“Mengistu seemed to symbolize the revolution. He was the baria, the slave who overthrew the master, the member of the conquered tribe who got even with the conquerors, the poorly educated son of a servant who rose against the intellectual elite.”

I answer: "The previous elite."
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Narrated Abu Musa Al-Ashari, in Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 46, Number 723
Sunni Hadith

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 39, with a quote from Galatians, IV, 6-8.

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Variant: The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

"A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980)
General sources
Context: I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and can be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is social approval of learning and social rewards for learning.
We can all be members of the intellectual elite and then, and only then, will a phrase like "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, have any meaning.

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

193
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Source: Train to Pakistan

"The Great Hate Debate" https://www.takimag.com/article/the-great-hate-debate, Taki's Magazine (July 13, 2019).