It's also about this intellectualised snobbery which is very dismissive of anything which isn't presented in a certain intellectualised way. That is also why Cass is starting to cut through - it's everything we've said here and has been ignored because it could be dismissed because it wasn't intellectualised and in a format that was acceptable to this new political class. It's all about data collection and formalisation. Which I actually support but only to a point.
Matt Goodwin describes the rise of the "epistemic class" that shapes the prevailing culture, conversation, politics, arts, policy in a way that means all that they survey is familiar to them but unrecognisable to others outside that group. (This overlaps with Rob Henderson's observations about luxury beliefs for which the harms accrue to others, and not those that espouse them. And Mark Fisher's Vampire's Castle.)
For much of the last half century, the new elite, whose families often descend from the professional and managerial classes, benefitted far more than others…
Shaped by their privileged family backgrounds, their educational qualifications, and their much greater ‘cultural capital’…the new elite hoovered up most of the gains from Britain’s embrace of hyper-globalisation and a political economy which was rebuilt around them, which both demanded and rewarded their skills.
They’ve benefitted culturally, too. After flooding into the creative, cultural, knowledge and public sector institutions, becoming a new “epistemic class” which creates, filters and determines what is or what is not acceptable or desirable within the national conversation, the new elite watched the prevailing culture be completely reshaped around their far more socially liberal values, tastes, political priorities, and interests.
Increasingly, when they’ve looked out at the institutions and what they create -the television programmes, films, adverts, books, museums, galleries, columns, and the national conversation more broadly- they’ve seen their worldview staring back at them while millions of others struggle to recognise their worldview at all.
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/rise-of-the-new-elite