Welcome to the debate. Today, we're dissecting
three words that have managed an impossible journey.
We're looking at a phrase that went from the
blood -soaked cobblestone streets of 18th -century
Paris straight to the algorithmic neon -lit feeds
of TikTok. Eat the rich. It really is a phrase
that has completely saturated our cultural groundwater.
I mean, you see it scrawled on cardboard at picket
lines in Detroit. Yeah, you hear it sampled in
chart -topping hip -hop. Right. And ironically,
you buy a ticket to see it as essential theme
of Oscar -winning cinema. It is everywhere. And
that ubiquity creates a really strange paradox.
On one hand, it serves as a rallying cry for
a generation facing historic wealth inequality,
a generation that feels totally locked out of
the economic future. Absolutely. But on the other
hand, it's a meme. It's a hashtag, a vibe. It
occupies this bizarre superposition between a
genuine demand for wealth redistribution and,
well, a commodified pop culture aesthetic that
you can literally buy on a t -shirt at the mall.
And that is exactly the tension we need to resolve
today. The core question we are facing is this.
Does the slogan eat the rich represent a legitimate,
historically grounded demand for economic justice?
Is it a necessary articulation of class conflict?
Or has it devolved into a hypocritical, performative
signal that actually obscures the real solutions
we need? I am taking the position that this phrase
is a potent, necessary metaphor. It serves as
a diagnostic tool for a failing system. And I
disagree. Well, I'd argue it highlights systemic
inequality in a visceral way that polite policy
language simply cannot. and it has deep historical
roots that give it weight far beyond the internet
cringe compilations you seem so fond of pointing
out. Fair enough. But I am taking it to position
that the phrase has become actively counterproductive.
It suffers from a fatal lack of definitional
precision. While I understand the anger, today
the phrase manifests less as a revolutionary
stance and more as first world hypocrisy. It's
become a fashion statement for the comfort class
that frankly flirts with dangerous extremism
while alienating the very coalitions needed to
actually fix the economy. I'd argue it has become
a barrier to progress, not a driver of it. Let's
get right into it, then. And I want to start
by stripping away the modern gloss. We really
need to understand that this isn't a slogan invented
by a branding agency or a bored teenager in a
suburban bedroom. This is a historical cry of
desperation. You're referring to the French Revolution
connection, I assume? Precisely. We have to ground
this in the history. The phrase is most commonly
attributed to the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau,
a man whose ideas on the social contract were
fundamental to the era. The quote, which gained
massive traction during the French Revolution,
is, It is a terrifying image. It is meant to
be terrifying. But look at the context. This
wasn't a literal threat of cannibalism for the
sake of cruelty. It was a statement of cause
and effect. It's social physics. If you starve
a population while a nobility hoards grain and
flaunts excess, violence is the inevitable output.
When we see this phrase resurging in the 2020s,
appearing at Elizabeth Warren rallies in 2019
to support a wealth tax, or being adopted by
the Land Party in South Africa, it isn't because
people are just trying to be edgy. It's because
the conditions are rhyming with history. We are
seeing a return of the have -nots in a way that
feels completely existential to them. I don't
dispute the historical lineage at all. Rousseau
is obviously a titan of political thought. But
I strongly dispute the modern application. You're
drawing a straight line from the starving sans
-culottes of 1793. People who literally had no
bread. to a college student in 2024 tweeting
from an iPhone about how much they hate capitalism.
That is exactly where the hypocrisy gap opens
up. That feels like a dismissal of the underlying
economic reality. I mean, just because someone
has a smartphone doesn't mean they can afford
rent or healthcare. It's a critique of the rhetoric,
not the suffering. Let's actually look at the
danger aspect before we even get to the hypocrisy.
Words have consequences. As of 2023, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, has explicitly
associated the phrase eat the rich with what
they classify as anarchist violent extremism,
or AVE. You're citing a government watch list
to delegitimize dissent? That feels like a very
classic move to silence opposition. I'm citing
it to show how the rhetoric is perceived by the
institutions responsible for public safety. Look.
The FBI's Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide notes
that while using the phrase isn't a crime, obviously
we have the First Amendment in the United States,
it is a marker used to identify potential violent
extremism. When you use the language of the Reign
of Terror, you really shouldn't be surprised
when people worry about a Reign of Terror. It
signals a move away from democratic reform toward
total destruction. I think that characterizes
the movement as far more violent than it actually
is. But let's go back to the history for a moment,
because I think you're glossing over why it was
used then and why it's used now. It wasn't just
Rousseau. On October 14th, 1793, Pierre Gaspar
Chalmet, the president of the Paris Commune,
gave a very famous speech. He was speaking during
the height of the terror, yes, but he explicitly
referenced Rousseau to justify the actions of
the revolutionary government. against hoarders
and speculators. He was justifying the guillotine.
Let's be very clear about that. He was justifying
survival in a time of severe famine. He said,
essentially, that the wealthy had declared war
on the poor by hoarding resources. The eating
is a metaphor for redistribution. When I hear
that phrase today, I don't hear a call for violence.
I hear a call for a wealth tax. I hear a call
for food security. To strip it of that intellectual
charity and focus only on the scary words is
to completely ignore the suffering that generates
the words in the first place. You're focusing
on tone policing rather than resource allocation.
But that intellectual charity is exactly what
the modern usage makes impossible. You want me
to read Eat the Rich as a sophisticated demand
for a marginal tax rate adjustment. You want
me to hear it as a nuanced policy proposal. But
when you look at how it actually propagates in
the wild, that is simply not what is happening.
Give me an example of what you see in the wild
then. Look at TikTok. In 2019, and throughout
the pandemic, there was a massive trend of Eat
the Rich content. But the targeting was completely
incoherent. It wasn't directed at the 0 .1 %
who owned the means of production or the massive
multinational conglomerates. The anger was directed
at people who studied abroad in college, people
who had a Spotify premium subscription. Social
media is always messy. You can find bad takes
on literally any topic. It wasn't just messy,
it was cannibalistic, pun intended. My favorite
example, and by favorite I mean the most depressing,
was the vitriol directed at people who had a
second refrigerator in their garage. This wasn't
class warfare against the bourgeoisie. This was
a circular firing squad within the middle class.
When the definition of rich slides down to include
anyone with slightly more comfort than me, the
movement loses all political utility. It becomes
a purity test, not a policy platform. It turns
neighbors against each other while the actual
billionaires are totally unaffected. I think
you are over -indexing on teenagers and algorithmic
noise. Of course, social media discourse lacks
nuance. That's the nature of the medium. But
does a bad tweet invalidate a legitimate labor
movement? I don't think so. You've lost the plot.
I disagree that it confuses the allies that actually
matter. Let's look at where the rubber meets
the road here. Organized labor. You want to talk
about political utility? Let's talk about the
United Auto Workers. In 2023, Sean Fain, the
president of the UAW, didn't shy away from this
rhetoric. He leaned into it. Sean Fain is a serious
operator. I will grant you that. The standup
strike was a master class in strategy. It absolutely
was. And during those strikes against the Big
Three, Ford, GM, Stellantis, he framed the conflict
explicitly as a war between the working class
and the billionaire class. He used the eat the
rich sentiment to draw a hard line. He wasn't
talking about refrigerators. He was talking about
record corporate profits not trickling down.
And guess what? It worked. They secured historic
wage increases. They reinstated cost of living
adjustments. They won because they had leverage
and they halted production, not because of a
slogan on a sign. The slogan galvanized the membership.
It gave them a narrative. It defined the enemy.
Look at Christian Smalls, the leader of the Amazon
Labor Union. In 2022, he goes to the White House
to meet President Biden. Does he wear a suit
and tie to fit in? No. He wears a jacket with
eat the rich painted right on it. Which again
circles back to my point about performative aesthetics.
It wasn't performative. He was in the Oval Office.
That is the exact opposite of performative. That
is confronting power directly. He was bringing
the message of the warehouse floor straight to
the president's desk. These leaders prove that
despite the second refrigerator discourse online,
the core signal of the phrase is still received
loud and clear by the people who actually challenge
capital. It has teeth in the real world. I would
argue Small succeeded in spite of that jacket.
Not because of it. But let's pull on that thread
of aesthetics for a minute. You mentioned Small's
jacket. I want to talk about how this slogan
has been commodified. You claim it's a threat
to the system. I claim the system has already
eaten the slogan and sold it back to us for $15
.99 a month. You're talking about the movies.
I am talking about the eat the rich cinematic
universe. It is practically a genre now. In 2019,
we had Parasite, Joker, Knives Out, Ready or
Not. In 2022, we got Triangle of Sadness, The
Menu, Glass Onion. These films follow a very
specific formula. Rich people are grotesque,
poor people are desperate, and violence ensues.
Filmmakers will make movies about wealth inequality.
That is how culture works. But look at who is
making them. These are massive studio -backed
productions. Netflix released a docu -series
literally titled Eat the Rich, the GameStop Saga.
There's a comic book series called Eat the Rich.
When a revolutionary slogan becomes a marketing
tag for a multi -million dollar production, it
has been neutralized. It's what Mark Fisher called
capitalist realism, the system's ability to absorb
and monetize its own opposition. Or it has been
amplified. You can't start a conversation if
no one is talking about it. No, it becomes a
spectacle. Listen to this. In 2024, the New Chateau
International Fantastic Film Festival used Eat
the Rich as the theme for a retrospective exhibition.
You could buy a ticket to a gala to celebrate
a slogan about destroying the gala. It allows
audiences to engage in safe rebellion. You watch
the menu, you cheer when the restaurant burns
down, you feel like you've done your political
duty, and then you go home and order something
on Amazon Prime. It functions as a pressure valve
that protects the status quo rather than threatening
it. That is a very cynical take, but I see the
logic. However, I think you're confusing the
medium with the message. Just because a message
is delivered via a Netflix subscription doesn't
mean the viewer doesn't internalize it. But does
it spur action, or does it just spur merchandise
sales? It spurs consciousness, and consciousness
precedes action. You mentioned the hypocrisy
earlier. I want to circle back to that, because
I think it's the weakest part of the critique.
You say Eat the Rich alienates the middle class
because of the second refrigerator stuff, but
look at the timeline. The usage of the phrase
spiked specifically following the COVID -19 lockdowns
in 2020. Right, during the height of the uncertainty.
That wasn't a fashion statement. That was a moment
where the essential workers are risking your
lives for minimum wage, bagging groceries and
driving delivery trucks, while the billionaire
class added trillions to their net worth from
the safety of their yachts and private islands.
The disparity was so naked, so obvious that the
slogan became the only rational response. A valid
observation of disparity, certainly. The pandemic
laid those fault lines bare. Exactly. The slogan
functions as a barometer. When you hear it getting
louder, it is a warning signal. It means the
social contract is broken. If you ignore the
signal because you don't like the violent imagery
or because you think the movies are too commercial,
you are ignoring the smoke alarm because you
don't like the sound of the beep. You're complaining
about the noise while the house catches fire.
My argument isn't that we should ignore the inequality.
My argument is that this specific smoke alarm
is broken. It rings when there is a fire, yes,
but it also rings when someone buys a latte.
And because it rings constantly and indiscriminately,
people have stopped listening. They haven't stopped
listening. The UAW strike proves that. The victories
in the labor movement prove that. The UAW strike
proves that strikes work, that organized labor
works. But let's look at the broader political
landscape. In a democratic society, to pass a
wealth tax, which is the actual policy goal here,
right? You need coalitions. You need the working
class, but you also need the moderate middle
class. You need the suburban voter. And you think
this scares them off? Absolutely. When you scream,
eat the rich, and the FBI is flagging that language
as adjacent to violent extremism, you terrify
the moderates. You frame economics as a zero
sum war. You tell them we are coming for you.
But economics is a zero -sum war when resources
are finite and hoarding is rampant. It doesn't
have to be. That is the failure of the slogan.
It implies destruction, eating, consuming, destroying,
rather than constructing. It suggests we fix
the house by burning it down rather than fixing
the foundation. and that scares away the very
people you need to vote for the fix. It makes
the movement look like a mob rather than a government
in waiting. I would argue that fixing the foundation
has been the promise for 40 years of neoliberalism
and the inequality has only widened. The slogan
resurfaces when polite negotiation has failed.
It appeared in 1793 because the French monarchy
refused to reform. It appears now because the
modern economy has failed to deliver on its promises.
But it is indistinguishable from a Motorhead
song. That's the dilution problem again. Motorhead
had a song called Eat the Rich. Aerosmith had
a song Eat the Rich in 1993. PJ O 'Rourke wrote
a book called Eat the Rich. It is background
noise. It is a t -shirt at Hot Topic. When a
phrase has been in circulation in pop culture
for that long, it loses its edge. It just becomes
retro. And yet it scares you. You just said it
terrifies the moderates. So which is it? Is it
a harmless pop song or is it a terrifying threat?
It's both. And that is exactly the problem. It's
terrifying to the people you need to persuade.
And it's a harmless commodity to the people you
want to overthrow. It fails on both fronts. It
disappoints me because it takes genuine, righteous
anger, anger that should be channeled into specific
policy demands and funnels it into a meme that
is easily dismissed by serious policymakers.
I don't think Sean Fain or Christian Smalls are
dismissed. And I don't think the millions of
young people facing a future where they will
own nothing are dismissing it. They are using
the language available to them to articulate
a breaking point. They are saying, we see what
you are doing and we will not accept it quietly.
And I fear they are using language that ensures
they will remain unheard by the people with the
power to change it. They are opting for catharsis
over strategy. We are coming up on time, so let's
crystallize this. You see a slogan that has been
cannibalized by the culture it critiques. You
see a first -world hypocrisy that turns potential
allies into enemies over Spotify subscriptions
and garage fridges. Exactly. I see a tool that
has become counterproductive through commodification
and imprecision. Between the FBI warnings regarding
anarchist violent extremism and the Hollywood
blockbusters turning it into popcorn entertainment,
It has lost its revolutionary edge. It has just
become a brand. And I see a phrase that, despite
its messiness, remains the most potent articulation
of our current crisis. Whether it's Rousseau
in the 18th century or a union leader today,
Eat the Rich is a mirror reflecting a society
where the gap between the haves and the have
-nots has become intolerable. It is a warning
that if we don't address the hunger, literal
and economic, the metaphor might stop being a
metaphor. That is a sobering thought. It suggests
that whether we view it as a threat or a commodity,
the persistence of the phrase from 1793 to today
proves that the underlying wound hasn't healed.
It certainly hasn't. And until it does, the slogan
isn't going anywhere. Thank you for joining us
on the debate. We encourage you to look beneath
the slogans on your timeline and question what
they really signal and what they obscure. Until
next time.