It's not a conspiracy, it's human nature
Left unchecked, institutions will inevitably drift in the ideological direction of the most intransigent within them.
The Long March Through the Institutions is regularly discussed in Right-wing circles. It’s taken for granted that Leftists, inspired by the likes of Antonio Gramsci and Rudi Dutschke, having been educated in the radical sixties, and having come of age in the seventies, started a coordinated infiltration of the institutions that make our country work: the civil service, the universities, the media, and even the banks that line the streets of The City of London.
There are various theories about how they got into the institutions. Perhaps they started at the bottom and worked their way up, disgruntled at their side’s loss of power in the wake of the tumultuous premierships of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and, disturbed at their lack of access to the levers of government, they instead needed to look for careers elsewhere.
Perhaps some Leftists were pushed to get into positions that might eventually allow them access to the levers of power in British institutions, the marionettes of the Soviet Union and its active measures so clearly elucidated by the ex-KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov.
Both of these may have contributed to the genesis of the culturally Leftward direction of Britain’s institutions, or indeed it could have happened more organically. An ideological evolution contributed to by numerous cultural forces, from the Christian ambivalence towards power and temporal hierarchy, and therefore the power and dominant hierarchical position of the culture of which Christianity was the cornerstone; to the two aforementioned phenomena (both of which I’m sure happened at some scale, even if not a significant one); to the individualising effects of education (Talcott Parson’s ‘achieved’ identities) and of market liberalism in which consumers are treated as individuals and economic production became an individual endeavour rather than the home and family being the primary economic unit of production.
Other people — like Kathleen Stock in her recent article for UnHerd — argue that the vast mass of the elite isn’t what we’d now colloquially call ‘woke’, that it’s in fact a small intransigent minority within our institutions who have seized control of the rudders and are steering the ships in their own radically ‘progressive’ direction. That the apolitical or ambivalent mass doesn’t “have a political vocabulary with which to counter the wild rhetoric, [or] have the convictions or earnestness to make it stick”.
I think she’s likely onto something here, but whether or not the mass of our elites are “university-educated, urban-dwelling, liberal cosmopolitans, heedlessly imposing their luxury beliefs about race, gender, and Gary Lineker upon everybody else”, or just a minority of them are, this is immaterial. The New Elites, the ones with the luxury beliefs, are the ones with their hands on the rudder. And they’re obviously a growing cohort.
People often contribute this elite’s power to considered calculation or conspiracy. What is more likely is that it is a result of unconsidered temperament and basic human nature. That’s almost certainly true of the Leftward drifting of our institutions. A conspiracy simply isn’t necessary to explain why this is happening.
There’s a phenomenon well-known to sociologists and those who study human networks, both in the physical world and cyberspace. That’s the phenomenon of homophily.
Homophily is “the tendency to form strong social connections with people who share one’s defining characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, [and the one we’re interested in] personal beliefs”. Birds of a feather flock together as the old proverb tells us.
Just a cursory glance at social media should inform any sceptic that this is indeed a real phenomenon and an incredibly powerful one. Some echo chambers on the internet are nigh on impenetrable, quick to drum out any dissenting voice. In times gone by homophily wouldn’t have been such a society-shaping phenomenon, necessarily and practically restricted to the formation of tight-knit friendship groups. People were born into a community, and largely, that’s where they remained regardless of temperament. It’s a phenomenon that’s been supercharged by technology; people’s ability to travel for work enabling a selection of potential employees, and social media, as already stated, allowing the narrowing down of social groups.
People are more likely to hire people who are like them. This is true in every business and every institution, and it likely won’t even be done consciously and explicitly based on the person's political beliefs. It’s not like people are asked who they vote for in job interviews, but there are always clues given about what tribe someone belongs to. Vernacular is often the most telling clue. I’m sure if one were to go for a job interview at GB News, and if one were to use the term ‘woke’ a lot, one would be more likely to get the job. Likewise, if one goes for a job interview at the University of Sussex and uses terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ and has their pronouns displayed on their LinkedIn profile, one is potentially more likely to get hired.
It doesn’t have to be as explicit as I’ve described here. We’re very good at picking up social clues and cues, and we’ll inevitably choose to be around, and therefore hire, people who we’d like to be around, meaning people who think as we do.
Left unchecked, institutions will inevitably drift in the ideological direction of the most intransigent within them. If we want those that need to remain neutral to do so, then a commitment to diversity is actually necessary, but not the sort of diversity the Left is endlessly concerned with. A commitment to be non-discriminatory is also not sufficient. It means being aware of our values-based unconscious affinity bias (which seems to be the one type of unconscious bias the modern Left is unconcerned with), the type that drives one to hire people who are like one’s self, and not, instead, opt to hire the person around whom one might feel less comfortable. It means seeking out ideological and temperamental diversity.
It also means enforcing an environment in which dissenters aren’t punished for their views; in which it’s safe to tell the intransigent minority of zealots that what they’re advocating goes against the mission of whatever the institution is that they’re within, no matter how flowery or emotionally manipulative the language. How to do that I’m unsure, given the ease with which unthinking mobs can be stirred into action via social media.
What it can’t mean is what the quest for other forms of diversity seem to have become; the lowering of standards — both academic and decorum — to allow in those with supposedly differing views. Indeed more stringent enforcement of high standards would probably help, given that those comfortable in their talent and intellect often don’t feel the need to be defensively obnoxious and are less threatened by being presented with views with which they might not agree.