The Sophistry of the New Right Activism

“Rufo’s ‘New Right Activism’ is not the prescription of one who, following Socrates, seeks to be virtuous, but rather one who, following Faust, sacrifices his soul to achieve victory.”

It is perhaps the most banal of truisms that politics is not about truth but, rather, about narrative. In the world of politics, it is easy to be cynical about the polemics of politicians, the judgment of journalists, and the antics of activists, grifters, hucksters, and talking heads who are in the game of spin. But in the conspiracy-mongering cesspool of the postmodern Right, where any information from “Establishment” figures or institutions is treated as just another mendacious language game of the Left that deserves insurmountable suspicion, scorn, and rebuke, the distinction between truth and narrative increasingly seems to have been lost altogether. With former President Donald Trump and bullshit at the helm of the Republican Party, the postmodern Right has devolved into naked sophistry.

When former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X on January 16th, after suspending his campaign, that his “entire campaign is about speaking the TRUTH,” as if capitalizing “truth” made it a truer statement, it was easy enough to roll one’s eyes and chalk it up to spin. But this was from a man who seems to have never met a conspiracy theory he did not like, no matter how often it has been debunked, such as the idea that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hatched the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in order to entrap the perpetrators, or the absurd allegation that January 6th was an “inside job.” After recently being asked in Iowa about 5,000 pedophiles in the Department of Defense whom President Trump supposedly arrested in 2019, Ramaswamy did not miss a beat, responding that they need to be held accountable without a flinch of doubt that the assertion was true. Most recently, he has felt right at home engaging in “some wild speculation” that pop icon Taylor Swift is being used as a psy-op to sway the upcoming presidential election. The right-wing conspiracy theorist par excellence, Alex Jones, has even dubbed Ramaswamy “Alex Jones 2.0.”

For Ramaswamy, it has never been about the truth. It has always been about winning. It is not winning the race, of course, since he was trounced in Iowa. It is about winning praise from a sufficiently large audience that he should come to the attention of people who will advance his brand. Branding makes sense for a man with a billion dollars and an entrepreneurial background, and it does not seem a stretch to infer, especially after his fawning endorsement of President Trump, that he has been aiming for Vice President or a Cabinet position all along, assuming President Trump wins the general election. If he has to sacrifice “TRUTH” on the altar of bull—, the national limelight is worth it.