Elle Purnell writes for the Federalist about another sign of Europe’s decline.
One of Europe’s crown jewels, a centuries-old relic of irreplaceable artistic and historical import, has fallen into the hands of vandals intent on abusing it for their own selfish gain.
I’m not talking about the heist at the Louvre over the weekend, in which thieves broke into the most famous art museum in the world and stole nine items from a collection of priceless treasures that once belonged to French royals of no less significance than Napoleon Bonaparte.
I’m talking about the plunder of Canterbury Cathedral, in which a church founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury and famed as the site of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom was defaced with irreverent graffiti accusing God of being “indifferent to suffering” and “creat[ing] hate.” Unlike the Louvre heist, it wasn’t done by bandits with angle-grinders. It was done by a man who describes himself as an “agender goblin-thing,” with the enthusiastic blessing of the cathedral’s curator, Jacqueline Creswell, and its dean, David Monteith, because it catered to “marginalized communities.”
The graffiti, which officially debuted on Friday, is only the most recent example of Europe’s self-loathing elites plundering the cultural bounty they’ve inherited. Over the summer, after patriotic Britons began flying the St. George’s Cross and the Union Jack to celebrate their national heritage, local officials tore the flags down and maligned them as divisive and racist.
This past Easter, Charles — the British monarch and nominal head of the Church of England — couldn’t issue a basic missive in recognition of the greatest Christian holiday without a performative shoutout to Islam, which has become the second-most prominent religion in the United Kingdom. Thanks to the mass immigration of people from Muslim countries, the Muslim population of the U.K. more than doubled between 2001 and 2021. Neither the millions of recent Muslim arrivals nor the British government has shown any interest in assimilating these masses of people into British society, and native Britons who object are routinely smeared as racist and often arrested.
