Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the California GOP convention on September 29, 2023, in Anaheim, California. | Source: David McNew / Getty
One can only wonder if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ever gets tired of being associated with white supremacists while he’s trying his absolute hardest to push the delusional narrative that white supremacy doesn’t exist. Seriously, it’s bad enough that the governor of so-called beneficial slavery can’t seem to stop white supremacist groups from marching through his state while holding up “Ron DeSantis 2024” signs. It’s bad enough that a DeSantis-appointed commissioner who posed for a photo in a KKK robe had to resign, and DeSantis recently had to replace a campaign staffer who shared a pro-Nazi video.
Now, a conservative activist who is a close ally of the governor of subjugating the Black vote is out here entertaining the idea of standing on the side of white power “in order to destroy the power of the left.”
Meet Christopher Rufo.
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According to The Guardian—which described Rufo as “a Manhattan Institute fellow who has been a hugely influential figure in DeSantis’ culture war policies in Florida”—he recently hosted an online debate in which one right-wing participant argued that conservatives should be OK with white nationalists in power so long as it brought to a heel the ubiquitous anti-conservative group they conservatives refer to as “the left.” It was a hypothetical scenario that, if we’re being honest, isn’t so hypothetical.
From the Guardian:
Participating in the debate was Charles Haywood, a former shampoo magnate who the Guardian previously reported is a would-be “warlord” who founded a secretive, men-only fraternal society, the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR).
The debate concerned Haywood’s promotion of a strategy he calls “no enemies to the right”, which urges people on the right to avoid any public criticism of others in their camp, including extremists.
Early in the Rufo-hosted discussion last Tuesday, Haywood raised the hypothetical possibility early in the discussion: “Let’s say a real white nationalist arose who had real political power … and therefore [could] be of assistance against the left.”
Responding to the hypothetical, Haywood said: “I think that the answer is that you should cooperate with that person in order to destroy the power of the left.”
Again, the only reason this is a hypothetical scenario is that conservatives refuse to acknowledge that DeSantis, Donald Trump and many other anti-“woke” GOP officials are all, for all intents and purposes, “real white nationalists” who have “real political power.” They wield that power when they engage in their propaganda-reliant wars against critical race theory and non-white-washed Black history. They wield that power when they redistrict their congressional maps in an intentional effort to dilute Black voting power and seek to disenfranchise Black and brown voters. Anti-“wokeness,” when it comes right down to it, is white nationalism under a name that gives white nationalists plausible deniability in the eyes of other white nationalists. Of course, in this instance, Haywood is at least admitting that white nationalism is largely a right-wing thing.
Anyway, here’s more from the Guardian:
Later in the broadcast, Haywood responded to concerns about rightwing authoritarianism by saying: “When we’re talking about people like Franco or Pinochet or even Salazar … they did kill people. They killed people justly, they killed people unjustly, and that’s just a historical fact.”
“But,” Haywood added, “they saved a lot more people than they killed.”
Augusto Pinochet was military dictator of Chile from 1971 to 1990, and after coming to power in a coup he tortured, exiled or killed tens of thousands of his regime’s opponents.
Francisco Franco was dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975, and his regime killed 100,000 to 200,000 people during the so-called “white terror”. António de Oliveira Salazar was the head of Portugal’s authoritarian, one-party state from 1932 until 1968; his regime repressed domestic opposition and oversaw brutal colonial policies in Africa that permitted forced labor and other abuses.
Certainly, Rufo wouldn’t stand for this, right? Surely, white conservatives against “wokeness” haven’t sunk so low that they’re holding space to justify murderous right-wing and white supremacist terrorism. Please tell us Rufo gave this fanboy for genocidal colonialists an earful of condemnation and didn’t, instead, praise Haywood for their stimulating and thought-provoking insight.
Come on. y’all. You know that’s exactly what he did.
Rufo gave Haywood and other participants their props for “raising “some provocative points on all sides, some thoughtful points on all sides.”
“I think there is room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right,” he continued. “I think we need to have a bridge between the two and engage in thoughtful dialogue.”
So, basically, “wokeness” is definitely bad, but the possibility that genocidal white nationalist dictator policies might be good for America is up for debate. Got it.
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