With Fox News and Republicans in a continuing uproar over the false idea that a graduate-level legal theory is being taught in K-12 schools, Joy Reid brought one of the architects of that uproar, Christopher Rufo, onto her show Wednesday night, and smilingly refused to allow him to recite his well-rehearsed talking points.

The campaign against critical race theory in schools is based on identifying virtually any discussion of race or racism as critical race theory. Rufo has admitted as much—or bragged about it—tweeting “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” 

Reid was not having it when Rufo tried to do just that on her show. He repeatedly offered up non-critical race theorists like Robin DiAngelo as examples of critical race theory supposedly being taught in schools, and Reid shot him down—still smiling—every single time. (DiAngelo has a degree in multicultural education.) “Critical race theory” as promoted by Republicans and the right-wing media, Reid correctly identified, is really Christopher Rufo Theory. “You made up your own thing, you admitted you were going to do it, and I’m going to give you credit for one thing: You did create your own thing,” Reid said late in the interview.

Writing at Media Matters, Matt Gertz (not Gaetz) showed just how that happened, identifying a “feedback loop between powerful right-wing institutions” that’s driving the critical race theory discourse just as the same basic process made the tea party movement a thing in 2009, drove opposition to health care reform in 2010, and whipped up rage about public health guidelines in 2020.

The first step of that feedback loop is that “Right-wing think tanks came up with a framework for discussing ‘critical race theory.’” That’s Rufo, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, but his choice of targets has been amplified by others including the Heritage Foundation. Next, “Advocacy groups use the think tank framework to oppose ‘critical race theory,’” with “at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender,” according to NBC News. Those groups include blatant astroturf led by longtime Republican operatives as well as efforts by right-wing activists given strength by appearances on Fox News.

Next, Gertz writes, the work of the advocacy groups (which were inspired by the think tank framework) “generates press coverage, particularly from right-wing media.” Mentions of critical race theory have spiked from Fox News to Breitbart, fed by interviews with those advocacy groups in which what often goes unmentioned is that the person being billed as a concerned parent involved with a local anti-CRT group is a media-trained Republican operative: “For example, Fox has provided a series of reports about “critical race theory” in schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, often featuring the commentary of Ian Prior, a GOP operative and executive director of Fight For Schools who lives there. (County school officials say critical race theory is not taught in the district.)”

And then Republican politicians jump on the issue, centering their campaigns on it and passing legislation that is demonstrably not about critical race theory, but claims to be. That in turn helps convince more of the Republican base (the ones not already convinced by Fox News and OAN and Newsmax) that this is a Big Problem. Even though, at least in the case of critical race theory, it is a 100% manufactured controversy over a theory not actually being taught in K-12 schools that’s being used to stand in for any teaching about race and racism and U.S. history that makes conservative white people uncomfortable.

That’s how Republicans manufacture a culture war. They’re doing it right in front of our eyes right now, and they’re not even really bothering to hide that that’s what they’re doing.