I’ve encountered the adjective “elitist” in more than one progressive-inspired publication. In a strongly pejorative sense, of course. This is because the progressive mentality’s psychological profile is an amalgam of mediocrity, triviality, and even vulgarity. As a result, it is viscerally hostile to all forms of selection and to all kinds of elites.
When using this adjective — so debatable from a vernacular point of view — typical progressives imply that every member of an elite is, by definition, a snob smeared with fatuity. He is mediocre, unproductive, selfish, and capable only of grouping with other “elitists” to form parasitic cliques complicit in siphoning the fruits of others’ labor.
In the “light” (!) of this concept, “elitists” would constitute small minorities, while their victims would form the great multitude.
Who could deny that there are “elites” who precisely match the progressive concept? Who would want to dispute that they deserve the repudiation of every sensible person? But are these “elites” really elites?
They have abandoned their true spirit, renounced their mission, and been invaded by gangrene and putrefaction.
Can one point to a faded, lightless star as an example of what a star is? It would be like asking whether one can show a rotting corpse to convey what a man is.
However, this is what progressives do to elites. Based on their pejorative use of the term “elite,” progressives juggle words and end up presenting all elites as “elitist.” In this way, they point to all minorities as authentic leeches on the vast majority of authentic working men.
In the eyes of the general public, this creates the ideal scenario for triggering class warfare. This is precisely what suits communist propaganda: on the one hand, you have a vast majority of workers, and on the other, various minorities (maliciously confused with the fatuous, lazy, mediocre, and timid “elitists” mentioned above) who stand out in any legitimate way through their culture, talent, education, self-sacrifice for the public good, charitable action, and so on.
The outcome of the clash between these minorities and the masses that the communists seek to stir up can only be the communist cat swallowing the “elitist” mouse.
Of course, the “anti-elitist” panorama liberals present to foster communist propaganda is false in almost all its terms, but two stand out at first glance. The first is that every elite is necessarily “elitist” in the pejorative sense of the word. We have already seen how arbitrary and unfair this claim is. The other is the assertion that there are no elites in the crowd, especially among the working class.
It is a gross mistake to imagine that only those who belong to minorities outside the masses are part of the elite, and that the masses are by definition an immense herd of mediocre or even intellectually, culturally, and morally deficient people. As a result, a country would necessarily be divided into two categories, separated by a chasm: the paradigmatic and the wrong, the supermen and the subhumans.
In this regard, it seems essential to me to recall a truth that many historians and sociologists do not emphasize.
It is generally accepted that every nation has the government it deserves. The corollary is that every nation also has the elites (in the authentic, not the pejorative sense) it deserves. The emergence of elites, their perfect characterization, and the full radiance of their beneficial action are largely influenced by the connection they maintain with the population as a whole. No elite can remain intact and lively without a constant infusion of values from the general population.
For an elite to fully assume the character that should be its own, an adequate interpretation and a communicative consensus among the masses contribute greatly. The people’s receptivity is indispensable for elites to influence.
Furthermore, when the relationship between the elite and the people is right, the elite often draws inspiration from the people. To give just one example among hundreds, if not thousands, we need only recall the musical masterpieces inspired by artists of genius, based on the simplest popular melodies.
The role of the population in shaping a country’s soul, and therefore its culture, great men, and historical actions, is so significant that even in functions usually considered the privilege and peculiar mission of the aristocracies of blood and others, the people perform a mission of particular greatness.
In a certain sense, the conservative classes par excellence are more popular than the upper classes. In Europe, for example, the old costumes, dances, songs, and ways of being—in short, typical regional customs—were much better preserved by the common people (in the countryside) than by the ruling classes in the big cities. In Brazil, the classic black woman from Bahia, with her clothing, delicacies, and folklore, is in many ways more reminiscent of the Brazil of yesteryear than many descendants of captains, barons, councilors, or colonels of the national guard.
If the elites decline, it is difficult for them not to drag the people down with them. If the people decline, it seems impossible to me that they will not drag the elites down with them.
Here, it is appropriate to distinguish between any people and a great people, or between a people in its ascendant phase, at its peak, and a people in stagnation or decline. It would not be stretching the meaning of the word to say that a people on the rise or at its zenith constitutes, in the universal ensemble of peoples, an enormous elite within which more quintessential and smaller elites emerge almost by distillation. The harmonious combination of the elite-people (or elite-majority) with the elite-minority is what gives rise to general greatness.
Last week, I wrote for this newspaper about Winston Churchill and his wife. Perhaps England would not have won the war without the leadership of this great man, whose illustrious wife was his female counterpart. On the other hand, the United Kingdom would have lost the war if it had not had a veritable legion of elite figures posted throughout the political, social, economic, and military hierarchies, in the most varied commands of the armed forces and civil resistance. Finally, what good would this whole constellation of high, middle, and low elites have been if the English people had not been a great people? That is, a people with many average and even below-average men, but few mediocre men. Many heroes on the battlefield, but also “mini-heroes” willing to sacrifice themselves in civilian life behind the lines, keeping up the spirits of those around them, whether in the gloomy hours when it was necessary to listen, deep in the air-raid shelters, as the Luftwaffe bombed the cities, or in the melancholy hours when it was clear that household budgets were being mercilessly eroded by wartime rationing.
If, instead of all these elites and heroes of such varied backgrounds and dispositions, England had not had great or average men from Buckingham Palace to the depths of the coal mines, but mediocre people, not heroic but cowardly, it would today be nothing more than a historical memory.
Ultimately, the elite-people antithesis that progressives seek to inculcate by painting reality as if there were a dark and gaping gulf between them is a sham. This gulf exists only when the people and the elites are, more or less, moribund and disjointed: small, artificial elites on one side and large, anonymous masses on the other.
These considerations have already gone on too long. I will conclude by quoting a brilliant text by Pius XII on the people and the masses.
“The State does not contain in itself and does not mechanically bring together in a given territory a shapeless mass of individuals. It is, and should in practice be, the organic and organizing unity of a real people.
“A people, and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, “the masses”) are two distinct concepts. The people lives and moves by its own life energy; the masses are inert of themselves and can only be moved from outside. A people lives by the fullness of life in the men that compose it, each of whom — at his proper place and in his own way — is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views. The masses, on the contrary, wait for the impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits their instincts and impressions; ready to follow in turn, today this flag, tomorrow another. From the exuberant life of a true people, an abundant rich life is diffused in the State and all its organs, instilling into them with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good.
“The elementary power of the masses, deftly managed and employed, the State also can utilize: in the ambitious hands of one or of several who have been artificially brought together for selfish aims, the State itself, with the support of the masses, reduced to the minimum status of a mere machine, can impose its whims on the better part of the real people: the common interest remains seriously, and for a long time, injured by this process, and the injury is very often hard to heal” (Radio message of Christmas 1944, in Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII, vol. VI, 238-239).
Let the reader consider carefully what the late lamented Pontiff says about a true people. He will see that, from top to bottom, a people is nothing but a healthy and magnificent intermeshing of elites, the upper levels shining in gold and silver, and the more modest in beautiful and noble bronze.
That destroys the unpleasant elite-people antithesis implied by the distressing “elitist” adjective in liberal discourse.
