What is the Dark Enlightenment?

The extraordinary anti-DEI media campaign against Cambridge Professor Jason Arday was but the latest salvo in an ideological war.

By their own admission, Trump officials and their well-funded allies are attempting to coordinate an extreme shift in Western culture and politics. British institutions are in the crosshairs. 

‘The Dark Enlightenment’ once described a fringe online programme put forward by blogger Curtis Yarvin and British philosopher Nick Land. But its core ideas – racial hierarchy and corporate authoritarianism – have found a powerful set of transatlantic backers. 

JD Vance has demanded Europe embrace MAGA politics and deregulate Big Tech, while US diplomats have intervened on behalf of ‘race realist’ Nathan Cofnas. The State Department is now pouring millions into reshaping European politics – including a reported $12 million for groups founded by Toby Young and Jacob Rees-Mogg, both involved in the Arday pile-on.

From Cambridge to the National Trust to the National Theatre, from the BBC to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution – the battle to reshape Britain’s culture is already underway.

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Byline Times Has been on the Cutting edge

This newspaper was incredibly early in describing this crucial new battleground.

In November 2021, Nafeez Ahmed first exposed a Thiel-backed Cambridge University network promoting race science under the banner of academic freedom – revolving around ‘ethics’ professor James Orr.

Five years later, we’d reveal that Orr – who was until recently Reform UK’s policy chief – was facilitating a far-right political recruitment pipeline at the same university. 

Orr is now under investigation by Cambridge – and Reform UK faces a series of Parliamentary and police probes into its finances.

Through the years, Byline Times has been there to unearth the dark money networks, opaque think-tanks, and offshore paymasters fuelling Britain’s Dark Enlightenment turn.

We were there to scour the Epstein Files and shine a light on the dark corridors of global power where the wealthy and influential sought to draft a new world order. 

And critically, we were there to sound the alarm – often serving as a lone voice defending the victims of the culture war. 

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What’s Next – With Your Help

This crucial work must continue. But we’re not backed by powerful nation states, tech billionaires, or foreign oligarchs. We rely on our readers to back public interest investigative journalism. 

We’re seeking your support to launch a dedicated #LightUpTheDark investigative series into the personnel, finances, and organisations behind this concerted push to transform Britain. 

Byline Times will follow the money behind a sprawling new ecosystem of think-tanks, publications, campaign groups and social media influencers.

We’ll find out where the next target is – which universities, clubs, conferences, fellowships, and landmark cultural institutions are being derided or infiltrated. We’ll find where the pressure is coming from and call out the lines of attack. 

We’ll map out the infrastructure of the Dark Enlightenment: how ideas travel from anonymous ‘X’ accounts to niche publications to newspapers to Westminster, how once-fringe ideas about race, culture and democracy are being laundered into the mainstream. 

And as ever, we’ll scrutinise the media itself. The treatment of Jason Arday demonstrated how quickly claims originating in ideological networks can be amplified across Britain’s press before their foundations are properly examined. We’ll investigate who is manufacturing controversy, how they spread, and why so much of our media remains susceptible.

This is not an easy line of work to maintain. Proper investigative journalism is costly, risky, labour-intensive work. We need your help to map the Dark Enlightenment and defend our institutions – our democracy – from a historic, all-encompassing far-right pressure campaign. 

Will you help us #LightUpTheDark?

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