I don’t buy this. Mainly because you could take away all the mistakes the “credentialed” elites have made, just imagine they never happened, and it’s just outlandish to believe that the “Covid kookery” we’ve currently got would be less rampant in such a scenario.
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1416136070606082062
Notice what I’m saying: there certainly were major missteps by elites—but they weren’t causal drivers of the right-wing kookery, nor do they justify its presence in any way.
It’s a good question. I think elite mismanagement is sometimes—like in the case of Covid—epiphenomenal to right-wing distrust. I think the elite worldview itself—mistakes or no—ensured it would be opposed by an ascendant right-wing populism. The mistakes didn’t change anything.
https://twitter.com/CheeseForEvery1/status/1416429915847766017
Covid intervention—which was always going to rely on the forms and practices of elite management (scientific expertise, bureaucratic control, discourse gatekeeping, etc.)—was inevitably going to be demagogued by the right-wing crank machine.
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