Opinion | I Answer Your Questions on Peter Thiel, Chris Rufo and the D.S.A.

But then a lot of the music is actually helping me hold things that are hard to feel at the same time, so that I can infuse the work I’m doing with the contradictory emotions that it sometimes needs to have.

Gordon: Whoa.

[Both laugh.]

Gordon: Let’s talk about the feedback to the Chris Rufo episode, which, of our recent episodes, got the most questions, the most comments.

Klein: Bifurcated feedback.

Gordon: Bifurcated feedback. So this question is from Jason, and it requires a little bit of setup:

I listened to your recent episode with Chris Rufo. Then, out of curiosity, I went and listened to a few episodes of his podcast, “Rufo & Lomez.” In one of the episodes, Rufo reflected on his conversation with you. I found his interpretation of the conversation wildly different from mine.

So I’m going to play two clips here.

So the first clip is from our episode with Chris Rufo, and you describe Tucker Carlson as a white nationalist. Rufo then asked you to define “white nationalism,” and this is what you said:

Archival clip of “The Ezra Klein Show”:

Ezra Klein: In some versions, they’re not included in that white race. In some versions, we are talking about something I would describe primarily as a kind of nationalism. You know, if you have too much of a country not sharing a common heritage, you lose solidarity.

In some cases, we’re talking about something much darker than that. There are people who just don’t like the way their community is changing, and then there’s the K.K.K. Everything exists on a spectrum.

Chris Rufo: But would you say someone who is, for example, hesitant about rapid, large-scale demographic change is just a kind of 1-percent white nationalist?

Klein: No, I don’t believe that.

Rufo: Yeah, because that would be like the majority of the country.

Klein: Yes. I don’t think it is a problem or unfair or even wrong to worry about large-scale, rapid demographic change.

Gordon: And then here’s Rufo’s response:

Archival clip of “Rufo & Lomez”:

Rufo: A couple years ago, you would not hear a prominent New York Times voice saying that it is totally legitimate, reasonable and understandable to be concerned about large-scale, rapid demographic change. I mean, that was a right-wing talking point for many years, and the left-wing criticism was: That was the Great Replacement Theory — that was white nationalism, that was K.K.K.-style white supremacy.

And so is this a concession? Is this going to be the left’s — kind of moderate left’s or the establishment left’s — new position moving forward?

Gordon: I’ll also add that episode of “Rufo & Lomez” was called “Ezra Klein Admits The New York Times Was Wrong on Woke,” and the first two chapters on YouTube were called “Ezra Klein’s Great Replacement Moment,” and “What Ezra Now Admits Was Once Branded White Nationalism.”

So with all that setup, Jason’s question is:

It seemed that “Rufo & Lomez” equated your statement with a full endorsement of the Great Replacement Theory. To me, this is a ridiculous misinterpretation of your point. When you have guests with broad platforms, like Rufo, do you engage with them after an interview? And if so, how at all do you respond if you feel that someone is misrepresenting your position?

Klein: I don’t, for the most part. I’ll say a couple things here.

One is that a major thread of my interview with Chris Rufo is that Rufo is a propagandist. We begin with his discussion of agitprop. Then a lot of the conversation is me unspooling with him the way he does that and the consequences I think it has and the way it often misrepresents and then worsens reality and has worsened the political party that he’s part of.

But I’m not, then, going to sit here and be surprised that a person who is a proud propagandist — maybe the way he responds to that interview is by focusing on the parts he thinks he can turn into propaganda.