A fascinating article. I agree with you that the Left only cares about optics and in the end, it is reality that matters. No matter how many people you convince, it still does not help if your policies cannot lead to the desired outcome. Your strategy seems to be quite effective so far, but…
Once you have revealed the ideological capture, then what?
What is the end game? Is it a return to merit-based institutions that focus on their original non-ideological mission or is it collapse of those institutions?
I have struggled over this point because I believe that traditional American institutions really matter, but I am not convinced that they can reform themselves. Left-of-center ideologies are only growing in strength among college-educated professionals and they seem increasingly willing to “go down with the ship” rather than reform.
So many great organizations have been captured over the last few decades. Can we get back to something like we had before, or is institutional collapse the only option?
Were those institutions ever great, or did they merely appear to be great due to their control of the narrative? I'm struggling to think of any institutions I care about.
No, it was never about narrative. It was about accomplishments. Here are just a few examples: Harvard, MIT, UC system, NASA, NIH, Mayo Clinic, Los Alamos Lab, US military, IBM, Ford, Apple, GM, Boeing, Amazon, Google, Smithsonian, Disney, Warner Bros, Library of Congress, Paramount, Red Cross, United Way. I could go on and on...
As this article explains, legitimacy comes from accomplishments not narrative.
I'm more of a centrist/liberal type guy, but the fact that you are willing to engage with people like Glenn Greenwald or Jonah Goldberg and answer to the standard criticisms in your socials, put you on team progress in my book, even if we disagree. If however you create an echo chamber and ignore all good faith criticisms, I will be disappointed, so I hope this doesn't happen.
Yes, I do think "calling your shots" in this way is a smart strategy. I might also add that doing so is a force multiplier . . . you don't have to rely only on those "in the know" to execute the strategy, by publicly calling your shots, you invite the public to fully participate in the process.
I did notice that you mispelled Chris' name as "Christ" three times!
The strategy also has the advantage of being honest. It becomes more persuasive when it short-circuits accusations of dishonest and hidden motives. Of course, such accusations will still come from the left, but they will be less persuasive to observers.
Great article, I've come to realize that progressivism puts morality before principles. Since truth is an ethical principle, it tends to get discarded in the headlong pursuit of their chosen moral objectives.
Thanks for laying this out so clearly. It helps to see the metapolitics of what Rufo is doing and why it works.
Where I land, though, is that this entire battle still unfolds inside what I call the Culture of Separation—a 2,500-year-old materialist philosophy that has colonized nearly every institution. Both left and right end up reinforcing the same prime mover: disconnection of self from God, self from self, people from people, people from nature, and humanity from the Sacred.
What we’re watching is not renewal, but dueling oligarchies fighting for supremacy. On one side, progressive elites have captured institutions through the long march of decades; on the other, Trumpism has emerged as a kind of counter-revolutionary oligarchy. It may check the excesses of the left, but it still relies on top-down power and personalist cults, and the deep bureaucratic and corporate structures are too entrenched to be dismantled from within. Reform within the Culture of Separation only manages decline—it can’t birth coherence.
History offers us another path. In the late 1970s, Václav Benda and other dissidents in Czechoslovakia launched Charter 77 and developed the idea of a Parallel Polis—an alternative society rooted in Imago Dei, truth, culture, and community. Instead of fighting on the regime’s terms, they quietly built independent networks of education, economy, art, and faith. They didn’t try to “fix” totalitarian institutions; they created parallel structures of trust that eventually made the old system irrelevant.
What’s fascinating is that we are now seeing three embryonic Parallel Polis “pulses" emerging today:
• a Left version (e.g., The Alternative UK),
• a Right version (e.g., N.S. Lyons), and
• a Christian version (e.g., Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option).
Each reflects a hunger for alternatives beyond captured institutions. The problem is, they remain siloed and fragmented—mirroring the very separation they’re trying to transcend.
What we need is a United Parallel Polis—big enough to hold differences yet coherent enough to embody a shared sacred pattern. One that starts in grassroots local communities and builds upward through spiritual, moral, social, cultural, and economic life, and only then expresses itself politically. That order of priority reverses the current inversion of the Logos, which elevates politics above all else.
For me, Logos as Divine Love is not an abstraction but the underlying sacred pattern of relational life, one I’ve been learning to embody with communities for decades. The invitation now is to widen the conversation—beyond tactical exposure and dueling oligarchies—to cultivate parallel spaces of trust, virtue, and coherence that can withstand the soft totalitarian impulses of both the left and the right.
I would love to connect with others who are wrestling at that level.
This is an insightful piece. Lots of good points. It needs some copy editing, though. There are a lot of errors. I was literally just reading one of Chris’ articles on City Journal and thought, “It adds a lot to his credibility that there isn’t even the slightest grammatical error. He even says ‘Procter & Gamble,’ when people often write, ‘Proctor & Gamble.’” Well-polished articles have a way of outclassing the opposition. This one is almost there — it just needs another pass or two.
One of course hopes it works. Wins are valuable and good intentions are admirable after all. But I’d be lying if all this didn’t seem hopelessly naive considering the challenge we’re facing.
I think your spellchecker has swapped Chris for Christ a couple of times, unless Jesus has returned again...
Yes, Chris is great and all, but I wouldn’t take it that far… 🤣
Yes. It’s sending me.
A fascinating article. I agree with you that the Left only cares about optics and in the end, it is reality that matters. No matter how many people you convince, it still does not help if your policies cannot lead to the desired outcome. Your strategy seems to be quite effective so far, but…
Once you have revealed the ideological capture, then what?
What is the end game? Is it a return to merit-based institutions that focus on their original non-ideological mission or is it collapse of those institutions?
I have struggled over this point because I believe that traditional American institutions really matter, but I am not convinced that they can reform themselves. Left-of-center ideologies are only growing in strength among college-educated professionals and they seem increasingly willing to “go down with the ship” rather than reform.
So many great organizations have been captured over the last few decades. Can we get back to something like we had before, or is institutional collapse the only option?
Were those institutions ever great, or did they merely appear to be great due to their control of the narrative? I'm struggling to think of any institutions I care about.
No, it was never about narrative. It was about accomplishments. Here are just a few examples: Harvard, MIT, UC system, NASA, NIH, Mayo Clinic, Los Alamos Lab, US military, IBM, Ford, Apple, GM, Boeing, Amazon, Google, Smithsonian, Disney, Warner Bros, Library of Congress, Paramount, Red Cross, United Way. I could go on and on...
As this article explains, legitimacy comes from accomplishments not narrative.
I had the sense this is what he and his team were doing. Thank you for this article.
BTW, a correction: "it is to illicit a response". I think that should be "elicit", not "illicit".
You should change every instance of Christ to Chris so he doesn’t get a God complex 😉
😇
I'm more of a centrist/liberal type guy, but the fact that you are willing to engage with people like Glenn Greenwald or Jonah Goldberg and answer to the standard criticisms in your socials, put you on team progress in my book, even if we disagree. If however you create an echo chamber and ignore all good faith criticisms, I will be disappointed, so I hope this doesn't happen.
I agree with everything you're doing except for calling Chris "Christ"
Yes, I do think "calling your shots" in this way is a smart strategy. I might also add that doing so is a force multiplier . . . you don't have to rely only on those "in the know" to execute the strategy, by publicly calling your shots, you invite the public to fully participate in the process.
I did notice that you mispelled Chris' name as "Christ" three times!
The strategy also has the advantage of being honest. It becomes more persuasive when it short-circuits accusations of dishonest and hidden motives. Of course, such accusations will still come from the left, but they will be less persuasive to observers.
Great article, I've come to realize that progressivism puts morality before principles. Since truth is an ethical principle, it tends to get discarded in the headlong pursuit of their chosen moral objectives.
Thanks for laying this out so clearly. It helps to see the metapolitics of what Rufo is doing and why it works.
Where I land, though, is that this entire battle still unfolds inside what I call the Culture of Separation—a 2,500-year-old materialist philosophy that has colonized nearly every institution. Both left and right end up reinforcing the same prime mover: disconnection of self from God, self from self, people from people, people from nature, and humanity from the Sacred.
What we’re watching is not renewal, but dueling oligarchies fighting for supremacy. On one side, progressive elites have captured institutions through the long march of decades; on the other, Trumpism has emerged as a kind of counter-revolutionary oligarchy. It may check the excesses of the left, but it still relies on top-down power and personalist cults, and the deep bureaucratic and corporate structures are too entrenched to be dismantled from within. Reform within the Culture of Separation only manages decline—it can’t birth coherence.
History offers us another path. In the late 1970s, Václav Benda and other dissidents in Czechoslovakia launched Charter 77 and developed the idea of a Parallel Polis—an alternative society rooted in Imago Dei, truth, culture, and community. Instead of fighting on the regime’s terms, they quietly built independent networks of education, economy, art, and faith. They didn’t try to “fix” totalitarian institutions; they created parallel structures of trust that eventually made the old system irrelevant.
What’s fascinating is that we are now seeing three embryonic Parallel Polis “pulses" emerging today:
• a Left version (e.g., The Alternative UK),
• a Right version (e.g., N.S. Lyons), and
• a Christian version (e.g., Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option).
Each reflects a hunger for alternatives beyond captured institutions. The problem is, they remain siloed and fragmented—mirroring the very separation they’re trying to transcend.
What we need is a United Parallel Polis—big enough to hold differences yet coherent enough to embody a shared sacred pattern. One that starts in grassroots local communities and builds upward through spiritual, moral, social, cultural, and economic life, and only then expresses itself politically. That order of priority reverses the current inversion of the Logos, which elevates politics above all else.
For me, Logos as Divine Love is not an abstraction but the underlying sacred pattern of relational life, one I’ve been learning to embody with communities for decades. The invitation now is to widen the conversation—beyond tactical exposure and dueling oligarchies—to cultivate parallel spaces of trust, virtue, and coherence that can withstand the soft totalitarian impulses of both the left and the right.
I would love to connect with others who are wrestling at that level.
What did the New Yorker end up doing? I can’t find any follow up coverage.
This is an insightful piece. Lots of good points. It needs some copy editing, though. There are a lot of errors. I was literally just reading one of Chris’ articles on City Journal and thought, “It adds a lot to his credibility that there isn’t even the slightest grammatical error. He even says ‘Procter & Gamble,’ when people often write, ‘Proctor & Gamble.’” Well-polished articles have a way of outclassing the opposition. This one is almost there — it just needs another pass or two.
One of course hopes it works. Wins are valuable and good intentions are admirable after all. But I’d be lying if all this didn’t seem hopelessly naive considering the challenge we’re facing.
Heroes!
Keep hitting them hard and don't stop!
Make the bastards obey their own standards.
illicit should be elicit. Ain’t English grand?
Ah! The Dave Chapelle strategy. 😂
A striking contrast of virtue ethics with consequentialism.