The Revolt of the Elites

Why do our cosmopolitan elites hate their own people?

There are two popular theories in our circles that explain this phenomena. The first theory holds that it is the result of a Jewish culture of critique. The second theory holds that liberalism has degenerated our culture. While there is a great deal of truth to both of these theories, it ignores a crucial third element which is the rise of Modernism and the impact that it had on elite attitudes.

The following excerpt comes from John Carey’s book The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride & Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939:

“Ortega’s ideas recall those of Nietzsche, who prefigures many of the developments we shall be concerned with. Nietzsche similarly deplores overpopulation. ‘Many too many are born,’ his Zarathustra declares, ‘and they hang on their branches much too long. I wish a storm would come and shake all this rottenness and wormeatenness from the tree!’ Where the ‘rabble’ drink, all fountains are poisoned. Zarathustra also denounces the state, which overwhelms the individual. It is ‘the coldest of all cold monsters’. In it ‘universal slow suicide is called life’. It was invented for the sake of the mass – ‘the superfluous’. Nietzsche’s message in The Will To Power is that a ‘declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed’. The times are critical. ‘Everywhere the mediocre are combining in order to make themselves master.’ The conclusion of this ‘tyranny of the least and the dumbest’ will, he warns, be socialism – a ‘hopeless and sour affair’ which ‘negates life’.”

As John Carey goes to explain at length, Modernist intellectuals who were alienated by the rise of mass culture answered Nietzsche’s call to declare war on the masses in the 20th century.

“The old, sick and the suffering suggest themselves as particularly ripe for extermination. Nietzsche affirms that ‘the great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men’. He blames the corruption of the European races on the preservation of sick and suffering specimens. The breeding of the future master race will entail, he warns, the ‘annihilation of millions of failures’. The actual method of annihilation is generally left vague, both in Nietzsche and Lawrence, but Lawrence has a chilling passage in a letter of 1908, in which he explains to Blanche Jennings how he would dispose of society’s outcasts:

“If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.”

The humiliation and annihilation of the masses is a theme that runs through Modernism:

“The intellectuals could not, of course, actually prevent the masses from attaining literacy. But they could prevent them reading literature by making it too difficult for them to understand – and this is what they did. The early twentieth century saw a determined effort, on the part of the European intelligentsia, to exclude the masses from culture. In England this movement has become known as modernism. In other European countries it was given similar names, but the ingredients were essentially similar, and they revolutionized the visual arts as well as literature. Realism of the sort that it was assumed the masses appreciated was abandoned. So was logical coherence. Irrationality and obscurity were cultivated. ‘Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult,’ decreed T.S. Eliot.” How deliberate this process of alienating the mass audience was is, of course, problematic and no doubt different from case to case.”

“I would suggest, then, that the principle around which modernist literature and culture fashioned themselves was the exclusion of the masses, the defeat of their power, the removal of their literacy, the denial of their humanity.”

This is a good example of it in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End:

“When early twentieth-century writers depict beneficiaries of this reform – representatives of the newly educated masses – they frequently do so with disdain. The effort of the mass to acquire culture is presented as ill-advised and unsuccessful. E.M. Forster, for example, in his novel Howards End depicts a lower-class young man called Leonard Best, who works as a clerk in an insurance office. Leonard lives in a nasty modern flat, eats tinned food and is married to a vulgar young woman called Jacky, who is, Forster tells us, ‘bestially stupid’. It would be false to pretend that Forster is wholly unsympathetic to Leonard. His loyalty to Jacky verges on the tragic. But what Forster cannot condone is Leonard’s attempt to become cultured. If only his ancestors had stayed in the countryside, he might have made a robust shepherd or ploughboy. But like thousands of others, they were ‘sucked into the town’, and Leonard strives to educate himself by reading the English literary classics and going to symphony concerts. Despite these efforts, Forster makes it clear, Leonard does not acquire true culture. He has a ‘cramped little mind’; he plays the piano ‘badly and vulgarly’. There is, Forster assures us, not the least doubt that Leonard is inferior to most rich people. ‘He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable.’ The novel has a cautionary ending, for Leonard’s wish to obtain culture proves fatal. Attacked by one of his upper-class characters, he symbolically grabs at a bookcase for support, and it falls over on top of him, so that he dies of a heart attack. Such are the dangers of higher education, we gather, when it is pursued by the wrong people.”

As nationalists, we identify with our own people or with “the masses.”

Modernism is about the rejection of the masses and particularly the traditional culture of the 19th century bourgeois. It is based on a strong feeling of alienation from the masses.

As I joked to my wife, I am an intellectual who is deeply reactionary in the abstract, but kind, laid back and fairly egalitarian in temperament. In contrast, Modernists are often egalitarian in the abstract, but deeply reactionary and elitist in temperament. The only thing that progressives believe in more deeply than abstract equality and progress is how much they do not like the ordinary American!

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

30 Comments

  1. HW city intellectuals of any ideology, philosophy, and theology don’t have basic survival skills to live in a rural wilderness.

    It all comes full circle to hunters/fisherman and gatherers (agriculture) or scavengers Jews blacks and white metropolitan elites that have nothing to eat after BLM have destroyed the food supply in metropolitan areas.

    My favorite quote from Nietzsche was?

    “With our music life would be but era”

    You made think with this post!

    NoW the quote for me is existential.

    Life With out food would be genocidal for all humanity

    Can’t use the “” it’s my quote?

  2. That is an excellent observation about despising the masses while professing egalitarianism. However GENUINE Levelers, and genuine Christians, do not look down on others, and do not serve others with selfish motives.

    Re: “The old, sick and the suffering suggest themselves as particularly ripe for extermination (…) the great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men (…) He blames the corruption of the European races on the preservation of sick and suffering specimens”:

    Now we have privatized public health systems and general laissez faire (all human relations monetized) to take care of all that. Herd immunity and survival of the fittest (the richest) are the American way. We will have NO social safety net, no communism for us! As Nancy Pelosi says, about herself and fellow Democrats: “We’re capitalist to the bone.”

    • Anon- y-Mouse “However GENUINE Levelers, and genuine Christians, do not look down on others, and do not serve others with selfish motives.”

      Your presuming that Egalitarianism is Biblical. IT IS NOT. It is the doctrine from HELL.

      Everything in Holy Scripture attests to God as Sovereign (Despot, in Greek!) Christ as KING, and the HIERARCHY of a KINGDOM.

      Protestant-schism has GIVEN US BLM, ANTIFA, and an uppity N-word Hindoo/Jew HOE, precisely because of the ‘All men are created equal’ (NOT!) thinking- Just look at the Dems “Kabala Ha’aretz’ thinks she is the equal of a man, first- and an elected leader/king, second.

      JUST SAY NO TO JOE AND THE HOE!!!

      And who are YOU, o man, to talk back to God!?!? – St. Paul

      “Christianity is our only real enemy since all the political and economic phenomena of the bourgeois states are only its consequences,” Rakovsky, says. (All page citations from Griffin, Fourth Reich of the Rich, 1988, p. 264)
      – ‘Christian’ Rakovsky (born CHAIM Rakover in 1873) was a veteran Communist insider 

      HERE is where Egalitarianism erupted (like a pustule) from- Godless JEWs. They said they were ‘fellow white people’ but they lied- and why? ONLY to gain total control!

      ““The Jews have a right to subordinate to themselves the rest of mankind and to be the masters over the whole earth. This is the historic destiny of the Jews” – Harry Waton, A Program for the Jews and an Answer to All Anti-Semites (New York Committee for the Preservation of the Jews, 1939), pp. 99-100
      found at: https://www.truthfromgod.com/articles/jews_created_communism.html

      The BIBLICAL world view is a MONARCHY.

      “Equality is known to produce strife. Therefore God allowed the human race to be a monarchy, not a democracy. But the family is constructed in a similar way to an army, with the husband holding the rank of monarch, the wife as general and the children also given stations of command.”
      St. John Chrysostom, Homily 34 on I Corinthians, 7

      And the same goes for the Church, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Monastics, Lay men… and Lay women and children at the bottom of the hierarchy.

      Just one look at the Feminazi sluts and hoes in politics, education, commerce, government (Aherne of NZ, I’m pointing at you) and the BLASPHEMY of whores on the altars of so many of the Impastor ‘Churches’… and you are without excuse, that such is of Satan.

      • At the heart of the Gospel, the heart of the New Testament, the heart of the Bible, are teachings that clearly DO NOT support elitism, monarchy, and war. The “inequality” of familial relations mentioned in your Chrysostom quote is something different from, has nothing to with, the injustice, indeed the crimes, of fascism, feudalism, monarchism, and other names for: Plutocracy.

        • You are without grace, without the Spirit [Pevma] and without Christ. Anathema sit.
          Oh, wait. You’re a godless Prot. Never mind.

          “The heretics were totally shipwrecked with regard to the Faith; but as for the others, even if in their thinking they did not founder, nevertheless, because of their communion with heresy they are perishing.”
          St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Graeca 99, 1164

      • Father John,

        I am not supposed to comment on this site anymore but I had to break radio silence for your comment. I will catch Hades for commenting but—-That was a fantastic comment!

        Perhaps someday I will be allowed back by my father but not for now. Anyway well done. I found your comment inspirational and that is rare in any comment section. If you respond I will read but cannot comment for now. Like you said the father of a family is king of his family and I obey.

        I will show him your comment and I think he will go easy on me.

      • Father John,

        I could not resist one more comment. The most common form of government in Christian history is monarchy and they were annoited by the christian hierarchy. In the Old Testament the chosen ones had monarchy with God’s prophets annoiting them. They ruled by the direct will of God. God does not make mistakes.

        Do not pay much attention to the evil one on this site. He/It is obviously a disrupter. And it is quite fond of the communist Chinese.

    • I don’t have a problem with much of your post, anonymous, but why are you all acting like if Nietzsche was egalitarian? Nietzsche hated egalitarianism and believed that the strong should dominate the weak. There is absolutely no way he’s be an “SJW” if he was alive today. He also believed women should not have the right to vote and his master morality is a complete refutation of the modern left.

      • Nietzsche was not an egalitarian.

        Modernists are not egalitarians either although they can be in terms of their ideology. Modernism is compatible with liberalism, conservatism, fascism, comnunism, etc. It is a sensibility like Romanticism.

        • Of course Nietzsche was not. But Gerrard Winstanley was egalitarian. And our state’s founder, William Penn, certainly leaned toward it:

          “The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here makes them strangers” – William Penn

          “A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it. Let us then try what love will do” – William Penn

          “Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but for that reason it should be most our care to learn it.” – William Penn

          “The Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us form a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons…” – his 1660 Declaration to King Charles II

      • You must have misunderstood. I have never thought Netzsche was egalitarian, in any sense. But I am egalitarian.

        • Well, then, this is your hour. Enjoy the death of the West, the destruction which is the very soul of egalitarianism realized, you stinking filth.

          Leveling the White man downward to equality with the Negro, by destroying him. Leveling the dominant man down to the level of the submissive woman, through feminism. Leveling away the differences between the genders themselves, through trannyism. Leveling away beauty through the ineffable ugliness of its official “art,” leveling away nations by removing borders, leveling, leveling, leveling, downwards towards muck, towards vileness, towards destruction and death.

          Nature is inegalitarian and unequal.

          Equalism and egalitarianism are dreams of madness, which can only be achieved by abasing the superior to the level of the inferior, which can only be achieved through great force and tyranny. “Egalitarianism” is so unnatural it must be FORCED with immense coercion, which is precisely what we’re seeing now. Otherwise, the aristocratic principle of nature reasserts itself, because it is natural, and all the necessary inequalities result — families, nations, the pursuit of excellence.

          You are the friend of the darkness destroying my people, and therefore enemy scum.

  3. Excellent article Hunter. This is a revelation that reinforces the trend through American history of rich White people f*cking over poor White people. Jews simply amplify all of our problems by agitating for immigration, and then our problems were really amplified.

    Also, NEETzsche is the ultimate hypocrite. He tried to marry the same woman several times and always failed, then he went nuts. Should we wheel him into the Crystal Palace gas chamber as well? He is a crazed and godless angry teenager, who need him?

  4. Why did the Jews kill Christ? Is it human to persecute and torment the weak and the innocent? The Jews are not like us. The Jews are less than human and the Jews are cursed and tormented by our God, by our lord and by our Christ.

  5. Instead of reading crap (Nietzsche) read the accounts of the Russian Orthodox clergy and the Russian People, who were betrayed by the [pseudo] Russian Aristocratic Elites prior to the Revolution, and why Czar Nicholas is a saint, because of their sinfulness. Just sayin’- since you say you like history.

    • The Orthodox church has many questionable people as her saints, for example Theodora – one of the biggest whores in history.

      • Yes, and your point. Christ forgave the woman caught in Adultery. It is the sum total of everyone’s life that matters, not your narrow puritanical hypocrisy.

        “The people should be led, not followed, as God has ordained… Those who say, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God,’ are not to be listened to, for the unruliness of the mob is always close to madness.” – Deacon Alcuin of York to Charlemagne

        Francis of Assisi was a hippie, and yet the RCC (post-Schism) canonized him.
        Oh, and Edith Stein, an unrepentant Jew was ‘canonized’
        And numerous non-Aryan pseudo-saints, whom one cannot prove are truly saints, because they are not the Race of the Elect. [Adamkind] God has only ONE people [ Gen 1:27, 5:1, Amos 3:2, Ez. 9:2, Matt. 1:21, Eph. 1:4, Rev. 2:8,9, etc.] that are His own. The rest? Meh.

        An RC response to ‘love your enemies, then an Orthodox one.

        And, in the Vulgate (the RC translation) “…the passage telling us to love our enemies used the work “inimicus” in the Latin translation, which means personal enemy. This word was used as opposed to the word “hostis”, which mean the public, or political enemy. So obviously Christ did not teach us to love the people who want to kill us; we are simply to love our brethren and forgive their petty transgressions.”

        “Live in peace with your enemies, but only with your Personal Enemies, and NOT the ENEMIES OF GOD.” – St. Theosodius of the Kiev Caves Lavra

        “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
        – Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius

        • Re: “Your dispensational fractured ecclesiology is a byword among the Deicides, who LAUGH that you think the Yids have ANY claim to being ANY sort of Chosen People”:

          That is incredible. I do not believe that descendants of Abraham, or Jacob, or David et al, are “chosen” or any better or worse than any other human beings, and I’ve always been strongly opposed to “Christian” Dispensationalism and other EXCLUSIVISTIC, mostly Old Testament- and Talmud-based soteriological heresies, such as “Adamkindism” which is evident in: “the Race of the Elect. [Adamkind] God has only ONE people (…) that are His own. The rest? Meh.”

  6. But Hunter, Nietzsche’s goal and philosophy is the antithesis of the modern left. Even in the quoted passages above, you show how he despised egalitarianism:

    “The old, sick and the suffering suggest themselves as particularly ripe for extermination. Nietzsche affirms that ‘the great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men’. He blames the corruption of the European races on the preservation of sick and suffering specimens.”

    Do you really think this sounds like the rhetoric of the woke?

  7. Another word for these “elitists” is homosexual. “I won’t shake hands with anybody from San Francisco” – Richard Nixon. There is nothing new about snobbery, the only thing that’s new is taking the pretensions of rabid perverts seriously.

  8. There will always be elites who govern. The question is weather they govern for the good of the race and the racial community or whether they govern only for themselves or malevolent forces. I think we know what the answer is in modern America. Their much loved Liberal Democracy is in reality neither liberal or democratic but merely the façade behind which a hostile anti-white elite reigns supreme.

  9. Outside the South and Pacific Northwest, most of the US white population is descended from Catholic immigrants. “Anti-whiteness” is judeo-dissenter Protestant racial antagonism towards America’s status as a nation of white Catholic ancestry.

    • False. From the late 1500’s this country had laws against papists living here, voting, holding office, or buying land. The Irish and Italians were nothing in numbers compared to WASPs.

      We should bring the anti-papist laws back too.

      • Yeah….JPS is incorrect. And the anti-papist laws should have been maintained. All the Catholics I’ve ever known let other people do their thinking for them, one way or another.

        • Genetically white Americans are in the majority descended from Catholic immigrants. Those Catholic immigrants mostly fell away from the Faith, that is the reason why the US is not Catholic. It may not be the case in the South but in most of the country it is definitely the case. Catholics were nearly a 1/4 of the US population in the 1870s, 1/6 in the early 20s. Yet through all that time the population of the US was increasing naturally and more Catholic immigrants were coming. Most whites in America are descended from Catholic Europe, not Reformed Europe. And the South is full of the descendants of kidnapped indentured servants, many of whom were probably Catholic.

        • And nearly ever protestant I’ve seen can’t wait to get their lips attached firmly to a jew’s anus. I’m Catholic and we always stood for morality, monarchy, and didn’t mind booting the jews when needed. By the way, it was Catholic Edward I who gave jews the heave-ho out of England and the vile worm Oliver Cromwell who brought them back in.

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