The cost of cynicism
How should the left respond to a political culture that believes in nothing?
Chris Rufo is being a hypocrite again. After a good decade of melting down about woke cancel culture and tweet policing, Rufo had the audacity to cry “racism” on Thursday after digging up a six year old tweet of Mayor Zohran Mamdani giving Christopher Columbus the finger. If Mamdani were to respond to literally any act of actual racism in the same way, of course, Rufo would predictably call this a brutal imposition of elite liberal sensitivities on free speech and spend the next year quietly lobbying Congress to deport him to France or whatever. But since it was Mamdani showing disrespect, and since it did it in a way Rufo disapproves of, all of these complaints about cancel culture go out the window.
Whenever Rufo does something like this it’s hard not to focus on the logic of his hypocrisy — as if he and his supporters simply do not appreciate that they are being dishonest, and as if some sufficiently airtight analysis of his contradictions will be enough to show him the error of his ways. By now, however, it should be perfectly obvious that Rufo knows exactly what he’s doing. If you don’t get this, all you need to do is watch his reply to Ezra Klein in a recent interview:
KLEIN: I think that the right’s inability to hold itself to certain epistemelogical or institutional standards…is insane, in my view.
RUFO: …you think I take the rhetorical flourish too far? …I would ask you a question then. Has the New York Times editorial line moved more in my direction since 2020…?
Rufo isn’t worried about the truth. He’s worried about winning. So if you are spending any amount of time explaining to Rufo that he’s being dishonest, you’ve missed the point. Rufo’s error is not in failing to recognize his own hypocrisy. Rufo’s error is in believing that building a culture of deliberate cynicism and Machiavellian sophistry will get him where he wants to go — or that the ends would ultimately justify the means.
Klein focuses on Rufo and the right, of course, but this culture of cynicism is just as prolific among liberals. And if we don’t fight it, it will infect the left as well.
