What’s particularly remarkable about the political left, these days especially is the extent of their conceit and self-delusion. The left are utterly convinced that they, and they alone, are on the side of “good”, the “right side of history”. In Jim Goad’s words, “The modern left’s heads are so far up their own asses with the idea that they are unimpeachably good, I suspect they may all soon suffocate to death”.
The most odious stink in the flatulent smug of ignoble lies the modern left tell themselves is that they are the oppressed, the victims, “punching up” and “speaking truth to power”.
The reality is, as Karl du Fresne writes, that the left are in fact very much the elite, the privileged, the “1%”.
The elites – often referred to as the metropolitan or inner-city elites – are Leftist idealists who prefer to describe themselves as “progressive”. Leading global figureheads include the two HCs, Hillary Clinton and Helen Clark.
You could almost call the elites the new ruling class, since they have power and influence far beyond their numbers. They predominate in the universities, the media, the arts, schools, the churches, the public service and the not-for-profit sector – that vast and perpetually busy plethora of organisations, mostly taxpayer-subsidised, that lobby for politically correct causes.
The elites also beaver away behind the scenes in local councils, where the elected representatives of the people, the councillors, often seem powerless to control them[…]The influence of the elites is all-pervasive. For the past two decades they have largely controlled the public conversation.
This should come as no surprise: it’s exactly what they set out to do when leading leftist thinkers coined the strategy of “The Long March through the institutions” in the 1960s. They didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were bent on seizing every institution of civil society and remaking it into a leftist fortress.
The new elite are wealthy and firmly ensconced in the high-priced inner-cities, often in luxurious gated communities where the only oppressed minorities are their armies of underpaid servants.
The new ruling class might call themselves “liberal”, but they are thoroughgoing totalitarians. They ruthlessly suppress dissenting views and arrogate to themselves the assumed right to control the lives of ordinary people, from what they think, to what they eat, drink and even the light bulbs and shopping bags they’re allowed to own.
This is because the new elite, above all else, think that they and they alone are fit to rule.
A central article of faith with the elites is that ordinary people can’t be trusted to make the right decisions for themselves. The path to Utopia requires a supposedly benign interventionist state which knows what’s best for us[…]But there are some things the elites can’t control. They can’t dictate what people think or how they vote.
Hence the elites’ terror of what they dub “populism”. The core of democracy, as Churchill said, is the lone voter, “with his little piece of paper and his little pencil”, asserting their sovereign right to think whatever they want in the sanctity of the ballot box. As it happens, the servants often have the temerity to think very differently to their masters.
Certain supposedly unthinkable ideas are very popular with voters. So the elite dub such democratic rebellions against the authority of the ruling class “populism”: which seems to mean nothing other than popular ideas which are not approved by the elite.
Trump, Brexit, Bolsanaro, Orban, Morrison, Johnson…all hugely popular, to the utter, shrieking dismay of the elite.
The only way the elites can make sense of such outcomes is by concluding that voters have been manipulated by the dark, malevolent, nationalistic force they call populism. It confirms their suspicion that ordinary people can’t be trusted to vote sensibly.
The elite prejudice against so-called “populism” – which is just another ruling-class nod and wink code for “far-right”, the left media’s favourite pejorative – also infests New Zealand, where the left-elite Ardern government rules at the whim of a so-called “populist”…who really isn’t that popular at all.
So what about New Zealand? We tend to think of Winston Peters as our own example of a populist politician, but the Great Tuatara won only 7 percent of the vote in the 2017 election and lost his own seat.
It follows that he doesn’t represent ordinary people in the way Johnson or even Trump can claim to. He occupies a position of power only through his ability to manipulate a dodgy electoral system to his own advantage.
karldufresne.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-new-ruling-class.html
Much like the prime minister, he was foisted on the New Zealand people.
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