The mood is anti-elite. But not anti-celebrity
The difference — seen at a Trump rally — may affect Trudeau’s shot at re-election
It wasn’t exactly the wisdom of crowds on display in Florida this week, when supporters of President Donald Trump got openly hostile with CNN reporter Jim Acosta.
Chanting “CNN sucks!” and “Go home, Jim!,” the mob seemed intent on chasing the veteran reporter out of the pro-Trump rally in Tampa. But then something unexpected happened: when Acosta went over to chat with his noisy critics, they turned into adoring fans — asking him for his autograph or to pose in selfies with them.
As Fox News’ Evan Axelbank reported on Twitter: “After the cameras are off, all I see is them asking his opinion on everything under the sun and if they can take pictures with him. It’s quite a phenomenon.”
This one incident also perfectly captures the public’s ambivalence these days about elites and celebrities. We know the public generally seems to be in an anti-elite mood — here in Canada, it propelled Doug Ford into the Ontario premier’s job in June and some big, populist measures in his first month in power.
But celebrity remains a powerful force, too — it can even soothe angry mobs or make people forget that a person can be an elite and a celebrity at the same time.
DELACOURT from IN1
Did Americans vote for Trump because he was an elite millionaire or because he was a reality-show celebrity? I fear we all know the answer to that.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a charter member of Canada’s elite; raised at 24 Sussex amid power, wealth and privilege — now the head of government in this country. You don’t get much more elite than that. But he’s also a bona fide celebrity, not only domestically but abroad as well. Just this past week, Hollywood legend Jane Fonda was calling Trudeau “a good lookin’ Liberal.” (But not in a good way — the full quote in Maclean’s was: “Don’t trust good-lookin’ liberals.” Fonda is annoyed that Trudeau supports the Trans Mountain Pipeline.)
Fonda’s misgivings aside, celebrity is a wild card amid the current surge of anti-elite populism. And sorting out who’s an elite and who is a celebrity is going to be a recurring theme over the next year — especially for Trudeau — as we head toward the 2019 election.
In 2015, Trudeau was elected despite his elite credentials, in part because he was a celebrity. Can he pull that off again as a re-election strategy? That’s far from clear.
Alex Marland at Memorial University is one of Canada’s leading political-science experts on branding, marketing and communications. He’s also one of the editors behind a new book: Political Elites in Canada: Power and Influence in Instantaneous Times. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I wrote the foreword for this book and have worked with Marland on several academic-journalistic collaborations over the past decade.)
Populism and anti-elitism are on Marland’s radar right now, because they are changing the shape of our institutions — quite literally, as we’ve seen with Ford’s abrupt slashing of Toronto City Council seats. Marland believes that Ford’s moves at city hall play right into the anti-elitist agenda.
“Populists are foremost people who champion the average person. Taking on the number of politicians fits the script to a T, especially when it is done at the start of a mandate,” Marland says.
When it comes to how elitism and celebrity will play out in 2019, Marland says we can see some trends emerging now.
“The Conservatives will try to project the negatives of elitism and celebrity, whereas the Liberals will try to avoid the elitist label by projecting the positives of celebrity,” he says.
But while crowds still are posing for selfies with Trudeau out on the hustings, can the prime minister use that celebrity as a bulwark against anti-elitism once again in an election campaign?
“An inescapable fact is that once you are the head of government you are part of the establishment,” Marland said. “The opposition can always project themselves as non-elites in a different way. What worked for Trudeau the leader of the third party in 2015 must therefore be adjusted for the realities of Trudeau the prime minister in 2019.”
Political Elites in Canada shows just how wide and deep the trend to anti-elitism runs in Canada. It’s an economic, social and global phenomenon, fuelled in large part by the digital revolution, which broke down barriers between haves and have-nots.
For what it’s worth, I think the public now broadly defines elites as anyone with privileges unavailable to average people: wealth, money, education, power or even good jobs. The more expensive or unattainable these things have become, the more people resent those who have them. It’s a zero-sum equation: if you have that advantage, I don’t.
Oddly enough, I think people are more conflicted about celebrity because it’s easier to obtain in the digital age. Wealth may be an impossible dream in the 21st century, but fame, thanks to social media, is seen as available to anyone with a smartphone.
So with anti-elitism on the rise, not just in Ontario, but in Canada and beyond, people may be wondering how to avoid becoming a target of resentment — the kind that Acosta encountered at a Florida rally this week. Easy — try saying you’re famous.
“Populists are foremost people who champion the average person.” ALEX MARLAND AN EDITOR OF POLITICAL ELITES IN CANADA
Susan Delacourt is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Ottawa. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@bell.net