Progressive in public, conservative in private. By Ed West.
People really dislike the idea that progressive elites run the country, but a quite simple test of who wields power is ‘what are people’s politics like in private compared to what they are like in public.’
I know of a few fairly high-profile people who present a public image of their political views which is misleading, and they are all more Right-wing in private. Not unpleasantly Right-wing; not racist or anti-gay, just the sort of median national opinion it’s unwise to voice in public.
Why do people consistently think that they have to pretend to be more progressive to rise up in their chosen careers? Because those are the establishment views. …
Many members of this new ‘elite’ are also poor — a feeling made far worse by London’s catastrophic housing market. Academics, who often live in poverty, resent being told they’re part of the elite, even though they have huge cultural power (just like the clergy they replaced).
This is allied to Robert Conquest’s first law of politics:. The other two are worth remembering too:
- Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
- Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
- The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
