If you’re as morbidly fascinated by the New Right as I am, you will enjoy an article in today’s Politico about J.D. Vance and elitism. The gist of the article is that Vance, following several prominent New Right thinkers with common complaints about contemporary America but very different concepts of the just society, views his elite credentials as a feature, not a bug, of his ideology. The idea is that a new elite with proper right-wing ideas will connect with the masses through populism, win elections, and then use their skills to take over the administrative state and remake America. Populism is thus the mechanism by which the counter-elite can gain power and subsequently impose views that have little support among Americans today on the entire country.
A small intellectual elite building relationships with the masses, gaining power, and then using it to remake society even over the short-term wishes of the public–this sounds a lot like Bolshevism, no?