Language in the Age of Fascist Politics (Henry Giroux)

In the age of expanding fascism, the power of language is not only fragile but increasingly threatened. As Toni Morrison has noted, “language is not only an instrument through which power is exercised,” it also shapes agency and functions as an act with consequences. These consequences ripple through the very fabric of our existence. For in the words we speak, meaning, truth, and our collective future are at risk. Each syllable, phrase, and sentence becomes a battleground where truth and power collide, where silence breeds complicity, and where justice hangs in the balance.

In response, we find ourselves in desperate need of a new vocabulary, one capable of naming the fascist tide and militarized language now engulfing the United States. This is not a matter of style or rhetorical flourish; it is a matter of survival. The language required to confront and resist this unfolding catastrophe will not come from the legacy press, which remains tethered to the very institutions it ought to expose. Nor can we turn to the right-wing media machines, led by Fox News, where fascist ideals are not just defended but paraded as patriotism. 

In the face of this crisis, Toni Morrison’s insight drawn from her Nobel Lecture becomes all the more urgent and makes clear that the language of tyrants, embodied in the rhetoric, images, and modes of communication characteristic of the Trump regime, is a dead language. For her “a dead language is not simply one that is no longer spoken or written,” it is unyielding language “content to admire its own paralysis.” It is repressive language infused with power, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties and dehumanizing language, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. “Though moribund, it is not without effect” for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, and “suppresses human potential.” Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, or fill baffling silences. This is the language of official power whose purpose is to sanction ignorance and preserve. 

Beneath its glittering spectacle and vulgar performance, lies a language that is "dumb, predatory, sentimental." It offers mass spectacles, a moral sleepwalking state of mind, and a psychotic infatuation for those who seek refuge in unchecked power. It forges a community built on greed, corruption, and hate, steeped in a scandal of hollow fulfillment. It is a language unadorned in its cruelty and addiction to creating an architecture of violence. It is evident in Trump’s discourse of occupation, his militarizing of American politics, and in his use of an army of trolls to turn hatred into a social media spectacle of swagger and cruelty.



Despite differing tones and political effects, the discourses of the far right and the liberal mainstream converge in their complicity: both traffic in mindless spectacle, absorb lies as currency, and elevate illusion over insight. The liberal mainstream drapes the machinery of cruelty in the language of civility, masking the brutality of the Trump regime and the predatory logic of gangster capitalism, while the far right revels in it, parading its violence as virtue and its hatred as patriotism. Language, once a powerful instrument against enforced silence and institutional cruelty, now too often serves power, undermining reason, normalizing violence, and replacing justice with vengeance. 

In Trump’s oligarchic culture of authoritarianism, language becomes a spectacle of power, a theater of fear crafted, televised, and performed as a civic lesson in mass indoctrination. If language is the vessel of consciousness, then we must forge a new one--fierce, unflinching, and unafraid to rupture the fabric of falsehood that sustains domination, disposability, and terror. The late famed novelist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, was right in stating that “language was a site of colonial control,” inducting people into what he called “colonies of the mind.”

The utopian visions that support the promise of a radical democracy and prevent the dystopian nightmare of a fascist politics are under siege in the United States. Increasingly produced, amplified and legitimated in a toxic language of hate, exclusion, and punishment, all aspects of the social and the democratic values central to a politics of solidarity are being targeted by right-wing extremists. In addition, the institutions that produce the formative cultures that nourishes the social imagination and democracy itself are now under attack. The signposts are on full display in a politics of racial and social cleansing that is being fed by a white nationalist and white supremacist ideology that is at the centre of power in the US—marked by fantasies of exclusion accompanied by a full-scale attack on morality, reason, and collective resistance rooted in democratic struggle. 

As more people revolt against this dystopian project, neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialised out of legitimate grievances against the government, controlling privileged elites and the hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism. The current crisis of agency, representation, values and language demands a discursive shift that can call into question and defeat the formative culture and ideological scaffolding through which a savage neoliberal capitalism reproduces itself. This warped use of language directly feeds into the policies of disposability that define Trump's regime.

State Terror and Trump’s Politics of Disposability

As Trump’s regime concentrates power, he invokes a chilling convergence of law, order, and violence, a cornerstone of his politics of disposability. His acts of cruelty and lawlessness, abducting and deporting innocent people, branding immigrants as “vermin,” claiming they are “poisoning the blood” of Americans, and even proposing the legalization of murder for twelve hours, make clear that his violent metaphors are not just rhetorical flourishes. They are policy blueprints. In Trump’s hands, rhetoric becomes a weaponized prelude to atrocity, a tool of statecraft. Threats, hatred, and cruelty are transformed into instruments of governance.

This is not careless talk, it is a brutal and calculated expression of power. Trump’s threats to arrest and deport critics such as Zohran Mamdani reveal his willingness to use the machinery of the state for political extermination. His targets are predictable: immigrants, Black people, educators, journalists, LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone who dares to challenge his white Christian nationalist, neoliberal, and white supremacist vision. His language does not merely offend, it incites harm, enacts repression, and opens the gates to state-sanctioned violence. It extends the reign of terror across the United States by labeling protesters as terrorists and deploying the military to American cities, treating them as if they were “occupied territories.” 

Trump is not alone. Many of his MAGA follower use these same hateful discourse. For instance, conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote “in response to a speech by Melanie Yazzie, a Native artist and professor, about decolonization, “We didn’t Kill enough Indians.” This is not simply harsh rhetoric; nor is it a performative display of emboldened hatred and historical forgetting, it sets the stage for state-sanctioned repression and mass violence. What is at stake is more than civic respect. It is democracy itself. When language loses meaning and truth is blurred, tyranny thrives. Trump’s and too much of MAGA discourse is not about persuasion; it is about dehumanization and domination. It functions as statecraft, laying the groundwork for a society where suffering becomes spectacle and repression masquerades as law and order. Language is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that democracy dies without an informed citizenry.

As Eddie Glaude Jr. has powerfully argued, Americans must confront a brutal truth: the creation and expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), now the largest federal law enforcement agency, is not merely a matter of policy, it is a cornerstone of white supremacy. It is a racist institution, entrenched in an immigration policy designed to uphold the values of white nationalism. In the face of shifting demographics, ICE is tasked with an urgent mission—to make America white again, a calculated attempt to turn back the clock on progress, to preserve an imagined past at the cost of justice and humanity.

We now live in a country where class and racial warfare both at home and abroad is on steroids, exposing the killing machine of gangster capitalism in its rawest, most punitive form. Trump supports the genocidal war waged by a state led by a war criminal. Children are being slaughtered in Gaza. Millions of Americans, including poor children, teeter on the edge of losing their healthcare. Funds for feeding hungry children are being slashed, sacrificed to feed the pockets of the ultra-rich. Thousands will die, not by accident, but by design. Terror, fear, and punishment have replaced the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. Childcide is now normalized as the law of the land. The lights are dimming in America, and all that remains are the smug, ignorant smirks of fascist incompetence and bodies drained of empathy and solidarity.

Gangster Capitalism and the Death of Empathy

Gangster capitalism lays the foundation for Trump’s racist and fascist politics. As I have noted elsewhere, the United States has descended into a state of political, economic, cultural, and social psychosis, where cruel, neoliberal, democracy-hating policies have prevailed since the 1970s. At the core of this authoritarian shift lies a systemic war on workers, youth, Blacks, and immigrants, increasingly marked by mass violence and a punishing state both domestically and internationally. The U.S. has transformed into an empire dominated by a callous, greedy billionaire class that has dismantled any remnants of democracy, while embracing the fascistic ideology of white Christian nationalism and white supremacy. Fascism now parades not only beneath the flag but also under the Christian cross. 

America has shifted from celebrating unchecked individualism, as depicted in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, to the glorification of greed championed by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, and the psychotic avarice of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. This descent into barbarity and psychotic infatuation with violence is further demonstrated by Justin Zhong, a right-wing preacher at Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Indianapolis, who called for the deaths of LGBTQ+ individuals during a sermon. Zhong defended his comments by citing biblical justifications and labeling LGBTQ+ people as "domestic terrorists." 

It gets worse. During a Men’s Preaching Night at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, Zhong's associate, Stephen Falco, suggested that LGBTQ+ people should "blow yourself in the back of the head," and that Christians should "pray for their deaths." Another member, Wade Rawley, advocated for violence, stating LGBTQ+ individuals should be "beaten and stomped in the mud" before being shot in the head. Fascism in America, nourished by the toxic roots of homophobia, now cloaks itself not just in the poisonous banner of the Confederate flag, but also in the sacred guise of the Christian cross.

Welcome to Trump’s America, where empathy is now viewed as a weakness and the cold rule of the market is the template for judging all social relations. One noted example can be found in the words of Trump’s on-and-off billionaire ally, Elon Musk, who dismisses empathy as a naive and detrimental force that undermines the competitive, individualistic ethos he champions. Speaking to Joe Rogan on his podcast, Musk specifically stated that “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.” As Julia Carrie Wong observes in The Guardian, the stakes extend far beyond casting empathy as a "parasitic plague." Empathy's true danger lies in its role as an enabler—granting permission to dehumanize others and constricting the very “definition of who should be included in a democratic state.” This is a recipe for barbarism, one that allows both states and individuals to turn a blind eye to the genocidal violence unfolding in Gaza and beyond.

Naming the Deep Roots of the Police State

Ruth Ben-Ghiat has warned that “America has been set on a trajectory to become a police state,” pointing to the passage of the Brutal and Bellicose Bill (BBB), which handed ICE a budget larger than the militaries of Brazil, Israel, and Italy combined. But the roots of this state violence go deeper. The foundation was laid under Bush and Cheney, whose war on terror birthed Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, mass surveillance, and extraordinary rendition. What Trump has done is strip these earlier authoritarian practices of all pretenses, elevating them to the status of governing principles.

The police state did not begin with Trump; it evolved through him. Now, we see its terrifying maturity: racial cleansing disguised as immigration policy, hatred normalized as political speech, dissent criminalized, birthright citizenship threatened, and everyday life militarized. This is not politics as usual, it is fascism in real time.

Trump’s fascist politics grows even more dangerous when we recognize that his language of colonization and domination has helped transform American society into what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o chillingly describes as a “war zone.” This war zone now spans the digital terrain—through the internet, podcasts, social media, and educational platforms—becoming a fertile breeding ground for fascist symbols, reactionary values, manufactured identities, and the toxic resurrection of colonial logics. In this battleground of meaning, the language of colonization does more than obscure the truth—it erodes critical thinking, silences historical memory, and disarms the very possibility of empowered agency. What remains in its wake is a nation scarred by suffering, haunted by loneliness, bound by shared fears, and anesthetized by the numbing rituals of a punishing state.

The transformation of America into a war zone finds its most visible expression in the rise of Trump’s omnipresent police state. This authoritarian machinery reveals itself through the mechanisms of state-sponsored terror, a heavily militarized ICE force operating like masked enforcers, and the rapid expansion of detention centers that will increasingly resemble a network of potential forced labor camps. As Fintan O’Toole warns, Trump’s deployment of troops onto the streets of Los Angeles is not merely symbolic—it is “a training exercise for the army, a form of reorientation.” In this reorientation, soldiers are no longer defenders of the Constitution but are being retrained as instruments of authoritarian power, bound not by democratic ideals but by obedience to a singular will.

Nevertheless, we resist or refuse to name the fascist threat and the ideological and economic architecture of its politics. Still, we recoil from calling the Trump regime what it is: a fascist state engaged in domestic terrorism. Still, we remain blind to the fact that economic inequality, global militarism, and the genocidal logics of empire are not peripheral issues, they are the center. Why is it so difficult to admit that we are living in an age of American fascism? Why do the crimes of the powerful, at home and abroad, so often pass without scrutiny, while the victims are blamed or erased?

The Collapse of Moral Imagination

What we face is not only a political crisis, partly in the collapse of conscience and civic courage-- a profound moral collapse. The war being waged at home by the Trump regime is not just against immigrants or the poor, it is a war on critical thought, on historical memory, on the courage to dissent. It is a war on every institution that upholds critical thinking, informed knowledge, and civic literacy. This is a genocidal war against the very possibility of a just future—a war not merely against, but for stupidity, for the death of morality, and for the annihilation of any robust notion of democracy. Viktor Klemperer, in his seminal work The Language of the Third Reich, offers a crucial lesson from history: "With great insistence and a high degree of precision right down to the last detail, Hitler’s Mein Kampf teaches not only that the masses are stupid, but that they need to be kept that way, intimidated into not thinking." Klemperer’s analysis reveals that Nazi politics did not arise in a vacuum; it was cultivated in a culture where language itself was the breeding ground of cruelty and control.

Trump’s rhetoric of fear, racial hatred does not emerge in a vacuum. It resonates because it taps into a long and violent history, a history soaked in blood, built on genocide, slavery, colonialism, and exclusion. His language recalls the genocidal campaigns against Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Jews, and others deemed disposable by authoritarian regimes. It is a necrotic lexicon, resurrected in service of tyranny. It gives birth to politicians with blood in their mouths, who weaponize nostalgia and bigotry, cloaking brutality in the false promises of patriotism and “law and order.”

Language as War and the Return of Americanized Fascism

This is not merely a rhetoric of cruelty, it is a call to arms. Trump’s words do not simply shelter fascists; they summon them. They silence dissent, normalize torture, and echo the logic of death camps, internment camps, and mass incarceration. His discourse, laden with hatred and lies, is designed to turn neighbors into enemies, civic life into war, and politics into a death cult and zone of terminal exclusion. Undocumented immigrants, or those seeking to register for green cards or citizenship, are torn from their families and children, cast into prisons such as Alligator Alcatraz, a grotesque manifestation of the punishing state. As Melissa Gira Grant writes in The New Republic, it is "an American concentration camp…built to cage thousands of people rounded up by ICE," constructed in a chilling display of colonial disregard, and erected on traditional Miccosukee land without so much as consulting the Tribe.

This is the face of modern cruelty: language wielded as a tool to orchestrate a spectacle of violence, designed to degrade, divide, and erase. Culture is no longer a peripheral force in politics; it has become the central weapon in the rise of state terrorism. The language of war and complicity normalizes America’s transformation into a monstrous carceral state, a symbol of state-sponsored terror where due process is suspended, and suffering is not just an outcome but the point itself. 

A culture of cruelty now merges with state sponsored racial terror, functioning as a badge of honor. One example is noted in Trump advisor Laura Loomer, who ominously remarked that "the wild animals surrounding President Donald Trump’s new immigration detention center… will have 'at least 65 million meals." Change.org, along with others such as Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor, noted that her comment “is not only racist, it is a direct emotional attack and veiled threat against Hispanic communities. This kind of speech dehumanizes people of color and normalizes genocidal language.” Her racist remark not only reveals the profound contempt for human life within Trump's inner circle but also highlights how cruelty and violence are strategically used as both a policy tool and a public spectacle. Loomer’s remark is not an aberration, it is a symptom of the fascist logic animating this administration, where death itself becomes a political message. Her blood-soaked discourse if symptomatic of the criminogenic politics fundamental to the working of the Trump regime.

The parallels to history are unmistakable. Loomer’s invocation of death as the outcome of detention recalls the Nazi designation of certain camps as Vernichtungslager, extermination camps, where as Holocaust survivor Primo Levi noted, imprisonment and execution were inseparable. Likewise, the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, though often sanitized in public memory, operated under a similar logic of racial suspicion and collective punishment. The message in each case is clear, as Judith Butler has noted in her writing: some lives are rendered invisible, deemed unworthy of legal protection, of family, of dignity, of life itself. In fascist regimes, such spaces function not only as instruments of punishment but as symbolic theaters of power, meant to instill terror, enforce obedience, and declare which bodies the state has marked for erasure.

For Trump, J.D. Vance, and their ilk, fascism is not a specter to be feared but a banner to be waved. The spirit of the Confederacy and the corpse-like doctrines of white supremacy, militarism, and neoliberal authoritarianism have returned, this time supercharged by surveillance technologies, financial capital, and social media echo chambers. In the spirit of the Trump regime, the symbols of the Confederacy are normalized. Confederate flags are now waved by neo-Nazis in public squares and parades, while Trump renames US warships and 7 military bases after Confederate officers, reinforcing a dangerous nostalgia for a past rooted in racism and rebellion against the very ideals of unity and equality that this nation claims to uphold.

Higher Education and the Fight Against Authoritarianism
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It should not surprise us that the American public has grown numb with the constant echo chamber of state terrorism playing out in multiple sites of attack. Powerful disimagination machines, mainstream media, right-wing propaganda platforms, tech billionaires, have flooded public consciousness with conspiracy theories, historical amnesia, and spectacularized images of immigrants and others being deported to prisons, foreign Gulags, and modern day black holes. These are not simply entertainment outlets; they are pedagogical weapons of mass distraction, breeding civic illiteracy and moral paralysis. Under their influence, the American people have been placed in a moral and political coma.

White Nationalism and Reproductive Control

Nowhere is this more evident than in the mainstream media’s failure to address the racial and ideological foundations of Trump’s agenda. His attacks on Haitian immigrants, the travel ban on seven African countries, the shutting down of refugee programs, and his open-door policy for white Afrikaners from South Africa are not merely racist; they are explicitly white nationalist. The same ideology drives attacks on women’s reproductive rights, revealing the deep racial and gender anxieties of a movement obsessed with white demographic decline. These are not isolated skirmishes, they are interconnected strategies of domination.

These converging assaults, white nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchal control, and militarized life, manifest most vividly in the war on reproductive freedom. White nationalists encourage white women to reproduce, to hold back demographic change, while punishing women of color, LGBTQ+ people, and the poor. It is a violent calculus, animated by fantasies of purity and control.

The Systemic Assault on Democracy

This is a full-spectrum assault on democracy. Every act of cruelty, every racist law, every violent metaphor chips away at the social contract. A culture of authoritarianism is now used to demean those considered other, both citizens and non-citizens, critics and immigrants, naturalized citizens and those seeking such status. They are labeled as unworthy of citizenship now defined by the Trump regime as a privilege rather than a right. Meanwhile, a media ecosystem built on clickbait and erasure renders both such fascists as legitimate while making invisible the roots of suffering mass suffering and fear, all the while, turning oppression into spectacle and silence into complicity.

In this fog, language itself is emptied of meaning. Truth and falsehood blur. As Paulo Freire warned, the tools of the oppressor are often adopted by the oppressed. We now see that the logic of fascism has seeped into the culture, eroding civic sensibility, destroying moral imagination, and rendering resistance almost unspeakable.

The Normalization of Tyranny

Trump’s authoritarian fantasies do not alienate his base, they galvanize it. What was once unthinkable is now policy. What was once fringe has become mainstream. Cruelty is not something to be deplored and avoided at all costs, it is a central feature of power, wielded with theatrical and spectacularized brutality. Under the current acting ICE Director, Todd Lyons, this punitive logic has intensified: Lyons oversees a $4.4 billion Enforcement and Removal Operations apparatus staffed by over 8,600 agents across 200 domestic locations, using militarized tactics, surprise raids, and aggressive targeting of immigrant communities to sustain a regime of fear. ICE’s presence is at the heart of Trump’s hyper-police state, and its funding has been greatly expanded to $170 billion under Trump’s new budget bill, creating what journalist Will Bunch calls Trump’s “own gulag archipelago of detention camps across a United States that’s becoming increasingly hard to recognize.”

Meanwhile, figures like Tom Homan, who led ICE under Trump’s first term, laid the groundwork with Gestapo-style operations, midnight raids, family separations, and public declarations that undocumented immigrants “should be afraid”. As the “border tzar” under Trump, Homan has initiated deportation policies that are even more aggressively violent and cruel that those that took place in Trump’s first term as president. As Bunch notes, take the case of “the 64-year-old New Orleans woman, Donna Kashanian, who fled a tumultuous Iran 47 years ago, volunteered to rebuild her battered Louisiana community after Hurricane Katrina, never missed a check-in with U.S. immigration officials , and was snatched by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles while she was out working in her garden and sent to a notorious detention center.” These horror stories now take place daily in cities extending from Los Angeles to Providence, Rhode Island.

A central player in this current regime of state terrorism, systemic racism, mass abductions, deportations, and the criminalization of dissent is Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff. During Trump’s first term, Miller was the driving force behind the Muslim ban, the family separation policy, and assaults on birthright citizenship, all rooted in an unapologetic white supremacist and eugenicist worldview. In Trump’s second term, he has emerged as the architect of even more draconian measures, pushing for mass deportations, the abolition of birthright citizenship, and the revocation of naturalized citizenship for those who fall outside his white Christian vision of who deserves to be called American.

Far-right white nationalist such as Miller, Tom Homan and Todd Lyons, do not treat cruelty as a regrettable side effect. For them, cruelty is the currency of power. Suffering becomes a spectacle, and violence a ritual of statecraft. Tyranny is not inching forward in silence; it is advancing at full speed, cheered on by those who treat fear as a governing principle and pain as public policy. At stake here is what Timothy Snyder calls the practice of fascist dehumanization.

This is not a passing storm. It is the death throes of a system that has long glorified violence, commodified everything, and fed on division. Trump’s language is not a performance, it is preparation. His words are laying the foundation for a society without empathy, without justice, without democracy.

Reclaiming the Language of Resistance, Reclaiming Democracy

In a decent society, language is the lifeblood of democracy, a vessel of solidarity, truth, and hope. But in Trump’s America, language has become a weapon, dehumanizing, excluding, and dominating. His vision is not a warning; it is a blueprint. We must resist, or we risk losing everything. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of democracy, the retrieval of truth and the refusal to live in a world where cruelty is policy and silence is complicity. 

What is needed now is not only a rupture in language but a rupture in consciousness, one that brings together the critical illumination of the present with a premonitory vision of what lies ahead if fascist dynamics remain unchecked. As Walter Benjamin insisted, we must cultivate a form of profane illumination, a language that disrupts the spectacle of lies and names the crisis in all its violent clarity. At the same time, as A.K. Thompson argues, we must grasp the future implicit in the present. His notion of premonitions urges us to read the events unfolding around us as urgent warnings, as signs of the catastrophe that awaits if we do not confront and reverse the political and cultural paths we are on. It demands that we see the connections that bind our suffering, rejecting the fragmented reality that neoliberalism forces upon us. 

The time for complacency is past. The time for a new and more vibrant language, one of critique, resistance, and militant hope, is now. A language capable not only of indicting the present but of envisioning a future rooted in justice, memory, and collective struggle.

As Antonio Gramsci remarked in his Prison Notebooks, "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." What is clear is that these morbid symptoms have arrived. Yet, alongside the despair they breed, they also present new challenges and opportunities for revitalized struggles. This is where the power of language comes into play—this is the challenge and opportunity for those who believe in the transformative power of culture, language, and education to address not just the nature of the crisis but its deeper roots in politics, memory, agency, values, power, and democracy itself.

[This article first appeared in the LA Progressive.]


By Henry A. Giroux

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His latest book is The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence (Bloomsbury in 2025). He is LA Progressive's Associate Editor. His website is www.henryagiroux.com

“Wypipo” and Higher Education: Unpacking Race, Privilege, and Power in U.S. Colleges

What Does “Wypipo” Mean?

“Wypipo” mimics the pronunciation of “white people” but carries critical connotations. It is often used to call out behaviors associated with whiteness, including racial entitlement, cultural tone-deafness, and systemic blindness to inequities. The term serves as both a cultural critique and an assertion of resistance against normalized white dominance.

Higher Education and “Wypipo”: The Landscape

U.S. colleges and universities remain sites where whiteness shapes admissions, curriculum, governance, and culture. Predominantly white institutions (PWIs) continue to reinforce racial disparities despite diversity initiatives (Espenshade & Radford, 2009; Alon, 2015). Curricula center Eurocentric perspectives, while faculty and administrative leadership remain disproportionately white (Turner, González, & Wong, 2011).

Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA, and Liberty University: Conservative “Wypipo” Powerhouses

Among the most prominent embodiments of “Wypipo” influence in higher education are conservative activist Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Founded in 2012, TPUSA has become a major force in conservative campus organizing, advancing a right-wing political agenda centered on opposition to what it terms “woke” ideology and critical race theory.

Charlie Kirk’s activism includes extensive social media campaigns, campus chapters, and large-scale conferences that mobilize predominantly white student bases. His rhetoric often frames racial justice efforts as threats to free speech and traditional values, casting “wokeness” as a form of indoctrination (Cowan, 2020). Kirk’s influence extends into shaping public policy and funding flows, leveraging connections with major donors and political figures.

Liberty University, founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Sr., is a key institutional partner in this conservative higher education ecosystem. Liberty positions itself as an alternative to mainstream universities, promoting Christian conservative values with significant political and financial resources. Its student body and leadership largely reflect a white evangelical demographic that aligns with Kirk’s messaging. Together, TPUSA and Liberty University represent a coordinated cultural and political push that sustains whiteness as a dominant force in higher education debates (Harriot, 2021).

Michael Harriot’s Insights on “Wypipo” and Power

Journalist and cultural critic Michael Harriot has explored how whiteness functions not only as racial identity but as a system of social control. In his work, Harriot emphasizes the performative and often self-interested nature of white activism and the ways white power adapts to preserve itself, including in educational settings (Harriot, 2017).

Harriot’s analyses illuminate how figures like Kirk and institutions like Liberty University deploy cultural narratives that obscure systemic racism while mobilizing racial resentment. This dynamic reinforces “Wypipo” dominance under the guise of protecting free expression or traditional values, often at the expense of marginalized students and faculty.

How “Wypipo” Reveals Structural Inequities

The use of “Wypipo” challenges higher education stakeholders to recognize whiteness as an active, often unmarked, structure of privilege. Critical race theory frames whiteness as a form of property and power that shapes institutional policies, resource distribution, and cultural norms (Harris, 1993; Lipsitz, 1998).

This perspective calls on predominantly white faculty, administrators, and students to examine their roles in perpetuating inequities, even unconsciously (DiAngelo, 2018). It also critiques diversity efforts that focus on surface inclusion without addressing deeper power imbalances (Ahmed, 2012).

Controversy and Necessity of the Term

While “Wypipo” can be provocative and controversial, it forces a confrontation with realities often softened or ignored in polite discourse. Scholars argue that such language is essential for disrupting entrenched whiteness and fostering honest conversations about race and power (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017).

Toward Equity Beyond “Wypipo”

True progress requires dismantling systemic racism in admissions, curriculum, governance, and campus climate. This means elevating marginalized voices, redistributing power, and holding institutions accountable (Gasman, Kim, & Nguyen, 2011; Harper, 2012). Programs rooted in critical race pedagogy and institutional change show promise for fostering inclusive educational spaces (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

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• Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271–286.

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July 4th in the Face of Fascism: Moral resources for Americans who know we’ve been betrayed (William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove)

Civil Rights Movement and Wayside Theatre photographs, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

On America’s 249^th anniversary of declaring freedom from tyranny, a would-be king will celebrate Independence Day by signing a budget bill that Americans oppose 2 to 1.

This Big Ugly Bill that was passed by Republicans in Congress this week will make the largest cuts to healthcare and nutrition assistance in our nation’s history to pay for tax cuts for people who do not need them and an assault on our communities by masked men who are disappearing our neighbors to concentration camps. The dystopian scene is enough to make any true believer in liberty and equality question whether they can celebrate Independence Day at all. But it would be a betrayal of our moral inheritance to not remember the true champions of American freedom on this day. Indeed, to forget them would mean losing the moral resources we need to revive American democracy.

As bad as things are, we cannot forget that others faced worse with less resources than we have. We are not the first Americans to face a power-drunk minority in public office, determined to hold onto power at any cost. This was the everyday reality of Black Americans in the Mississippi Delta for nearly a century after the Klan and white conservatives carried out the Mississippi Plan in the 1870s, erasing the gains of Reconstruction and enshrining white supremacy in law.

When Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer decided to join the freedom movement in Sunflower County, Mississippi, she knew two things: the majority of people in Sunflower County despised the policies of Senator James O. Eastland and Eastland’s party had the votes to get whatever they wanted written into law. The day she dared attempt to register to vote, Ms. Hamer lost her home. When she attended a training to learn how to build a movement that could vote, she was thrown into the Winona Jail and nearly beaten to death. Still, Ms. Hamer did not bow.

Instead, she leaned into the gospel blues tradition that had grown out of the Delta, spreading the good news that God is on the side of those who do not look away from this world’s troubles but trust that a force more powerful than tyrants is on the side of the oppressed and can make a way out of no way to redeem the soul of America. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” she sang, and a generation of college student volunteers came to sing with her during Freedom Summer. Their mission was to register voters and teach the promises of democracy to Mississippi’s Black children in Freedom Schools.

On July 4, 1964, Ms. Hamer hosted a picnic for Black and white volunteers who’d dedicated their summer to nonviolently facing down fascism on American soil. They celebrated the promise that all are created equal even as they faced death for living as if it were true. Those same young people who were at Hamer’s July 4th picnic went on to launch the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and take their challenge all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City that August. “I question America,” Ms. Hamer said in her testimony that aired on the national news during coverage of the convention. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

Hamer and the MFDP didn’t win the seats they demanded at the 1964 convention, but Atlantic City would be the last convention to seat an all-white delegation from Mississippi. Just a year later, as part of the War on Poverty, Congress passed the Medicare and Medicaid Act, expanding access to healthcare to elderly and low-income Americans – an expansion that Trump is rolling back half a century later in an immoral betrayal of the very people he promised to champion in his fake populist appeal to poor and working people.

There’s nothing un-American about questioning a fascism that defies the will of the people to terrorize American communities and assert total control. It has been the moral responsibility of moral leaders from Frederick Douglass, who asked, “what to the slave is the 4^th of July?” to those who are asking today how Americans are supposed to celebrate when their elected leaders sell them out to billionaires and send masked men to assault their communities. Ms. Hamer is a vivid reminder of the moral wisdom that grows out of the Mississippi Delta. It teaches us that those who question America when we allow fascists to rule are not un-American. They are, in fact, the people who have helped America become more of what she claims to be.

So this 4^th of July, may we all gather with Fannie Lou Hamer and the moral fusion family closest to us – both the living and the dead – to recommit ourselves to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Yes, America’s fascists have the power today. They will throw a party at our House and desecrate the memory of so many who’ve worked to push us toward a more perfect union. But they will not own our Independence Day. As long as we remember the moral tradition that allowed Fannie Lou Hamer to host a July 4^th picnic while she battled the fascism of Jim Crow, we have access to the moral resources we need to reconstruct American democracy today.

This is why today, as all American’s celebrate our nation’s declaration of liberty and equality, we are announcing that the Moral Monday campaign we’ve been organizing in Washington, DC, to challenge the policy violence of this Big Ugly Bill is going to the Delta July 14^th for Moral Monday in Memphis. As we rally moral witnesses in the city of Graceland and the Delta blues – the place where Dr. King insisted in 1968 that the movement “begins and ends” – delegations of moral leaders and directly impacted people will visit Congressional offices across the South to tell the stories of the people who will be harmed by the Big, Ugly, and Deadly bill that Donald Trump is signing today.

Yes, this bill will kill. But we are determined to organize a resurrection of people from every race, religion, and region of this country who know that, when we come together in the power of our best moral traditions, we can reconstruct American democracy and become the nation we’ve never yet been.

Today’s neo-fascists have passed their Big Ugly Bill, but they have also sparked a new Freedom Summer. We will organize those this bill harms. We will mobilize a new coalition of Americans who see beyond the narrow divisions of left and right. We will lean into the wisdom of Ms. Hamer and Delta’s freedom struggle, and we will build a moral fusion movement to save America from this madness.

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The Dark History of Yale University: Power, Privilege, and Complicity in Genocide

Yale University, long celebrated for its intellectual prestige and political influence, has carefully cultivated an image of moral and civic leadership. But beneath the carefully constructed brand lies a history mired in racism, elitism, secrecy, and direct complicity in acts of violence—including genocide. From its early support of settler colonialism to its modern entanglements with war profiteering and imperial policy, Yale has not simply been a passive observer of atrocity, but in many cases, an active participant or enabler.

Founded in 1701 on land taken from the Quinnipiac people, Yale’s earliest benefactors enriched themselves through slavery, land theft, and violent religious expansionism. The institution was deeply tied to Puritan theology and settler colonialism, which justified the displacement and extermination of Native peoples in New England and beyond. Yale College educated generations of ministers, judges, and politicians who championed Manifest Destiny and Indian removal policies—ideologies and practices that resulted in the deaths and forced migrations of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people across the continent. In this sense, Yale was not only born of colonialism; it helped write and preach the intellectual and religious justifications for genocide.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Yale’s scientific and anthropological institutions played an instrumental role in legitimizing eugenics and racial pseudoscience. Professors affiliated with Yale promoted theories of white supremacy, while the university's alumni became architects of U.S. imperialism abroad. Yale graduates were deeply involved in violent campaigns in the Philippines, Latin America, and the Caribbean—campaigns that destroyed communities, repressed national movements, and imposed economic and racial hierarchies through military and corporate force.

In the 20th century, Yale became an incubator for the Cold War security state. The university cultivated close ties with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Skull and Bones, Yale’s secret society, became a recruitment pipeline for covert operations that supported right-wing dictatorships and death squads across the Global South. Yale men were involved in U.S.-backed coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and Indonesia (1965)—many of which led to mass killings and long-term political repression. Some of these operations resulted in genocidal violence, such as the U.S.-supported extermination of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists in Indonesia.

Yale's complicity has continued into the 21st century. The university and its alumni were instrumental in shaping the so-called War on Terror, which led to the invasion of Iraq—a war based on lies, responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and the displacement of millions. Yale Law School graduates like John Yoo and Harold Koh wrote or defended legal justifications for torture, targeted killings, and indefinite detention. Others helped normalize drone warfare, which has devastated communities in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. These are not merely policy failures—they are crimes against humanity in which Yale-educated policymakers, lawyers, and think tank intellectuals have played central roles.

Yale’s investments also raise questions about complicity in structural violence. The university’s massive $40+ billion endowment is largely hidden from public scrutiny, but investigative reporting and activist pressure have revealed connections to fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, and multinational corporations that profit from land dispossession, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation. Yale’s refusal to fully divest from these industries—despite sustained student and faculty protests—aligns it with forces that contribute to ecological collapse and human displacement on a global scale.

In recent years, Yale has made limited efforts to confront its dark history. These include renaming buildings previously honoring staunch defenders of slavery and colonialism, sponsoring research projects on the university’s ties to slavery, and promoting diversity initiatives. However, these gestures, while notable, are overwhelmed by the institution’s long record of harmful acts. The scale and depth of Yale’s complicity in oppression and violence far outstrip these piecemeal reforms, leaving the university’s fundamental structures of power intact and unchallenged.

This is not merely a matter of history. As the world confronts genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, the repression of Uyghurs in China, and the persecution of Indigenous communities in the Amazon, Yale has failed to take meaningful stands. Its silence on current atrocities, particularly those committed or enabled by U.S. allies and business partners, reflects a persistent institutional cowardice masked as neutrality. The university continues to host and celebrate figures implicated in these atrocities while marginalizing the voices of those calling for justice.

Meanwhile, Yale benefits from the labor of underpaid staff and the gentrification of New Haven, all while operating as a tax-exempt institution that hoards wealth rather than redistributing it. Yale’s rhetoric of inclusion and social justice cannot obscure its structural role in global systems of domination and violence.

The dark history of Yale is not a footnote—it is central to understanding how elite education functions in a global empire. Yale has helped shape the world not only through scholarship and leadership, but through conquest, secrecy, and the normalization of genocide. To confront this truth requires more than renaming buildings or commissioning reports. It demands reparations, divestment, decolonization, and a total reimagining of what higher education can and should be.

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to report on these institutional contradictions, shining a light on the real consequences of elite complicity. As long as Yale and its peers remain unaccountable, they will continue to reproduce the very systems they claim to critique.

Juneteenth in New Jersey: The Complicity of Higher Education in Slavery

New Jersey’s legacy as a “slave state of the North” is often overlooked, especially in the sanitized histories of its most prestigious universities. Yet a closer examination reveals that the state’s institutions of higher education—particularly Princeton University and Rutgers University—were not only complicit in slavery, but were active beneficiaries of racial exploitation. Their histories are deeply intertwined with a system that built wealth and social power through the bondage of Black people.

This article is based on the findings of For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey, a landmark report from the New Jersey Reparations Council. The report is an urgent call for transformative change through reparative justice. It draws a direct throughline from New Jersey’s foundational embrace of slavery, through its Jim Crow era and more recent forms of structural racism, to today’s reality of “Two New Jerseys”—one Black, one white, separated by a staggering $643,000 racial wealth gap between median Black and white family wealth.

Princeton University: Built by the Enslaved, for the Elite

Founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton University’s early leadership reads like a roll call of slaveholders. Nine of its first presidents enslaved Black people. At least five brought enslaved individuals to live and labor on campus—including Aaron Burr Sr., who in 1756 purchased a man named Caesar to work in the newly built President’s House. Another, John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president from 1768 to 1794, kept two people in bondage and spoke out against emancipation, claiming that freeing enslaved people would bring “ruin.”

Financially and culturally, Princeton thrived on slavery. Many of its trustees, donors, and faculty enriched themselves through plantation economies and the transatlantic slave trade. Historian Craig Steven Wilder has shown that the university’s enrollment strategy was deliberately skewed toward elite southern families who owned enslaved people. From 1768 to 1794, the proportion of southern students doubled, while the number of students from New Jersey declined. Princeton became a finishing school for the sons of America’s racial aristocracy.

Slavery was not just in the background—it was present in the daily life of the institution. Enslaved Black people worked in kitchens, cleaned dormitories, and served food at official university events. Human beings were bought and sold in full view of Nassau Hall. These men and women, their names often lost to history, were the invisible labor force that built the foundation for one of the wealthiest universities in the world.

The results of this complicity are measurable. Princeton graduates shaped the American Republic—including President James Madison, three U.S. Supreme Court justices, 13 governors, 20 senators, and 23 congressmen. Many of them carried forward the ideologies of white supremacy and anti-Black violence they absorbed in their youth.

Rutgers University: Queen’s College and the Profits of Enslavement

Rutgers University, originally established as Queen’s College in 1766, shares a similarly grim legacy. The college’s early survival depended on donations and labor directly tied to slavery. Prominent among its early trustees was Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who made his fortune by trading enslaved people and operating Caribbean plantations.

Enslaved labor helped build Rutgers, too. A man named Will, enslaved by the family of a college trustee, is among the few individuals whose name has survived. His work helped construct the early physical campus, though his story, like so many others, is only briefly mentioned in account books and correspondence.

The intellectual environment of Queen’s College mirrored the dominant racial attitudes of the time. While some students and faculty opposed slavery, their voices were overwhelmed by an institution that upheld the social, political, and economic status quo. Rutgers, like Princeton, prepared white elites to rule a society built on racial exclusion.

Toward Reparative Justice

The For Such a Time as This report from the New Jersey Reparations Council underscores that the legacy of slavery is not a relic of the past—it is embedded in the material realities of today. New Jersey’s racial wealth gap—$643,000 between Black and white families—is not accidental. It is the result of centuries of dispossession, disinvestment, and discrimination.

The state’s leading universities played a formative role in that history. Acknowledgment of this fact is only a first step. True reckoning means meaningful reparative action. It means directing resources and power toward the communities that have been systematically denied them. It means funding education, housing, healthcare, and business development in Black communities, and making structural changes to how wealth and opportunity are distributed.

Princeton and Rutgers are not just relics of the past; they are major economic and political actors in the present. As institutions with billion-dollar endowments and vast influence, they have both the means and the moral obligation to contribute to a just future.

The question now is whether they will answer the call. 

Navigating the Storm: Existential Questions for Higher Education and the Nation

“Who are we? Where are we going? Where do we come from?” These existential questions are not luxuries in times of crisis—they are necessities. And as the storms of political, social, and environmental upheaval grow darker, they demand our full attention.

For many in the United States, especially younger generations, the future feels bleak. Student loan debt weighs down tens of millions. Meaningless, low-wage, precarious employment—what anthropologist David Graeber called “bullsh*t jobs”—dominates the landscape, even for the college educated. Higher education, once touted as the great equalizer, has increasingly functioned as a sorting mechanism that reinforces class division rather than dismantling it.

This is not accidental. It is the consequence of more than a half century of growing inequality, fueled by tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, union busting, and the privatization of public goods. Since the 1970s, wages for working people have stagnated, while the top one percent has consolidated unimaginable wealth and power. Higher education has both suffered from and contributed to this shift: as public funding declined, universities increasingly turned to corporate partnerships, tuition hikes, student loans, and contingent labor to survive. In doing so, they have often replicated the very inequalities they claim to challenge.

Instead of building an informed and empowered citizenry, the modern university too often churns out debt-saddled consumers, precarious workers, and disillusioned graduates. The idea of education as a public good has been replaced by the logic of the market—branding, metrics, debt financing, and labor flexibility.

Meanwhile, U.S. politics offers little solace. We are caught between the reactionary authoritarianism of Trumpism and the managerial neoliberalism of the Democratic establishment. Both forces have proven inadequate in confronting systemic inequality, environmental collapse, and imperial overreach. Instead, they compete to maintain the illusion of normalcy while conditions deteriorate.

Internationally, the collapse of moral leadership is most evident in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Backed by billions in U.S. aid and political cover, the Israeli military has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and displaced countless more. Hospitals, schools, and entire neighborhoods have been leveled. On college campuses across the U.S., students and faculty who dare to speak out against this atrocity have faced surveillance, censorship, arrests, and administrative repression. At a moment when moral clarity should be the minimum, too many institutions of higher learning have chosen complicity.

This convergence of global injustice and domestic repression raises urgent questions for academia. What is the role of the university in a world marked by war, inequality, and ecological collapse? What values will guide us through the storm?

The answer begins with honesty. We must recognize that higher education is not separate from society’s failures—it is entangled in them. But that also means it can be part of the solution. Colleges and universities can serve as spaces of resistance, reflection, and regeneration—but only if they reject their alignment with empire, capital, and white supremacy.

Where do we come from? From resistance: from student uprisings, civil rights sit-ins, anti-apartheid divestment, labor organizing, and community building. From people who believed—and still believe—that education should serve justice, not profit.

Where are we going? That depends on whether we are willing to confront power, abandon illusions, and build institutions that are democratic, transparent, and rooted in the needs of the many rather than the few.

The future is uncertain. The storm is here. But history is not finished. A more humane and equitable society remains possible—if we have the courage to demand it.

Chris Rufo and Right Wing "Civil Rights"

Chris Rufo’s recent article in City Journal, titled "New Right-Wing Civil-Rights Regime", is a prime example of ideological revisionism that fails to engage with history in any meaningful way. At its core, Rufo presents an interpretation of the civil rights movement and its aftermath that is both profoundly ahistorical and dangerously reductionist. While attempting to frame his argument as a critique of the modern Left’s grip on civil rights law, Rufo distorts the legacy of the 1960s civil rights movement and misrepresents the real challenges of racial justice in America today.

Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a prominent figure in the battle against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, has gained significant influence in recent years for his aggressive campaigns to shift the national discourse on race and education. Rufo's rise to prominence coincided with his efforts to expose and denounce critical race theory (CRT) in public education, a tactic that has been instrumental in shaping conservative rhetoric around race. His latest article continues this trend, proposing that the Trump administration's attack on DEI programs in higher education represents a necessary correction to what he perceives as a Left-wing racialist agenda.

However, Rufo’s understanding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its legacy is highly problematic. The article begins by referencing Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement, a book that has been influential in certain conservative circles. Caldwell’s thesis, which Rufo echoes, argues that the Civil Rights Act marked a "fundamental departure" from America’s constitutional tradition. According to Caldwell (and by extension, Rufo), the Act, initially a noble effort to combat racial discrimination, eventually "consumed core American freedoms" and has been weaponized to entrench "left-wing racialist ideology" in American institutions. This narrative, however, overlooks the essential purpose of the Civil Rights Act—to eliminate legally sanctioned racial discrimination and provide equal protection to marginalized groups.

Rufo’s invocation of Caldwell’s book is troubling because it oversimplifies the historical context of civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not the beginning of a long, slow descent into tyranny, as Rufo suggests, but rather the long-overdue correction of centuries of systemic racism. The idea that it was somehow a “departure” from constitutional principles is a misguided reading of both the Act’s intent and the broader history of American law. To frame the Act’s enforcement mechanisms and subsequent civil rights policies as a threat to "core American freedoms" is a distortion that erases the basic reality of racial oppression in the U.S. before and after its passage.

The Legacy of White Supremacy and Structural Racism

What Rufo and those who echo his arguments fail to acknowledge is the enduring legacy of white supremacy and structural racism that has pervaded American society for centuries. The very system of racial discrimination that the Civil Rights Act sought to dismantle is far from a relic of the past; it is woven into the fabric of American institutions, policies, and practices in ways that continue to disadvantage Black people and other people of color.

One glaring example is the practice of redlining, where federal policies explicitly denied mortgage loans and insurance to Black families and other communities of color in favor of white neighborhoods. The result was the creation of segregated, impoverished urban spaces that continue to suffer from disinvestment and lack of opportunity to this day. In many cities, predominantly Black neighborhoods were intentionally situated near polluting industries, highways, and other environmentally harmful sites—leading to environmental racism. For example, toxic waste was often dumped in or near Black communities, subjecting these populations to higher rates of asthma, cancer, and other health problems. These practices are a direct manifestation of a racist infrastructure that systematically devalued the lives and health of Black and Brown Americans.

Similarly, housing policies throughout the 20th century—especially during the post-WWII era—were designed to exclude Black families from the expanding suburban dream. The GI Bill, which offered housing subsidies to veterans returning from World War II, was administered in ways that largely excluded Black servicemen from accessing these benefits. As a result, millions of white families were able to buy homes and build wealth, while Black families were largely left out, forcing many into substandard housing or limited to racially segregated neighborhoods with fewer opportunities for economic mobility.

The effects of segregation are not limited to housing, however. In education, the legacy of white supremacy has created an unequal system that continues to affect Black and Latinx students today. While Brown v. Board of Education (1954) officially declared school segregation unconstitutional, de facto segregation still exists in many schools due to housing patterns, local funding disparities, and state and federal neglect. Predominantly Black schools often face chronic underfunding, inadequate facilities, and higher teacher turnover rates, all of which contribute to a less equitable education for students of color. The persistent racial achievement gap in standardized testing, college admissions, and career prospects is not an accident, but the direct result of this long-standing inequality in education.

In the workplace, systemic discrimination continues to be a major problem. Job discrimination against Black and Brown workers has been documented for decades, whether in hiring practices, wage disparities, or promotions. Studies show that applicants with “ethnic-sounding” names are less likely to be called back for job interviews, even when their resumes are identical to those of their white counterparts. Even in fields like law, medicine, and finance—where education and credentials are paramount—racial minorities face significant barriers to advancement.

The criminal justice system is perhaps the most visible example of how structural racism is still a significant issue in the United States. The over-policing of Black neighborhoods, mass incarceration, and the disproportionate sentencing of Black Americans for similar offenses compared to their white counterparts are stark reminders of how racial inequality remains embedded in American institutions. Rufo’s argument that we have moved past the systemic racism embedded in our society ignores this reality, while conveniently minimizing or disregarding the lived experiences of Black and Brown communities.

"Colorblindness" as a Historical Evasion

Rufo goes on to argue that the Right, for years ambivalent about civil rights law, has now discovered its “winning argument”—one grounded in “colorblind equality.” This is where the article takes a dangerous turn, suggesting that policies such as affirmative action and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are the result of a Left-wing plot to institutionalize racial discrimination. The article not only misrepresents the goals of such programs but also fundamentally misunderstands the role they play in a society that has never fully reckoned with its history of racial inequities.

The notion of “colorblindness” as the ideal model of equality, promoted by Rufo and others, is deeply problematic. While it may sound appealing in theory, in practice, colorblindness ignores the structural realities of race in America. It’s an abstraction that overlooks the lived experiences of racial minorities and fails to address the historical and ongoing disadvantages they face. In higher education, for example, DEI policies are designed not to perpetuate discrimination but to provide opportunities for those who have been historically excluded from academic spaces. Rufo’s argument that these policies are a form of “racialist discrimination” is not only misleading but actively harmful, suggesting that efforts to correct inequality are themselves a form of bigotry.

Chris Rufo’s Avoidance of Class in His Analysis

One of the most glaring omissions in Rufo’s analysis is his near-total avoidance of class as a factor in understanding systemic inequality. Rufo's focus is almost exclusively on race, specifically on how he perceives racial policies to be privileging one group over another, but he does not consider the ways in which class and economic status intersect with race to perpetuate inequality. This avoidance of class, particularly in the context of economic mobility and working-class struggles, weakens his entire argument and distorts the reality of how racism operates in modern American society.

Rufo’s critique of the modern civil rights regime seems to entirely ignore the vast disparities in wealth, income, and opportunity that are not simply a product of racial identity but of class-based systems of power. For example, his focus on “colorblind” equality in education does not account for the fact that the richest Americans, regardless of their racial background, have access to a far superior education and resources than the poor, who are disproportionately Black, Latinx, or Indigenous. The education gap that Rufo claims is a result of racial policies is also a direct consequence of economic inequality, where low-income communities—largely communities of color—are unable to access the same quality of education as wealthier, predominantly white communities. Acknowledging this would complicate Rufo’s narrative, as it would challenge the simplistic framing of a racial conflict between different ethnic groups, rather than a structural critique of the class divide in America.

Moreover, Rufo’s call for a “colorblind” society effectively erases the fact that poverty and economic disempowerment are racialized in ways that cannot be understood without examining the intersection of race and class. By focusing solely on racial hierarchy without addressing the role that economic disparity plays in sustaining social divisions, Rufo contributes to a larger ideological erasure of class struggle from the national conversation. His avoidance of class is a deliberate one, as it allows him to cast the issue of racial justice solely in terms of “identity politics” and to dismiss efforts aimed at addressing material inequality as divisive or unnecessary.

Who Will Be Receptive to This Propaganda?

While Rufo's article represents a highly selective interpretation of civil rights history, it will likely resonate with certain groups whose political and cultural leanings align with his critique of left-wing ideologies. These are individuals who believe that the modern civil rights agenda, particularly in the form of DEI and affirmative action programs, has gone too far and is now harmful to the interests of "oppressor" groups like white people, men, and even some Asian Americans. This demographic includes:

1. Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Many who align with conservative or libertarian ideologies are drawn to the narrative that civil rights policies have become a tool of social engineering, seeking to dismantle traditional values in the name of racial and gender equality. Rufo’s emphasis on "colorblind" policies will appeal to those who see government intervention as an overreach and prefer individual merit over group-based policies.

2. Populist Right-Wing Activists: The article will likely resonate with populist voters who view institutions like the Ivy League universities as bastions of elitism and left-wing ideologies. These individuals are often distrustful of academic institutions, the media, and governmental institutions, and Rufo’s framing of DEI as racialist discrimination plays into their fears of being "marginalized" in favor of minority groups.

3. Cultural War Foot Soldiers: Many of Rufo’s ideas are packaged as part of the broader culture wars. His framing of CRT, DEI, and "wokeness" as threats to American values is designed to rally those who feel alienated by changes in cultural norms, especially regarding race, gender, and identity. This group tends to be more reactive to what they perceive as a breakdown in social order, and Rufo provides a coherent narrative that positions them as defenders of a traditional, meritocratic society.

4. Right-Wing Media Consumers: The article is likely to appeal to consumers of right-wing media who are already attuned to the language of cultural decline and political correctness. These readers will be receptive to Rufo’s framing because it aligns with familiar themes promoted by conservative pundits.

In the end, Rufo’s narrative is one that is carefully designed for a particular audience—a segment of the American populace that feels threatened by the cultural shifts around race, identity, and equality. By presenting a revisionist history of civil rights and ignoring the deeply embedded structural inequalities of class, race, and economics, Rufo continues to peddle an ideological framework that is more about cultural warfare than actual justice.