The Co-Opting of the Word Elite by the Real Elites
by
Howard Richler
Trump Win Should Send Elites Back to the Drawing Board
Thomas
Sowell, Nov 14, 2016, Toronto Sun
Reckoning With a Trump Presidency and the Elite Democrats
Who Helped Deliver It
Betsy Reed, Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, Nov 12, 2016, The Intercept
The Hubris of Democratic Elites, Clinton Campaign Gave
Us President Trump
Kenin Gosztola, Nov 9, 2016, Shadowproof
These
are but three of the countless headlines we saw days after the American
election asserting that the left-wing “elites” were responsible for the
election of Donald Trump. But hold on folks. Surely billionaire Donald Trump
who was born into a rich family is also an elite? And of course, notwithstanding that Trump’s
wealth is far greater and far less transparent than that of the Clintons, this didn’t
prevent him from constantly assailing Hillary Clinton as an elite on social
media. But, don’t get smug and imagine that the same selective
elite-bashing isn’t going on in Canada. In November, Conservative candidate
Kellie Leitch sent an email that congratulated
Donald Trump on his election victory, praised his anti-establishment message
and declared “the elites are out of touch.”
Leitch and her advisors have made “elite” the mantra of their campaign.
They have criticized Lisa Raitt for supporting “the left-wing media elite” and
called Andrew Scheer an “out-of-touch elite” for launching his leadership
campaign at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa. Incidentally, MD Leitch, who grew up in an
affluent family in Winnipeg made these comments while promoting a $500-a-person
fundraiser organized by lawyers.
So given most people’s previous understanding of the word, how
did “elite” take on this connotation to refer to people on the left of the
political spectrum? Dictionaries are not of much help here. The OED defines “elite” as the “choice part
or flower (of society, or of any body or class of person” and has its first
citation for this definition in the 19th century. Actually, it does
show an earlier meaning in the 15th century but with a very narrow
sense as “a person chosen, spec., a bishop elect.” The Encarta World English Dictionary gets closer to the implied sense
in the headlines quoted above. It defines “elite” as “a small group of people,
within a larger group who have more power, social standing, wealth, or talent
than the rest of the group.” But even
this doesn’t explain why the term is used nowadays almost exclusively to refer
to the liberal left. If the classic
connotation is of people by virtue of birth being able to achieve status at the
expense of others, surely the word applies more to the Trumps and Leitches of
the cosmos.
The explanation lies in political theory where the term “liberal
elite” has been used since the 1960s to describe politically left-leaning people, whose
education had traditionally opened the doors to affluence and power and to thus
to dominating managerial positions. In fact, if you check the site Google Ngram
Viewer which charts the frequency of words and expressions from the years 1500
to 2008, you will find that the expressions “liberal elite” and “Democratic
elites” enjoyed huge spikes in usage starting in 1990. An underlying premise of
this theory is the belief that the people who claim to support the rights of working
men and women are themselves members of the ruling
class and are therefore out of touch with the real needs of the people they claim
to support and protect. It’s possible that many people supported Trump because
they were put off by what they saw as the smugness of some people in the Democratic
Party and by the left-leaning media.
Exemplifying this was political commentator Bill Maher’s suggestion that
people who intended to vote for Trump suffered from congenital defects.
Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s comment during the campaign that half of Trump
supporters were “deplorables” caused her great political harm. Claiming that
you are somehow superior to others in any aspect of your life is a no-no in our
post-modern, post-truth world.
Therefore, right-wing talking heads use the designation” “elite” as a polemical tool to declaim
positions associated with the left as varied as environmentalism,
secularism, feminism, sexuality, immigration, and multiculturalism.
Ironically, because “regular” Americans were angry at the elites
represented by the Democratic Party and the media, they nevertheless elected
one of the richest and most elitist people in the United States. These “regular
people” disdained the Democrat Party notwithstanding the fact that Democratic
President Barack Obama had among other advantages brought them the Affordable
Care Act, a form of health care previously only afforded to the elites, now
available to over 20 million hard-up Americans.
Only time will tell if “elite” to refer to so-called ivory tower
groups with certain political leanings is more appropriate than “elite” used to
designate the resident of the Fifth Avenue, pseudo-Versailles Trump Tower.
Richler’s latest book is Wordplay:Arranged
and Deranged Wit
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