With public voices from Elon Musk to Professor David Starkey ringing the alarm bells about the state of British democracy, Sir Lindsay Hoyle's interview with the BBC was cause for greater alarm.
An interesting if depressing read. I’m always slightly nervous of overly reductionist thinking, but I think your identification of Brexit as being the root cause of this fear and loathing of the plebs that the elite is now manifesting with increasing regularity is spot on. I vaguely remember hearing the theory during lockdowns that part of the reason the ‘elites’ in this country were so enamoured of the whole concept was that Brexit was such a traumatic shock for them, they were in existential terror of ‘the masses’, and so latched on to lockdown as a way of carrying out a post-Brexit punishment beating ‘for our own good’. That all seemed a bit fanciful at the time, but it doesn’t now…
It is my conclusion that they have loathed us since long before Brexit. The fear may have arisen from the vote which they expected to win but instead they lost.
The empowerment of quangos began in Blair's time and it was bedded-down, facilitated and expanded under the succession of Tory administrations. It was Cameron-Clegg who announced the "nudge unit" which was a no longer concealed well financed and permanent propaganda organisation designed to promote the policies of the elites and to undermine any opposition.
the loathing of the working class by the 'new elite' goes a lot further back than Brexit, Michael Young covered it in The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1953 and warned us that by the early 21st C this would be a major problem of division in society and one which would eventually result in a reaction.
I should have made my point with more clarity which is that it was the Brexit vote that lifted the mask they were wearing - since then the contempt has been open an unashamed. That's the issue - Grayling etc felt emboldened to express their elitism by the Brexit vote
Agreed - Brexit probably did just give them licence to take the mask off a hatred and fear that was already there, rather than a ‘creation event’ for that hate. But what’s always fascinated me is why they are all so shrill and hysterical about their oikophobia ? Can’t prove it obviously, but it feels like the old school aristocracy and Industrial Revolution titans, who may have genuinely had reason to fear the workers, never succumbed to these levels of hysteria - so what’s driving it all now ?
Well, Michael Young explains this in his essay. It's essentially that the old aristocracy and establishment had learned to respect the plebs over 1500 years of facing consequences if they did not.
Young's premise was that the 'new meritocracy' will be a class of unearned privilege whose parents and grandparents elevated themselves from the working class through merit hard work and opportunity.
That this class would become the ruling class and would have none of the learned humility of the class they displaced.
His warning was that unless the new meritocracy learned this Pronto it would potentially end in a reaction from the working classes.
What's compounded this and what Young didn't foresee is the replacement of the old moral value system, broadly Christian that glued people together despite class differences with the new religion adopted so enthusiastically by the new Meritocracy. This is what woke is and it intrinsically links morals with politics. The consequence of this is that it further fuels the contempt for the working class and emboldens the new meritoctatic class to remove its mask. Under the skewed value system of woke they have nothing to be ashamed of because they are the enlightened ones.
Very interesting - I've not come across Young's essay so will give it a read. What you've suggested there definitely chimes with my observation that there's a deeply existential, negative 'self-hatred' element to the psychology of some woke people I've met - they seem much more preoccupied with 'not being' white working class, than with actually being something else.
"Voters aren’t stupid". That's an oxymoron I'm afraid. And, yes, a civil war would be the natural conclusion, but nature has been horribly bent out of shape.
This is what will happen, and it should shame us all: the Parliamentarians - who are simply an elite tier of the managerial class born from the twisted bowels of left-wing institutions, and delivered into society via our universities in neat little gift boxes with a nice red ribbon on top - will continue to turn the screw on the people. They believe they pity the people, but it's far worse than that; they despise the people and cannot get the stinking, rotten, smell of the people out of their nostrils. The people - the moronic majority of the masses that hold them and their ideology in contempt - must be brought into line for their own good. And they will be and with little fuss. Why? Very simply, the people have become soft, distracted, and afraid. Soft through technology, distracted through technology, and afraid through technology. Technology, being distinct from progress, only moves relentlessly in one direction.
The elites will imprison us, both literally and metaphorically, without a fight; we will bow down to them with nothing more than a whimper, which is exactly what we're doing right now - whimpering. The mistake we've made, completely unwittingly of course, has been to find meaning through an existence driven and shaped entirely by technology and the virtual relationships and experiences that technology will enforce.We'll continue to wrap ourselves in chains and continue to meekly bleat about those chains. They have already won, what we're now witnessing is the long awaited realisation of those chains. Nothing more.
An interesting if depressing read. I’m always slightly nervous of overly reductionist thinking, but I think your identification of Brexit as being the root cause of this fear and loathing of the plebs that the elite is now manifesting with increasing regularity is spot on. I vaguely remember hearing the theory during lockdowns that part of the reason the ‘elites’ in this country were so enamoured of the whole concept was that Brexit was such a traumatic shock for them, they were in existential terror of ‘the masses’, and so latched on to lockdown as a way of carrying out a post-Brexit punishment beating ‘for our own good’. That all seemed a bit fanciful at the time, but it doesn’t now…
It is my conclusion that they have loathed us since long before Brexit. The fear may have arisen from the vote which they expected to win but instead they lost.
The empowerment of quangos began in Blair's time and it was bedded-down, facilitated and expanded under the succession of Tory administrations. It was Cameron-Clegg who announced the "nudge unit" which was a no longer concealed well financed and permanent propaganda organisation designed to promote the policies of the elites and to undermine any opposition.
The current government will make it much worse.
The Tories will do nothing to reverse it.
Vote Reform.
the loathing of the working class by the 'new elite' goes a lot further back than Brexit, Michael Young covered it in The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1953 and warned us that by the early 21st C this would be a major problem of division in society and one which would eventually result in a reaction.
I should have made my point with more clarity which is that it was the Brexit vote that lifted the mask they were wearing - since then the contempt has been open an unashamed. That's the issue - Grayling etc felt emboldened to express their elitism by the Brexit vote
Agreed - Brexit probably did just give them licence to take the mask off a hatred and fear that was already there, rather than a ‘creation event’ for that hate. But what’s always fascinated me is why they are all so shrill and hysterical about their oikophobia ? Can’t prove it obviously, but it feels like the old school aristocracy and Industrial Revolution titans, who may have genuinely had reason to fear the workers, never succumbed to these levels of hysteria - so what’s driving it all now ?
Well, Michael Young explains this in his essay. It's essentially that the old aristocracy and establishment had learned to respect the plebs over 1500 years of facing consequences if they did not.
Young's premise was that the 'new meritocracy' will be a class of unearned privilege whose parents and grandparents elevated themselves from the working class through merit hard work and opportunity.
That this class would become the ruling class and would have none of the learned humility of the class they displaced.
His warning was that unless the new meritocracy learned this Pronto it would potentially end in a reaction from the working classes.
What's compounded this and what Young didn't foresee is the replacement of the old moral value system, broadly Christian that glued people together despite class differences with the new religion adopted so enthusiastically by the new Meritocracy. This is what woke is and it intrinsically links morals with politics. The consequence of this is that it further fuels the contempt for the working class and emboldens the new meritoctatic class to remove its mask. Under the skewed value system of woke they have nothing to be ashamed of because they are the enlightened ones.
Very interesting - I've not come across Young's essay so will give it a read. What you've suggested there definitely chimes with my observation that there's a deeply existential, negative 'self-hatred' element to the psychology of some woke people I've met - they seem much more preoccupied with 'not being' white working class, than with actually being something else.
"Voters aren’t stupid". That's an oxymoron I'm afraid. And, yes, a civil war would be the natural conclusion, but nature has been horribly bent out of shape.
This is what will happen, and it should shame us all: the Parliamentarians - who are simply an elite tier of the managerial class born from the twisted bowels of left-wing institutions, and delivered into society via our universities in neat little gift boxes with a nice red ribbon on top - will continue to turn the screw on the people. They believe they pity the people, but it's far worse than that; they despise the people and cannot get the stinking, rotten, smell of the people out of their nostrils. The people - the moronic majority of the masses that hold them and their ideology in contempt - must be brought into line for their own good. And they will be and with little fuss. Why? Very simply, the people have become soft, distracted, and afraid. Soft through technology, distracted through technology, and afraid through technology. Technology, being distinct from progress, only moves relentlessly in one direction.
The elites will imprison us, both literally and metaphorically, without a fight; we will bow down to them with nothing more than a whimper, which is exactly what we're doing right now - whimpering. The mistake we've made, completely unwittingly of course, has been to find meaning through an existence driven and shaped entirely by technology and the virtual relationships and experiences that technology will enforce.We'll continue to wrap ourselves in chains and continue to meekly bleat about those chains. They have already won, what we're now witnessing is the long awaited realisation of those chains. Nothing more.