Olufemi O. Taiwo's Elite Capture on Social Media
Identity Politics and the Limits of Online Progressive Discourse
Welcome to Dilemmas of Meaning, a journal at the intersection of philosophy, culture, and technology. This is the second entry in the Identity Series. But it stands on its own, and asks one central question: How do elites use their identities for status in online spaces to control the conversation? It also focuses on the origins of ‘identity politics,’ its utilization by American politicians, and the problem it poses for making lasting change.
In a society where American liberals try to assuage their white guilt through hiring Black people to tell them they’re racist over dinner,1 identity has come to occupy a strange position. But why are those who are hired and have access to these Beverly Hills dinner parties taken to represent their broader group? In his book Elite Capture, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò explores the phenomenon of how identity politics strayed from its original use of ending material oppression to commoditized identity-based movements. This essay uses his concept to explore the dilemma of meaning that Elite Capture makes salient and how it becomes amplified online.
Elite Capture
Elite capture, as used by Táíwò, is utilized both to diagnose identity politics as preventing the equality it aims to seek and advocate for a better way forward. In Táíwò’s words:
Elite capture happens when the advantaged few steer resources and institutions that could serve the many toward their own narrower interests and aims.2
While many movements and activists are ostensibly well intentioned, much of the progressive-posting on the timeline proved to be more of an aesthetic than legitimate activism. The problem is that people turn their social media use into activism, ostensibly becoming the spokesperson for a group of people with the implication that their efforts will trickle down and benefit their supporters. Elite capture thus questions the “racial Reaganomics”3 of identity politics. However, neither Elite Capture nor this essay is a critique of POC trying to lift themselves out of the margins. It is, rather, analyzing the harm that the system that produces elites and their use of identity politics poses to the political movements and the people they claim to represent.
The label of elite has been applied to those varied as billionaires to those with large Twitter followings. It is important, therefore, to outline how ‘elite’ will be used as Táíwò’s writing and social media are analyzed. For the ensuing discourse, I define elite as a confluence of the following:
a) Influential, their decisions have material impact on many other people
b) Representative, a financial social relation between them and those they represent
c) Reflective of the status quo, their actions conform to the interests of the system they exist within
These traits, when in concert, denote an elite and designate the type of power (in on- and offline spaces) being interrogated. By having the ability to make their decisions matter by leveraging collectively sourced funding in line with the system’s agenda, elites have the power to make their world as it makes them. Indeed, as will be shown, despite having an elite social position partially due to a collective’s support—i.e., votes, followers—elites’ interests seldom reflect those but their own. Although this is a sketch to be more comprehensively explored in future work, it will suffice in providing a consistent definition for interrogating elites in real life and online.
For example, Táíwò notes the Congressional Black Caucus and Reaganites’ collaboration on the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, “which helped supercharge mass incarceration […] and the surge of discriminatory law enforcement”4 targeted most those the caucus was poised to represent. The actions here reflect a) in that the law had dire consequences for the working-class Black Americans the caucus represented, which thus satisfies b), and fulfills c) through supplementing the US carceral system, exculpating governmental failures by blaming crack, and “allowing them to look busy”5 to the higher-ups. To be clear, the elites are not some clandestine cabal; they are an unofficially syndicated class of individuals allied by their interests levered by capital under “the banner of group solidarity.”6 Fundamentally, elites’ decisions are made according to their interests, and identity is a factor only insofar as it serves these ends.
Táíwò is questioning when one’s individual identity represents their larger group and the interests they serve. How can the radical and intersectional queer politics of Stonewall and the white cis male Christendom of Pete Buttigieg both adorn the ‘progressive’ label?7 That move, from radical to assimilationist politics, is the mark of elite capture.
Let’s take a step back to clarify the nuance of this essay’s perspective toward identity politics and the term’s origins. ‘Identity politics’ was first popularized by the Combahee River Collective’s 1977 statement written to forge a politics grounded in their own experiences as queer, socialist Black women. The only way “to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression,”8 they thought, was to circumvent Black folk’s and especially Black women’s tokenization within white feminist spaces. The need for Black women’s lived experiences to be included is imperative for any political movement claiming to be emancipatory. True emancipation, they argued, is intersectional.9 However, through its perversion of standpoint epistemology, the branch of identity politics as usurped by elites is a facile shell of the Combahee River Collective’s mission. Indeed, that identity politics birthed “a new vocabulary to describe their politics and aesthetic […] even [when] counter to the interests of the marginalized people whose identities are being deployed”10 is the core of the issue.
What’s in a room?
Narrowing on contemporary identity politics, Táíwò classifies it as a politics of deference, whereby we center the most marginalized in the room in our political discussions. He writes that deference politics “considers it a step toward justice [to modify] interpersonal interactions in compliance with the perceived wishes of the marginalized.”11 He concedes that this person may very well be the most qualified to take the lead on a topic relating to their identity-community.12 Yet, deference in this way presents identity groups as monolithic. Even if they are “‘elites’ relative to the larger group of people they represent, but disadvantaged relative to the other people in the room with them,”13 their particular social positioning is reduced to their relative marginalization and universalized as representative for those not present. But who built the room? Who is in it, who is left out, and why? The dinner parties previously mentioned are one example, social media posts and Washington, D.C policy rooms are others. By elites representing those not in the room, elites prevent both the possibility for the absentee’s representation and the need for their invitation inside. It is thus that Táíwò writes,
deference politics can still mask essential power relations, especially when we consider the performance in the context of the people who aren’t in the room at all.14
The issue is that deference appeals to the hegemonic power that built the room to begin with, leaving the structure of—cishet white-supremacist patriarchy—society unchallenged. As Táíwò so nicely puts, it concedes “so much creative space to the blueprint of society.”15 Instead, we must tear down the walls and uproot the foundations of the system if we wish to change it. He calls for us to focus
on institutions and practices of information gathering that are strategically useful for challenging social injustices themselves, not just the symptoms manifest in the room we happen to be in today.16
Táíwò’s point is that when an elite defers to the most marginalized person in the room, the key is not their marginalized identity but that they are already in the room; they too, are elite. In an ontological game of sorts, when the elite centers someone else in the room it cements their status as elite as it is them choosing to whom they pass the mic. This is the problem with deference politics: the elite retains control of the narrative by getting to pick who they center without giving any real agency or structural equality to the deferred identity group. It enables elites to adorn ‘progressive’ labels whilst tacitly determining the limits of progressive discourse.
An example of this in action, if you’ll grant me a brief digression, is the 2022 Democratic primary for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District between Nina Turner and Shontel Brown. The former ran a grass-roots campaign with a platform endorsed by progressive voices such as Cornel West and Bernie Sanders, and the latter a corporate-backed campaign cosigned by establishment democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton. Who do you think the DNC put its efforts and capital into becoming their candidate? Since both Nina and Shontel share the identity of ‘Black woman,’ the DNC could choose the candidate whose politics most aligned with theirs whilst retaining the progressive aesthetic. As POLITICO’s headline read: “Establishment Prevails.”17 Surely, supporters of Nina were not fooled by the DNC’s progressive performativity; however, it is inconsequential because larger discourse was, if I may, captured alongside Shontel’s victory. Indeed,
the elites at the levers of funding and oversight saw what was in their best interest and then simply did that; its foreseeable negative effects on those they supposedly represent weren’t an effective deterrent.18
Therefore, the issue that Elite Capture makes clear is that contemporary identity politics, a concept originally potent with revolution, ends up serving the interests of the system it was created to transform. Elite capture is thus important to consider for the difficulty it poses any progressive, radical, or transformative politics. In binding discourse to the status quo, transcendence becomes impossible. Any action is purely aesthetic. While we’ve considered the rooms being built and maintained by elites in the offline world, we are not limited to it. Indeed, today, it’s doubly necessary to consider those online for their increased influence, manufactured importance, and consequential amplification of elite capture.
Social Media and Social Capital
The issues Elite Capture raises are amplified on social media not simply for the extended reach the platforms provide but by how it more easily captures our attention and restructures importance. The significance of Táíwò’s call for abandoning deference is underscored by David Beer’s writing that our social and cultural structures “organize themselves through the self-organizing and predictive powers of the software with which we live.”19 Indeed, since new media communications are increasingly intertwined with our lives, the elites that occupy these spaces get more airtime and are awarded a greater sense of importance than they otherwise deserve. A society of ubiquitous media is one in which elites are more able to capture the discourse,20 ultimately preventing critiques of the system from sticking.
The elites on social media fit the definition of elite as they a) have the influence to structure what becomes important, b) become a figure representing a community that enables them by providing funding, and c) exist within the social media apparatus in a way that generates money for it in alignment with their terms of service. Considering b) more deeply, we confront elite’s social media following. The elites leverage their followers who buy their books, subscribe to their Patreons, and engage with their content enough that their platform can grow and attract sponsors. Of course, this is not for nothing; the elites are providing a product being consumed. What is being critiqued, however, is how their elite status enables them to produce something to be consumed, exaggerate their product’s importance, and the commoditization of identity. Indeed, social media elites become able to produce products and generate profit after they become an elite due to the combination of their influence, fanbase, and amiable relation to norm.
Social media promises democratized conversations. All voices are said to be heard. Despite this, Táíwò’s proverbial rooms on social media, too, get hijacked by elites. The quotidian and ubiquitous nature of online communications amplifies elite capture’s impact. Unlike in the policy rooms in Washington, DC, on social media everyone is able to participate, yet not all participation is equal. As Beer notes, power has become more and more “localized in our communications.”21 Appreciating internet virality, the ease and immediacy with which the content of elites reaches us is unparalleled on social media.22 Yet, the elite’s domination of online discourse distracts us from “focusing on the actions of the corporations and algorithms that much more powerfully distribute attention.”23 Thus, two problems arise/become clear: 1) the online debate amongst elites hinders a critique of the system and 2) since you encounter their content on their page, any engagement with it only gives them more exposure and cements them as elite.
The new media elite becomes the same type of spokesperson created by deference that Táíwò alerts us to. They capture the attention with their large following, and their immediately identifiable verification badge gains them entry to other elite-exclusive rooms. When a news network wants a guest contributor for their program or a publishing house is looking for someone to sign a book deal, they are going to defer to someone with 300k Instagram followers than someone with 300. Deference remains an interplay of elites. The online elite gets access to news interviews or a column in a mainstream magazine, and thereby becomes the authoritative voice. This creates a confirmation bias of sorts because more exposure means more followers, which signifies importance. The more we see them as we scroll, the more their association to and perspective on an issue is legitimated. Social media thus captures attention and awards legitimacy to those who are “already in the room and [… are] associated with some form of oppression.”24 The social media platforms become a funnel to a sieve filtering the new elites to be crowned.
The accounts in question present their political opinions as authoritative often above or contra to those with academic or experiential qualification, but to their identity. However, this is not to claim an elite necessarily lacks credentials; rather, that the elite assumes a position where their opinions become authoritative is the point of contention. While sharing and discussing lived experience is valid and important, when one builds a platform centered around one’s personal identity to make political commentary speaking for and capitalizing on an entire group, it is neither standpoint theory nor praxis. It instrumentalizes a group after rendering them a monolith. Even when many people of the same group endorse this person, it nevertheless perpetuates their capture of the discourse. This is especially the case as their following and capital grows. There is thus a “political naivete”25 with presuming the elites’ interests align with the larger group’s interests. As these accounts then capitalize by writing books, starting podcasts, and making various media appearances they become simultaneously estranged from the group they represent and enshrined as the sanctioned figure on these topics. Exactly, as Táíwò writes:
The tech-company owners get the lion’s share of revenue generated by the site’s traffic, driven by our conversations, and a small number of site participants get the lion’s share of attention directed by the activity on the platform. An elite emerges.26
We see this problem not only in the well-intentioned progressive spaces Táíwò discusses, but also in leftist’s engagement with right-wing discourse. Your favorite left-wing political commentator has probably reacted to a right-wing creator you have never heard of, introducing you to their content. If this creator’s views are harmful, why engage? Indeed, why do leftist commentators use their platform to repudiate right-wing content and thereby expose their audience to individuals and ideas they would potentially not encounter otherwise? Sure, there is an element of education and harm-reduction, all well-intentioned actions. However, as bleak as it may be, your favorite leftist commentator’s criticism of the latest failed-comedian turned crypto-fascist’s remarks do little to change the impact and reach of their content. This is not to conflate the two as equally harmful—they’re not—but rather to explain that they react to it because they are both elites. The right-winger’s elite status bestows them unwarranted importance; however, since they both occupy a similar space online—they are members of same room—leftists feel compelled to comment on it. They won’t do this with any random right-winger online, only the ones whose follower-count is akin or greater. One argument is that since the right-wing account has a big platform their deleterious views have a large impact, thus requiring vocal opposition. Yet, no matter the best intentions, all it does is legitimate their elite status by treating them as newsworthy. Indeed, “some of the very actions we take to resist oppressive hierarchies end up serving them.”27 By leftists responding to discourse initiated by conservatives instead of initiating discourse themselves, left-wing media tacitly puts those with harmful views in the driver’s seat. We saw this with Fox News controlling American politics by pushing hyperbolized headlines and manufacturing hysteria that pundits on CNN and MSNBC felt they had to respond to.28 Instead of leaving harmful opinions to fizzle out within their own echo chambers, elites give one another the airtime needed to stay afloat. Elites do not challenge the system, they uphold it. Thus, “we’re mostly making choices in an environment shaped by elites”29 and the system that created them.
The Revolution Will Not Be Posted
“The politics of deference focuses on the consequences that are likeliest to show up in the rooms where elites do most of their interacting,”30 Táíwò writes. Those with the privilege to spend their time engaging with online political discourse have made it in the room—or are, at least, in the audience. While we can be (rightfully) aggravated by bigoted remarks from a right-wing YouTuber, their consequences do not (at least not immediately) manifest as tangible harm to the targeted groups. I am neither invalidating the pain felt at encountering hate online nor the consequences that its proliferation can have; I am, instead, asking whether our efforts would be better spent outside of the room constructed by elites and occupied by us with our relative privilege. The more we focus on squabbles inside the room, the more we amplify their impact and “the harder it becomes to change the world outside of it.”31
This is thus the dilemma: Despite our intentions to transform the system, when we get caught up with online discourse, we concede our attention to the elite and overlook what truly matters. As Táíwò explains, “elites do often make the environment worse and block solutions,”32 but focusing our attention on the elites over the system which created them allows the true problem to remain unchallenged. That the system is by and for elites is the problem. We’re missing the system for the rooms.
That some are cherrypicked by the system is not the cause, but an effect. The essential critique is thus not the elites entirely—surely, they are part of the issue—but the true object of our ire must be “the system itself, the built environment and rules of interaction that produced elites in the first place.”33 While much of this essay was spent problematizing elites, that was done in an effort to uncover the insidious effects of the true problem and to ultimately warn against being caught up in frivolous political discourse online when there exist greater, more ‘real’ culprits. New rooms need be built according to a different system that does not use walls to delimit a hierarchy of importance. Yet, the interplay of elites capturing each other’s online discourse prevents that; “it focuses the very capacity that we have to reconstruct the whole house to the specific rooms that have already been built for us.”34 Like Táíwò explains with Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, elites captured our attention by making it about discourse and everyone focused on the ensuing debate between parties, activists, and commentators, while the people of Flint excluded from the room remained without water.
Identity is empowering. It should be used to empower, as the Combahee River Collective hoped, a movement that dismantles “all the systems of oppression”35 instead of playing to the system’s hand for personal gain. In a hegemonic system, the call for deference is kind-hearted; it makes sense why the marginalized would seek to amplify their voice—and why it feels progressive to assist this process—as white supremacy drowns them out. However, this essay has shown how this unfortunately narrows what are otherwise good intentions to the interests of the elite. The situation thus demands different strategies. Táíwò’s proposed constructive politics, is one such strategy that asks that we be accountable and responsive to people who aren’t yet in the room”36 and challenges us to challenge the system instead of being preoccupied with the elites’ showmanship. Regardless of how opposed their politics are presented, at the end of the day the elites who occupy the same room end up dancing together.37
Until the system is one that champions the collective of voices instead of rewarding the individual, no meaningfully transformative politics can occur. Contrary to the Combahee River Collective’s goal, when identity of a group is used for the political, social, and economic gain of the individual, the collective is subsumed. All voices must be heard, not simply the elite screaming the loudest.
See: The Guardian article.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 22.
Ibid., 74.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid.
Ibid., 32.
See: BuzzFeed News article.
Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, 19.
Ibid, 23.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 9.
Ibid., 69.
Ibid., 78.
Ibid.
Ibid., 75.
Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 84.
See: Politico article.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 25.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 72.
Ibid., 70.
Ibid., 74.
Ibid., 54.
Ibid., 99.
See: Vox article.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 58.
Ibid., 72.
Ibid., 82-83.
Ibid., 54.
Ibid.
Ibid., 83.
Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, 20.
Táíwò, Elite Capture, 84.
While it was falsely reported that the Florida lawmakers danced together after passing anti-Trans legislation, Florida republicans have been consistently introducing anti-Trans bills, book bans, and other harmful legislation poised to rid people of their rights for months and Democrat’s care-free mingling despite all of this has dark meaning for those these policies will ultimately impact. Video.