The anti DEI MAGA activist Christopher Rufo

**Justin Webb** (0:00)
It would be hard to find a campaigner who's done more to influence the cultural changes that Donald Trump has introduced at the White House than Chris Rufo. He is perhaps the most influential activist on the MAGA right. He spent the last few years taking on particularly diversity initiatives in the US, including a campaign to oust the former Harvard president Claudine Gay, a campaign that was eventually successful. He is more though than simply a MAGA activist. He is also a thinker about the future of the right and he is concerned about the direction of the movement and what will happen to it after Donald Trump leaves office.
Welcome to Americast.

**Christopher Rufo** (0:46)
Americast from BBC News.

**Justin Webb** (0:48)
You hear that sound?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

**Justin Webb** (0:53)
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you.
I am delighted to be joined by Chris Rufo, who is on the line now. Chris, hello.

**Christopher Rufo** (1:17)
Good to be with you.

**Justin Webb** (1:18)
I want to start by getting you to lay out what the Chris Rufo agenda is. What is the America that Chris Rufo wants to see? What does it look like?

**Christopher Rufo** (1:29)
Well, there is a near-term answer and a longer-term answer, but in the near-term, the campaigns that I have been working on for the last five or six years have been broadly categorized as anti-woke.
What I would like to see is the de-wokefication of America. Getting rid of left-wing racialist ideology within our institutions, dismantling the gender cult within our institutions, and moving America back towards those great principles of freedom, equality and the republic.

**Justin Webb** (2:00)
And obviously, diversity, equity and inclusion, this kind of catch-all term that refers to efforts made, not just in the public sector, but very much in the private sector as well, I suppose, to, as supporters of it would say, equalize things. And that is where you have set your sights in recent years.

**Christopher Rufo** (2:20)
Yeah, that's right. So I led the campaign to abolish DEI. We did it in the state of Florida with Ron DeSantis. We did it then in 20 states around the country, red states. And then, of course, President Trump dismantled the DEI bureaucracy within the federal government on day one of his administration. But the question about equalizing or equality is really the key one. And as I see it, you can really have two principles of equality. One is to have equal treatment of people based on their intention with one another. You can have equal treatment as individuals, recognizing that that will result into disparate group outcomes. Or you can have unequal treatment of individuals to try to equalize group outcomes. And so my reading of the history of our country, those deep principles of the Declaration, the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, it leads us to say that we reject equalizing different treatment of people based on their identity or ancestry. And we need to get back to treating people equally under the law, no matter their sex, et cetera.

**Justin Webb** (3:22)
I wanna get to some of the counterarguments in just a second, but before we get there, how successful have you been? How much of this battle, this war, I suppose it is, have you successfully won, do you think?

**Christopher Rufo** (3:34)
So I think we've defeated DEI ideologically as a matter of public opinion, but we haven't defeated DEI institutionally as a matter of policy in particular in the private sector, in places like universities, which in the second Trump administration have changed the name of their diversity offices. They've tried to hide their discriminatory policies, but they haven't had the wholesale institutional gutting that I think needs to happen in order for us to move beyond this discriminatory racialist ideology.

**Justin Webb** (4:06)
How do you deal them with those who would say, we understand the outcome that you want, Chris Rufo, but we think that to get to the outcome, which is everyone being able to flourish in a properly fair society, to get there, you are going to have to address the wrongs that were done through the many, many decades, the wrongs that have been done to groups of people in order to make sure that people from those groups have the same opportunities as everyone else. And that and only that is what DEI is about.

**Christopher Rufo** (4:43)
Well, I mean, it's a great story, right? And I would share some of the premises in the sense of acknowledging the history of racial injustice in the United States, obviously slavery, segregation. These are ugly parts of American history. And thankfully those principles that the founders laid down in the 1760s helped guide us towards transcending those systems. The question is what to do about it now. And I reject this idea that we are forever tethered towards treating people unequally because we treated people unequally in the past. And I actually think the system that is most just is of course to acknowledge the history of the United States, but then to move towards a system where everybody is treated equally as an individual, everyone gets a fair shake. And I think more or less we're there in the sense that most Americans and in particular Americans who run institutions, who dispense opportunities, who have large companies truly want to do the right thing. They want to give people a fair shot. They want to give special or careful consideration to say job applicants who have emerged from difficult life circumstances, whatever racial background they might be. But the system that we have now is actually perversely, not achieving that kind of story that the left would like to say. And in fact, you have someone like the former president of Harvard, Claudine Gay.