Cracks are appearing in the Cathedral walls

Is the ‘Cathedral’ about to fall down? That’s the name given by the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin to denote the 21st century’s most prestigious intellectual institutions, particularly in journalism and academia. He’s talking about the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. But we can enlarge the definition to include nearly all the West’s high-status institutions and professions. One of the mysteries of the Cathedral, he says, is that the people in these power centres seem to be members of the same cult-like religious movement – the Great Awokening, Wokus Dei – even though there’s no Holy See responsible for its official doctrine. Indeed, there doesn’t appear to be any central organising body at all. Yet the members of the Cathedral all march in lockstep as if they can hear some drummer that’s inaudible to the rest of us.

Most popular

Mark Galeotti

What does Trump’s minerals deal mean for Ukraine?

Brendan O’Neill

The BBC’s Gaza farce takes another sinister turn

Lloyd Evans

We saw the real Keir Starmer at PMQs – and it was ugly

Their message discipline is particularly baffling because the official dogma that they faithfully trot out keeps changing. One minute they’re cancelling their social and intellectual inferiors for not using the term ‘BAME’ to describe ethnic minorities; the next they’re insisting everyone refer to them as members of the ‘global majority’. No ‘memo’ is circulated to inform them of this update, yet they all seem to get it. They’re like Soviet-era communists without the Politburo.

To complete the puzzle – and this is my observation – they don’t seem to be aware that their opinions are being handed to them by some invisible party manager. On the contrary, they think of themselves as rational free-thinkers, guided by reason and evidence, who’ve all spontaneously arrived at the same conclusions.