We speak about “elites” without thought, but the term died for centuries and only revived in recent times. It found its origins in the 14th century—when it referred to the “selection” of bishops, you could say that to be “elite” is to be “hand-picked” (“Robin Hood and his hand-picked men led a raid on the Sheriff of Nottingham”).
However, by the 15th century the word had died out.
It was Byron who revived the term in his Don Juan (1824):
“The noble guests, assembled at the Abbey,
Consisted of—we give the sex the pas—
The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke; the Countess Crabby;
The Ladies Scilly, Busey;—Miss Eclat,
Miss Bombazeen, Miss Mackstay, Miss O’Tabby,
And Mrs. Rabbi, the rich banker’s squaw;
Also the honourable Mrs. Sleep,
Who look’d a white lamb, yet was a black sheep:
With other Countesses of Blank—but rank;
At once the ‘lie’ and the ‘elite’ of crowds;
Who pass like water filter’d in a tank,
All purged and pious from their native clouds;
Or paper turn’d to money by the Bank:
No matter how or why, the passport shrouds
The ‘passee’ and the past; for good society
Is no less famed for tolerance than piety,—
That is, up to a certain point; which point
Forms the most difficult in punctuation.
Appearances appear to form the joint
On which it hinges in a higher station;
And so that no explosion cry ‘Aroint
Thee, witch!’ or each Medea has her Jason;
Or (to the point with Horace and with Pulci)
‘Omne tulit punctum, quae miscuit utile dulci.’”
You notice that Byron uses the term in quotation marks, because it was a revival—he knew the word wouldn’t be familiar to his readers. The use is pejorative from the first—Byron links “elite” and “lie”, so there’s an idea that the elite is corrupted (as conveyed by the other verses that surround the word’s usage—the wordplay on “rank”, both a mark of office and a fish that stinks with “rank offence”).
The term had become common currency by 1852—thanks to a singlehanded effort by Byron (you have to remember that Byron was a celebrity in his day—easily equivalent to Mick Jagger or Taylor Swift today; he really could alter your consciousness).
Of course, there have always been terms for “the top” or “the powerful”, but Byron revived the idea that they were “the chosen” or “the selected” (the word finds its origin in the French and Latin for “choice”).
But “elite” is pejorative, as you can tell from the way Byron contextualises the term: “Also the honourable Mrs. Sleep, Who look’d a white lamb, yet was a black sheep”.
Indeed, these people are only “the elite of crowds”—the suggestion is that they are a mob who got above themselves, delude themselves that they are so superior.
And this is followed by an idea that the aristocrats and bankers represented at the party “wash themselves clean” like the water in a tank that gathers rainwater that has been filtered by the clouds—the idea here being that their money is “dry-washed”, as with the mafia, so that however it was made it becomes clean.
Hence: “Who pass like water filter’d in a tank, All purged and pious from their native clouds; Or paper turn’d to money by the Bank…”
The suggestion is that the way a bank turns paper into money is itself somehow an underhanded trick—“put a face and a signature on it, and suddenly it’s worth something—apparently; well, you can pay me in actual gold, thanks—if you can’t scratch a window with it, I don’t take it. Pay me with something that’s real.”
Byron associates Jewry with aristocracy in this financial arrangement, per his list of ladies present: “The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke; the Countess Crabby; The Ladies Scilly, Busey;—Miss Eclat, Miss Bombazeen, Miss Mackstay, Miss O’Tabby, And Mrs. Rabbi, the rich banker’s squaw.”
The slang term “squaw” for wife is a play on the fact Red Indians marry “squaws”—so it’s about “the tribe” (of Hebrews or Iroquois).
The names are sarcastic caricature jokes themselves—“Miss Eclat”, since “éclat” comes from “lightning” in French; it means “style” or “panache”—as in “he has real éclat” if he’s a hit at a party “like a lightning flash” (flash harry, Flashman).
“No matter how or why, the passport shrouds
The ‘passee’ and the past; for good society
Is no less famed for tolerance than piety,—”
So here Byron refers to an international elite, at a time when passports were a rarity and often considered to be “an imposition on liberty”, who travel about the world but whose “tolerance” refers to the fact they overlook the sins of their fellow guests at dinner (“piety” being a secondary consideration for “the elite”).
Byron supported the French Revolution, so the way the term “elite” has been used in modernity has always had leftist connotations. “The people versus the elite”—led by the original bleeding-heart liberal and ur-Romantic Byron, himself a top aristocrat and so an original “decadent elite” or “rebel elite”. Indeed, it was he who said, as regards the Tory minister Castlereagh:
“Posterity will ne’er survey
a Nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss!”
And Byron, of course, was deformed—he had a crippled leg—and had a father who was known as “mad Jack”, and a mother famed for her over-indulgence (obese). Perhaps leftism and physical and mental deformity do go together—Byron was this English Ephialtes, keen to betray the country to Boney.
He was just like the contemporary leftist who lies down in front of Israeli bulldozers in Palestine, or old Che in his revolutionary tour of South America—because Byron died, of malaria, in Greece during his own participation in a “national liberation” struggle (solidarity, comrades) for a “subject people”.
Byron would be in BLM today, or, more likely, the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank—he would die “romantically” in front of an IDF bulldozer, or, more likely, from a nasty Covid-19 variant he contracted from a rogue falafel.
To speak of Israel, the emancipation of the Jews heralded by Bonaparte and the French Revolution actually increased popular anti-Jewish sentiment—once allied, per Byron, as “Mrs. Rabbi” to kings and aristocrats, the emancipated Jew found himself at the mercy of the nation-mob, in which he was now a foreign element (tl;dr the Jews were better off in the medieval ghettos, their emancipation made them subject to “scientific extermination”—nationalism is leftism).
So “elite” and “the elites” have always had a leftist connotation—“the elites”, in modernity, are always “corrupt” and “in bed with the bankers” (just as they were in 1824). In our time, the term is used by the populist right—so it has become a term that is associated with the right. But its origins in modernity lie with the left; and it makes sense because populists and nationalists are the relative right, not the absolute right.
And, indeed, as you can see from the above graph, “the elites” really take off post-war, when there are leftist regimes, of various types, almost everywhere in the world. In particular, I think the term owes its contemporary usage, to judge from the bump, to the Marxisant C. Wright Mills and his book The Power Elite (1956).
The term goes back to Latin “eligere”—it literally refers to when you pick or pluck a plant from the ground. In figurative terms, it is used to mean “election” or “selection” (eligible, as in sometime bachelors like Byron)—hence “I was plucked from obscurity into the power elite, once my obvious talents were realised” (an event I expect any day now).
So it’s connected to “choice”, to “the elect”, to actual elections—as I noted earlier, it’s the right that lets people choose, which is the same, in etymological terms, as to be “a heretic”; and if you let people choose then you get inequality and hierarchy, because some people choose better than others.
The conclusion I draw from this examination is that it is unwise to speak about “the elites”, because the term itself is pejorative and contains within it the assumption that there should be no “selected” people at all—and that all selection is somehow corrupt, and I don’t think that’s the case (though anything could become corrupt).
You see how Byron uses it in a mocking way, “Oh, you’re in ‘the select’ are you? You’re ‘among the chosen’? You think you’re so high and mighty—well, I went to all your parties and I know exactly what you’re all really up to…”.
Byron was among the first celebrities as we understand the term today—he was also mad, physically deformed, and a sex maniac (a state that some of us can only aspire to, despite our best efforts). I often say that “the left is the media” and Byron bears me out in this respect—perhaps rather than “elites” we should speak of aristocrats, as Byron was, and about decadent aristocrats (as Byron also was); and, above all, about celebrities.