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Help, the Online Right is fighting again! In a long, wide-ranging article published yesterday for the digital magazine IM-1776, the neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin and the conservative activist Christopher Rufo debate DEI, Plato and the American Revolution. In a battle between Yarvin’s often high-falutin metaphors and Rufo’s more practical approach to advancing conservative thought, there doesn’t seem to be a clear winner. Just insults galore.
"Readers must decide: step into the opium den with Curtis Yarvin, or into the arena with other men."https://t.co/BtYrBE64iN
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 11, 2024
Yarvin says of Rufo’s campaign against DEI that “even when your sword goes home and sinks to the hilt, you only demonstrate what a pinprick it is to this Brobdignagian monster”. The activist, meanwhile, asks his counterpart, “You claim to have immense ambitions […] but what are your practical accomplishments?” Ouch.
But there’s more. Rufo accuses Yarvin of being “too clever” not to know that “lifting metaphors from action films and fantasy novels is not a substitute for the practical work of governance”, but “too arrogant to fully accept it”. Is the Right’s cathedral about to experience a schism?
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SubscribePretty fascinating exchange. I found myself agreeing with Rufo when he says “Ultimately, you are a sophist: your writing might create a small magnetic field, but underneath it, there is nothing.”