Culture wars

Plenty of arch invective here worthy of a Taibbi Vampire Squid Award:

It would be foolish and exhausting to speculate on the role that Times editor-in-chief Joseph Kahn (Harvard '87, Harvard M.A. '90) played in pushing this story; there is nothing to do but speculate, there. Power works in different ways, and if Ackman–style public meltdowns are the loudest and most overt expression of that work, and Rufo's store-brand Rasputin act are the most obviously motivated, they are not the only ones. There is also the Times' understanding of itself as the author of the discourse, and all that ostentatious invisibility—the decisions about what is and is not a story, or what is and is not up for debate, that only show up in the negative.

You already know how that works; we are soaking in it. Someone at the institution decides that there is or ought to be, say, a debate about the safety or advisability of trans health care where no such debate actually exists, and then the debate is manufactured to suit that sense—in and through stories about that debate. And then, at some point down the line, some laws are promulgated that reflect that debate's terms. 

When Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine banned trans health care in his state last week, he did not do it by signing a heavy-handed law passed through his state's legislature. He vetoed that, and then effectively did the same thing in a way that reflected all the deep and vexing complexities and risks that the Times has repeatedly insisted exist. He mandated a process that would force people seeking that care to navigate a series of onerous administrative requirements, and to compel the services of an endocrinologist, and a bioethicist, and a mental health specialist—to make sure that care is not given too fast. "It needs to be lengthy," DeWine said of the counseling component, "and it needs to be comprehensive."

So what begins as irresponsible, ideological, but plausibly deniable discourse shows up down the line as policy. It's rarely quite as easy to see as it is in this instance, when irresponsible, ideological, plausibly deniable discourse is the policy. The debate can only ever continue; the resolution will arrive without any visible fingerprints, as a story about something that just happened.

Maybe the clearest sign, the clearest admission that all of this was part of the conservative push to attack education and build the muscles and power to limit academic institutions came from one of the architects of the plan himself. Chris Rufo is already known for working with Ron DeSantis to attack the New College in Florida, driving away numerous LBGT students, and making the school a far more conservative and repressive institution. On December 19th Rufo publicly tweeted out, “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” And his plan worked. He is now openly bragging about it not just on social media, but in the Wall Street Journal.

Just like Ackman, Rufo is no longer even pretending that this is about antisemitism, protecting Jews, plagiarism, or anything else with any merit. Ackman calls it attacking diversity at these institutions, Rufo calls it winning the culture war, and yet numerous major publications immediately went with the framing that these men really care about academic integrity, Jewish students, and seemingly whatever else these cynical and bad-faith actors wanted them to say.