GOP's 'woke' whisperer linked to wannabe warlords and proto-fascists: report

The right-wing activist who has cooked up messaging strategies against critical race theory and other hot-button culture war issues has close ties to a "dissident right" magazine that undermines liberal democracy and lavishes praise on authoritarian leaders.

Chris Rufo, a frequent Fox News guest who has the ear of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, contributes to the far-right IM-1776 magazine and maintains an explicitly collaborative and supportive relationship with its editors and writers, including would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood who leads a network of armed extremists bent on ending liberal ideals, reported The Guardian.

"[IM-1776's] editors and writers — many of them so-called 'anons' working under pseudonyms — have variously advocated for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act; celebrated figures such as the 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski and the proto-fascist Italian nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio; and advanced conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, and what they term the 'regime', a leftist power structure that they imagine unites the state, large corporations, universities and the media," the newspaper reported.

The outlet ran a "manifesto" by Rufo called "The New Right Activism" last month in both its online and print versions, and he has publicly urged his followers to buy and subscribe to IM-1776. He said during one of the Twitter spaces he's co-hosted with the magazine's editors that he hoped to incorporate the "dissident right" into mainstream conservatism.

“I think there is a room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right," Rufo said. "I think we need to have a bridge between the two and engage in thoughtful dialogue.”

Haywood, a former shampoo manufacturer turned wannabe warlord, contributes to IM-1776 and apparently helps fund its publication, has published six bylined articles on the website using eliminationist rhetoric against his enemies and calls for “the total, permanent defeat of the left, of the ideology at the heart of the Enlightenment."

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"Our society is commanded to excise the limitless, satanic evils brought on us by the left," he said in one published conversation with IM-1776 regular Daniel Miller.

Haywood gave a glowing review of Rufo’s book, "America’s Cultural Revolution," saying that, “We might have to accept we can’t live with these people, the five or ten percent of our nation who lead or are most active in supporting the left," and then calls for the repeal of the “so-called Civil Rights Act."

The magazine champions El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, a scheduled speaker this week at CPAC, for suspending civil liberties in 2022 to crack down on alleged gang members, which resulted in the arrest of 75,000 people without charge, and IM-1776 founder and editor-in-chief Mark Granza wished an American president would do the same to non-conservatives.

“America needs its own Bukele. Build massive prisons and start by throwing in every single regime apparatchik," wrote Granza, an Italian national living in Hungary, in a Twitter post last March.

Conservative columnist Rod Dreher interviewed Granza last February for the Hungarian Conservative, an outlet aligned with the authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.

“[Rufo]e doesn’t care about convincing the other side, or battling in the ‘marketplace of ideas,'" Granza said. "He’s going to tell you what he’s going to do, and then do it, whether you agree with him or not. That’s what I believe conservatives should do: use whatever power they have or can get and impose their views on to society.”