What Happens When a Carnival Barker Writes Intellectual History

Christopher F. Rufo is what is sometimes known as a shit-stirrer—a particular type of troublemaker whose game is to find something stinky, then waft its fumes toward the noses of those mostly likely to be outraged by it. In the past several years, controversies over race, gender, and campus leftism have ripened in part due to his publicity. Often the so-called antiracists, trans activists, and tenured radicals at the center of the controversies are self-discrediting. All Rufo has to do is quote them or post their videos on his Twitter feed—a teacher fanatically devoted to a trendy form of social justice, say, or someone preening about their identity. Even those who find their behavior outrageous often find Rufo’s tactics distasteful as well. (Many of his targets strike me as mentally unbalanced.) But the thing about shit-stirrers is that even if they are distasteful or loathsome, they’d be out of work if there were not already raw material to stir.

Rufo’s new book, , is in this context surprisingly hygienic. It is not about the raw material but about the manufacturers of the porcelain