The NYT had 4,000 sources at ARC. It quoted 2 who weren't there.
A New York Times reporter had nearly 200 speakers, dozens of research papers, and three full days of programming to draw from. She quoted two people who weren't even in the building.
That's the story behind Lauren Jackson's recent New York Times dispatch on the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, or ARC — the London-based conference that recently concluded its third annual gathering.
I was on that stage. I've served on ARC's advisory board since before the project even had a name. So let me do the job Jackson skipped.
If you haven't heard of ARC, here's the short version: Founded in 2023 by figures including psychologist Jordan Peterson and Baroness Philippa Stroud, it is often described as a conservative counterpart to Davos, bringing together politicians, academics, business leaders, clergy, and other cultural leaders under the banner of reviving Western civilization through stronger families, free markets, and cultural confidence. This year's conference, held June 23–25 in London, drew roughly 4,000 attendees from more than 80 countries to discuss everything from artificial intelligence and energy policy to education and demographic decline.
Jackson's article frames ARC as part of “an escalation of Christian nationalist rhetoric that offers a unifying mission for the religious right everywhere.” It's a serious charge — and one readers would reasonably expect to be supported by careful reporting from the conference itself.
Instead, her roughly 1,000-word article relies primarily on two people who never spoke at ARC: Yale sociologist Philip Gorski, author of The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, and philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. By my count, nearly 300 words are devoted to Gorski alone.
The only quotation from anyone who actually spoke at ARC is a single 10-word line from Rod Dreher: “A civilization will die if it loses its sacred story.”
That could have been the story. It captures one of the conference's central themes. Instead, Jackson substituted primary-source reporting with jabs at “Jordan Peterson's suit guy” in his “embroidered Last Supper jacket” and a mocking reference to a book titled The Manbook: A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done.
Thankfully, readers don't have to take her word for it. Every ARC 2026 session is being uploaded to YouTube, free and in full. Watch them yourself and decide whether Jackson's characterization holds up.
What the audience actually watched
Three of the most-watched ARC 2026 speeches belong to advisory board members — and not one promoted Christian nationalism.
Jonathan Pageau's keynote, approaching 700,000 views, wasn't about government at all. It explored artificial intelligence through the legend of the Holy Grail, asking whom powerful technology ultimately serves and warning against what he called “the Moloch trap,” in which efficiency and power consume the people they were meant to serve.
Katharine Birbalsingh — Britain's “strictest headmistress” — received a standing ovation and more than 300,000 views for a speech that never mentioned Christian governance. Instead, she argued that schools have replaced gratitude and personal responsibility with a culture of victimhood and that the solution is educational reform, not theology.
Paul Marshall's “100-Year History of Woke,” also nearing 300,000 views, traced the roots of cultural deconstruction through Jacques Derrida and post-structuralism. He even noted that his own politics are “pretty much those of a Democrat circa 2010.” Hardly the profile of an aspiring theocrat.
Artificial intelligence ethics. Education reform. Intellectual history.
Those are the subjects millions have watched recently. Strangely, none of them made the Times article.
The threat that wasn't
Jackson's effort to portray ARC as adjacent to fascism required overlooking the conference's broad framework, which seeks to apply principles of human flourishing to governance, energy, the environment, the social fabric, and national identity.
Take the fertility crisis, a recurring topic at all three ARC conferences. The European Union's fertility rate fell to 1.34 children per woman in 2024 — well below the 2.1 needed simply to replace the population. That's not an ARC talking point. It's Eurostat data. A civilization that isn't having children isn't moving toward authoritarianism; it's moving toward demographic collapse.
By overlooking the conference's substance, Jackson also deprived readers of Bjorn Lomborg's argument that net-zero energy policies have produced some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world, pricing ordinary families out of air conditioning during a heat wave that has reportedly claimed more than 1,000 lives in France.
I experienced that reality firsthand. During a 95-degree day in London, an Uber driver kept the air conditioning off to preserve his electric vehicle's battery. “Sustainability” at work.
Jackson couldn't even be bothered to mention her own colleague. Ross Douthat delivered one of the conference's most compelling addresses, warning that the next 25 to 50 years could become “a story of mass extinction” — not of the planet, but of marriage, childbearing, art, and “the basic continuity of the human race” as digital life increasingly replaces real human relationships.
Douthat concluded not with nationalism, but with an appeal to personal responsibility, quoting Deuteronomy: “I have set before you today life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.”
A New York Times columnist warned about civilizational decline and answered it with faith and hope. His own newspaper couldn't spare a sentence.
A movement, not a myth
Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, whom Jackson did interview but didn't speak at ARC, argues that “Western civilization” is a myth invented to disguise white ethnonationalism.
Ironically, Jackson's own reporting undermines that claim.
She interviewed attendees from Armenia, Gambia, Nigeria, and Madagascar — participants from outside the West who told her they supported exactly what ARC is attempting to build.
A movement drawing thousands of people from more than 80 countries to discuss stronger families, educational excellence, technologies that strengthen rather than diminish our humanity, and abundant, affordable energy is not an expression of ethnonationalism.
It is the opposite.
It is the argument that these ideas belong to anyone willing to defend them, regardless of continent, ethnicity, or nationality.
Jackson had the evidence all around her. It was on the stage before her, in the audience beside her, at the book tables throughout the venue, and now on YouTube for the world to see.
She didn't miss the story.
She chose not to tell it.
Katy Faust is the founder and President of Them Before Us. Spokeswoman for the Greater Than campaign. Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Advisory Board member.
