Insight – the “intellectual elite” notion

Every now and again, we bump into an idea that resolves a puzzle or clarifies a confusion. 

Modern conservative movement propaganda forwards a number of key notions, evident through their constant repetition and broad dissemination (lots of different voices used to forward them).  Effectively promoted, they become received wisdom within the community that inhales this stuff which, of course, is precisely the goal.

One example of this is that the mainstream media is unfairly biased against conservatives/conservatism.  Limbaugh has been probably the most vociferous advocate forwarding this notion.  How extreme does he get? 

The Republican base considers the media to be part of the enemy that has to be defeated and overcome.

But here I want to look at another notion…that there is an “intellectual elite” who look down their noses at and despise “normal” or “real” Americans.  They are to be found, we are told, in universities, Massechusetts, New York, large cities in general, California, “high brow” publications and the mainstream media. 

One can properly see this as a continuing expression of a very old populist strain in America (see Hofstadter particularly) supported by a desire for local political autonomy as well as a defence by some religious communities against the encroachment of secular ideas.  So, there was already a rich soil in the US for cultivation of this notion of “intellectual elites” seeking to over-ride the “knowledge” and “wisdom” and “liberty” of the common folk.

But in the modern conservative world, this notion is asserted every day.  If you can find a Limbaugh transcript for any day of the last five years which doesn’t contain it, I’ll send you five bucks.  It is an absolutely predictable mantra of the voices on the right.

One obvious and commonly-noted function achieved in this particular propaganda strategy is to isolate and self-validate the community of listeners Limbaugh and others like him have cultivated.  “You don’t have to be concerned”, the message says, “with people who have prestigous degrees (this phrase will be spat out like a nasty bug that somehow got in the speaker’s mouth) or listen to people who read lots of books (which were written by others with prestigious degrees) or listen to “the authorities” .  They are all snooty elitists, full of themselves, without “common sense” and they despise you and your faith and your values, etc.  Ignore them and your inherent goodness and wisdom will prevail.  Attend to them and you will be seduced into falsehoods and un-Americanness and then you and your family will surely come to great and destructive peril.   

This all serves to insulate the audience from opposing or alternate ideas.  It keeps the ‘base’ in the fold, keeps them angry at and fearful of some distant class of people who are “different” and are “in control”.  Importantly, it also serves to define a difference between Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives. 

It also serves, as we can see presently with Limbaugh (and others doing the same set of propaganda functions) to provide a rationale for why those allies previously in the Republican/conservative community who are now speaking in the voice of apostates (Powell, Buckley, Noonan, Brooks, etc) deserve to be ignored…they are part of the snooty “intellectual elite” or they have become infected/seduced by it (validating and magnifying the peril of moving even an inch away from doctrinal truths and prior alliances). 

But now here, finally, is the idea I’ve just bumped into which fills in an important puzzle piece, for me at least.  It helps us understand the odd and quite counter-intuitive coalition of business, religion and populism (the latter defined as discourse or ideas which pit “the people” against “the elites”).   

To gain and hold power, conservatives must also frustrate the possibiliity that one pillar of the base will see another as a threat to its fundamental values.  The base melts down if the traditional Democratic attack – that the Republican Party is the party of the few – resonates sufficiently with social conservatives to turn them against the policies that disproportionately benefit wealthy business conservatives.  Seeking that wedge, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore argued in 2000 that the tax policies of his opponent, Governor George W. Bush, favored the upper 1% of income earners.  Democrats also position their party as the party of the middle class, and by implication not the party of the poor, by promising “middle-class tax cuts” and assuring audiences that they will only raise taxes on the rich.  In this Democratic configuration of the world, social conservatives who do not share the values or the wealth of the Wall Street business conservatives are invited to see conservatism as an ideology of wealthy, amoral elites.  “So ‘middle-class’ tax cuts, even phony ones, are offered as a ‘wedge’ to divide middle -income earners from the greedy ‘rich.’” obseved the [Wall Street] Journal of the Clinton campaign of 1992.  “The theme of resentment – encapsulated in the word ‘fairness’ – is designed to break voters away from the opportunity based coalition of Ronald Reagan and, at least in 1988, of George Bush.”

In a skillful act of redefinition, conservatives sidestep that alternative by substituting a more threatening “cultural elite” – one that is godless, patronizing, and a threat to every value social conservatives cherish.  Doing so requires disassociating the notion of ”elite” from that of “the wealthy” and attaching it instead to those who embrace “liberal” social values.  The dispacement of one elite by another gains traction if at the same time the beneficiaries of Republican tax policies are cast as residing on Main Street, not Wall Street, and defined as the owners of “small businesses” and “family farms,” not “giant corporations” and ”agribusiness.”  (Echo Chamber, Jamieson and Cappella, p 63-64)  

I find this a brilliant insight.  Notice too, how it helps us understand why the conservative movement voices push the notion of Reagonomics (trickle down theory…let the big boys get really wealthy and the “rising tide will lift all boats”.  The present post-election rhetoric from these people is marked by threats that if Obama is to repeal Bush’s tax cuts (to the very wealthy) then nothing but mayhem and disaster will strike the economy.  And (importantly) this will result in what will effectively be a tax raise on the middle class.