The Right’s Phony Class War
The populist right’s new intellectuals are abuzz about capitalism and class. Don’t be fooled. Their denunciations of “cosmopolitan elites” actually provide cover for the plunder by the rich and powerful.
David Sessions is a doctoral candidate in European history at Boston College and a graduate fellow at the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy.
The populist right’s new intellectuals are abuzz about capitalism and class. Don’t be fooled. Their denunciations of “cosmopolitan elites” actually provide cover for the plunder by the rich and powerful.
Mark Lilla’s prosecution of radical thinkers in the name of intellectual seriousness can only lead to a flat and lifeless politics.
There’s a reason conservative critics want to limit the study of literature to aesthetic experience: any further analysis might become a gateway to a political awareness they fear.