Saturday, December 29, 2012

Elitistics, Continued










This essay is a continuation of a previous essay, Elitistics.

Elites are Monolithic

The most important feature of Elitistics, perhaps, is its assumption that Elites constitute a simplex and monolithic sociopolitical class. All are perceived to be more or less equally powerful and equally removed in terms of wealth, social environment and ideology from a supposed vast majority of ordinary (and therefore conservative) people.

This by itself would imply a kind of conspiracy theory by which a dastardly cabal of a very small, if not tiny, minority in the West has incredibly immense power to control immense factors in terms of politics, geopolitics, business, academe, public schools, the news media, pop culture, and most institutions throughout the West.

Not all Elitisticians (as we may call those who subscribe to an Elitistics) may be comfortable with such a fantasy-based notion and the conspiracy theory it tends to necessitate. One way to try to dilute this implication is to broaden the problem sociologically -- i.e., to posit the existence of innumerable Leftists among more or less ordinary people, whose existence in society to some degree facilitates the agenda of the dastardly Elites. These ordinary Leftists will be posited to be in varying degrees brainwashed by the Elites, through a conscious process of decades of concrete attempts -- apparently successful, at least with regard to all the ordinary Leftists -- to infiltrate the educational realm and the cultural institutions of various media in order precisely to brainwash the populace. We may call this a "soft Elitistics", since it permits at least some number of ordinary people to be part of the problem, which we may contrast with a "hard Elitistics" that limits the problem to a dastardly cabal comprised exclusively of Elites.

This modification implied in a soft Elitistics, however, is not without problems. One problem is the classic logical flaw of having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too. In this context, the soft Elitisticians are trying to have their cake of exculpating ordinary people and placing all the blame for the West's blindness to (if not complicity in) Islam on the shoulders of a tiny minority of Elites from whom the soft Elitisticians, themselves ordinary people, feel profoundly alienated -- while trying to eat their cake of squirming out of the conspiracy theory this implies. This logical flaw tends to play out by the soft Elitisticians simultaneously assuming both sides of the contradiction -- that Elites have no sociological influence on ordinary people, and yet that there exist a number of ordinary people out there who are Leftists (i.e., who have been brainwashed by the "Gramscian" Elites) sufficient to be causative where the Elites by themselves do not, apparently, suffice.

Thus, to reflect the incoherence of the logical flaw, ordinary Leftists will be assumed to be numerous enough to take the pressure off the conspiracy-theory fantasy, but not so numerous that the faith in the ordinary people which the soft Elitisticians have will be threatened. This safety valve that would take the pressure off the conspiracy-theory fantasy, however, tends to set up a counter-pressure, since the the soft Elitisticians would not want too many ordinary people to be assumed to be brainwashed.

Other soft Elitisticians, however, are grimly content to follow the logical implications of a large swath of ordinary people having succumbed to the brainwashing of the "Gramscian" Elites -- and thus speak in grandiose terms of an imminent "civil war" -- which would be such precisely because of a mutually hostile array of two sides numerous enough to be so termed -- as a way to express their alienation not only from the tiny minority of dastardly Elites, but also from what must be millions of their fellow citizens, now turned into their potential mortal enemies.  But then they have a problem, Houston:  For if the Good Guys are themselves a tiny minority, and the vast majority including Elites and vast swaths of ordinary people are brainwashed Leftists, how could the Good Guys ever possibly stand a chance of winning such a civil war...?

Counter-Assertion:

In fact, just as there is no rigid hierarchy of classes anymore in the modern West -- much less a starkly medieval opposition of Royalty and Peasantry (i.e., Elites and Ordinary People) -- so too there is no hard and fast sociological division which an Elitistics assumes. While there does exist in the West a tiny subculture (or superculture, in terms of wealth and prestige) of elites who are so wealthy and so sociologically exclusive that they are indeed removed from the lives of the majority of ordinary people, they represent an extremely small part of the overall population -- and a very small proportion of so-called elites overall. Unless, that is, the doomsday conservative wants to assert a "99% vs. 1%" problem ironically mirror-imaging the deluded rhetoric of the Wall Street Occupiers.

I.e., in the modern West, the majority (if not the vast majority) of so-called elites are themselves so stratified sociologically that on closer inspection one sees that they merge into the population of ordinary people. I.e., most so-called elites are really ordinary people -- though one would reasonably qualify that by saying that they are lower-upper to upper middle-class ordinary people, in terms of income, career and sociocultural habits and values. An editor of a local paper in Duluth, Minnesota, for example, who has a nice home, perhaps also a time-share in Florida, can afford three cars (one for his daughter who's getting ready to go to college), has a boat to take out on the lakes, is able to take the family on one vacation a year, once even to Europe, etc.: is he a dastardly "Elite"? Of course not. He's just your average lower-upper middle-class American with a relatively nice job; but he most certainly is not a Tom Brokaw who jets all over the world, owns at least three homes and maintains an expensive apartment in Manhattan, goes fishing in Mongolia and gallivanting in Africa, getting million-dollar contracts to do puff pieces on world news, is invited to cocktail parties on Long Island with Charlie Rose and other celebrities, etc. There are far more "Elites" like the Duluth editor than there are Tom Brokaws. The former represent, in fact, the majority of what are identified so glibly as "Elites". And yet the Duluth editor with bland sincerity assumes the PC MC paradigm about Islam in his editorials and choices for his mainstream, albeit relatively small, newspaper, with more or less the same degree of self-righteously matter-of-fact sincerity as does a Tom Brokaw or a Tom Friedman.

So, if the Duluth editor is really just an ordinary person more or less, why does he believe the PC MC paradigm, and why does he participate in the general obfuscation of the dangerous facts about Islam? How do the Elitisticians explain this? They can't, according to their own paradigm; unless they opt for the more grimly alienated version that sees an imminent civil war in the West where Ordinary People will be fighting against Ordinary People -- the former against the Elites, the latter brainwashed to defend the Elites and thus themselves arrayed as the Enemy -- this scenario to be quickly followed perhaps by a half Mad Max, half evangelical Christian apocalypse.

The latter fantasy I've noticed being bruited at various times by various guest authors (if not by the owners themselves) at the Gates of Vienna blog and also at Lawrence Auster's blog.  For example, the relatively famous blogger "Fjordman" seems more or less to subscribe to it. back in 2009, Auster put up a piece about Fjordman's epiphany about the West:

I think we need to be realistic and realize that the current political-ideological order is completely broken and beyond repair. Instead of wasting time and energy on attempting to fix what cannot be fixed we need to prepare as best as we can for the coming crash and hopefully regroup to create something new and stronger afterward. There will be a pan-Western and perhaps international economic and social collapse in the not-too-distant future. I fear that this is too late to avoid by now. The people who support the ruling paradigm are too powerful and the paradigm contains so many flaws that it cannot be fixed. It needs to crash. We should focus on surviving this crash and on developing a new paradigm to replace the failed one.

Auster's editorial remark is uncritical:

Fjordman is speaking to the current crisis in which we seem to feel the West passing some transition point. What he says is provocative and important and I hope he will develop this theme further.

(Ironically, as I have noted before, this is more or less the same dismal view his Moriarty Breivik subscribes to; although Breivik in his "Manifesto" seems to granularize the enemy a little more subtly -- though, of course, not subtly enough to spare them the likely necessity he envisioned of having to have them killed, in various degrees of collateral damage in pursuit of the overarching enemy -- the "Marxist Multicultural" elites.  But this is the subject of another essay, perhaps someday.)

So too, Auster more recently lent uncritical pride of place to a similar view by featuring as a separate article a reader's grandiosely depressing forebodings of the Western future:

I am a simple school bus driver. Here is a conversation I heard. Last year we had an Iranian girl who loudly proclaimed, when the school was in its Patriotic Songs Celebration ("This Land Is Your Land," etc.): "I am not an American, I am a Muslim."
This was done on the bus so all could hear.
This is what they feel, deep down. They don't think like us, they lie without compunction, they want us dead or out of the way, because they are not fools like the Propositional Nationalists.
They know what a country really is; it is its land and resources. As long as we are here, we're in their way.
I am stunned at the stupidity of our leaders. Either they go to war in a place like Kosovo and learn nothing about it and why it became the way it did, or they are biding their time until full scale civil war breaks out in the USA, so martial law can be enforced and their power grows exponentially.
Personally, I think the latter will be the case.

However innumerable Leftists may be in the conception of Elitologists, their numbers never rise to the level of being sufficiently popular to explain the mainstream cultural dominance of PC MC -- for that explanation is the function of the cabal of the dastardly Elites and their para-democratic power, of course. As far as Leftists qua Leftists go, the Elitologists are correct: Leftists are in fact a minority throughout the West, and thus do not represent a demographic sufficiently numerous to be able to control the sociopolitical climate. 

Thus, in addition to "Elites are monolithic", we see two other assumptions by which to explain why the mainstream continues to protect Muslims and turn a blind eye to the inimical content of Islam:

Elites are a Tiny Minority 

Elites are not only monolithic: they are also conceded to be a small if not tiny minority -- a necessary feature by which to protect the conception among the Elitologists that the vast majority of ordinary people throughout the West are not liberals but are, rather, "one of us".

Elites are Amazingly Powerful

The tiny number of Elites, then, coupled with the dominance of PC MC, leads to the logical conclusion that this tiny number of Elites wields a remarkable, if not amazing, degree of power over Western societies. Apparently, they are able to control the mass media, academe, popular culture, and public schools, as well as local, national and international governments throughout the West.

So even an otherwise level-headed Diana West would think to ask a rhetorical question which makes sense only in these terms:

Well, it's a free-ish country, after all, right? But that doesn't account for why elites in the media and public life have abdicated their freedom, forever failing to call things what they are.

Conclusion:

At this juncture, only two explanations seem logical to explain the mainstream dominance of PC MC throughout the entire West: either a majority of non-Leftists have become PC MC, or a dastardly cabal is controlling and manipulating society to be PC MC, and our democratic freedoms, throughout the West, are a cruel illusion manufactured by this same cabal.

Unless I see sufficient evidence to indicate otherwise, I will assume the former to be the more reasonable explanation: and that effectively pulls the plug on the whole paradigm of Elitistics, and we are left with a more realistic -- but alas, more complicated -- problem.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah Hesperado, I was wondering if you were still optimistic after the last couple of years, and I see that you are. Although I love your optimism, I am your opposite.

The Constitution is ignored.

The Republic is dead.

Democracy is dying.

Western elections are largely computer-controlled shams with candidates from both major parties selected and steered by the elite anyway, and the small oligarchy of elites who rule from afar are non-Christian Marxist foreigners.

The vast majority of ordinary people throughout the West ARE willingly witless cowardly sheep led by a minority of willingly amoral cowardly sheep leaders.

The West is ripe for the taking without a fight - with barely a whimper - by willingly amoral cowardly Muslim sheep following and imposing Sharia Law in order to facilitate the coming Marxism of the elite oligarchy.

If it is hard to fathom that 1/4 of the world 'accepted' the evil depredations of Islam, then it is even more difficult to anticipate that the other 3/4 are ready and willing to submit, too, to either Islam or its successor Marxism. Well, submit or die in the fast approaching World War III.

Happy New Year!

Egghead

Hesperado said...

Happy New Year, Egghead!

Yes, I continue to go by the principle that the bigger the accusation, the more solid evidence is required; and what you've articulated (repeated by many others, including more or less the blogger who's the subject of my more recent post) is quite a doozy in that department, and while I've seen a good deal of circumstantial evidence and a rich tissue of inferences, I've not yet seen the smoking gun.

Anonymous said...

"...I've not yet seen the smoking gun."

You'll know it when you see it! :)

Egghead

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan said...

Constructing crackpot conspiracy theories, whining and fatalistically waiting for the Apocalypse is always easier than being an active and responsible citizen. But now all these sheeple can't even formulate their own philosophical-cultural values, babbling instead some vacuous nonsense about being "white", "indigenous", "Christian", "conservative", "ordinary people".

Anonymous said...

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan: Marxism is NOT a crackpot conspiracy theory. Marxism is a deadly murderous plot of a powerful oligarchy to control the entire world. So far, Marxism has succeeded in changing the whole culture of the West to our detriment and danger - part and parcel being the importation of deadly Muslims to our formerly peaceful lands. If you fail to see both the advancing Islam and Marxism or be concerned for the lives and safety of current and future Westerners, then no one can help you.

It is also ALWAYS the Apocalypse when Muslims conquer a country - which white indigenous Christian (and Jewish) conservative ordinary Middle Eastern people experienced!

It is ALWAYS the Apocalypse when the Marxists take over a nation - which white indigenous Christian conservative ordinary Russian people experienced!

History is replete with violent revolutions which murder and maim millions at a time. For you to cavalierly label my noticing the twin impending Muslim and Marxist revolutions in the West as being crackpot, well, that says more about you than me....

Egghead

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan said...

Is the Catholic Church a Marxist organization ? Google "Populorum Progressio" and explain why in 1967 (!) Pope Paul VI supports the idea of establishing a global, socialist-fascist, redistributionist totalitarian regime. Marxist Pope ?

Anonymous said...

If the shoe fits....

Marxists infiltrated the Catholic Church as well as other political, economic, and educational groups in Europe and the United States. (Ann Barnhardt also cited this idea.)

Knowing firsthand the true evil character of Islam, Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe used to 100% strictly forbid all Islam and Muslims in Europe UNTIL the recent Marxist infiltration of the mainline Christian churches.

Now, mainline Christian churches import as many Muslims as possible into Christian lands.

Oh, but the real question is, "Who are the Marxists? Who were the original Marxists, and who are the Marxists now? When you answer that question, then the truth will set you free....

Egghead

Anonymous said...

Speak of the devil, here's a bit by Ann Barnhardt on Jan 19, 2012:

"The rubric of the elbows-down posture was intentionally stripped from the Mass by the Communist-homosexualist infiltrators in the 1960's because they hated Our Lord, His Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and specifically because of the connection to the marital act. The infiltrators had as a goal the total destruction of sexual morality, because that is the fastest and surest way to demoralize and then destroy a culture. The Communist-homosexualist infiltrators of the Church wanted to convince everyone that sex was no big deal, and if sex is no big deal, then it really can't be connected to the concept of "sin", and thus DO WHAT YOU WANT! Contracept! Sleep around! Be a sodomite! Abuse yourself! Hey, it's not like what you do in private behind closed doors actually matters, right? Wrong. Our entire civilization is going to crash and burn first and foremost because of what people have done "in private behind closed doors", namely making a complete mockery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."

Anonymous said...

More from same:

"Your Novus Ordo priest almost certainly knows nothing about any of this because he was never taught the theology of the Mass in seminary. In fact, as far as I can tell, today's Novus Ordo priests aren't taught much of anything in seminary aside from Marxism and pop psychology. The good ones have to self-teach, and even sneak around in order to learn the Traditional Rites. The Novus Ordo priests today are taught a load of Protestant nonsense about the Mass being a MEAL, wherein WE gather around THE TABLE and WORSHIP OURSELVES by eating a symbolic MEAL. Wrong, Father Jazzhands. The altar isn't a table. It's a bed, complete with bed linens. And it is NOT SYMBOLIC. The meal aspect is deeply subordinated first and foremost to the SACRIFICIAL aspect, followed by the nuptial aspect. The meal motif is, by far, the least important - but then non-important, pedestrian and even trivial is EXACTLY what the infiltrators want the Mass to be."

"If you try to explain this to Father Jazzhands, good luck. You will get a very odd look, and then be dismissed. He doesn't want to hear anything about this, because it messes with his narcissistic Communist-homosexualist neo-pagan worldview. Same with the Superfun Rockband Church™ denizens and their for-profit macchiato-sipping insipidity. And the lesbian pagan witch nuns? Those sick broads are so far gone, they aren't even in the same galactic cluster. The vast majority of them self-excommunicated themselves decades and decades ago. I just wish that Rome would make it official."

Egghead

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan said...

Egghead.
The evil character of Islam is pretty much obvious to anyone with a functioning brain. In the USSR the commies used to fight mohammedanism ruthlessly and quite effectively. But they were not Catholics or Protestants, these commies.

By the way, the soviet commies were extremely puritannical. The term "communist-homosexualist" was an absurdity there. Homosexuality was a serious criminal offence in the USSR.

As much as I hate and despise marxism/communism/socialism, it seems to me that these destructive collectivist ideologies are merely consequences. The root cause of this lunacy is a combination of two factors: nihilism and "altruism".

Anonymous said...

"By the way, the soviet commies were extremely puritannical (sic)."

I beg to differ.

Here's what I understand about Marxists: Marxists use all means possible to break down existing moral, societal, and political structures UNTIL such time as Marxists control a government at which point Marxists officially clamp down on behavior that was formerly allowed and encouraged - while allowing any such private behavior for Marxist leaders.

For example, Marxists would allow and encourage homosexuality while homosexuality is useful to their acquisition of power. However, once in power, Marxists would formally target homosexuals but quietly reserve the practice of homosexuality for any homosexual Marxist leaders.

I have read that the first Russian Marxists were vicious and brutal sexual reprobates who FORCED the general population to engage in sexual deviancy in order to break down society and morality.

For example, I have read that the first Russian Marxists forced ALL young women to register with the state so that the state could force the young women to marry older men (who were strangers to them) against their will.

Dostoyevsky's dictum:

"If there is no God, then everything is permitted."

I searched Google for a good while trying to find citations regarding early Marxism and homosexuality and sexual exploitation of women, but all that I can find is blatant Marxist propaganda which disturbs me to no end!

P.S. I did find a good site about the French Revolution which told the truth about its totally horrific sexual brutality - mainly against women and children, but also men.

P.P.S. Well, despite Hesperado's lovely sentiments, I see little to no 'altruism' in the people who embrace PC MC - just fear that any who rebel - even in their minds - will lose their jobs, reputation, etc., and will face state-approved violence from minority groups.

If people were allowed to speak freely without fear of job loss or violence, PC MC would evaporate.

Egghead

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan said...

Egghead.

Look. I'm a native russian speaker, born in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg), USSR. Being a son of liberty-minded anti-soviet parents I can assure you that it is not my intention to whitewash the horrors of the Soviet regime or the idiocy of the Marxism-Leninism. But let's not distort reality and mythologize the issue unnecessarily by attributing all sorts of fringe nihilistic crackpottery to the Soviets. Commies were objectively evil, without being totally crazy satanic perverts.

One of the earliest, long-lasting and widespread propaganda slogans of the Soviet marxist-leninists was: "Family is a basic cell of the socialist (or communist)society." At the same time, homosexuality and all sorts of sexual deviance were condemned as "immoral decadence of the rotten western bourgeoisie".