Tommy Robinson staged a Christmas carol concert. Senior figures in the Church of England had to condemn it publicly. He is now number four in news on Substack. These facts connect.

The Church of England faces a crisis. Substack rewards extremism through its business model. Both failures stem from the same source: liberal institutions so hollowed out they cannot defend themselves because they cannot say what they defend beyond process and politeness.

The Church’s Lost Ground

Robinson staging a Christmas carol concert is not just a goad. It is theft. He claims Christian nationalist ground the church thought it owned. The condemnations come too late because the ground was already given up.

When did the Church of England lose this ground? When it stayed silent or mealy-mouthed through Brexit’s hatred of foreigners. When it failed to fight back as “Christian values” got turned into a weapon against Muslims. When it let itself become a culture war football kicked between liberal hand-wringing and backward-looking fantasy. When it chose management-speak over theology, when it put keeping the institution alive before moral clarity, when it decided the safest spot was no spot at all.

The problem runs deep. The established Church cannot say what it stands for beyond vague talk of “being open to all” and “bringing people together.” This is not theology. It is the language of human resources departments. It is the vocabulary of bodies that have forgotten why they exist.

The void gets filled. Robinson fills it with blood-and-soil nationalism wrapped in hymns. He offers what the Church will not: certainty, a place to belong, foes to fight, a story about who we are and who threatens us. That the story is fascist matters less than that it makes sense.

The Church of England’s crisis is not that it has far-right worshippers. Everybody has backward-lookers. The crisis is that it has no strong teaching about faith and power that can stand up to fascism when fascism shows up singing “Silent Night.” It cannot say why Robinson’s or Russel Brand’s or Britain’s First Christianity is wrong because it cannot say what Christianity means beyond nice buildings and mild attitudes.

An established Church, by what it is, makes claims about the link between God’s authority and earthly rule. But today’s Church of England gave up that ground decades back. It pulled back into care work and looking after old buildings. It became the National Trust with communion. Now someone else makes those claims about authority and order, using the Church’s own symbols, and the body can only splutter condemnations that come too late and convince no one.

Platform Money and Fascist Infrastructure

Robinson hits number four in Substack news because the platform’s model makes money from rows without taking responsibility for content. Substack takes its cut while claiming to stay neutral. This is the same pattern as Musk’s X, Rumble, Telegram: infrastructure that profits from extremism while saying it bears no blame.

But Substack is not neutral. Its algorithms that suggest what to read, its bestseller lists, its reader tips all boost whatever gets clicks regardless of what it says. Fascist organising gets the same push as film reviews or cooking tips. The money logic does not care about politics, which means in fact it helps whoever works the system most ruthlessly.

Robinson’s Substack success is not despite the platform’s rules but because of how it works. He builds readers. Readers bring in money. Money proves the model right. The circle closes. Substack can point to its “writer-first” mission while fascists use that exact freedom to organize, to work together, to make money from their movement.

This is not a flaw. It is how the business works. Substack sets itself against “editorial gatekeeping” and “mainstream media bias.” It offers writers “freedom” and “independence.” These words mean something clear: no editorial judgment, no standards for what gets published, publishing cut down to buying and selling.

What gets called freedom is really making money from captured readers. The platform does not care what you write as long as subscribers pay. This neutrality is itself a belief system. It treats fascist propaganda and literary reviews as equal products in a market for attention. The Nazi and the novelist both click “publish.” Both pay their fees. Both get their cut of subscriptions. The platform grows.

This model cannot police content because policing needs saying some ideas matter more than others, some speech causes harm, some writers should not have platforms. But that would be gatekeeping. That would be bias. That would break the founding myth of the neutral platform letting diverse voices speak.

So Robinson thrives. He is not a mistake. He is proof the concept works.

The Link: Liberal Bodies and Their Destruction

The Church of England and Substack fail for the same reason. Both are liberal bodies that define themselves through what they will not do rather than what they believe. The Church will not be dogmatic, will not get involved in politics, will not draw clear lines about who belongs and who does not. Substack will not control editors, will not set content standards, will not take blame for what it publishes.

These refusals get presented as good things. Openness. Tolerance. Freedom. Letting all in. But refusal is not belief. The lack of gatekeeping is not the same as having principles. A body that stands for nothing but its own neutral processes cannot defend itself when attacked.

This is how hollowed bodies serve reaction. They become infrastructure for their own destruction. The church as building, Substack as technology, both hijacked because neither has the clarity of thought or political will to fight who uses them and how.

Robinson grasps this perfectly. He does not need to beat the church on theology or Substack on editorial grounds. He just needs to use their neutrality, their openness, their refusal to take stands. The carol concert happens in Church space because Church space sits there available. The far right Substack thrives because Substack will not judge content. The bodies help in their own capture.

What This Shows

We live in the wreckage of liberal institutions. The post-war settlement built structures meant to handle conflict through process: churches that dodge theological fights, platforms that let speech happen without editorial judgment, bodies that prize neutrality over belief.

These structures worked, if they worked, because of historical conditions that no longer hold. Social democracy gave material security that made procedural liberalism bearable. The Cold War gave liberalism a foe that made clear what it opposed. Post-colonial guilt softened into multicultural platitudes that cost nothing.

Those conditions dissolved. Austerity destroyed social bonds. The Soviet collapse removed liberalism’s defining enemy. Migration and economic crisis gave raw material for nationalist reaction. And the bodies built for a different moment proved hollow.

Now they serve as infrastructure for forces they cannot grasp and will not resist. The Church that will not say what Christianity means cannot stop fascists from saying it instead. The platform that will not make editorial calls cannot stop its algorithms from pushing white nationalist content.

This is not failure. This is how they work. These bodies do exactly what they were built to do: stay neutral, dodge conflict, let diverse voices speak, refuse gatekeeping. The problem is that neutrality in crisis is collaboration. Procedural liberalism in the face of fascism is surrender.

No End

There is no neat way to finish this. The Church of England will not find political theology again. Substack will not bring in editorial standards. Both bodies are built in ways that make the needed clarity impossible.

Robinson will keep staging goads that show how weak these bodies are. He will keep building readers on platforms that profit from extremism. The Church will keep putting out condemnations that convince no one. Substack will keep claiming neutrality while fascists organise.

What matters is seeing the pattern. Hollowed bodies do not fall down. They stay standing as shells, as infrastructure, as spaces that reaction fills and turns into weapons. The Church becomes a venue for nationalist ritual. The platform becomes logistics for fascist organising. The forms stay the same. The content transforms.

This is how liberal institutionalism ends: not abolished but stolen, not destroyed but given new purpose, not beaten but occupied from within by forces it cannot acknowledge and will not fight.

Originally posted at Anti-Capitalist Musings Dec 14, 2025

 Subscribe for free.Against capital, against empire, against forgetting. Notes and essays from the wreckage of the present.