17-04-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Meet MAGA's Favorite Communist
Christopher Rufo is perhaps the most potent conservative activist in the U.S. Last year, he led the campaign that pressured Harvard University into replacing Claudine Gay as its president. His crusades against critical race theory and DEI in higher education have shaped President Trump's aggressive policies toward elite universities like Harvard, which the administration targeted this week with a $2.26 billion funding freeze.
For the past year, Rufo has been working on a book called 'How the Regime Rules,' which he describes as a 'manifesto for the New Right.' At its core is a surprising inspiration: the Italian Communist thinker Antonio Gramsci, a longtime boogeyman of American conservatives. 'Gramsci, in a sense, provides the diagram of how politics works and the relationship between all of the various component parts: intellectuals, institutions, laws, culture, folklore,' said Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
