Entrepreneurs, despots and dark elves
I’ll start by mentioning Curtis Yarvin’s latest article, which was not very well received in the corner of the internet where he and many other right-wing intellectuals have sought refuge from the contemporary shitstorms. Yarvin draws a parallel with the world of Tolkien, where the ruling elite are described as elves and ordinary people as hobbits.
The elves want to live beautiful lives, while the hobbits barbecue and devote themselves to family. Friction arises. And on top of that, there are dark elves who secretly side with the hobbits. Rarely has such a mediocre analogy been heard, and many with sharper pens than mine have criticized his text.
People are difficult to divide into classes, as Yarvin describes; elves, hobbits, dark elves, or even elite, middle class and working class. Today’s fast-moving society presents many challenges to historians and social scientists alike.
Our modern era is awash with unlikely elites and figureheads, such as Lenin, Yeltsin, Mandela and many others. Even Putin, Trump and Biden belong to this crowd of people who would hardly have been predicted as world leaders a few years before their accession. And who was an elite in one era might be a pariah in the next? Many a formerly pompous eastern bloc politician came home with a black eye after 1989, and a former shipyard worker became president of Poland, etc. etc.
The term elite may have become mostly an accessory for the trendy urban class, but they are not the ones in charge, they are at best clients or so-called NPCs. The real ruling class is trash; consciously or unconsciously they are engaged in corrupting our society both economically and culturally. I have written about this countless times.