A “Vested” Interest: The Discontent Populist & the Protesting Elite

A “Vested” Interest:

The Discontent Populist & the Protesting Elite

By Ben Goldstein

In his 1932 Doctrine of Fascism, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini injected a sense of “common man” egalitarian fury into the burgeoning Italian Fascist movement, asserting that “If the Bourgeoisie believe that they have found us in their lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards the people. . . we will fight both technical and spiritual rear-guardism.”[i] The popular fury against the social, cultural, and intellectual elite that guided much of twentieth century politics appears to be nearly as old as societal stratification itself, with medieval England’s Peasants' Revolt, the Third Estate-driven French Revolution, and the Revolutions of 1848 serving as long-standing precedents for backlash against the perceived privileged classes.

Historically, the target of popular resentment was—at least somewhat—well-defined. Whether the enmity was directed towards Renaissance Italian nobiltà, English lords, or New England’s “Boston Brahmins,” there was usually a clear demarcation between the perceived dominant class, and the resentful, disobedient, often radical “popular class.” The former was defensive of their influence and skeptical of change, while the latter focused on eliminating the destabilizing power deficit that many of them believed to be responsible for their day-to-day hardships.

Nevertheless, as the world shifts from a system of hereditary privilege to one in which social divisions are primarily drawn along the lines of material wealth, a “new elite” is emerging: kings, nobles, and aristocrats are out, and tech magnates, media moguls, and Hollywood stars are in. While it may have been unfathomable to expect the elites of yesteryear to support popular, and occasionally destructive, calls for radical social or political change, their current counterparts have endorsed and often taken part in theoretically elite-skeptic movements concerning climate change and systemic racism. Movements that are, ironically at times, perpetuated by the highest levels of government, media, and industry. Nevertheless, the bulk of both the “liberal” and “conservative” elites in the United States and Europe continue to, often quietly, oppose popular movements—such as the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States or the Yellow Vest movement in France—that more directly attack their privilege. Today’s somewhat progressive dominant class has more in common with privilege elites of the past than proletarian campaigners for change. While resistance intuitively appears straightforward from those who identify (or are commonly identified) as “conservative,” purportedly liberal societal elites who take pride in their political orientation manifest their resistance to popular urges in curious ways.

Although a class of conservative “old guard” elites remains potent and influential, the shift in elite politics has become undeniable. In 2012, Democrats eclipsed Republicans as the preferred political party of America’s high-earners ($220,000+ per year).[ii] In Britain, the epithet “Hampstead Socialist” (named after a wealthy London enclave known for a progressive social culture) has been used to describe supporters of Tony Blair’s “New Labour'' shift away from populist leftism within the Labour Party, as well as the wealthier, more urban constituency of Britons who voted to remain in the European Union.[iii] Likewise, in France, high income was a predictor of voting for President (and former investment banker) Emmanuel Macron’s socially liberal La Republique En Marche party, while the poor were more likely to support Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally.[iv] On a similar note, consider climate activist Greta Thunberg’s invitation to the World Economic Forum summit at Davos (a gathering of the world’s richest and most powerful), the plethora of investment bank and Silicon Valley firm logos dotting LGBTQ+ pride parades throughout the world, or Hollywood’s well-known liberal slant (80% of Hollywood political contributions in 2016 went to Democrats). They serve as evidence for the existence, if not dominance, of socially liberal culture among the twenty-first century West’s most culturally and economically influential.[v]

This reality is nowhere more apparent than in the recent movements for climate justice. After the series of mass demonstrations against human-caused climate change with over 7 million participants across all seven continents in the Climate Strike of 2019, Amazon multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos unveiled an ambitious plan to curb climate change. Shortly after came Bill Gates’s “Master Plan” and the formation of the “Creo Group,” a secretive consortium of the ultra-wealthy with the objective of directing global cash flows in a sustainable direction.[vi]

Much like its warm reception in Silicon Valley, the movement has garnered a similarly welcoming reaction within the financial services sector. BlackRock, a major financial services firm, has capitalized on this movement by selling “sustainable investing” products to consumers, while Goldman Sachs has hatched their “2030 Sustainable Finance Commitment” as a means of directing clients’ investments to “accelerate climate transition and advance inclusive growth.”[vii] Indeed, industry has not merely flaunted its support for climate action: it has infiltrated the movement to its very core. Approximately a decade ago, Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and perhaps America’s most well-known climate activist, and John Podesta, President Obama’s climate policy coordinator, met with billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg at Steyer’s 1,800 acre Northern Californian ranch. What stemmed from this motley gathering grew into a concerted effort to lobby Congressional Democrats on the issue of climate change, one that has influenced the interpretation of climate science in controversial and empirically flawed ways.[viii] The undeniable connection between climate activism and the white-collar industry, to some degree, removes the uncomfortable issue of class from popular discourse surrounding climate.

While it is the case that the elite corporate world plays a tremendous role in contributing to climate change, with Amazon alone responsible for as much carbon emission as the entire nation of Norway, much of the elite class that could theoretically stand to lose from decisive action on climate justice has embraced the movement with open arms.[ix] Ironically, those who are likely to gain from climate action often oppose it. A Yale report on climate change denial among the European far-right found a commonly shared belief that climate change movements are “driven by a liberal cosmopolitan agenda, that they harm the little man.”[x] Of course, this could not be further from the truth; climate change itself is a significant driver of economic inequality.[xi] Nevertheless, the popular sentiment of climate justice as an “elite movement”—and among some circles, a “liberal elite movement”—lingers nonetheless. This remains true despite high-profile proposals ranging from the Green New Deal to the climate-linked wealth tax targeting the rich, with only a handful of climate and engineering-focused magnates standing to benefit commercially from reforms.

Why is this? Why do those with resources support a movement from which they stand to lose, and why do those who stand to gain from it often reject this movement in a show of anti-elitism? Perhaps this can be explored through an examination of a movement that does not have such cordial ties to the elite class as the climate change movement does: the French Yellow Vests.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron’s administration decided to raise diesel prices by 20%, exacerbating an increasingly dire cost of living situation. The decision was widely interpreted as unfair to France’s car-dependent rural working class. Beyond the peripheries of major cities, the nation had been suffering from festering unemployment, poor economic growth, and a sense that citizens’ futures and wellbeing had been abandoned by the Parisian gentry—this decision, to many, confirmed that notion. In the eyes of critics, a more just policy would have been to tax and sanction corporations for their environmental degradation, rather than penalize those relegated by financial necessity to exurban transit deserts.[xii]

Subsequently, on November 17, 2018, over 200,000 people spontaneously, and, more notably, without centralized leadership, took to the streets of French cities. Donning the yellow vests that motorists are required to carry, masses of citizens brought demands ranging from increased governmental transparency and a more egalitarian system of taxation and service allocation, to calls for direct democracy and Macron’s resignation. In time, the movement grew more disruptive as infuriated casseurs (rioters) took to looting shops, vandalizing Paris’s iconic Arc de Triomphe, and injuring thousands, prompting a Paris arrondissement mayor to describe the situation as a “state of insurrection.”[xiii] Interestingly, the predominantly working class protesters had little discernible ideological unity, with activists belonging to both far-left and far-right groups, bringing together approximately 70% of the population in approval before destructive radicalism began to hamper the protest’s public image.[xiv] Interestingly, the movement shunned political affiliation and did not style itself as an attempt at reform through partisan politics. Raising the French minimum wage, introducing a “solidarity” wealth tax, and reversing austerity-borne welfare cutbacks—usually left-wing policies—were broadly supported by Yellow Vests from across the political spectrum. Communist flags and anti-capitalist chants have pervaded the movement.[xv] On the other hand, factions of the protesters have also called for an end to gay marriage, a military government, and anti-immigration policies, while some have even professed outright Holocaust denial.[xvi] Without a well-defined message, the sole uniting thread among the protesters has been a collective disdain for Macron, the brutality his authorities employed in attempting to quell the chaos, and the supposedly out-of-touch elite urbanite class he represents.

Unlike the Climate Strike and ensuing protests, the Yellow Vests have not hesitated to confront the economic elites head-on. BlackRock, the aforementioned finance firm interested in “sustainable investing” products, was directly targeted by Yellow Vests who stormed and vandalized its Paris headquarters over its putative ties to President Macron’s erosion of the French welfare state.[xvii] Rather than meeting for a tame discussion at Tom Steyer’s sprawling ranch, activists made sure to unleash rage upon upscale department stores and tourist sites, going as far as to force an evacuation of Paris’s posh Grands Magasins luxury shopping district.[xviii] Inferably, the movement has gotten limited sympathy from the magnate-mainstream media-movie star crowd. The movement’s remarkable dearth of artist endorsements stands in stark contrast to the celebrities who had opened their homes to refugees fleeing hardship abroad, only to retreat into willful blindness upon witnessing French citizens experiencing it at home. [xix] While other movements tiptoe around skepticism of elites, this very skepticism seems to be the only thing binding the Yellow Vests together, much to the elites’ chagrin. As prominent climate change activists have offered billionaires, neoliberal politicians, and major corporations a seat at the table, the Yellow Vests have put them on the menu.

Needless to say, one would be hard-pressed to find a tycoon with a “master plan” to overthrow a centrist, corporatist establishment, or a media mogul interested in dismantling corporate presses (another Yellow Vest aim). It makes sense that even those with both influence and a genuine sense of noblesse oblige would prefer causes that strive to improve quality of life without directly targeting them as responsible for societal ailments, even when they very much are.

This Western elite preference for “non-threatening” social activism raises some interesting philosophical questions. For one, if climate change protesters relentlessly hounded corporate wealth generation and capitalism as the largest contributors to global warming in a unifying chorus, while the Yellow Vests discarded their resentment for the wealthy and powerful and instead focused on lower taxes and better living conditions, would BlackRock and Bezos don their vests and shun the Climate Strike? If movements for racial justice were to more explicitly target capitalism as a contributing factor to racial inequality, would corporations be slower to embrace them? The inconsistencies in liberal elite participation of social movements may suggest that their support has less to do with the theoretical requirements necessary to achieve certain end goals, and more to do with the perceived threat posed by the movements’ organizers, geographies, arbitrary emphases, and factions of support.

It is without question that the modern day upper class has, as a whole, taken on more socially progressive positions than their predecessors. Attempts to discern what those with power support and what they do not are often tricky and riddled with contradictions and idiosyncrasies, but a common theme nonetheless shines through the murkiness: a movement’s methods and emphases are ultimately better predictors of elite backing than ideology is. Indeed, protests that take direct, deliberate, and aggressive action against those in power that tend not to curry favor within influential circles. It is also worth mentioning that right-wing elite politics remains at least as prevalent as its liberal and left-wing counterpart, with major political donations (in the US, at least) relatively even between parties, though this faction tends to shun from fiery protest in favor of a more subdued lobbying strategy. How “elite progressivism” will evolve as inequality grows and progressive parties embrace an increasingly post-material agenda remains to be seen, though we should not expect iSocialism to emerge as Apple’s latest product anytime soon.

Illustration by Talia Fishman

[i] Benito Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism,” 1936, https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf.

[ii]  Lee Drutman, “Democrats Are Replacing Republicans as the Preferred Party of the Very Wealthy,” Vox, June 3, 2016, https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/6/3/11843780/democrats-wealthy-party.

[iii] “Brexit Vote Explained: Poverty, Low Skills and Lack of Opportunities,” JRF, August 26, 2016, https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-low-skills-and-lack-opportunities.

[iv] Leigh Thomas, “Le Pen Thrives among French Poor, Vote Analysis Shows,” Reuters, April 25, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-data-analysis-idUSKBN17R1TA.

[v] Neil Gross, “Why Is Hollywood So Liberal?,” The New York Times, January 27, 2018, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/hollywood-liberal.html.

[vi] Annie Palmer, “Jeff Bezos Unveils Sweeping Plan to Tackle Climate Change,” CNBC, September 19, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/jeff-bezos-speaks-about-amazon-sustainability-in-washington-dc.html; “Creo Syndicate Is the Secret Club for Billionaires Who Care About Climate Change - Bloomberg,” accessed April 26, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-16/creo-syndicate-is-the-secret-club-for-billionaires-who-care-about-climate-change; Christina Binkley, “Bill Gates Has a Master Plan for Battling Climate Change,” Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2021, sec. Magazine, https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-interview-climate-change-book-11613173337.

[vii] David Solomon, “Goldman Sachs Update on Our 2030 Sustainable Finance Commitment,” Goldman Sachs, accessed April 26, 2021, https://www.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press-releases/2021/announcement-04-mar-2021.html; “What Is Sustainable Investing?,” BlackRock, accessed April 26, 2021, https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/investment-ideas/sustainable-investing.

[viii] Roger Pielke, “How Billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg Corrupted Climate Science,” Forbes, accessed April 26, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/01/02/how-billionaires-tom-steyer-and-michael-bloomberg-corrupted-climate-science/.

[ix] Matt Reynolds, “Jeff Bezos Wants to Fix Climate Change. He Can Start with Amazon,” Wired UK, February 18, 2020, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/jeff-bezos-climate-change-amazon.

[x] “For Europe’s Far-Right Parties, Climate Is a New Battleground,” Yale E360, accessed April 26, 2021, https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-europes-far-right-parties-climate-is-a-new-battleground.

[xi] Josie Garthwaite, “Climate Change Has Worsened Global Economic Inequality,” Stanford Earth, April 22, 2019, https://earth.stanford.edu/news/climate-change-has-worsened-global-economic-inequality.

[xii]“One Dead, over 220 Injured in French Protests over Fuel Prices,” Al Jazeera, November 18, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/11/18/one-dead-over-220-injured-in-french-protests-over-fuel-prices.

[xiii] “The ‘Yellow Vest’ Movement Explained,” Al Jazeera, December 4, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/4/the-yellow-vest-movement-explained.

[xiv] Michel Rose and Luke Baker, “No Leader, Lots of Anger: Can France’s ‘yellow Vests’ Become a Political Force?,” Reuters, December 6, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-future-idUSKBN1O51ON.

[xv] Jake Cigainero, “Who Are France’s Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want?,” National Public Radio, December 3, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672862353/who-are-frances-yellow-vest-protesters-and-what-do-they-want; Matt Bradley, Mac William Bishop, and Marguerite Ward, “France’s Apolitical ‘yellow Vest’ Movement Moves into Politics,” NBC News, February 26, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/yellow-vests-find-support-among-france-s-far-right-far-n976021.

[xvi] Alexander Hurst, “The Ugly, Illiberal, Anti-Semitic Heart of the Yellow Vest Movement,” The New Republic, January 7, 2019, https://newrepublic.com/article/152853/ugly-illiberal-anti-semitic-heart-yellow-vest-movement.

[xvii] Liz Alderman, “BlackRock Becomes a Symbol for Anticapitalist Fervor in France,” The New York Times, February 14, 2020, sec. Business, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/business/france-blackrock-protests.html.

[xviii] Cecilia Rodriguez, “Riots In Paris: ‘Yellow Vests’ Violence, Vandalism And Chaos Hitting Tourism,” Forbes, December 2, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2018/12/02/rioting-in-paris-yellow-vests-violence-vandalism-and-chaos-hits-tourism/.

[xix] Gavin Mortimer, “Why the Yellow Vests Haven’t Received Any Celebrity Endorsements,” The Spectator, January 31, 2019, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-yellow-vests-haven-t-received-any-celebrity-endorsements.