Populist rejection of expertise often reflects a response to perceived condescension rather than ignorance. People will forgo material benefits if accepting help feels like accepting humiliation, so elevating 'common sense' becomes a way to reclaim dignity from credentialed elites.
— This reframes the crisis of expertise as a status conflict, suggesting that restoring trust requires dignity‑preserving communication and institutions that don’t degrade lay publics.
Arnold Kling
2025.12.02
86% relevant
The post highlights how elite gatekeeping generates anger and resentment—matching the idea that perceived humiliation and condescension from experts fuel populist backlash. Magoon’s description of radical ideology as appealing to certainty and moral identity complements the humiliation→anti‑expert pathway: people reject experts when accepting help feels humiliating.
Mary Harrington
2025.12.02
92% relevant
The article’s core claim — that technocratic elites are incompetent and that their perceived condescension fuels resistance to projects like the Great Reset — directly maps onto this idea: it treats elite incompetence and perceived humiliation as drivers of popular backlash against experts and managerial reformers. It names concrete UK failures (lost asylum seekers, fiasco train service, leaked spreadsheet) as evidence that elites have lost moral authority.
2025.10.07
100% relevant
The piece’s Dostoevsky Snegiryov vignette and claim that populism 'gifts uneducated voters the power of knowledge' exemplify honor‑preserving refusal of elite help.