Christopher Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023). In it he has a chapter on DEI and its role in the Cultural Revolution. The chapter’s final paragraphs are just as true of Australia and other Western nations: If critical race theory should succeed as a system of government, it is easy to imagine the future: an omnipotent bureaucracy that manages transfer payments between racial castes, enforces always-shifting speech and behavior codes through bureaucratic rule, and replaces the slogan of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” with the deadening euphemism of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

There is a real cultural revolution underway. The culture wars have been fought for a number of decades now, and they present a very real threat to the West. The fact that I have over 2500 articles on this matter is but one indication that this has been a key battleground between the radical left and those who think Western civilisation is still worth preserving.

As has been explained so often now, the earlier calls for violent political revolution largely fell on deaf ears. The workers of the world did not rise up and revolt as Marx had predicted. So later Marxists determined that internal evolution through the taking over of the institutions would be the way to achieve what external armed revolution could not.

So now we have the whole gamut of critical race theory, wokism, political correctness, intersectionality, tribalism, victim politics and the like being pushed throughout the West. And by targeting all the major institutions of power and influence – the schools, the media, law, politics, and even the churches – it has been largely quite successful.

All this is part of the attempt by the revolutionary left to remake the West in its own image, and to undermine all things they consider to be toxic and counterrevolutionary. Everything must go, but by using internal subversion and upheaval, much of what is being done can be presented in platitudes and euphemisms.

Consider DEI for example. It sounds pretty good, right? Who is not in favour of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Of course, it all depends on what is meant by these terms. Kamala and the Dems in America, and Albo and Labor in Australia for example are constantly using these words. But what they mean by them is not what most of us mean.

The examples of DEI are everywhere to be found, sometimes with really quite tragic consequences. One of the most recent and egregious cases in point almost cost Donald Trump his life. The utter bungling and failures of the US Secret Service to protect the former President at his rally in Butler, PA some 12 weeks ago showed the whole world just how dangerous DEI can be.

Sure, it was not the only reason for this colossal fail by those meant to be protecting Trump, but it was a major component nonetheless. Recall what was the main priority of the then head of the SS, Kimberley Cheatle. DEI was a consuming passion of hers, and her stated goal was to have at least 30 per cent of all personnel female.

Now in many areas, it does not matter if 90 per cent of your workers are female, be it flipping burgers or developing software. But when it comes to protecting the leaders of a nation, it is not quotas that we need, but those who are fully qualified. Merit and not mere numbers is what matters. Many women can fit the bill here, but when the quite short female agents could not even properly protect Trump (he is 6’ 3” after all), then DEI should be left out, and those who are qualified should be the primary consideration.

But that is just one example of many. Hiring people simply to fill quotas is a recipe for disaster. I have written on this matter often. In one such piece I quoted a woman – yes, a woman – who put it this way:

Quotas suck. Women will only be equal when there isn’t an artificial incentive for women to be promoted. If management staffing decisions are made with a frame of ‘we don’t have enough women so we should pick a woman’ then how can a woman ever be respected in that position? If quotas exist, how will women ever be considered worthy of their roles, deserving of them and equal to the task, rather than equal to the quota? https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/03/09/women-quotas-and-affirmative-action/

Of course it is not just women we are talking about here, but Blacks and others. The noted Black American economist Thomas Sowell has written numerous works on this. Here is just one quote – from his important book Race and Economics:

“Perhaps the greatest dilemma in attempts to raise ethnic minority income is that those methods which have historically proved successful—self-reliance, work skills, education, business experience—are all slow developing, while those methods which are more direct and immediate—job quotas, charity, subsidies, preferential treatment—tend to undermine self-reliance and pride of achievement in the long run.”

And he of course has more recently written on DEI as well.

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