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The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's 'elite' or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political system.

Thomas Frank#10

PoliticsClassCorporatePower

About this quote

What does it mean?
Backlash politics deny economic class to create cultural conflict and protect corporate power.
In plain terms
Denying economic class helps protect corporate power through cultural conflict.
What can you take from it?
Cultural conflicts often obscure economic power structures.

Where it applies

  • political strategy
  • media analysis

Putting it to work

  • identify hidden agendas
  • analyze political narratives

Questions to consider

  • What interests are served by denying class?

Another view

Some political movements address both economic and cultural issues.

More from Thomas Frank

  1. Thanks to its chokehold on the nation's culture, liberalism is thus in power whether its politicians are elected or not; it rules over us even though Republica…

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  2. Apparently, there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a…

    Permalink to quote #8
  3. They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are…

    Permalink to quote #7

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