Has the swing against elitism gone too far?

At a time when most people understand that the personal is political, individual views have become a battleground of virtue – equality, good; hierarchy, bad. Elitism? The worst possible kind of social evil.

- Clement Yong

Yet, take a step back from this instinctive repulsion and there might be benefits to muddying the waters. Elitism, the belief that an elite group, however defined, should be entitled to the reins of power has been the norm throughout much of history.

Whether it is the clergy, kings with their divine right, the Confucian scholar or today's fintech bros, there have been groups in each time period that societies tend to value and reward.

It was only with increasing democratisation, and a growing disenfranchisement at the chasm between the top and the rest, that elitism has become a byword for undeserved privilege and gross injustice.

This brief trip back in time is not to rehabilitate elitism, but to show that the current period against it – or at least one that pays lip service to not believing in an elite class – may be an aberrant one. In the West, this has been taken to extremes, manifesting in a debilitating disregard for experts and fatal results during the Covid-19 pandemic against the advice of doctors to vaccinate.