Aleks’s Reviews > The Art of Political Storytelling: Why Stories Win Votes in Post-truth Politics > Status Update

in the context of national populism, ‘elite’ refers to anyone with a role in an establishment institution whose job involves them, as William Davies puts ‘claiming some disembodied, dispassionate perspective, not available to the ordinary’ person. In other words, elitism in this conception isn’t to do with a person having wealth and influence, it’s to do with them being related somehow to the authority of the system.

In many ways the story it tells is as simple as this. The general populace is being taken advantage of by a self-serving establishment, and the populist leader, as the only person able to represent the ‘real people’, will take the fight to this establishment on behalf of the common man and woman.