Russell Brand: Liberals Secretly HATE the Working Class

Socialist French President François Hollande once said publicly that he “hated the rich,” but reportedly had a habit of calling the poor “les sans dents” (“the toothless ones”) in private. Hollande was no outlier, either, according to English comedian, actor, and activist Russell Brand. In fact, said Brand in a recent interview with commentator Tucker Carlson, leftists absolutely despise the people they sometimes claim to champion: the working class.

Mentioning the media mischaracterization of the European farmers protests, Brand said that the farmers were being unfairly tarred as racists by pseudo-elites who just don’t like them. He then stated that “there’s no question that a rise in nationalism is an understandable response to rampant globalism.”

“But the ongoing sort of finger pointing and condemnation of ordinary people [is something] I identify with; I recognize it because I grew up in those communities,” Brand continued. “Professional metropolitan people don’t like working-class people, don’t like ordinary people, and now they’ve found a way to legitimize their hatred.”

“‘Oh, they’re all disgusting; they’re all racist. Look at them in their MAGA hats, look at them with their white vans and their flags, look at them with their perspectives, with their unearned views and their belches and their beer,’” Brand elaborated. “It’s a kind of legitimization of a loathing of the people that are most connected to the nation, people that, generally speaking, a couple of generations ago were asked to sacrifice the lives of their sons … for the for the idea of nation — an idea that they’re now being told doesn’t exist” (relevant portion begins at 1:57).

Brand’s last point is interesting because the globalist-nationalist divide is, in fact, also a leftist upper class/working class divide. As The Conversation wrote in 2017, “Working-class voters, traditionally the base of social democratic parties, are turning towards the anti-immigration populism of the right.” On the other hand, “internationalism has become a subcultural identity,” the site also stated. “A social democrat in the UK is likely to have more in common with a social democrat in France or Germany than with a nationalist in their home town.”

In reality, leftists consider “nationalism” barbaric and atavistic, an obsession of people too narrow-minded and unevolved to crave citizen-of-the-world status. The latter’s provincial morality damns them to oh-so-tedious national monogamy, whereas leftists are globe-trotting philanderers of nations. (Of course, the pseudo-elites never put their “asylum seekers” in their neighborhoods — they put them in working-class ones.)

As for Russell Brand, he’s hardly the first to note the Left’s anti-working-class prejudices. Just consider, for example, a fellow Brit, Paul Embery, opining at UnHerd in 2019. He wrote:

When some on the Left argue that the term ‘traditional working-class’ is obscure or divisive or racist and should therefore be ditched, what they are really demonstrating, unintentionally, is their own hidden contempt for this group. They would rather it didn’t exist at all in the form it does.

They think its members are ‘nativist’ and reactionary and – God forbid – voted to leave the European Union. Because, you see, the group-thinkers and virtue-signallers and woke liberals and quasi-Marxists and echo-chamber-dwellers who comprise so much of the modern Left believe themselves to be Inherently Better People than those of us from the more traditional Left. We are Gillian Duffy and White Van Man of Rochester – ripe for votes, but not fit to be seen in public with. [Some call you something else: useful idiots.]

What this illustrates is that upper-class leftist antipathy for the working class isn’t just about the latter’s current support for “rightist” policies (though that’s an extreme exacerbating factor). For these pseudo-elites dislike even working-class people who share their voting habits.

This isn’t a new observation, either. Just consider yet another Brit, late author George Orwell, describing the nature of his day’s socialists. Their ranks were replete with middle-class people, he wrote, who “while theoretically pining for a classless society, cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige.”

While often hidden, à la Hollande, this crass class contempt sometimes spills out in public when a pseudo-elite is off-script. Just consider Barack Obama, on the campaign trail in 2008. “Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses,” The Guardian wrote, “the presidential hopeful said: ‘They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.’”

There can be a psychological reason for the snobbery, too, one relating to self-esteem. Chauvinism — whether based on race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, ideology, class, or something else — has enduring appeal because it’s comforting to believe you’re part of a special, superior group. After all, a person may be lacking in substance, character, intelligence, talent, and ability and really be quite insecure. But he can always say on some level, “At least I’m not like those people.” He’s a cut above — part of an elite.

Of course, if pseudo-elite leftists really cared about “the toothless ones,” they could use their resources to help the poor get dental care, which is quite expensive. But don’t hold your breath waiting. Studies have repeatedly shown that liberals give less to charity than conservatives do — despite having higher incomes. (They donate less blood, too.) Moreover, when they do support charity, their money tends to go to political activism, not the poor.

As for avoiding poverty — of character — the Hollande brand in particular, a line from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If” comes to mind:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch…”

Arrogant decadence is never a good look.