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Elites Quotes

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Elites Quotes

“How can a deep-seated distrust of all elites and institutions be squared with unwavering admiration for one leader and party? This is why populists ultimately depend on the mystical notion that the strongman embodies the people. When trust in bureaucratic institutions like election boards, courts, and newspapers is particularly low, an enhanced reliance on mythology is the only way to preserve order.”

TrustInstitutionsElitesPopulists
Book:Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
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“The secret of celebrity power and the most beautiful of girls, and how to seduce them? Well, if you look at a celebrity’s page and pics one hundred times a day, you will kneel to her fake and often satanic power, and she will feed off your worship. But if you do not, and that celebrity or extremely beautiful girl looks at your page, even a couple of times, the power is reversed. So, if you want to seduce a celebrity, and she shows you even glancing curiosity, at that point you can prise her off the rock like a limpet, and then she is lost, flailing around in the scary ocean, which most of us know as the real world, until you rescue her. Celebrities are the most insecure of people, after all, disattached, and scared of the real world.”

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Author:Jack Freestone
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“Death by Starvation or Boredom” Many toil for scraps and cheap wages, surviving one fragile breath at a time— just one more breath... While others, bloated with excess, labor only to escape boredom, pretending they’re saving a world drowning in the greed they created, and the power they refuse to let go. The first walks a tightrope between breath and hunger. The second, cushioned by comfort, drifts closer to spiritual starvation, their soul numbed by excess. And here lies the cruel symmetry— fate, with its blunt hands, levels the field by offering death either way: starvation... or boredom. But the greatest tragedy belongs to those who die of both.”

PovertyCharityBoredomElitesWorking ClassHumanitarianismClass StruggleArabic Poetry
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“[Death by Starvation or Boredom] Many are those who work For cheap wages Only to barely survive One breath at a time… Just one more breath… And others who have so much Yet work simply to kill boredom Only to feel that they are saving A world that is drowning Because of their greed And their love for power and wealth… The first one remains one step or less Closer to dying of starvation; While the second one -who provides the wages of the first one- Remain one step or less closer to dying of boredom… And here lies the irony! It’s as if fate insists on breaking All human barriers To force everyone to choose Between death by starvation or boredom… And owe to those who die of both… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on January 28, 2023]”

HumanityPovertyFateGreedInjusticeHungerBoredomElitesStarvationClass Struggle
Author:Louis Yako
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“But what if what the working class—white, black, Hispanic, etc.— needs most isn’t a check from the government but inclusion in community? And what if the most accessible form of community—the church—is under constant assault by both culture and the government? And finally, what if the elites frowning upon the deplorable poor won’t include them in their community, citing their deplorability?”

ReligionCommunityPovertyElitesChurch And StateSocial CapitalWealth Redistribution
Book:Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
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“The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility. Unequal outcomes make equal opportunity impossible….Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies and kin to scramble up.”

PovertyInequalityAccountabilityElitesDistrustMeritocracyWealth Gap
Book:Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
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“Generally we think of white supremacist views as having their origins with the unlettered, underprivileged, poorer-class whites. But the social obstetricians who presided at the birth of racist views in our country were from the aristocracy: rich merchants, influential clergymen, men of medical science, historians and political scientists from some of the leading universities of the nation. With such a distinguished company of the elite working so assiduously to disseminate racist views, what was there to inspire poor, illiterate, unskilled white farmers to think otherwise? Soon the doctrine of white supremacy was imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structural part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth.”

AmericaCultureWealthClassElitesWhite SupremacyAristocracy
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“With Lean Leniency by Stewart Stafford Office handshakes and smiles, ''Coffee or tea? Have a seat! Now, how can we help you?'' Hmm, now the cuff clicks. Clemency, a non-rider in a hunt, Cuckoo in power's tower eyrie, Financial fingers punch down, Then coldly count the money. Victimless crime, perp's bounty, Assailants with a whiff of coin, Left for dead, dripping liquidity, Drain death. Good mourning, sir. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved”

WealthMoneyPowerMercyGreedFinanceElitesLoanClemencyLoans
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; can you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you have to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all—where money is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody’s thoughts—where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work, that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they have any leisure, and the men who don’t have to work are even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display and silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you know how awful that life is? Of course I know there are clever people, and people of taste in that set, but they’re swamped and spoiled, and it’s the same thing in the end; empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I’m exaggerating, and I did make friends and have some happy times; but that’s how I feel after it all. The seasons in New York and London—how I hated them! And our house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest—the same people, the same emptiness.”

WealthEmptinessWealthyElites
Book:Trent's Last Case
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“Every society had its elites, of course: its wealthy, well-educated, upwardly mobile types. Machiavelli, a republican himself, called them the grandi. The trick to preserving a republic was not to allow them to predominate as a class, to amass power at the expense of their fellows. Or more precisely: the key was not to allow them to amass power at the expense of the common man.”

AmericaWealthPowerSocietyRepublicElitesCommon ManJosh HawleyThe Tyranny Of Big Tech
Author:Josh Hawley
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“We believe some people are more special, more beautiful, more capable, more influential, more intelligent, more gifted, and have a greater capacity for good than others, often based on material possessions and outer appearances. At the root, that is why we are engaged in a struggle now in the Congress led by one group of people who truly believes their role is to defend the privileges of the elite. They defend tax breaks for the rich and ask for trillions in cuts to the safety nets that protect the middle class, the elderly, the sick, and the poor, because, in essence, they believe one group is more important than the other, more deserving than the other, and one contributes more good than the other. This is actually an illusion that is blind to the interdependence of the entire creation, which unites the weak with the strong, the privileged with the poor, and the ugly with the beautiful. All the inequities of our world are basically attempts to actualize this erroneous belief. And that is why there is turmoil, because we are in conflict with the truth, working to manifest an idea that is false.”

TruthGoodnessPrivilegeEqualityElitesInterdependenceInequities
Book:Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
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“Earthlings, full of diversity, generally weren't hostile toward each other. The Earth was like a big insect jar. Insects put into a jar together tended not to fight unless the jar was agitated enough. If the jar owners put different types of ants in the same jar without agitating their habitat enough, they might just work together to overthrow the jar owners and build a happy society where everyone was equal and free. And we can't have that. Gotta keep shakin' that jar.”

TruthManipulationElitesDivide And ConquerBeasts Of SuccessDivide And RuleEarthlingsGlobalistsSocietal Engineering
Book:The Beasts of Success
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“The first problem with the word “diversity” is the word itself. Who is diverse in relation to whom? The way diversity is often framed in institutional domains implies that some people are diverse in relation to others. That some need to learn diversity while others have it and bring it to the table. This framing, I argue, has from the start driven a wedge between a significant percentage of marginalized and disadvantaged white people and other marginalized and disadvantaged groups—groups that should naturally be allies, not enemies. The only group that benefits from this divide is a small percentage of privileged whites who use the structure of whiteness to their full advantage. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

PowerDiversityPropagandaElitesWorking ClassEquityDiversity And InclusionMisinformationDivide And ConquerEquity And Inclusion
Author:Louis Yako
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“Many DEI trainings and narratives have indeed enabled or produced types of people who seem to be looking for excuses to be offended and to construe, sometimes genuine human slips, as intentional micro and macro aggressions. Even worse, the way things have been done has resulted in people who are quick to play identity cards anytime they are confronted with totally unrelated matters like being incompetent in doing their work or other unrelated professional and personal matters. I am in no way condoning or denying the existence of racism, sexism, and countless other forms of exclusions, marginalization, and even violence against so many vulnerable groups and individuals, but I also can’t in good faith ignore the darker side of this coin. For one side to be true, it doesn’t negate the other darker side. In many workplaces and university campuses, we have armies of people who overuse and even abuse the language of ‘feeling violated’ over things like someone mistakenly not referring to them as “they,” but they remain completely silent and unmoved by countless injustices on campus or at work, let alone about atrocities and genocides in the outside world. We have a type that wastes so much time giving themselves and others the ‘permission’ to indulge in selfish acts of complicity, indifference, and silence under the guise of ‘self-care.’ [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

DiversityRacismElitesEquityDiversity And InclusionMisinformationEquity And InclusionRuling ClassInstitutional Oppression
Author:Louis Yako
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“That's what powerful men did. Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.”

MenPowerDecisionsControlSecretsElitesCommon PeoplePowerful MenHoi PolloiRunning Things
Book:Vigil
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“Anyway, because of Beezy’s patrician vibe and the fact that our parents grew up in a very horses-and-beeswax part of an already pretty aristocratic area of the state, you would have thought they were marked for success. You would have thought they couldn’t have avoided it! But well into their youth each of the five really did their utmost to scupper their own chances in life in utterly idiosyncratic ways, which is the usual province of the middle-to-upper-middle class. We didn’t realize this at the time, of course. To us, our parents were doing just fine.”

ChildrenParentsElitesAristocracyUpper ClassUnderminingPatricians
Book:Idle Grounds
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“You don’t know they’ll be white. Maybe the Cloisters is full of Black people, and you’re the right person to knock on the door.” I could hear a cross laugh in Keller’s quiet voice. “I’m pretty sure that the people who set up shop in a castle are going to be white. Museums: last refuge of the ruling class.”

MuseumsElitesAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesRuling ClassCloistersElite Class
Book:All the Water in the World
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“Granting that you have more money than others, and that you don’t deserve such wealth—but stopping there—allows you to settle the score by paying your taxes and advocating more redistribution. This reductive attitude toward inequality has the added comfort of justifying nasty judgments about the other side.”

OpportunityCommunityInequalityElitesSocial CapitalWealth Redistribution
Book:Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
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“So far we have looked at two of the three practical threats to liberalism: firstly, that humans will lose their value completely; secondly, that humans will still be valuable collectively, but they will lose their individual authority, and will instead be managed by external algorithms. The system will still need you to compose symphonies, teach history or write computer code, but the system will know you better than you know yourself, and will therefore make most of the important decisions for you – and you will be perfectly happy with that. It won’t necessarily be a bad world; it will, however, be a post-liberal world. The third threat to liberalism is that some people will remain both indispensable and undecipherable, but they will constitute a small and privileged elite of upgraded humans. These superhumans will enjoy unheard-of abilities and unprecedented creativity, which will allow them to go on making many of the most important decisions in the world. They will perform crucial services for the system, while the system could not understand and manage them. However, most humans will not be upgraded, and they will consequently become an inferior caste, dominated by both computer algorithms and the new superhumans.”

InequalityLiberalismElitesThreats
Book:Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
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“The processes of corporate power do not work in isolation. The economic and legal mechanisms that allow the privatization of the commonwealth, externalization of costs, predatory economic practices, political influence-buying, manipulation of regulation and deregulation, control of the media, propaganda and advertising in schools, and the use of police and military forces to protect the property of the wealthy-all of these work synergistically to weave a complex web of power. Activists have dedicated lifetimes of necessary work to deal with the results of corporate power, by trying to mitigate the results of power: an ever-increasing disparity in wealth and power and continual economic, political, environmental, and human rights crises. For social justice campaigns to be strategic, it is also necessary to examine how privatization, externalization, monopoly, and other corporate power processes have been institutionalized. This institutionalization is exemplified in the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and in recent "free" trade agreements which have culminated in the creation of the World Trade Organization. An understanding of such institutions provides a necessary tool for achieving the long-term goals of environmental sustainability and social justice.”

PowerInequalityCorporationsElitesCorporate Influence
Author:George Draffan
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“Political correctness was never supposed to happen. Ever. The problem with politically correct language is already in the term itself: it corrects the language, and in doing so, it politicizes it through such imposed corrections. The problem with political correctness is that it corrects the language without correcting the conditions that produce and enable that language. In doing so, we lose two battles: the battle for correcting the conditions that produce the need for the language of political correctness, and the battle for creating awareness among those who think that using politically correct language is going to make any meaningful changes. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

PowerRacismElitesDiversity And InclusionPolitical CorrectnessDivide And ConquerEquity And InclusionPerformativityStructural Change
Author:Louis Yako
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“I confront the question of whether DEI initiatives are divisive and ineffective. The answer is yes on both counts, but not for the narratives propagated by the American ruling class of oligarchs. Rather, we should consider how DEI initiatives have worked just enough to keep the status quo intact for those at the top, while planting the seeds of division between a significant percentage of marginalized and impoverished white people and every other marginalized and impoverished group in the U.S. and beyond. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

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Author:Louis Yako
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“Many DEI officers/professionals I have spoken to over the years have confirmed to me that they don’t feel they have any power to change the structures of the workplaces in which they work. They are given just enough power – along with a fancy job title – to appear as though they are making changes, but once and if they dare to confront real problems, they are often replaced or disciplined by the privileged whites who remain at the top of every institution and organization. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

PowerRacismSocial JusticeElitesWhite SupremacyDiversity And InclusionInstitutional RacismDivide And ConquerEquity And InclusionInstitutional Oppression
Author:Louis Yako
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“We must be suspicious of the fact that we are still hearing about Trump and his trial, while more important cases, like that of Assange, are shrouded with secrecy and no time was wasted to throw him in jail. The reason for that is that Assange did in fact expose the lies, manipulation, and corruption of the U.S. and world elites, whereas Trump has been doing nothing but serving their interests. Same can be applied to Snowden who is still in exile. The key point here is that it’s time for Trump supporters themselves to begin questioning how they, too, are being co-opted and exploited to keep the nation divided and to crush any possibility of wider resistance in which people see each other as allies fighting for similar causes not divided enemies fighting each other like sardines trapped in a can, while the unlimited wealth and power of the few at the top remain unchecked. [From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”

PowerRacismPropagandaElitesWhite SupremacyAmerican PoliticsDivide And ConquerRuling ClassJulian Assange
Author:Louis Yako
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“Yeah, I did not have DOGE being the center of the Trump administration before January 20, but it certainly has become the center. And, to me, it's revelatory. You get the richest guy in the world cutting off food for the starving children around the world. Like, that's the essence of what it is. The second thing it is, it's cruelty and ruthlessness. I have had so many conversations over the last couple of weeks with people inside federal agencies when the DOGE boys comes to count. And they are naked in their cruelty, that this agency disagrees with Donald Trump, people here, we don't like what you believe, and we're just getting rid of you. And so that cruelty is kind of naked. And, to me, it symbolizes something that is at the epitome of this administration. These DOGE people, Elon Musk, he went to Penn. The DOGE people went to Harvard, they went to Stanford, they worked at McKinsey. These are not populists. These are elitists. These are conservative microelites who've been in elite universities who play in the elite circles and they want to take it out on their fellow elites. And that's what this administration has become about, a battle between elites, not somebody representing the working class for problems that are real.”

PoliticsCrueltyElitesElon MuskIvy LeagueTrump AdministrationDogeElitists
Author:David Brooks
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“Being an elite is not a mere possession or something "within" an actor (skills, talents, and human capital); it is an embodied performative act enabled by by both possessions and the inscriptions that accompany experiences within elite institutions (schools, clubs, families, networks, etc.). Our bodily tastes, dispositions, and tendencies are not simply something we're born with; they are things that are produced through our experiences in the world. Not only do they occur in our minds, but they are things we enact repeatedly so that soon these performances look less and less like an artificial role we're playing- a role that might advantage us- and instead look more and more like just who we naturally are.”

ElitesWorking ClassEmbodimentHabitus
Book:Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School
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“Because I work at places like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and PBS, some people see me as a stand-in for the coastal elites, for the systems they believe have been crushing them down, and I get that. When those of us in positions of power in the establishment media and the larger cultural institutions of society tell stories that don’t include you, it is disorienting and disenfranchising. It is as if you look into society’s mirror and find that you are not there. People rightly get furious when that happens.”

MediaElitesNew York TimesCommentatorsJournalistsPbsDisenfranchisementAtlanticCoastal ElitesCultural Elites
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“My major takeaway from Ron, now that I have a chance to reflect, is that getting a job is like gaining acceptance into an eighth-grade clique. There exists an elite consisting of people who hold jobs and have the power to confer that status on others, and my task is to penetrate this elite. Since my actual eighth-grade status never advanced beyond that of loathsome pariah and nerd, I have no practical experience of elite crashing, but it makes sense to include a ruthless scrutiny of the “product” I am trying to sell.”

JobsElitesNetworkingSocializingJob HuntingCliques
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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“The culture wars that have convulsed America since the sixties are best understood as a form of class warfare, in which an enlightened elite (as it thinks of itself) seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority (a majority perceived as incorrigibly racist, sexist, provincial, and xenophobic), much less to persuade the majority by means of rational public debate, as to create parallel or "alternative" institutions in which it will no longer be necessary to confront the unenlightened at all.”

EnlightenmentElitesAcademiaCulture War
Book:The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
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“The capitalist-imperialist governments, even though they themselves are about to be plundered, will not fight with any conviction against Fascism as such. Our rulers, those of them who understand the issue, would probably prefer to hand over every square inch of the British Empire to Italy, Germany, and Japan than to see Socialism triumphant. It was easy to laugh at Fascism when we imagined that it was based on hysterical nationalism, because it seemed obvious that the Fascist states, each regarding itself as the chosen people and patriotic contra mundum, would clash with one another. But nothing of the kind is happening. Fascism is now an international movement, which means not only that the Fascist nations can combine for the purposes of loot, but that they are groping, perhaps only half consciously as yet, toward a world-system. For the vision of the totalitarian state there is being substituted the vision of the totalitarian world. As I pointed out earlier, the advance of machine-technique must lead ultimately to some form of collectivism, but that form need not necessarily be equalitarian; that is, it need not be Socialism. Pace the economists, it is quite possible to imagine a world-society, economically collectivist–that is, with the profit principle eliminated–but will all political, military, and educational power in the hands of a small caste of rulers and their bravos. That or something like it is the objective of Fascism. And that, of course, is the slave-state, or rather the slave-world; it would probably be a stable form of society, and the chances are, considering the enormous wealth of the world if scientifically exploited, that the slaves would be well-fed and contented.”

SocialismFascismElitesTotalitarianismWorld GovernmentLate Capitalism
Book:The Road to Wigan Pier
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“Economics ought to be a magpie discipline, taking in philosophy, history and politics. But heterodox approaches have long since been banished from most faculties, claims Tony Lawson. In the 1970s, when he started teaching at Cambridge, the economics faculty still boasted legends such as Nicky Kaldor and Joan Robinson. "There were big debates, and students would study politics, the history of economic thought." And now? "Nothing. No debates, no politics or history of economic thought and the courses are nearly all maths." How do elites remain in charge? If the tale of the economists is any guide, by clearing out the opposition and then blocking their ears to reality. The result is the one we're all paying for.”

EducationEconomicsElitesThe GuardianCambridge UniversityPost Crash Economics
Author:Aditya Chakrabortty
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“We’ve learned that the most effective way at getting the sheep to willingly hand over their rights is to use a matter that’s life threatening. If they think their lives and their loved ones’ lives are in jeopardy, they’ll quickly agree to whatever we say. Even better than a virus outbreak is to make them think the whole planet will become inhabitable—a scenario where everyone would die. That’s why our Global Warming—which we changed to Climate Change—is our most important agenda. Instead of the reality of climate change being cyclical, of course, we make them think it’s humans’ fault and that way we can drastically mold their way of living to suit our needs. They’ll do whatever we tell them, give up all their rights and become completely dependent on us. Along with using technology for control, our Climate Change agenda is key.”

Climate ChangeGlobal WarmingControlElitesControlling GovernmentDeep StateGlobalistsConspiracy FactsElites AgendasGlobalists Agendas
Book:The Beasts of Success
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“When the mainstream media and the ruling class decide to pick on a critical issue, it is usually for two reasons: first, the issue is serious enough and is affecting their interests, and therefore the narrative must be controlled to ensure that the results are in their favor. Second, in doing the former, the ruling class gets to strictly filter and manage the narrative on what needs to be said about any given topic; which ‘experts’ are given the stage to speak; and whose voices are excluded from debates, or even defamed and slandered, if necessary.”

MediaCapitalismPropagandaElitesCorporate CultureNeoliberalismMainstream MediaRuling ClassDeep StateAlternative Facts
Author:Louis Yako
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“When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule--who is the elite--is never over. For a long time, some people in Europe and North America settled on the idea that various forms of democratic, meritocratic, and economic competition are the fairest alternative to inherited or ordained power. But even in countries that were never occupied by the Red Army and never ruled by Latin American populists, democracy and free markets can produce unsatisfying outcomes, especially when badly regulated, or when nobody trusts the regulators, or when people are entering the contest from very different starting points. The losers of these competitions were always, sooner or later, going to challenge the value of the competition itself.”

LeadershipDemocracyCapitalismCompetitionElitesRulersRulingFree Markets
Book:Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
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“Before discussing the 'relinking' of people and forests through community forestry, it is important to understand where the 'delinking' paradigm, superimposed onto Tanzania and elsewhere during colonial times originated. The separation of people and nature has deep-rooted conceptual origins, for example early Judeo-Christian texts explicitly framed humans as exceptional and separate from nature as opposed to many animist religions that placed humans within nature. The conceptual separation is particularly strong in Europe, as reflected in the origins of certain words, with the Latin word foestis originating from a meaning 'outside', as in a wild place outside human control. Such 'wild places' later became the hunting reserves of elites in Europe in the form of exclusionary Royal Forests, 'commoners' were kept out. A few centuries later, during the period of Enlightenment and into industrialisation and urbanisation, livelihoods in countries like Britain are further delinked from nature, The division between [eople and nature has become so heavily engrained in modern industrialised society that 'wilderness' has attained a romantic idealisation.”

HumansNatureEuropeForestsWildernessHuntingElitesJudeo Christian PhilosophyAnimismForestry
Book:Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025
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“On a planet with 300 million species and 7 billion humans, one man determining the future is a dangerous idea. It is dangerous for the Earth, because the anthropocentric, reductionist, and mechanistic assumptions by which Gates is guided are at the root of the ecological crisis that has brought us to the brink.”

PoliticsCapitalismElitesEcologyImperialismIndigenous RightsIndigenous KnowledgeClimate JusticeSmall Farmers
Book:One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%
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“Purpose and Perspective: This work, which the author acknowledges is essentially a synthesis drawing upon the results of many other detailed studies, offers a new approach to both the burgeoning study of regions in English history and on the established discussion of the nature of Yorkist and early Tudor government (Foreword by Professor A. J. Pollard, p. iv). The study aims to explore whether a regional approach to late medieval English politics and governance is feasible, with specific reference to south-west England during the later fifteenth century. The relative importance of regions, in comparison to counties, will be explored by examination of the elites, politics, and government of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset from 1450 to 1500. But such an undertaking raises the fundamental question of whether a regional approach to the study of the south-western shires (or indeed any grouping of neighbouring counties anywhere in England) is valid–was there anything more to a ‘south-west region’ than simply a set of separate shires? That problem has made it necessary to study the south-west in a longer and broader context, in political terms, across the whole of the later fifteenth century (p.1). Certain aspects of the political history of south-west England have received attention from historians, mostly in the form of family or county studies… (p.19). Despite these admirable and informative studies, therefore, there are still significant lacunae in our understanding of particular aspects of the region’s governance during the later fifteenth century. Consequently, a regional investigation of the south-west political elites spanning the later fifteenth century might draw on earlier research and offer a broader perspective of court–country relations. A regional perspective of the interaction of local and national government would make possible a greater evaluation of the role of the duchy of Cornwall and the impact of the Wars of the Roses in the region (p. 21).”

HistoricalRegionsElitesGovernanceBiographyRegionalismIdentitiesWars Of The Roses
Book:Political Elites in South-West England, 1450–1500: Politics, Governance, and the Wars of the Roses
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“Edward IV’s ‘regional’ policy: The stimulus for this investigation was D.A.L. Morgan’s analysis of Edward IV’s second reign… Morgan proceeded to explain that this ‘territorial re-ordering’ was designed to cure disorder and lawlessness in the localities. Thus, Morgan suggested, Edward intended ‘the creation of an apanage’ for his second son, Richard, Duke of York, and that ‘by 1475 the plan was to endow him with a collection of lands in the East Midlands’. Also, the king ‘bent his efforts to making his elder son’s household at Ludlow the governing power in Wales and the West Midlands...and similarly to establishing his brother [Richard, Duke of] Gloucester as heir to the Neville lands and ruler of the North’. Furthermore ‘1474 saw the scheme pushed forward...and the beginning of an apanage endowment for the king’s stepson Thomas Grey [Marquess of Dorset] in the South-West’. Moreover, Edward’s ‘two leading household men were fitted in as the heads of further regional blocs’: his steward, Thomas, Lord Stanley, was ‘made undoubted ruler of Lancashire’, while ‘in Cheshire and north-east Wales also Stanley power was extended’ through Stanley’s brother, William; and the king’s chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings, ‘similarly emerged in 1474 as ruler of the North Midlands from Rockingham to the Peak’ (pp. 1–2). …the concept of Edward IV’s provincial policy raises much broader questions… whether this regional policy was planned or unintentional, and also as to whether its consequences were constructive or destructive. Furthermore, in a broader context, Edward’s scheme also suggests the importance of issues concerning the concept of regions, with potential implications for our study of politics and government in the localities, as well as questions regarding royal authority, governance, and the constitution, in general, in the later fifteenth century (p. 5). …This topic [Arbitration] is inseparable from the wider consideration of justice, and law and order, and these aspects could be the subject of substantial research in themselves; hence the remit of this study is specifically limited to questions of politics and governance. Arbitration of disputes may indicate a magnate’s influence and local standing, but this is, of course, not the only way in which to ascertain a magnate’s power in the localities: consideration of his estates, offices, and clientele reveals the extent to which his lordship pervaded local society (p. 8).”

HistoricalRegionsElitesGovernanceBiographyRegionalismIdentitiesWars Of The Roses
Book:Political Elites in South-West England, 1450–1500: Politics, Governance, and the Wars of the Roses
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“The difficulties of a (four-county) regional study: Since this regional survey spans four counties, it is, clearly, impossible to provide the depth and detail expected of a single-shire study–to undertake a four-county investigation with the same intensity and intricacy as a single-county survey would presumably take four times as long to complete. Instead, this study intends to give an overview of shire societies thereby examining how ‘regional’ was the political community of the south-west… This study aims to contribute to discourse on fifteenth-century governance not only because it investigates Edward IV’s regional policy (which, as mentioned, requires further research at a provincial level), but because a regional approach has not previously been attempted for south-west England during the late Middle Ages, and moreover because the duchy of Cornwall’s place in contemporaneous regional politics has never been thoroughly examined before (p. 21). …While there are obviously certain limitations to a study with such a regional breadth, these restrictions do not inhibit the worth or originality of this work as a whole–this investigation cannot claim to provide definitive answers but offers an alternative way of looking at the existing perceptions and perspectives of late-medieval English politics and governance (p. 22). …the problem of studying four shires presented difficulties over the arrangement of these analyses. Would an account of the south-western region as a whole give equal weighting to each constituent county? …the most appropriate arrangement seemed to be one which gave, as far as possible, each shire an analysis on an equal basis. Consequently, in each chronological chapter, accounts of local governance and politics are structured on a county-by-county model (p. 25). …The consequence of this equality of approach to the counties, and of the requirement to draw regional and national evaluations, is a certain amount of repetition… Yet, it is only by recognising the frequency with which particular individuals, connections, and structures reappear–across shires, and throughout the period–that it is possible to summarise the extent to which there was a ‘regional’ element to the western political elites (p. 26).”

HistoricalRegionsElitesGovernanceBiographyRegionalismIdentitiesWars Of The Roses
Book:Political Elites in South-West England, 1450–1500: Politics, Governance, and the Wars of the Roses
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“Regions and Identities in South-West England: …at first glance, Edward’s south-western regional hegemony does not appear to have been based on any pre-existing region in relation to geography, economy, or culture. From this exploration of the multiplicity of regions within, and inclusive of, the western counties two major arenas of interaction appear to have emerged: the couplings of Cornwall and Devon, and of Somerset and Dorset (p. 56). …Finally, with respect to political structure, there seems to have been no configuration that encompassed all four shires at a macro-scale… Political regions as the districts of lordship of magnates and institutions, such as the duchy of Cornwall, could vary in extent and over time, and may have even expanded to include all the south-western shires, in certain instances… (pp. 57–8). …The region was certainly a country of plural loyalties, multiple laws, and differing cultures (p. 58). …Clearly, an important part of this investigation is to discover whether the four western counties were subject to a shared political centre during the period. Did Edward’s regional magnates constitute political cores? (p. 59).”

HistoricalRegionsElitesGovernanceBiographyRegionalismIdentitiesWars Of The Roses
Book:Political Elites in South-West England, 1450–1500: Politics, Governance, and the Wars of the Roses
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