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<\/a><\/p>\nIt\u2019s been a puzzle why our upper class is so enamored with woke progressivism.\u00a0 Now I think I know why.<\/p>\n
I stumbled across a reference to \u201cluxury beliefs\u201d and delved into the concept.\u00a0 It goes something like this:\u00a0 Traditionally, elites signaled their social status by means of their possessions\u2013how they dressed, where they lived, what kind of car they drove, and the luxury brands they flaunted.\u00a0 But today, when some of the richest corporate leaders just wear jeans and t-shirts and where our consumerist economy has given the middle class\u00a0 pretty-nice houses, pretty-nice cars, and access to luxury brands, the elite need other status symbols.<\/p>\n
Those new status symbols are beliefs, which elevate them over the vulgar masses and enable members of the elite to identify each other.<\/p>\n
British academic Matthew Goodwin has written a book on the subject: Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 He explains the concept in the UK publication The<\/em> Daily Mail,\u00a0<\/em>referring specifically to British politics and the issue of immigration, which may be an even bigger problem for Western Europe than it is for the United States.<\/p>\n From\u00a0The hypocritical mindset of the woke elite that exposes the huge ideological gulf between Labour and the Tories<\/a>:<\/p>\n One of the concepts I cover in the book is that of \u2018luxury beliefs\u2019 \u2013defined as ideas or values that confer status on the wealthy, but are not fully embraced or practised by them. The influence of \u2018luxury beliefs\u2019 as a means of winning social esteem has been charted by a number of academics, led by Rob Henderson, formerly of Cambridge University. Their fascinating research shows that in the past, members of the old elite derived their sense of status from physical manifestations of wealth, such as fine clothes, jewellery, foreign travel, servants, private carriages and large properties. But today, with prosperity spread across society, such ostentatious displays of riches have less significance. So, instead, the quest for social status now focuses more on \u2018cultural capital\u2019 than \u2018economic capital\u2019.<\/p>\n For the sophisticated, urban-dwelling, university-educated class that is overwhelmingly in the ascendancy across the media, the civil service, public management, quangoland [Brit. slang for nonprofits], the voluntary sector and the arts, a certain set of fashionable beliefs has become the new signifier of a higher rank in society.<\/p>\n Adherence to the values of the progressive orthodoxy is now the surest way to win acceptance into the elite and gain applause from its other members.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n These luxury beliefs include gender fluidity, being soft on crime, wanting open borders, and critical race theory.\u00a0 We could add\u00a0 here in the U.S. feminism, LGBTQ advocacy, abortion, and woke intersectionality.<\/p>\n If our wealthy elite advocated traditional Marxism, they would be advocating their own liquidation.\u00a0 But today\u2019s post-Marxism, with focuses on non-economic kinds of oppression between different kinds of identity groups, poses no such danger.\u00a0 Indeed,\u00a0Goodwin points out that \u201c\u2018luxury beliefs\u2019 impose few costs on those who espouse them \u2013 even though the price paid by everyone else can be heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n He gives the example of mass immigration.\u00a0 \u201cThe affluent Left loves to trumpet its commitment to open borders, \u2018safe routes\u2019 for asylum-seekers and multiculturalism as a badge of moral superiority, while portraying opponents of uncontrolled immigration as xenophobes.\u201d<\/p>\n They don\u2019t have to compete with mainly low-skilled migrants for jobs and housing.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t live in deprived neighbourhoods where rapid demographic change is eroding social solidarity and mutual trust.<\/p>\n The truth is that it is the working-class, the non-graduate majority, who are most likely to see their pay cut or have their rents pushed up by accelerating demand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Goodwin quotes Home Secretary Suella Braverman (an African-Indian), a Conservative who has raised the issue of \u201cluxury beliefs\u201d in the Labour Party: \u201cThe migrants won\u2019t be taking their jobs. In fact, they are likely to have them mowing their lawns or cleaning their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Goodwin gives other examples, which apply also in the United States.<\/p>\n Residents of disadvantaged housing estates, not those of gated communities, suffer most from the elite\u2019s \u2018luxury belief\u2019 that criminals are actually victims of society who need support rather than punishment.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, women prisoners are the ones in danger from the grotesque belief that a double rapist with a penis should be housed in a women\u2019s jail because he \u2018identifies\u2019 as a woman.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cLuxury beliefs\u201d also helps account for the paradox that the wealthy, affluent, well-educated class tends to be in favor of the sexual revolution, single-parenthood, and non-traditional family structures; and yet they themselves have the highest rate of marriage and of two-parent families of any other demographic. \u201cOnce again, it is the working-class, non-graduate majority who are the most likely to suffer the effects of the breakdown in family values that the new elite condones but rarely practices.\u201d<\/p>\n Here<\/a> is another good piece on the subject, this one by Rob Henderson, the scholar Goodwin references.<\/p>\n This is not to say that these beliefs aren\u2019t sincerely held, just that they have become status markers, both for those in our elite class and those who aspire to join it.\u00a0 They are part of the cultural air they breathe, part of their \u201csocial imaginary<\/a>,\u201d so that any contrary beliefs are practically unthinkable.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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