portland from Antifa. And so there's an interesting dynamic that's actually a dynamic that's been there since the 1960s, is that you have kind of elite white intelligentsia making common cause with the urban African American underclass. And that was the language they used back in the 1960s. I think that's still the dynamic today so that you have the kind of bleeding New York Times intelligentsia, you know, based in the hipster neighborhoods of New York.

Starting point is 00:34:14 New York and San Francisco and Seattle, leading the intellectual charge. And then of course you have in the predominantly African American neighborhoods where the most violent rioting was occurring. And so you have this very interesting alliance of forces. And they believed in the 1960s that that was a revolutionary combination. It didn't work out then. It didn't work out now. But that's the basis of their political theory and their political action.

Starting point is 00:34:42 They have the kind of intelligentsia, kind of leading the ideological fight. And then they have the threat of violence coming from the inner city that is putting political pressure, putting physical pressure on voters. And look, I think it actually worked to the extent in 2020 that they put so much pressure around the election. You'll probably remember this, although many people have forgotten. I know you wouldn't have forgotten. They said, and cities were gearing up for this, they were boarding up in anticipation for the election. If Trump wins, we burn the whole country down. They played a game of extortion and moral blackmail.

Starting point is 00:35:19 And I think that actually had some impact on people's votes, where the average voter said, you know what, this is too stressful. I'm just going to vote for Biden just to avoid the violence. And so it's a nice interplay. Sometimes they're winning, sometimes they're losing. It's pretty fascinating. But ultimately, I think there's nothing here. It's an empty ideology.

Starting point is 00:35:39 You know, I know people who, even though over the past couple years, they have learned that maybe some of the things that they believed are sad in 2020 aren't exactly true, that systemic racism and oppression may not be the reason for some of the disparities that we see between the races or maybe some of the things that they ascribe to racism, they're realizing, you know, shouldn't be ascribed to racism or they just believed that things like white fragility and Ibramax-Kindy, that these were good, you know, works that they're realizing, you know, works that they're not. they should be reading. They've realized it since, but they still don't want to admit it. Because look, it's more difficult to admit that you're wrong or to even admit to yourself that you're wrong. I think a lot of these, especially Christian women, they don't even want to say to themselves that, hey, maybe the reason for some of these disparities or some of the outcomes that we see among black Americans doesn't have to do with white supremacy. That's an uncomfortable place to go because then you have to explore different questions. of like, why is it? What is affecting it? And it's just not convenient for most white people

Starting point is 00:37:00 to go there, to ask those questions. It's like dangerous, scary, unpopular, controversial territory. And so I think some people want to stay in a state of denial because it's just easier to regurgitate the propaganda about race than it is to be someone to say, I don't know, that's not necessarily true. I mean, you have to. this, you have to potentially sacrifice your job and your safety and your comfort and all of that to push back against what has become such a ubiquitous narrative today that white supremacy is this pervasive force that's holding everyone down. Yeah, that's 100% right. And that's the true of the dynamic in any propaganda-based society,

Starting point is 00:37:45 whether it's the old Soviet Union nations or whether it's here in the United States where we have a kind of state, private propaganda apparatus that enforces this orthodoxy. But the good news is that I think it's weakening. And then the other piece of good news is that we now can arm ourselves with the arguments, the evidence, the rhetoric, the persuasion, and the language in order to make a different case. And that starts with people like you and me. We're in the public sphere. We're in some ways more immune than the average citizen from the dynamics of or going after our jobs. After all, we are in politics. So this is part of our job description. But we have to speak out with a clear, deliberate, and fearless voice. We have to say,

Starting point is 00:38:32 this is the truth, this is how it is. And then that will create space for other people to start, you know, learning from us, but also it will give them the ammunition that they need to then go back to their local institutions and put their two cents in. And so I would say that we have to have courage. And in politics often, the winner is not the person with the best idea. It's not the best human being, but the person who cares the most, who works the hardest, who wants to achieve their goals and is really to make a sacrifice toward that end. And conservatives, frankly, in our local institutions and mid-sized institutions have not been doing that. They've been saying, you know, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to get in there. I don't want to risk this.

Starting point is 00:39:16 I have this to think about. If that's our attitude, we're going to lose. But if we have enough people standing up, enough people speaking out, enough people that have good, persuasive, reasoned, compassionate lines of argument that they can make, they have good people skills, they know not how to alienate their friends and colleagues and family members, that's when the truth starts to win. That's when the story that we're telling starts to win. And I think that it's really important for people to feel that confidence that they need, to understand the history, to understand the origins, to have the facts, to have the lines of argument.

Starting point is 00:39:54 And so that was really what I tried to do in the book is give people that sense of confidence that once they read the book, once they know the history, they can go out there and say, you know what? DEI is based on a lie. And this is why and have something powerful to say. Yes, understanding where ideas come from really is so important and confidence-inducing, I think, and something that I say that I remember you saying a few years ago is that courage begets courage. And like someone having the courage to stand up and say, you know what, I know D.EI is popular. I know that it's something that's being presented as tolerance and empathy and love and compassion. But here's the truth about it.

Starting point is 00:40:38 that really can have a domino effect. I think that you've seen that in your own work, but I'm sure in your work, you've also seen that at universities, at places of work, in different communities, in churches, when someone is willing to stand up, because they are empowered by the education that you provide in the spoke and say, no, you're misunderstanding what this is. You're hearing euphemisms, but here's what this really means and why it's destructive. That can make a difference. Not everything. everyone has to be focused on writing the next bestseller or running for office or helping start a new university like you have, which is amazing. But everyone can do something. And that starts with being

Starting point is 00:41:19 courageous and saying what is unpopular but true. So thank you for giving us a handbook for how to do that and really giving us so much confidence in all the education that you're providing in this, just to give us context to really understand what's going on. Like you said, it's already number one. So people can get it on Amazon. Is there anywhere else that you want to direct people to buy the book, to share about the book, or the work that you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. Go on Amazon, go on Barnes & Noble, go on any website where books are sold. Buy a copy of the book.

Starting point is 00:41:51 It's officially out tomorrow, but you can pre-order a copy today and be the first to read it. I think this is going to set the narrative for conservatives moving forward. You're going to see the story told in this book, really be the story of the conservative presidential primaries. And so I would say right now, go to your computer, order the book. You'll get it in a couple days. And I appreciate your support. Thanks so much, Chris. I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:42:17 Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Days. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded

Starting point is 00:42:55 in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 839 | How Christian Women Got Played by Progressivism | Guest: Chris Rufo

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