The
world has become obsessed with elites
The
obsession is meaningless without a proper focus
Dec 17th 2016
AN ACADEMIC, a
politician, a journalist, a film star, a nobleman and a banker walk
into a bar. They order different drinks, and sit at separate tables
each doing their own thing. There is no punch line; these people do
not belong together in any sensible way. Yet members of these groups
and others are regularly given the same label: “elites”. Careful
writers should avoid this word; it is becoming a junk-bin concept
used by different people to mean wildly different things.
It is easy to
understand why people reach for “elites”. If pundits can agree on
anything about 2016, it is surely that it has been bad for elites.
Populist wave after populist wave has broken over Western politics,
with a vote for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and Italy’s
loss of a popular young prime minister over a constitutional
referendum that he called—and lost. The masses are out for blood,
and the elites are quaking.
But if you can
picture those masses in your mind—pitchforks, torches, perhaps
overalls—what do the elites look like? For Mr Trump, the hated
elites comprise the Washington political establishment and the press.
But for his own opponents, the very idea of a billionaire who lives
in a golden tower swanning in and winning himself the presidency just
goes to show what elite status can get you.
Campaigners for
Brexit railed against liberal elites—the economists, academics and
journalists who warned of its consequences. But the face of the Leave
campaign was Boris Johnson, an Eton- and Oxford-educated toff.
Michael Gove, another Leaver, said that folks were tired of
“experts”. But Mr Gove, like Mr Johnson, is a former president of
Oxford’s leading debating society, the Oxford Union, and one of
politics’ pointier heads. In other words, no matter who you are or
what you’re campaigning for, bashing elites seems a safe bet, while
admitting to being a member of an elite is an absolute no-go.
The obsession with
elites is relatively recent: the oldest citation in the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) dates back to 1823. It was only a singular
noun, from a past participle in French, meaning “chosen”; from
the same root as “to elect”. (Its very Frenchness may make elite
such a delicious word for some Anglophones to hurl as an insult.) The
OED says the English noun is “The choice part or flower (of
society, or of any body or class of persons)”.
This entry has not
yet been updated to include its more recent sense, the pejorative
version, often plural, which can be glossed as “people with
unearned privileges who keep honest folks from getting a fair shake”.
Data from Google Books show the plural word “elites” beginning to
be used in about 1940, with the obviously pejorative “elitist”
rising from about 1960. The anti-authority cultural changes of the
1960s, it seems, brought with them a rising concern with elites and
their apologists.
Data from the New
York Times show an even sharper spike in mentions of elites since
about 2010, as article after article has tried to diagnose anger at
elites. Populist anger is hardly surprising: elite financiers tanked
the global economy, elite economists failed to foresee it and
political elites failed to respond effectively enough. Those elites
in the crosshairs had to find other elites to blame, and they did so.
Elite scientists and Hollywood liberals whining about climate change
cost coalminers their jobs. Elite London journalists noshing on sushi
ignore the problems that hard-working northern Brits suffer as a
result of immigration. Cultural elites police what can be said about
minorities. And so on.
But the rush to
blame elites has nearly everyone in the crosshairs: Sketch Engine, a
digital tool for lexicographers, finds among the common modifiers for
elite not just obvious ones like “ruling”, “wealthy”,
“monied”, but also “secular”, “cultural”, “educated”,
“metropolitan” and “bureaucratic”. Elites are no longer “the
choice part or flower” of a group, but merely anyone in a position
of influence someone else thinks they do not deserve.
Words aimed more
precisely serve their purpose better. Elites are an abstraction. If
people are angry at bankers or at climate scientists, they should say
so specifically. Those seeking to diagnose the causes of the current
wave of populism need to understand what populist voters are truly
angry about. Those who are angry at elites generally, but can’t say
more specifically who they are angry at or why, should think twice
before voting for a populist who promises to find and punish those
elites, whoever they are.
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