Monty writes:
db comes from a different angle. I am fascinated with how he manages to combine strong religious views with his obsession with “the Cathedral”, a concept borrowed from racist blogger Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin. The Cathedral appears to be a phrase used in a similarly conspiracist manner to “Deep State”, with a broader application to anything and everything which is embedded in small-l liberal institutions. This often sets him up in opposition to my angle, which is institutionalism as a protection for freedoms that have been hard won over reactionary forces since the days of Menzies.
There really is nothing incongruous here. ‘The Cathedral’ simply is the matrix of liberal institutions (media, universities, Hollywood, and the like) that enjoy cultural hegemony now and rigorously maintain this hegemony through their control of these major cultural institutions. The ‘Deep State’ simply is the bureaucracy, the apparatus of power that notionally acts under the control of the government and legislature, but that practically, has a life of its own. In this sense, they are terms of art; which easily allows me to distinguish it from St Patrick’s Cathedral or any other cathedral. Moreover, it is amusing that monty should find phrases like ‘the Cathedral’ or ‘Deep State’ conspiracist since he admits himself that these same institutions are coordinated toward liberal ends. But there is a problem there for him. Why does monty hide these liberal ends under a bushel? Institutionalism, on its face, should simply mean the use of structures of any sort that regulate human activity towards this or that end. But monty does not want this or that end, he wants a particular end; namely a liberal one. More to the point, neither does ‘the Cathedral’. and not only does it want liberal ends, it wants to suppress whatever it deems ‘illiberal’. And as monty continues to argue the ‘heroism’ of killing an unarmed protestor that is no threat to anyone, he simply demonstrates, again and again, that he is quite happy for you to be killed in furtherance of these ‘liberal’ ends:
If you want a vision of a montyean future, imagine a policeman shooting an unarmed protestor in the neck – forever.
Apologies to George Orwell
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