There are few power dynamics as enduring as ruling classes’ disdain for the governed. Whether in the polished salons of Western liberal democracies or the corridors of power in the Global South, elites consistently reveal their true view of the masses: not as sovereign citizens but as irritants, dependents, or vermin to be managed, mocked, or suppressed. This contempt is not mere rhetorical flourish; it exposes the brittle foundations of oligarchical rule in an era when “dominant minorities” – to borrow from elite theory traditions – have ossified into self-perpetuating dominant majorities, lacking the legitimacy that once sustained their predecessors.Elite contempt is doctrinal, not an aberrationBut that is only the thin end of a reactionary wedge of attitudes that are considered normal in elite-democratic theorising: that the masses of people are basically irrational, stupid, emotionally-driven, and have no idea about their own interests. They are mob-like and need to be controlled. And that’s considered a good thing because elites and their paid for experts do know everything and must therefore lead. The contempt of ruling elites for the governed is doctrinal, elite commonsense. Classical elite theory, democratic realism, liberal scepticism of mass politics, and Nietzschean philosophy supply the legitimacy and intellectual scaffolding for reaction. Societies are and must be ruled by organised minorities – what Gaetano Mosca termed the “ruling class” and Vilfredo Pareto the “governing elite”. Democratic theorists who prize elite guidance to compensate for mass ignorance reinforce this worldview by cataloguing the vices of the masses. Walter Lippmann, in Public Opinion (1922), portrayed the public as incapable of mastering complex realities.Also read: With CJP Turning Towards Grassroots, JP Movement of the 1970s Shows the Way “The world that we [elites] have to deal with politically,” he wrote, “is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind [of mere masses].” Citizens navigate life through crude simplifications, “stereotypes” and “pictures in their heads,” requiring elites to manufacture consent through informed insiders and propaganda-like guidance. Direct democracy was a dangerous fiction; the public needed a secular priesthood with the technical expertise to mediate between masses and governments.Joseph Schumpeter echoed this in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), reducing democracy to a competitive struggle among elites for the people’s vote. The masses were emotional, impressionable, and vulnerable to “extra-rational” impulses. “The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field,” Schumpeter observed. Democracy functions not because the public governs wisely, but because elites rotate through electoral competition while the demos remains a passive, often irrational check. Max Weber, too, foresaw the iron cage of bureaucracy as a bulwark against mass irrationality, while warning of charismatic leaders exploiting emotional crowds when rational-legal authority falters. Friedrich Nietzsche offered an even more scorching aristocratic critique. He despised the “herd” and its levelling instincts, seeing modern democracy and mass culture as triumphs of ressentiment and “slave morality” over noble, life-affirming values. The masses, in his view, embodied the “last man” – blinkered, comfort-seeking conformists who blink at greatness and drag higher types downward. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra laments the market-square where “everything is mixed” and the herd’s “happy” mediocrity prevails: “Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star.” Nietzsche warned that democratic equality flattens distinction, empowering the envies of the many against the excellence of the few. He celebrated “higher men” and the Übermensch precisely because the masses, left to themselves, produce only vulgar uniformity and cultural decay.These perspectives justified elite stewardship by highlighting alleged popular vices: short-termism, manipulability, susceptibility to demagogues, ignorance of foreign affairs, and parochial self-interest. The “organised minority” triumphs over the “disorganised majority,” as Mosca put it, precisely because elites possess coordination, expertise, and insulation from fleeting passions.Contemporary elites echo classical elite theoryContemporary elites echo this inheritance, often crudely. Consider the casual dehumanisation. In India, a Supreme Court justice’s reference to unemployed youth as “cockroaches” and “parasites” – those who, frustrated by systemic failures in education, jobs, and opportunity, turn to activism and social media – sparked a remarkable backlash.“Women were here,” reads a graffiti by protestors near Jantar Mantar in Delhi. Photo: Special Arrangement.Young Indians reclaimed the slur, forming the satirical yet potent “Cockroach Janta Party,” flooding streets and online spaces in protests against unemployment, exam scandals, nepotism, and elite capture. What began as elite scorn became a badge of defiance, highlighting how a generation feels reduced to infestation in a system rigged for the connected few.This is no isolated gaffe. In the United States, Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 remarks dismissed 47% of Americans as “dependent upon government,” “victims” who believe they are “entitled” to basics like health care and housing, and thus unreachable by his message of personal responsibility. They were written off as electoral irrelevancies. Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 characterisation of half of Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” – racist, sexist, xenophobic, irredeemable – encapsulated a broader elite worldview that pathologises dissent from the professional-managerial class consensus.Rhetoric escalates to labelling and repressionToday, this rhetoric escalates. Opponents of Western-backed actions in Gaza, or critics of endless military engagements, are branded “terrorists,” “antisemites,” or “warmongers” by establishment voices. Masses protesting what they see as moral catastrophe or policy failure are not engaged as legitimate political actors but framed as threats to be surveilled, censored, or delegitimised. Elites, insulated in think tanks, foundations, media conglomerates, and transnational networks, project stability while their policies breed inequality, precarity, and alienation.Also read: When Competitors Became Citizens: The Exam, The Protest and The Work of DemocracyYet history, and elite theory itself, suggests such contempt breeds circulation – or rupture. Mosca and Pareto observed that societies are governed by organised minorities over disorganised majorities. However, while legitimate “creative minorities” renew themselves through talent, adaptation, and responsiveness, decaying ones reduce to closed oligarchies defending narrow interests, inviting political challenge. “Dominant majorities” – numerically small but structurally entrenched – lose the “political formula” that justifies their rule, relying instead on coercion, narrative control, and cultural dismissal.Masses, ariseWe see the masses rising. In India, the cockroach movement channels deep youth disillusionment with joblessness, cronyism amid demographic pressures. In the USA, populist surges – left and right – reflect working-class abandonment by both parties. The UK grapples with post-Brexit disasters and divisions and anti-establishment sentiment. Spain and Ireland witness protests over housing, costs of living, and foreign policy alignments. Gen Z-led mobilisations globally, amplified by social media, target corruption, economic exclusion, and elite hypocrisy.This is no fleeting populism but a structural response to a world of decaying elites. Oligarchies thrive on concentrated wealth, revolving doors between government and capital, and ideological uniformity across legacy institutions. They lecture on democracy while insulating themselves from its consequences – open borders for labour and capital that benefit the top, cultural cosmopolitanism that masks economic nationalism for the few. When masses demand accountability on Gaza, trade, migration, or sovereignty, the response is moral panic and labels, not dialogue.Circulate, adapt, or dieThe future will be shaken. As Pareto noted, elites must circulate or face displacement. In this “elite-decaying world,” legitimacy erodes when creative adaptation gives way to entrenchment. Masses, long disorganised, are finding coordination through technology, shared precarity, and reclaimed agency. From Delhi’s streets to Western ballot boxes and protest squares, they signal that the old formulas no longer suffice.Ruling classes ignore this at their peril. The cockroaches multiply in the rot ruling elites helped create. True renewal demands elites confront their contempt, open pathways for genuine talent and dissent, and restore a measure of organic connection to the governed. Absent that, history’s lesson suggests disruption: not the end of elites, but their forced transformation – or replacement – by forces they currently disdain. The masses are stirring; the question is whether the oligarchs will adapt before the ground shifts decisively beneath their feet.Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and the associate dean of research, School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is the author of several books including Foundations of the American Century and is currently writing a book on the history, politics and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.Bamo Nouri is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at City St George’s, University of London and an independent investigative journalist and writer with interests in American foreign policy and the international and domestic politics of West Asia. He is the author of Elite Theory and the 2003 Iraq Occupation by the United States.