Will Christopher Rufo Make a New Counter-Elite?

Personally, I’m not particularly offended by cat-eating,” says Christopher Rufo. “I was a vegetarian most of my life, but have traveled enough to see people eat many things: crickets, monkeys, serpents, mice, scorpions.” Last month, the presidential campaign had unexpectedly come to revolve around a Facebook rumor, supersized by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, that Haitian migrants were stealing and consuming household pets in Springfield, Ohio. Whatever their aversion to “childless cat ladies,” conservatives had now appointed themselves chivalric defenders of feline welfare. Rufo leapt into the discourse in typically provocative fashion, offering a $5,000 prize to anyone who sent him hard evidence of these crimes. The potential imagery stemming from the search was so surreal and gothic, it wasn’t obvious the right would benefit from an unearthing. But where others might have turned away queasily, Rufo, with his bottomless appetite for partisan combat, sensed opportunity. “Let’s settle it,” he wrote in his post announcing the bounty.

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