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"What's wrong" is that it would be very difficult and awkward in an interview to describe Jefferson in a way that didn't just make people reading go "oh, you're trying to say he's a racist." By any reasonable definition we have, we could consign Jefferson to the category. But Robinson may just genuinely not get that Rufo would never admit it because "Rufo admits CRT was right" is the kind of headline people would unironically parrot forever when discussing him.
Why Robinson decided to interview Rufo is beyond me, it should have been obvious that as "new" as the arguments might be, the incentives for a persona are entirely different from that of a person.
Cause if you don't Rufo will go around insisting that the Left isn't willing to have a discussion.
I don't see anything in the Current Affairs article saying that Rufo approached Robinson.
That's usually not how it works: I doubt most people are salivating to debate Nathan Robinson in particular. But they will attack the Left, claiming it doesn't discuss things anymore and where have the good liberal leftists gone and so on. This is an old game played by right-wingers and is especially good after some form of college illiberalism is thrown their way (e.g. Shapiro, Milo).
I just heard him on Hanania and he basically said as much: the Left doesn't really do debate anymore so the goal is to make it so uncomfortable that they have to.
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Rufo literally admitted to the fact. He's just not willing to capitulate on the word, for the exact same reason Democrats don't want to call the estate tax the "death tax" despite it being factually triggered by a death -- because everyone agrees on what the estate tax is and calling it a different name changes nothing about the actual substance of the disagreement. Refusing to use your opponent's loaded terminology has nothing to do with being dishonest.
The problem is that even in an entirely good-faith argument, I don't know how you could come away thinking Jefferson isn't a racist by our standards. Such an argument might also give consider what describes a person when one thinks of them generally - should you think Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father or Thomas Jefferson, racist Founding Father? Or if we have to acknowledge this bigotry in every instance.
This is why I was saying the personas mattered. Rufo's status hinges on him rejecting the philosophy of the social progressives and other radical leftists he identifies, he has every incentive to not give them an optics win. Approach Rufo in a bar with no other people and make the same argument, he'd be far more amenable to it, I suspect.
The proper conclusion is "Jefferson was a racist, but not all racism is as bad as you think it is". But "racism isn't as bad as you think it is" is a taboo position, regardless of its truth. Robinson knows this, which is why he built the questioning around racism in the first place, and which makes it fundamentally dishonest.
Rufo himself declared CRT to be wrong on everything. Robinson was challenging him precisely on the question of what they had gotten wrong when they described the Founding Fathers as racist. How is Robinson supposed to engage with Rufo on the validity of his claims about CRT if not by challenging something as basic as this?
Only a certain kind of literalist on the Internet thinks being wrong "about everything" means literally every single thing, rather than being wrong about major implications in typical cases.
"They are literally right that Jefferson is racist, but they are wrong in what this implies about how we should treat Jefferson" is, by normie standards, being wrong about Jefferson.
"The Founding Fathers were racist" is not a trivial statement in this case. It is very much an important idea that both sides grapple with in their critiques and rebuttals of said critiques. I don't know how you can say that this is a case of "Internet literalism" when it's a crucial point in the CRT edifice. Hell, this is literally one of the basis facts of the 1619 project. Rufo would 100% deliberately trash this because it constitutes a major attack on his stance.
It's not trivial, but it also isn't an automatic win. "Racism is evil, so now that we've established that Jefferson is racist, you'd better not mention him in a positive context ever again unless my side approves of it" is not legitimate. And that's what "Jefferson is racist" usually means.
Okay, but Rufo is the one who decided to take that stance. If Rufo had narrowed or moderated his stance against CRT, he wouldn't be subject to the weakness of his current stance. A bad argument in favor of a good thing (as many here would see it) is still a bad argument.
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Yes.
The proper lesson to learn is not to share a society with people who play these sorts of games. Conversations that start with the other side possessing absolute control over the terms aren't worth having, and Blues have demonstrated an abundant variety of methods for how to terminate conversations one considers unproductive.
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