counter-elites

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin.

One thing to note about counter-elites is that they are partial elites.

Tech cultivates counter-elites who essentially reframe many of the structures of society.

This notion of counter-elites is about their position in traditional hierarchies.

I could see a lot of the university types who teach critical theory as counter-elites.

More importantly, the Ivy League also functions as a way to take potential counter-elites and assimilate them into the existing system so that they can take roles that preserve it rather than destroy it.

- You have a situation now where there are many more elites fighting for the same position, and some portion of them will convert to counter-elites - Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners.

One of the most interesting aspects in Turchin's hypothesis is the notion of counter-elites: those who are groomed for power and then excluded from it, who wreak their vengeance by turning against the existing hierarchy.

- If commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels.

Yes, there is a lot of variation and rising "counter-elites", but why exactly should we ignore the elephant in the room?

However, eventually you get an actual success at fixing the underlying problems (often related to elites accumulating too big a percentage of the resources), then the "fathers-and-sons" cycles stop because there's not a big well of repressed anger for counter-elites (Robespierre, Cromwell, Lenin, etc.) to draw on.