Historians often read stuff from the many-days-ago.  While looking for something else, I came across a curious article.[1]  The article is an exercise in dystopic futurism.  It defines some terms; then extrapolates from events in the first half of the Twentieth Century. 

“Populo-phobia” is the hostility and disdain felt toward “the People” collectively asserting themselves against “the Elites.”[2]  Populism is often attacked as a collection of “anti” movements.  It is anti-elite, anti-intellectual, anti-complexity, anti-foreign, anti-change in some ways, and anti-system in the sense of believing that “working within the system” leads nowhere.     

“Progresso-normativity,” sprang from this “Populo-phobia.”  It is the concept that Progressivism is the “normal” political orientation.  It assumes a partisan binary in which Progressivism is empirically and morally correct and Populism is empirically and morally incorrect.[3] 

            Honey draws his evidence from the impact of the Depression and the Second World War.  First, the era witnessed a vibrant rhetorical faith in “democracy” combined with a suspicion of “the people.”  By the middle of the Twentieth Century, many examples could be offered of the ability of charismatic leaders to mobilize mass enthusiasm for destructive purposes.[4]

Second, there had been a huge expansion of government’s role.  On the one hand, this meant managing the economic environment to create material prosperity.  In this effort, independent central banks and, in some places, national planning authorities played an important role.  Government’s expanded role led to a great and continuing increase in bureaucracy.  This began to shift the balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches of government.  On the other hand, the acceptance of social change through “social evolution” gave way to change promoted by public authorities.  This meant a turn to laws and courts (hence lawyers and judges), and regulations (hence experts and bureaucrats).  All these were seen as too complex for the ordinary understanding. 

Fourth, Honey applied the ideas of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci to the modern elites.[5]  Gramsci argued that, through their control of media and education, the dominant minority sold its own values and culture to the mass of people.  The People’s acceptance of this culture made them conform, rather than resist.[6]  In this effort, education and the media are vital. 

Fifth, Honey conjectured that both the post-Second World War “G.I. Bill” and the foundation of the Educational Testing Service (1947) might create an enlarged and different “Elite.”  On the one hand, it could create a “Confucian” America where social advancement depended upon standardized examination testing.  On the other hand, Honey feared a compartmentalization of American society.  This might leave Progressive-Americans cut off from the lives of “ordinary” people. 

The effects of societal “Progresso-normativity” on Conservatives, Independents, and Populists has been labeled “Progressive privilege.”[7] 

[1] Theodore Honey, “Populo-phobia and Progresso-normativity,” Journal of Relatively Advanced Concepts, August 1948.

[2] This extends to individuals who self-identify or are read as being Populists. 

[3] To be fair, Honey also argues that Progressives view Conservatism as substantially unjustified. 

[4] That is, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. 

[5] On Gramsci, see Joseph Buttigieg, Gramsci’s Political Thought (1992). 

[6] To offer one example drawn from a later period, watch a few episodes of “All in the Family” (1971-83). 

[7] “Progressive privilege” is a sub-set of the larger concept of “Societal privilege.”  “Societal privilege” describes the advantages or benefits received by members of some groups which are denied to other groups.  These benefits, it is theorized, are received as a function of a person’s membership in such a group, rather than as a function of individual merit or action.  “Privilege” often runs hand-in-hand with various types of power: social, cultural, economic, and political.  However, people with some “privilege” tend to not understand that they are “privileged.”  They see themselves and the members of their group as “normal.”  “Privileged” people often deny the existence of an entrenched institutional “privilege.”  Those without “privilege” are seen as deviant.  That deviance may be either willful or the accidental result of misinformation.