The Rufo Reich and Mecha-Bentham

True liberalism has never been tried. In the Nineteenth Century, the British mask was ‘free trade’, but the British face was reengineering the economies of colonial lands to make them overly reliant on exporting a single commodity while importing everything else from Britain using Ricardo’s Law of Association as a thin ideological justification. In the Twentieth Century, the American mask was ‘liberal democracy’, but the American face was bombing all its enemies into submission to bend the knee to McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. In the Twenty-First Century, the American mask has remained ‘liberal democracy’, but the American face is a black trans lesbian demanding you respect her pronouns. Again and again, the dream has been a world where kings and aristocrats were things of the past, where every man and woman is free to attain a better standard of living based on their own merits, but the reality has been a world of tribal groups vying for power using universal ideals to hide their sectional interests. However, these facts have never diminished the dream. It is the dream of Jordan Peterson; it is the dream of Elon Musk; it is the dream of Chris Rufo; and it remains the dream of most Americans who have not already been won over by the allures of resentment. ‘Identity politics’ is the enemy of the dream, because ‘identity politics’ brings reality front and centre. Reality is always the enemy of the dream.

            Rufo’s counter-revolution is already well underway in the USA. He has found powerful allies against ‘the Woke’ on the Zionist Right, and recently scored a major victory against them by the much-vaunted ‘scalping’ of Claudine Gay, now former President of Harvard. Although Rufo is parsed by mainstream politics as ‘right-wing’, those steeped in reactionary literature will immediately see him as a liberal and not a man of the right. He’s still quoting Locke and Jefferson. I have talked at length about Back to Fresh Prince and Putting the Woke Away. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts, in short, it is that the USA must revert to the colour-blind liberalism of the 1990s in order to save itself. This, in fact, is the project of Chris Rufo. It is also the project of Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, James Lindsey, Ron DeSantis, Triggernometry, Tucker Carlson, and ultimately the True Meaning of Donald Trump.

            The ‘counter-revolution’ will amount to banning Critical Race Theory on college campuses (with a special carve-out for antisemitism), ending affirmative action practices while de facto ‘banning racism’ in America, forcing companies to stop ‘woke’ messaging in advertising and media, and a massive reassertion of majority-American values at the federal and state levels. In other words, the ‘counter-revolution’ will retake many institutions using top-down power and insist upon a more meritocratic society true to the liberal principles of freedom and equality. Within this, there will be a renewed focus on God and Christianity as central bedrocks of American society – a glue that can unite Whites, Blacks and Hispanics (with, again, a special carve-out for Jews). If you’re getting excited reading this, you too yearn for true liberalism, you too secretly yearn for Fresh Prince 2.0, you too share these ‘values’. And because almost all of you failed to take Jonathan Bowden’s advice to kill ‘the liberal’ within yourself, I believe this will ultimately happen, establishing what I will call The Rufo Reich. It may work, at least for a time. In the long-run, however, it simply delays the underlying issue, which is that the dream can never cloud-over the cracks of reality forever. But that will be then, let’s be truly Twenty-First Century and focus on the here and now.

            An interesting aspect of this development is that it has the backing of many very rich tech sorts. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel most notably, but also many others who are less well known, such as Marc Andreessen. Being tech sorts, these men believe not only in meritocracy, but in the power of technology itself, especially the looming prospect of artificial intelligence. Some of them even dabble in transhumanism. They are also natural optimists who find change exciting, in Pareto’s taxonomy, type 1 elites, entrepreneurs. As long as men like this are allied to the counter-revolution, there remains the opportunity for them to produce a ‘based A.I.’, what I have dubbed Mecha-Bentham. This has long been the dream of liberals. F.A. Hayek once joked that his ideal government is just a computer that says ‘no’. Mecha-Bentham has no tribe. Mecha-Bentham doesn’t understand your feelings. Mecha-Bentham doesn’t care what race you are. Mecha-Bentham sees only the data. Mecha-Bentham sees only the facts. Mecha-Bentham marks your coursework only on its actual merits. Mecha-Bentham scores your credit based only on your actual history. Mecha-Bentham hires you for a job based on your actual test scores. Mecha-Bentham does not understand if you come from a ‘socially disadvantaged background’, only your results. Mecha-Bentham can’t hear your tears. Mecha-Bentham is an efficiency engine, a true utilitarian. And if you can hear that sound, it’s Musk, Thiel and Andreessen salivating at the prospect of this mechanical monstrosity being launched into this world to destroy the inefficient woke enemies of progress forever! Again, if any of this excites you, make no mistake, you too are a liberal. And that’s okay, it’s to be expected. And this too is why this will likely make some headway towards happening in the future. The ‘dissident right’ is dead; long live the Rufo Reich, all hail Mecha-Bentham!