The Revolt of the Established

Elias, Ressentiment, and Authoritarian Populism

Abstract

Recent scholarship on authoritarian populism draws on the concept of ressentiment in order to encompass the dynamics of ‘power devaluation’ and the dethronement of previously established groups. This paper develops those arguments by outlining the ways in which our understanding of the dynamics of ‘dethronement’ and ‘power devaluation’ can usefully be enhanced by reflecting on the interaction between two aspects of Elias’s thought: first, his conception of the ‘drag effect’ in the relationship between social habitus and shifts in social structure, alongside Bourdieu’s related concept of the hysteresis effect; and, second, Elias’s analysis of the dynamics of established–outsider relations, at both an intra-nation and an inter-nation level—with a particular focus on the turn to National Socialism in 1930s Germany. The central argument will be that the interaction of these dynamics underpins the various forms of authoritarian populism, taking the form of a ‘revolt of the established’, creating the conditions for a destabilisation of the norms of civilised conduct and interaction for the sake of the protection of existing relations of power and status.